Ok, I can't draw it. There is no options here for draw. Very well. I'll explain it to you. It simply is a circle with two dots for eyes and a squiggly mouth. Now as I look at that picture I'm embracing it, telling it not to feel bad, its ok to be embarrassed. Now, I should really look up that word. Is embarrassed the same as shame or humiliation? Or, are they they different things?
Lately, don't know if I told you this yet, but lately, I've been feeling low. Call it what you will, I believe this is a process to something else. Something is going to be healed or I'm going to have a revelation.
Now this is a random thought for humiliation, my feelings are all over the place. I feel horrible. Oh well, we feel what we feel, we shouldn't be trying to block it. Pain has a purpose doesn't it? It has to go someplace. So I'll just feel where this place goes.
Humiliation was the tool mother used mainly for narcissistic supply from me. Humiliation was my lot in life. I had to feel it dreadfully and that look on my face made mother high. It was her drug of choice. That caricature, was a picture of me all scrunched up trying to not feel anything. My thoughts went elsewhere.
As I embrace the caraciture of myself, I can't help but feel love. Does this mean that now I do love myself flaws and all? What is love? Is is that gooey feeling?
No I tend to feel that love goes hand in hand with respect. Self respect. I think I'm releasing that feeling into myself for the first time. Seeing as that I blamed myself for everything that went wrong with my life. But it wasn't my fault. I look back now and, my gosh, I see where I did so much that was right despite my circumstances. I was responsible, I never cheated anyone. I even supported others. When I look back, I can see now, what a big deal that is.
Not that I'm all boastful. Of course, I still need a saviour for my sins and that is what I have Jesus for. But still looking back on my circumstances I was awesome.
I had thought I was raised to be the golden child in that whole growing up in a narcissistic household, but that's not true. I was raised to take humiliation, over and over again. A scapegoat for pain. Seeing as I was so spoiled by mother, for giving me so much, she loved me so much, all she wanted was to see me as successful. And all I did to her was disappoint.
She got a lot of humiliation supply from me. She probably had to, she was incapable of feeling humiliation. The opposite of humiliation was significance. And that was what she was trying to steal from me, she had that goal in mind, this was a mind gaming method. Gaslighting is where the truth is sticking clearly in your face and you are denied that truth, you are to see the opposite.
Fear and panic rose up inside of me. And why not? If significance is what she was trying to steal then fight or flight had better kick in. Significance is the actual hard wiring, and if you don't have it then you would have died in a culture less civilized.
Now, I'm writing this without thinking much, just going with my emotions. I've been feeling terrible lately, just trying to see what's up with me. So when I opened that book and saw that caricature, it told me something rather interesting. This pain I'm feeling right now is due to the fact that when my aunt and I talked a few weeks ago, she made me very aware of something. I'm feeling a little sorry for my mother. My judgement became cloudy.
Here is what I also have written down in my book, after my awakening:
The brainwashed victim does not consciously change his value system, rather the change occurs despite his efforts. He is no more responsible for this change than is an individual who "snaps" and becomes psychotic. And like the psychotic, the prisoner is not even aware of the transition.
So, yeah, I have been going all over the place with this. Where am I going with this? I think I have a plan.
When my aunt talked to me that day and said this and that, and I was all hard and then proceeded with my day and didn't feel one iota of negative energy. I actually forgot all about it. But I think I did feel something, but I blocked it out. Now, it is some weeks later. My butt glued to the chair, and I feel completely lazy. It is not like me to be lazy. If I am sitting down and can't get up, some depression has hit me and I need to try to feel my way through it.
So I guess I am feeling sorry for mother. She has had an abusive childhood herself and it was bestowed upon me to be responsible for things beyond my control, that happened way before I was born. And it feels that it is unlikely mother was a narcissist, there were worse people in my life that took total advantage that I was a targeted source of supply. Mother wasn't like that, she didn't try to hurt me, but she did. She found ways that were clever. It was happening during my formative years. When I became an adult, mother was insufferable, no one wanted to be around. For sure when I was younger she had people around her, she was liked more.
See here is the key issue. Mother wasn't as bad as the narcissists I later encountered. Seeing as she formed me this way to take abuse from every predator in life, and looking back and seeing her as "mommy", is strange. She didn't always hurt me. Many times I would be watching tv after school and she would make me some toast and she would go back in the kitchen to make supper. These were the times I remember the most. The times she was mistreating me (humiliating me, like I mentioned in early portions of my blog), I remember the least.
So how does it fit together then? These two pieces. It became lost on me, but not forever. I remember it now. But, I still can't really remember what happened more the bad or the good. It has not been a year yet in my recovery. Perhaps I will have every memory restored. Perhaps that's why I cannot get off my butt.
Now back to the aunt. She did not deny anything. Sure mother is awful, but its ok. I am to let it roll off my back. See it wasn't my imagination playing tricks on me, mother was bad. So how does someone do good things for me then? For now, I believe it is a trick of my mind, or the work of a very successful gaslighter, my mother.
But I always encountered humiliation and I was to sit there and take it, it was my responsibility to do that. And I'm not sure if mother were to call here, would I pick up the phone. I wouldn't. I would let my husband deal with her. That part of my life is over, even her voice would terrify me.
Mother was never there. Not a real mother. Not the one who cares about you. This creature doesn't really exist, its just a figment of my imagination. If she chose to disappear through her own child abuse, then that is her choice. This is nothing but a predator. I separate myself from having any more responsibility for her.
