I’ll try to at least check in to approve comments every few days, so feel free to start a conversation about the holidays and how they are affecting you this year in light of estrangements or difficulties.  Or if you’ve managed to overcome it, coping strategies.  And if you’re in between the two, like me, feel free to share that too!    Wishing everyone a joyous and peaceful holiday season!

Last year’s post

Also, a couple of other great resources which have been written since then:

Dr. T, with her usual blend of humor and common sense, explains over at Shrink4Men why Cluster B people are so difficult at holidays, both in a blog post and she dedicated a radio show to it.  But please note, the radio show is at a men’s rights site, which has a certain perspective/point of view.  If you disagree with it, please skip it or at least be respectful of the hosting space.  Thanks.

Blog Post

Link to radio post

Sometimes people deserve blame.  Such as when they’ve done something wrong.  When I hold family members accountable for their emotional abuse of me, I don’t have 3 fingers pointing back at me.  And to suggest so is to evade responsibility and accountability for one’s own actions.  And it adds insult to injury, because under the guise of being more enlightened, the speaker of this pithy platitude is trying to shift accountability/responsibility to the wronged party.  Implying that the person calling for accountability is morally flawed to expect any sort of accountability.

Dear Inner Heckler,

WTF is your problem?   Why are you so mean and nasty?   You are exhausting and obnoxious to live with .  You are miserable and make everyone around you miserable as well.  All you ever do is criticize and you overreact to everything.  I feel exhausted after listening to you.  Most of the time, you don’t even know what you’re talking about and you’re wrong.

I am hereby serving you with a notice of eviction.  Get the hell out my head and stay out!!   You’re not wanted here.

On the recent trip, someone rang the bell too soon.  He said “sorry, I meant the next stop.”    Of course, I’d seen other people do it before this particular bus trip, but it finally hit me! It’s a normal, human mistake to occasionally ring the bus signal too early.   Normal people say, “sorry, I meant the next stop” or something along those lines.   As the bus driver said, “no problem” and drove to the next stop, I realized I’d never seen a driver get angry with a passenger for ringing the signal too early. Except in high school when some kids were doing it to be obnoxious. The most extreme reaction other than that I’d ever seen was a driver sigh or roll his eyes. And even then, only if traffic was bad and/or he was trying to make a connection at a transfer point.

Shortly after that, I noticed another too early bus signal. She actually asked, “Isn’t this [street name]?” She actually doubted the bus driver and where we were before she doubted herself! When she realized she was in error, she apologized to the driver and he basically said “no worries.”

Now, I’d remembered this before. Mostly the few times I pushed the signal too early or if I was afraid of doing so. But I’d always remembered it as me being a 4 year old F**k up who couldn’t push the bell at the right time and made the family have to schlep extra blocks. And I’m not kidding/exaggerating when I say that. I thought I did something wrong or bad by pushing that bell too early and made things harder on my mother/brother. Although he was sitting in a stroller, so I’m not sure how I made things harder for him.

The more recent recall of it was different. For the first time, I realized her reaction was out of proportion and felt anger at her. WTF is wrong with just saying, “sorry, we meant the next stop”? Or even just asking me to say so? And I felt sorry for the 4 year old who wasn’t allowed to make a mistake and wasn’t shown how mistakes are corrected. Though to be fair, my mother’s childhood was so messed up, she probably wasn’t shown it’s ok how to make mistakes and how to address them. If it were that one incident, I don’t think it would be that much of a big deal, but there’s a whole series of them. No wonder I’m so anxious about doing the wrong thing. I couldn’t even ring the bus signal at 4 without being blamed because I screwed it up.   It felt good to be angry about it instead of beating myself up for messing up something when I was 4.

All’s I know is next time I’m on an unfamiliar route, if I ring the signal too early, I’m going to apologize and see if the driver will let me off at the next stop!

Yes, I do have some resentment over being  emotionally and occasionally physically abused, as well as being treated unfairly.   As well as  the impact it’s had on my life.  In cases like that, I’d say resentment is more like puking after someone else has poisoned you.  You don’t want to splatter anyone else with vomit.  And you want to figure out what makde you puke so you don’t get sick again.  And yes, if the poisoning is bad enough, you’re going to feel some old feelings of resentment when you see that person or reminders of him or her. 

