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When you take the place of the real abuser in your abusers life
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<blockquote data-quote="Scent of Cedar *" data-source="post: 666727" data-attributes="member: 17461"><p>I think it was that need to assess and respond to and change the other's emotional state. That way of being that left us forever focusing on the other guy's emotional state and believing we were responsible for what they felt. Not even in the sense of having caused it. For us, in our childhoods, there was no traceable cause and effect. There was the living horror of the moment. How to survive it if the mother never did come back, and you were there, with siblings to protect and only the way bigger than you, empty eyed mother.</p><p></p><p>Scary.</p><p></p><p>Grown up people get scared in those situations.</p><p></p><p>That's how we grew up. That (I think) is why we are like, terminally empathetic to this day.</p><p></p><p>For us, that was the most important survival skill.</p><p></p><p>That is why it feels so dangerous to just let things be real. But real listening honors the pain. In the adult world, I mean. Good things and bad things happen to us all.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Ha! Good for you. This is a condition to which I aspire. Temper these abilities with compassion and honor and care, and we realize the wonder of our humanness. </p><p></p><p>And we never have to be responsible for every smallest thing, any more.</p><p></p><p>Only for ourselves, and for the choice to be kind, and to have the courage to do the right thing as we see it.</p><p></p><p>And not beat ourselves up forever when we've made a mistake, or performed poorly, or didn't know what to do.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Well, but you had to. Seriously, you had to. Especially given what we have learned about FOO dynamics Serenity, your choices were only to fight back or disappear to yourself.</p><p></p><p>I am glad you fought for yourself.</p><p></p><p>If you hadn't learned how to do that Serenity, you might still be locked in a relationship with a sister whose definition of relationship is: We both agree that I get to define you, and the terms of relationship, in ways that glorify my intention that you to continue to function as scapegoat.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I love this definition.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>These things are lies, though. To denigrate someone behind their backs, that is lying and justifying to rationalize scapegoating. That is "What would Cedar do." and is the first step in ridiculing and then, victimizing to justify what the initial intent was all along: Eradication of those qualities in another person that leave us feeling smaller than.</p><p></p><p>It becomes a question of integrity. In dysfunctional families, that might be the prize we are all fighting for. A sense of integrity, of self reliance through understanding that we recognize right thinking from wrong. </p><p></p><p>That could be.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Yes. The problem for us is that we have trouble discriminating between who we are and who we were required to be in our FOO. Like, I am always feeling responsible for how people feel. That was important in my growing up, but it does not serve me well when that feeling of responsibility turns into defining myself in accusatory terms. I keep referring to the article you posted about role flexibility. It's a matter of degree. Real boats rock. We hold a certain measure of responsibility for everything that happens to us, but we are not solely responsible.</p><p></p><p>I think that's the difference for all of us in the ways we are seeing, now.</p><p></p><p>That is how we could see the wrongnesses in the behaviors our families of origin insist on.</p><p></p><p>Maybe, this is true.</p><p></p><p>I am not so clear on this part, yet.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>That makes me sad for your sister. I wonder if that is the crux of the issue for my sister, too. It could be that they always felt overshadowed by us, when the heart of the matter is that we were, all of us, floundering around trying to make sense of things. Maybe that explains why they come to us for advice. They think we know because, in our abusive childhoods, they had to believe, like we did, that someone knew what was going on. </p><p></p><p>And all they had was us.</p><p></p><p>Pseudo mom.</p><p></p><p>I feel so badly for all of us.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>That's how I feel about both my mom and my sister. That they focus on or target me, somehow. It is scary.</p><p></p><p>Before, I would tell myself I could handle it. I was so sure everyone wants to be family. Now, I acknowledge that I can't handle it. I am vulnerable to what they think in ways I don't understand.</p><p></p><p>I think this will never change.</p><p></p><p>So the right thing to do is choose what is healthy for me, and for my family.</p><p></p><p>This is a huge change for me, too.</p><p></p><p>That is the changed thing, between believing in someone and believing them.</p><p></p><p>Like Maya writes: Believe them the first time they tell you who they are.</p><p></p><p>It's pretty scary? But I don't even care if that makes me a coward, anymore.</p><p></p><p>Feets, don't fail me now.</p><p></p><p>:O)</p><p></p><p>So, I was looking for something funny to go with that. I found this instead, which is so much more the feeling it is.</p><p></p><p><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BeNHUqcCMAAA8Lf.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /> </p><p></p><p>Because under everything, I do love them. I love them very, very much.