They love to humiliate us and they take away our ability to form self respect. It's brought me a lifetime of pain. As I wrote on my blog I had mine sneer at me all the time. It took me coming out of the fog to realize she enjoyed my pain and enjoyed seeing me suffer and having others turn against me. I think yours may have treated you GC a little bit but that could be just some engulfing set ups some will do to keep you off kilter. Mine stole my significance too. That feeling I have when I'm out and about, like my guts are being ripped out, has to do with feeling invisible, like I'm not really there and that is how she treated me. It's not seeking of notice like a narc but just "being" and wanting to feel accepted and belonging. I am sorry you are feeling pain too. I have to watch my health too when I get like this, my blood sugars have been sky high.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I will warn you of, the flying monkeys will bring on the mighty depression. They are almost like proxies for the head narcs. Mine always tried to shame and blame me for leaving but then even before I went NC, I always "failed to please my mother" and her pleasure and feelings were always far more important then my own. None of them cared about how I felt. Maybe this is what brought on your depression. I know as the line of backs turned against me, I felt deep pain. I am glad we both have Jesus Christ. No you are not responsible for the choices they made.
Thanks Peep. I'm sorry your mother took so much from you. The pain was horrible, I know. But it has been better out of the fog. Yes, mine treated me as GC a little bit, and I've been off kilter much of the time. Like, I have this vague memory of being loved and treated well, then bang, she was back to publicly humiliating me again. I think she had to treat me GC sometimes, otherwise she couldn't get close enough to humiliate me for maximum effect. It was just the way she did it. Thanks for telling me of the off kilter part. That's definitely what it was. And the significance part, wow, that is why I can't hold down a paying job. I talk to my husband, he needs significance all the time at work, or else it wouldn't work. He has to stand up to people and many of them, how in the heck am I ever going to do that? Not a snowballs chance in hell would I ever be able to do that. I'm sorry your mother stole significance from you too. We are forced to survive with so little of ourselves. It is not narcissistic to want love from our parents.
ReplyDeleteYes those flying monkeys. They want to rip you to shreds to get you back with the abuser, almost telling me that I don't count in all this. Actually she did say that. Pretty much. And yes, God helps me. When it comes to depression, I just feel my way through, see where this is going.
Thanks Joan, Yes it is better being out of the fog. I know some will be nice and go back and forth, kind of like an domestic abuser that buys his wife flowers and then beats her up the next day. That is to throw you off and yes to feign closeness so you'd be more vulnerable for her to turn the screws harder. It's good your husband can stand up to people at work and make a living, a household where two are unable to do it, is a nightmare--one of my husband's online businesses is laying people off again, though you wonder what chunks of his soul he loses having to stay two steps ahead of all the business narcs.
ReplyDeleteI could stand up at work but I just got written up, everything was forgiven narcs but if a social awkward Aspie raised her voice once while the abusers ripped me to shreds, then it was write-up time at that last job. I wish I had sued those people for discrimination. They knew I was desperate and feared the streets, there too having a rotten family gave the narcs and abusers of the world more power.
As you know I am going no contact with my entire family because all I got was flying monkeys who wanted to keep me in the same role. I am working on the final letter to them all now, not that they will care but for more closure for me.
I am praying to God for help too, I just wish the descent into severe poverty would end, anything to please end that, it will make my narcs cheer to find out I am homeless and have absolutely nothing.
They do lose a little bit of their souls to this business world. At any point in time he could be sued or jailed if something goes wrong, I could never do his job. The narcs would eat me alive. He does it very easily though. But he had good parents, if we go to visit them, we have to stay for supper. They are the best. We mustn't ever forget this crap ain't our faults, we didn't have the right parents, instead of giving they took everything, and then we paid the price with nothing left.
ReplyDeleteI hope your husband does better with his work soon. The descent into poverty seems so endless I know, but like all evil things, it is temporary. Its horrible to think your mother would cheer over your poverty. My mother too. That I can't even imagine, but I can see the big eyes, the enjoyment and thrill they would have. It is beyond my comprehension.
My mother always used something like "collateral humiliation" for lack of a better word. I asked my sister about it and our memories are in sync about her and her propensity to make a childish scene at the drop of a hat anywhere or anytime she wanted. It was usually in public with her stamping her foot and digging in her heels over things that didn't matter. I remember her accusing the butcher of this grocery store of using red tinted lights to make the meat appear fresher. I worked T grocery stores for years and in all that time I never heard of this.But from what I heard later in the parking lot she did what she so loved to do. Pick a fight somewhere and use that as an excuse to not buy us food or anything else we might have needed. You just never knew what would set her off and why she would do it. I don't know how many times I saw my father sheepishly stand there with his hands in his pocket while she basically ranted like a loon while a crowd of people gathered and looked at her like a petulant child.
ReplyDeleteThey are petulant children. Total bullies. Its a horrible feeling when your mother is like this and anything can set them off, and you grow up like this.
ReplyDeleteThat must have been terrible then go home without the food. And your father excused her behaviour. He should have stood up to her, and not be so scared. The men can't seem to do anything, they are so paralyzed by fear. My brother is the same way with his wife.
But keeping them from getting set off would have been impossible. And we were always trying to do the impossible. The pain of it all is horrible.