Abuse is poison.  When we are around people who continue to abuse us, even into adulthood, we’re going to feel the urge to “puke” (i.e. feel resentment).  It’s normal and healthy to do so.  It’s our defense against digesting/absorbing the poison into our body and letting it kill us.

Also, it can take multiple experiences with  memories to work the feelings they recall through.  While I was discussing that I felt like I was rehashing the past & just going over the same stuff again, my therapist pointed out that since I was either just starting to feel the feelings associated with these past events and/or start feeling anger/outrage where before I’d felt guilt/responsibility, it wasn’t really rehashing them.  It was more like experiencing them. 

I think the simile of vomiting works well here too.  When we get food poisoning or a stomach bug, we generally don’t just throw up only once.  It tends to be several times because the body usually can’t purge itself of the toxin/poison in just one instance of vomiting.  Our bodies protect us from the poison/toxin by puking multiple times to get it out of our system and protect it from hurting us.  It may take more than one time revisiting a past incident of abuse to purge it from our minds/souls.

While I was looking to see what other people  had said about this saying, I came across a forgiveness type post.  One of the things the person said was that no one ever wished when they were dying that they’d stayed angry longer.  I’m not posting the link/exact quote here out of respect for that person’s space, but I call bs on that.  I gave my mother a 2nd chance after our first estrangement when she stopped drinking and started going to AA.  I wanted to be supportive of her sobriety.  She used that 2nd chance and forgiveness to treat me like crap yet again, just more subtly.  That set me back years in my healing and opened me up to more emotional abuse from her.  If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t have forgiven.  I do, in fact, regret not staying angry longer.  That anger would have been protection against being emotionally abused again.

Forgiving someone who is still abusing you is not a good or healthy idea, unless there are ways to protect/insulate yourself against them.  And even then, it’s up to you and optional.  It should be on your timetable, not anyone else’s.  Forgiving someone who is still abusing you without that protection basically means the abuser will spit on your forgiveness, throw it on the floor and stomp on it.

That is why I’m so opposed to what I like to call the Kumbaya Forgiveness Police.  Those are people who fall into one of the following categories and decide they can dictate to people who have been abused when we should forgive, etc:

• abusers themselves
• abuser enablers
• abuser apologists
• third parties

The only person who gets to determine if forgiveness should be given, to what degree and at what pace is the person who was wronged.  And the person who was wronged can forgive without reconciling if the abuser is going to continue to abuse.  Reconciliation is NOT a mandatory part of forgiveness.

Specifically, this quote:

As you read, allow yourself to admit the ever-present malevolence that is demonstrated in nearly every interaction with your narcissist mother. This is not a person who wishes you well.

I have a really hard time accepting when someone wants to do something nice for me.  I feel like I have to “pay” them back.  For example, my friend wants to take me out to dinner to thank me for dog sitting her dog one night.  I didn’t mind doing it at all, her dog is very sweet & affectionate and fun to spend time with.  My friend and her family are very kind to me, always making sure I have holiday plans and extending invites to their holiday gatherings.  She stopped over & kept me company when I was recovering at home for some minor surgery.  Her dad even made my favorite dish for dinner when I watched their dog.   I feel they’ve already done more than enough for me and I’m glad to have the chance to reciprocate by watching the dog.   

It’s only within the last couple of years I’ve started to put together why I feel strange when people are nice to me.  When dealing with my mother, even the “good” interactions often had an agenda.  When I was in grad school, I had car trouble.  My mother offered to give me her savings she had been putting away for a move.  I was in my early 20s and living on my own at the time.  There was sufficient public transit so that a car was more of a convenience than a necessity.  I thanked her, but refused to accept.  Because even that early on, I realized she had a tendency to use gifts against me when she got angry.  To call me ungrateful, etc.  Plus I knew that she was afraid of relocating and I would be “blamed” for her staying where she was unhappy if I accepted that offer.  Not only did it have strings, they were ropes which would cut off circulation!  She did eventually relocate and is quite happy with where she lives now vs. where she had been living.  She met my stepfather in her new location.  If I’d taken her up on it, she would have used giving me the money as an excuse to get angry with me for her not relocating.  Also, I felt as a self-supporting adult, I shouldn’t be taking money my mother needed for her own future for my own convenience.  If I lived somewhere where there was NO transit and I needed a car to get to work/class that might have been different.