</p><p></p><p>So maybe the way to see this is that way I saw daughter when we thought we were losing her. Just the laughter and the good things and the gratitude for what we had. We are taking responsibility for ourselves because, for reasons we have no connection to or responsibility for, our moms and sisters are where they are regarding relationship to us and to themselves and to each other.</p><p></p><p>I posted about the way people healthy in their cores view emotionally or verbally abusive relationship. For them, and for us too as we come through this time, we will see that it is the relationship that has been affected, and not us.</p><p></p><p>And in a way, this is the truth of the thing. How can I be sad to lose a relationship whose intention is...I don't know. I just know that as I become healthier, I am acknowledging fear that was always there, and that I refused to respond to because it did not fit with the picture of what I wanted my relationship to my mom or my sister to be. That is why we have excused so much that was wrong. That is why we feel responsible when things do go so wrong between ourselves and those we do, under everything, love. It gave us a sense of control in something that somehow turned chaotic. If we could name it, if we could name what we did, we were oh so willing to address it.</p><p></p><p>It wasn't us.</p><p></p><p>We cannot address the intentions they choose and insist on.</p><p></p><p>Thanks, mom.</p><p></p><p><img src="/community/styles/default/xenforo/smilies/2012/mcsmiley1.gif" class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":mcsmiley1:" title="mcsmiley1 :mcsmiley1:" data-shortname=":mcsmiley1:" /></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>D H says: Your fear has always been that you would lose them. So, you allowed things that should have been addressed. Had you addressed them, you may have lost them anyway <em>but at least you would know why. </em>As it is, we beat ourselves up for their actions when, as was their intention all along, they label and leave us.</p><p></p><p>I don't know whether this can change. I do know the change would have to begin with our sister's seeing us for more than the role they believe we are. That would involve becoming healthier themselves.</p><p></p><p>I don't know, Copa.</p><p></p><p>I only know I want to be healthier. I know I don't want to hate or blame people, I wish, and am working toward, trying to see their behaviors as separate things from me. If I have the opportunity to see either my sister or my mom again, it isn't going to be from a starting position of how much we all love one another, because that is not true. There are serious dysfunctions to be addressed, I do know that much. So, it follows then that my position must be to say what I see. to require immediate clarification the first time something is clangingly wrong.</p><p></p><p>Not to be afraid of losing them, but to require of myself that if I do lose them, this time, I will know why.</p><p></p><p>That's been the theme with each of us I think, Copa and Serenity. We find ourselves in places with our families that we never saw coming and try to make sense of it from there. The wrongnesses that might have been addressed at the start were excused. We believed ourselves into accepting that not enough was enough.</p><p></p><p>We cannot do that.</p><p></p><p>Just like we cannot enable our kids, we cannot enable our sibs or, in my case, our mothers. Whatever enabling we do in any facet of our lives spirals into the ugliness enabling always spirals into.</p><p></p><p>That was the part I played. I didn't actively engage in behaviors I knew were harmful, but neither did I take the stand against them that I should have.</p><p></p><p>I was afraid I would lose them.</p><p></p><p>I did, anyway.</p><p></p><p>How does that saying go? Something about, "What of him who has nothing?"</p><p></p><p>"He shall lose what he has."</p><p></p><p>It turns out to be less about fighting for the good things than it does about kicking people in the pants for the bad things.</p><p></p><p>And if they leave us, accepting that they would have left us anyway, instead of beating ourselves up for what they do that is wrong, that is disrespectful of us on any level.</p><p></p><p>But before we can do that, we have to respect ourselves.</p><p></p><p>And that is coming in us, now.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Yes, Copa.</p><p></p><p>But you stood for her in that, too.</p><p></p><p>She was not alone.</p><p></p><p>That is testament to your integrity.</p><p></p><p>This point is crucial, Copa.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I think both my mom and my sister suffer. I have the sense that they cannot put the pieces together, either. If everyone would only accept that it is what it is and that what is, is best for everyone. </p><p></p><p>There is a story about a town where life was perfect. A visitor to the town was enchanted with everything about the town, until he learned that there was a child in a dungeon in the center of the city whose purpose was to carry hatred and illness and pain.</p><p></p><p>And when the child died, a new one was chosen, from the townspeople's own children.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I'm scared to death of my sister.</p><p></p><p>And of my mom, too.</p><p></p><p><img src="/community/styles/default/xenforo/smilies/Graemlins/916wildone.gif" class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":916wildone:" title="scream :916wildone:" data-shortname=":916wildone:" /></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p><img src="/community/styles/default/xenforo/smilies/Graemlins/916blusher.gif" class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":916blusher:" title="blushing :916blusher:" data-shortname=":916blusher:" /></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p><img src="/community/styles/default/xenforo/smilies/Graemlins/9-07tears.gif" class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":9-07tears:" title="crying :9-07tears:" data-shortname=":9-07tears:" /></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p><img src="/community/styles/default/xenforo/smilies/Graemlins/919Mad.gif" class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":919Mad:" title="Mad :919Mad:" data-shortname=":919Mad:" /></p><p></p><p></p><p><img src="/community/styles/default/xenforo/smilies/emoticons/bag.gif" class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":bag:" title="bag :bag:" data-shortname=":bag:" /></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I never know, when I think about my mom or my sister, what is real. I think my sister tries really hard, like I do too, to have family. D H says that is her manipulation of me; that this is how she gets in, because I see her that way and she knows it. That is why D H says I will need to be very careful if anything happens to him.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Yes! Eye rolling. Exactly. I had not seen it that exact way. But that is it, Copa. That was my sister bare naked. That was me, taking responsibility again.</p><p></p><p>I need to stop doing that.</p><p></p><p>She was exactly rolling her eyes at me, and at everything about me!</p><p></p><p>Huh.</p><p></p><p>I always like to think she doesn't know what she's doing, or can't help it somehow.</p><p></p><p>Thank you, Copa.</p><p></p><p>That was an eye rolling thing and my sister was in grandiosity mode about those suckers because of course I told her someone fresh out of surgery should not have suckers yet, and that we needed was those glycerin mouth swabs and had she asked the nurse.</p><p></p><p>Which I did do, after my father got a little sick from that stupid sucker.</p><p></p><p>And you know what else they did to my poor father? I was telling everyone (including my father) that he needed an albuterol inhaler. He had been having such problems with shortness of breath, even before the surgery. I spelled it out for my mother, once.</p><p></p><p>But somehow, he never did get an inhaler.</p><p></p><p>When he'd had his stroke, and was finally transferred from intensive care in a local hospital to a facility in a big city, albuterol inhalants were included in the admissions orders.</p><p></p><p>Of course.</p><p></p><p>But they would not listen to me because even though I had some pretty fancy medical training (not that recognizing the need for an inhaler requires medical training, but I am just saying) they needed to not believe I could know more than they did about what my father might need.</p><p></p><p>Isn't that something.</p><p></p><p>I wish I'd said: Stop being so jerky. You can be superior to me in some other way and in the meantime, Dad will breathe easier. But I told my father about the inhaler, too. And he didn't do what I said, either.</p><p></p><p><img src="/community/styles/default/xenforo/smilies/emoticons/hangin.gif" class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":hangin:" title="hangin :hangin:" data-shortname=":hangin:" /></p><p></p><p></p><p>This is probably true about my sister, too.</p><p></p><p>I just don't like to say so. But for heaven's sake you two, my own sister prayed a ring of fire around me and my family. Who does that kind of thing!?! And all those other bratty things my sister did, too. Do you hear the term: bratty.</p><p></p><p>That is what a child is when they are rotten kids.</p><p></p><p>Adults are something worse than bratty.</p><p></p><p>I have to stop seeing my sister as a child.</p><p></p><p>Or maybe, I have to stop seeing myself as an adult, in relation to her. I should be protected and cherished and taught, too.</p><p></p><p>I merit that.</p><p></p><p><img src="/community/styles/default/xenforo/smilies/emoticons/choir.gif" class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":choir:" title="choir :choir:" data-shortname=":choir:" /></p><p></p><p>I think it was not a sad post too much, Copa. These are sad things that we are choosing to face. But the prize at the end is ourselves, freed from the dungeon in the depths of the Witch Mother's terribly foreboding castle.</p><p></p><p>We need to save those little girls we were.</p><p></p><p>They are the ones who matter, now.</p><p></p><p>Otherwise, how will they ever be strong role models and mentors for their own children.</p><p></p><p>Cedar</p><p></p><p>I always did like my kids better than my mom and my sister, put together.</p><p></p><p><img src="/community/styles/default/xenforo/smilies/emoticons/hugs.gif" class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":hugs:" title="hugs :hugs:" data-shortname=":hugs:" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Scent of Cedar *, post: 666727, member: 17461"] I think it was that need to assess and respond to and change the other's emotional state. That way of being that left us forever focusing on the other guy's emotional state and believing we were responsible for what they felt. Not even in the sense of having caused it. For us, in our childhoods, there was no traceable cause and effect. There was the living horror of the moment. How to survive it if the mother never did come back, and you were there, with siblings to protect and only the way bigger than you, empty eyed mother. Scary. Grown up people get scared in those situations. That's how we grew up. That (I think) is why we are like, terminally empathetic to this day. For us, that was the most important survival skill. That is why it feels so dangerous to just let things be real. But real listening honors the pain. In the adult