It was very odd, she’d make generous offers like that, but there was another side.  In contrast, when I started college, my father asked me if he should send the child support directly to me or if he should continue to send it directly to her.  I told him I didn’t know and I’d ask her.  Cue raging tirade about how just because I’m not living at home doesn’t mean the utilitiy bills are any less, etc.  Yet, when I’d come home for Christmas and the 2 Summers I was silly enough to come home for, she’d claim the electricity bills were higher.  Umm yeah, never mind that’s when people tend to get higher bills because of Christmas lights and air conditioning.  But it was an utter contradiction.  If my being home makes the utility bills higher, wouldn’t my being away at school make them lower?   

She would promise money at school and then back out.  I wanted to share a phone with my roommate and 2 of  our neighbors next door.  This was in the 80s when cell phones weren’t readily available or affordable.   She insisted she would be too worried if I didn’t have a phone in my room. She insisted she would pay my half of the basic service part of the  bill (split with my roomie) out of the child support.   Calls to her were on her calling card, calls to my dad on his.  I was responsible for long distance calls to my friends and other relatives.   Of course, when the bill literally came due, I got a sob story about how hard it was to make ends meet as a single mom and I had to pay for it from my work study job, sometimes with help from my dad.  Honestly, I didn’t mind paying because I’m sure it is hard being a single parent.  But if I was paying for it, I should have had the decision whether the phone and its associated costs would be split among 2 of us or 4.  Plus, it was an unexpected/unanticipated expense because she’d promised me she’d pay for it and then backed out.

Junior year, a relative on my mom’s side  got engaged and had asked me to be a bridesmaid.  This is the cousin my mother has compared me with unfavorably because said cousin is prettier (partially because she has blonde hair & blue eyes, which is my mother’s preferred ideal for some reason) and “nicer”.    My mother was thrilled at the prospect of me being in this cousin’s wedding party.  And my other offered to pay for my dress, shoes, etc.  I accepted based on that offer.  Needless to say, my mother changed her mind.  I tried to back out, but my cousin offered to pay.   She and her husband to be were just starting out, so I didn’t feel comfortable taking money from them. 

I think my mother  finally did pay on that one, but I think I also ended up kicking in some unplanned money into expenses for it.   My cousin has a shoe size close to mine, so she was nice enough to give me some shoes she’d used for a bridemaid dress so that I could get them dyed to match the dresses she had for her wedding. 

When I moved into my current home, I was in my 30s.  My mother & my stepdad offered to pay for the carpeting I was having put down.  I had already picked it out and was planning to buy it on my own, as I didn’t anticipate the gift.  I thought how nice!  When I told her the price, she criticized my carpet choices saying they were too expensive.  Without knowing about boundaries, I set one with her.  I told her I really liked the choices I’d made and I was going through with them.  If she wanted to give me an amount she was planning on towards it, that was fine, if not, I appreciated her thinking of me.

She ended up giving me the whole amount, which I thought was quite generous.  But looking back at it now, there was the way it was presented. Both of my step-sisters are married.  My brother wasn’t married at the time, but is now.  I forget the exact wording, but she presented it along the lines of well, since we’ve already given the girls money for their weddings and we plan to give your brother money for his, we’d thought we’d give you money for the carpet since it doesn’t look like you’ll be getting married anytime soon.  She even said if I ever did get married, she’d deduct the amount of the carpet from any wedding present! 

I didn’t see it then, but wow!  First she tried to criticize my choice of carpet by implying I was overspending on it   Then she diminshed an adult milestone I’d achieved (home ownership) by pointing out what ones the others had accomplished (my stepsisters getting married and my brother’s eventual anticipated marriage) and I hadn’t!  She also let me know which one she valued more by telling me she’d deduct the carpeting cost from any future wedding gift. 

And when the stock market had trouble shortly after, she’d make “jokes” about how she & my stepdad wouldn’t be able to afford retirement and would come sleep on my carpet since it was comfortable and they paid for it! 

She also made a big point of telling me to clean/vacuum it frequently.   As if I hadn’t been doing that chore for the household since I was about 11 or 12!

This had been brewing in my mind since last weekend.  The carpeting I picked is stain resistant and varies in texture and pattern.  So it’s worn pretty well for about a decade.  It’s only started to show wear in the last year or so.  A good steam cleaning and I’ll probably get some more use out of it.  I was thinking about what a good choice I’d made and I recalled the whole incident. 

The weird thing, at the time I was grateful.  I didn’t realize just how I was being undermined and insulted.  Even writing this out, I’m feeling more intense feelings at being insulted like that. 