world, I mean. Good things and bad things happen to us all. Ha! Good for you. This is a condition to which I aspire. Temper these abilities with compassion and honor and care, and we realize the wonder of our humanness. And we never have to be responsible for every smallest thing, any more. Only for ourselves, and for the choice to be kind, and to have the courage to do the right thing as we see it. And not beat ourselves up forever when we've made a mistake, or performed poorly, or didn't know what to do. Well, but you had to. Seriously, you had to. Especially given what we have learned about FOO dynamics Serenity, your choices were only to fight back or disappear to yourself. I am glad you fought for yourself. If you hadn't learned how to do that Serenity, you might still be locked in a relationship with a sister whose definition of relationship is: We both agree that I get to define you, and the terms of relationship, in ways that glorify my intention that you to continue to function as scapegoat. I love this definition. These things are lies, though. To denigrate someone behind their backs, that is lying and justifying to rationalize scapegoating. That is "What would Cedar do." and is the first step in ridiculing and then, victimizing to justify what the initial intent was all along: Eradication of those qualities in another person that leave us feeling smaller than. It becomes a question of integrity. In dysfunctional families, that might be the prize we are all fighting for. A sense of integrity, of self reliance through understanding that we recognize right thinking from wrong. That could be. Yes. The problem for us is that we have trouble discriminating between who we are and who we were required to be in our FOO. Like, I am always feeling responsible for how people feel. That was important in my growing up, but it does not serve me well when that feeling of responsibility turns into defining myself in accusatory terms. I keep referring to the article you posted about role flexibility. It's a matter of degree. Real boats rock. We hold a certain measure of responsibility for everything that happens to us, but we are not solely responsible. I think that's the difference for all of us in the ways we are seeing, now. That is how we could see the wrongnesses in the behaviors our families of origin insist on. Maybe, this is true. I am not so clear on this part, yet. That makes me sad for your sister. I wonder if that is the crux of the issue for my sister, too. It could be that they always felt overshadowed by us, when the heart of the matter is that we were, all of us, floundering around trying to make sense of things. Maybe that explains why they come to us for advice. They think we know because, in our abusive childhoods, they had to believe, like we did, that someone knew what was going on. And all they had was us. Pseudo mom. I feel so badly for all of us. That's how I feel about both my mom and my sister. That they focus on or target me, somehow. It is scary. Before, I would tell myself I could handle it. I was so sure everyone wants to be family. Now, I acknowledge that I can't handle it. I am vulnerable to what they think in ways I don't understand. I think this will never change. So the right thing to do is choose what is healthy for me, and for my family. This is a huge change for me, too. That is the changed thing, between believing in someone and believing them. Like Maya writes: Believe them the first time they tell you who they are. It's pretty scary? But I don't even care if that makes me a coward, anymore. Feets, don't fail me now. :O) So, I was looking for something funny to go with that. I found this instead, which is so much more the feeling it is. [IMG]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BeNHUqcCMAAA8Lf.png[/IMG] Because under everything, I do love them. I love them very, very much. So maybe the way to see this is that way I saw daughter when we thought we were losing her. Just the laughter and the good things and the gratitude for what we had. We are taking responsibility for ourselves because, for reasons we have no connection to or responsibility for, our moms and sisters are where they are regarding relationship to us and to themselves and to each other. I posted about the way people healthy in their cores view emotionally or verbally abusive relationship. For them, and for us too as we come through this time, we will see that it is the relationship that has been affected, and not us. And in a way, this is the truth of the thing. How can I be sad to lose a relationship whose intention is...I don't know. I just know that as I become healthier, I am acknowledging fear that was always there, and that I refused to respond to because it did not fit with the picture of what I wanted my relationship to my mom or my sister to be. That is why we have excused so much that was wrong. That is why we feel responsible when things do go so wrong between ourselves and those we do, under everything, love. It gave us a sense of control in something that somehow turned chaotic. If we could name it, if we could name what we did, we were oh so willing to address it. It wasn't us. We cannot address the intentions they choose and insist on. Thanks, mom. :mcsmiley1: D H says: Your fear has always been that you would lose them. So, you allowed things that should have been addressed. Had you addressed them, you may have lost them anyway [I]but at least you would know why. [/I]As it is, we beat ourselves up for their actions when, as was their intention all along, they label and leave us. I don't know whether this can change. I do know the change would have to begin with our sister's seeing us for more than the role they believe we are. That would involve becoming healthier themselves. I don't know, Copa. I only know I want to be healthier. I know I don't want to hate or blame people, I wish, and am working toward, trying to see their behaviors as separate things from me. If I have the opportunity to see either my sister or my mom again, it isn't going to be from a starting position of how much we all love one another, because that is not true. There are serious dysfunctions to be addressed, I do know that much. So, it follows then that my position must be to say what I see. to require immediate clarification the first time something is clangingly wrong. Not to be afraid of losing them, but to require of myself that if I do lose them, this time, I will know why. That's been the theme with each of us I think, Copa and Serenity. We find ourselves in places with our families that we never saw coming and try to make sense of it from there. The wrongnesses that might have been addressed at the start were excused. We believed ourselves into accepting that not enough was enough. We cannot do that. Just like we cannot enable our kids, we cannot enable our sibs or, in my case, our mothers. Whatever enabling we do in any facet of our lives spirals into the ugliness enabling always spirals into. That was the part I played. I didn't actively engage in behaviors I knew were harmful, but neither did I take the stand against them that I should have. I was afraid I would lose them. I did, anyway. How does that saying go? Something about, "What of him who has nothing?" "He shall lose what he has." It turns out to be less about fighting for the good things than it does about kicking people in the pants for the bad things. And if they leave us, accepting that they would have left us anyway, instead of beating ourselves up for what they do that is wrong, that is disrespectful of us on any level. But before we can do that, we have to respect ourselves. And that is coming in us, now. Yes, Copa. But you stood for her in that, too. She was not alone. That is testament to your integrity. This point is crucial, Copa. I think both my mom and my sister suffer. I have the sense that they cannot put the pieces together, either. If everyone would only accept that it is what it is and that what is, is best for everyone. There is a story about a town where life was perfect. A visitor to the town was enchanted with everything about the town, until he learned that there was a child in a dungeon in the center of the city whose purpose was to carry hatred and illness and pain. And when the child died, a new one was chosen, from the townspeople's own children. I'm scared to death of my sister. And of my mom, too. :916wildone: :916blusher: :9-07tears: :919Mad: :bag: I never know, when I think about my mom or my sister, what is real. I think my sister tries really hard, like I do too, to have family. D H says that is her manipulation of me; that this is how she gets in, because I see her that way and she knows it. That is why D H says I will need to be very careful if anything happens to him. Yes! Eye rolling. Exactly. I had not seen it that exact way. But that is it, Copa. That was my sister bare naked. That was me, taking responsibility again. I need to stop doing that. She was exactly rolling her eyes at me, and at everything about me! Huh. I always like to think she doesn't know what she's doing, or can't help it somehow. Thank you, Copa. That was an eye rolling thing and my sister was in grandiosity mode about those suckers because of course I told her someone fresh out of surgery should not have suckers yet, and that we needed was those glycerin mouth swabs and had she asked the nurse. Which I did do, after my father got a little sick from that stupid sucker. And you know what else they did to my poor father? I was telling everyone (including my father) that he needed an albuterol inhaler. He had been having such problems with shortness of breath, even before the surgery. I spelled it out for my mother, once. But somehow, he never did get an inhaler. When he'd had his stroke, and was finally transferred from intensive care in a local hospital to a facility in a big city, albuterol inhalants were included in the admissions orders. Of course. But they would not listen to me because even though I had some pretty fancy medical training (not that recognizing the need for an inhaler requires medical training, but I am just saying) they needed to not believe I could know more than they did about what my father might need. Isn't that something. I wish I'd said: Stop being so jerky. You can be superior to me in some other way and in the meantime, Dad will breathe easier. But I told my father about the inhaler, too. And he didn't do what I said, either. :hangin: This is probably true about my sister, too. I just don't like to say so. But for heaven's sake you two, my own sister prayed a ring of fire around me and my family. Who does that kind of thing!?! And all those other bratty things my sister did, too. Do you hear the term: bratty. That is what a child is when they are rotten kids. Adults are something worse than bratty. I have to stop seeing my sister as a child. Or maybe, I have to stop seeing myself as an adult, in relation to her. I should be protected and cherished and taught, too. I merit that. :choir: I think it was not a sad post too much, Copa. These are sad things that we are choosing to face. But the prize at the end is ourselves, freed from the dungeon in the depths of the Witch Mother's terribly foreboding castle. We need to save those little girls we were. They are the ones who matter, now. Otherwise, how will they ever be strong role models and mentors for their own children. Cedar I always did like my kids better than my mom and my sister, put together. :hugs: [/QUOTE]
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