That’s how messed up parents like this are.  They will use a gift or good gesture to tell you how unworthy they think you are.  Of course, when they brag about their good deed, they won’t mention the undermining or insults.  Or how they pocketed the child support when you were in college.  Everyone will think they are parent (in this case mother) of the year. 

I had already started realizing how my mother’s good deeds/gestures made me wary of other people’s good deeds/gestures.  But reading the Narcissists Suck blog entry really helped me put it together.  Gifts and generosity have been used to control and insult me.  I couldn’t even necessarily depend upon those deeds/gestures to be followed through.  So I feel  a need to be ”even” with people in the good deeds/gestures department.  And I have a hard time accepting the good deeds/gestures.

Even if we accept the premise that relationship means romantic relationship (I happen to think the term encompasses more relationships, including family relationships), there’s still the matter of women who abuse men, not to mention same sex couples where both the abuser and victim are the same gender.  How about a little bit of variation in the photos and the genders of the nouns/pronouns?   

I was a college/grad student in the 1980s and 1990s.  I was also a reporter/department editor for a campus newspaper.   We were encouraged to use either gender neutral language or to vary nouns/pronouns if it wasn’t possible to use gender neutral language.  So why is the language of abuse so tied to male as perpetrator and female as victim?  Women may get the worst of things in a physical altercation due to size differences, but it isn’t always the man who starts it.  And emotional abuse seems to be pretty equal opportunity.  I know men who have been emotionally and sometimes physically abused by their female partners.

Furthermore, why are we narrowing relationship abuse down to romantic relationships?   If you’re reading this because of your own experience of being abused by a parent with a Personality Disorder  and/or addiction, chances are some of the actions/tactics portrayed in those slides look pretty familar.  Such as being isolated and unfairly blamed/shamed/berated.    For many of us, it was our mothers who did most of that abuse.  I know it was in my case. 

Why is mother/child relationship abuse swept under the rug the way it is in our society?  Even when people are willing to acknowledge it, we are told to “get over it” or “she’s your mother” or “there’s nothing more important than family”.  Even when mothers continue the emotional abuse vs. their children into adulthood. 

I’m focusing on this slide show because it’s representative of most of the efforts which are out there on emotional abuse.   A more accurate portrayal of gender and abuse is necessary for the following reasons:

1) many people, both male and female, who are being abused by women don’t recognize it as abuse.  They keep trying harder thinking if they do more or prove how much they love their abusers it will get better. 

2) other people don’t recognize it as abuse, which makes it harder for the victims to find support.

3) this kind of emotional abuse of children primes them to become victims of an abuser as they grow up and develop their romantic relationships as teens and adults

Women aren’t inherently kinder and gentler than men.  We’re  just trained to handle aggressive impulses in a much less direct way.  It’s all I can do to prevent my eyes from rolling out of my head when someone speaks up with that “well, if we had more women leaders, there would be less wars”  routine.  Anyone who believes that never dealt with a NPD mother or a Queen  BPD and/or Witch  BPD mother.

My therapist’s take on it was that I wasn’t necessarily wrong to resort to rage.  I felt it was.  We debated this back and forth for a good part of the session. 

This weekend I was returning from a hair cut.  I wasn’t 100% familiar with the neighborhood.  Also, I have visual spatial processing issues which lead me to get lost easily.  The normal route was under construction.  So was an alternate.  My GPS is malfunctioning and won’t charge a battery.  I got a little bit lost, even inadvertently ran a red light.  Fortunately, there was no traffic in the other direction, so there was no injury or near miss or even inconvenience to other drivers.

I had to do a difficult highway maneuver of driving across several lanes of traffic quickly to get to where I needed to be.  Yet, I managed to do it.  I started beating myself up, telling myself what a f**king idiot I was, how I couldn’t do anything right.  Then I started reasoning with myself.  I have a hard time with directions.  And not just one route was blocked by construction, so was the alternate route I would take.

Then it dawned on me, I was “raging” at myself by calling myself a f**king idiot.  I just spent the better part of a therapy session talking about how it wasn’t right when I did it to my mother and brother, it wasn’t right when my mother did it to me.  Why then, is it ok for me to do it to myself?  It’s not!  I deserve not to be raged at, just like my brother & SIL don’t deserve to be raged at. 

I need to start treating myself as well as I treat others.