I’ve been thinking a lot about all this guilt that I’ve recently noticed. Why do I feel guilty about….everything? Where did this come from?

It’s a brand new concept so forgive me if I sound as if I’m babbling (I’ll feel guilty about that too, no doubt) but I’m going to give it a shot here anyway. It usually helps.

I was thinking that my anxiety level increases whenever I feel guilty and that I feel guilty about many things. When these things are held up to the cold light of reality there is no logical reason for my feelings of guilt. I’m going to use my year of unemployment as the example. I felt guilty the entire time I was off of work. I felt guilty for not bringing home enough money. I felt guilty for not being a productive member of society. I felt guilty whenever I did anything remotely enjoyable while hubby was at work. But here are the facts:

• I maintained full-time employment from the ages of 19-37
• My resume indicates a steady increase in responsibilities and promotions
• I was successful in my industry by anyone’s standards
• The job market was horrible, particularly for mortgage professionals and the state I live in had one of highest unemployment rates in the country
• During my year of unemployment I spent the vast majority of every day looking for work

When I look at these facts I realize that I had absolutely nothing at all to feel guilty about. Nothing. I had no history of extended periods of unemployment. I had no history of a poor work ethic. I had no control over the mortgage crisis or the company I worked for closing. I did everything within my power to find a job.

Still with me? If my “facts” sound flawed to you please let me know in the comments. If not…

So why did I feel guilty? Where did that guilt come from? It wasn’t hubby. He was extremely supportive. It was coming from me. But why? Why did I ignore the facts and my husband’s unwavering confidence that I was doing all that I could and would eventually find something?

The answers I have come up with so far from speaking with a couple of people are perfectionism and manipulation. Growing up I was expected to be perfect. Anything short of perfect was absolute failure. There was no middle ground. There was never pride in having tried my hardest. Results mattered. Perfect results.

There are many examples but the first one that comes to mind is when I received my very first report card in 1st grade. My mother demanded to know why I got a “B” in one class. I was shocked and pointed out that all the others were “A’s” and isn’t a “B” really good anyway? She did acknowledge that the “A’s” were good but that she expected me to pull that “B” up to an “A” by the next report card. I was crushed. I felt horrible. I felt as I had done something wrong but I didn’t understand what I had done. I felt as if I had tried my hardest and that was not recognized. I felt terrified that I might get a “B” on my next report card. I felt completely helpless and  powerless.

The reason that perfection was expected had nothing at all to do with me personally. My parents required perfection because I was a reflection of them. If I was less than perfect then they were too. With narcissists the idea that they could be less than perfect is not acceptable. Therefore, their mirror (me) must reflect their perfect image at all times.

In order to get me to comply they used manipulation and abuse. The admonishment about the “B” was a form of manipulation. The unknown consequences of failing to bring it up to an “A” were terrifying. It worked well.

I bring all this up to finally make the point that I’ve started to explore. It was not the guilt that caused my anxiety. It was the other way around. The anxiety I felt was the fear, the sheer terror, of feeling powerless. I could try my hardest and still get a “B”. I had no control over what would happen if I wasn’t perfect. Usually I was punished. Severely. The anticipation of the rage and abuse that would be unleashed on me whenever I failed to project the perfect image was too much for me to bear. So, I turned it into guilt. Shame really. It was much less stressful for me to feel bad about myself for being a disappointment than it was to think about how helpless I was against the inevitable consequences of my failure to meet unreasonable expectations.

As always when considering my childhood, the point is not to blame my current guilt and anxiety on my parents. The purpose is to figure out why I think the way I do so that I can change it. That six year old learned to avoid the fear of being powerless by turning it into guilt. It was a coping mechanism that worked. Guilt didn’t feel great but it felt a hell of a lot better than panic.

Back to my unemployment. Using this outdated coping mechanism I decided to feel guilty as opposed to feeling powerless. The truth was that I was in fact powerless to a large extent. After years of conditioning I equated powerlessness with extreme pain and abuse. Guilt was is my way of feeling as if I have some control or power in situations where I do not. Guilt allows me to alleviate the anxiety I feel when I feel helpless or weak. I don’t do helpless and weak. I do guilt.

I don’t know if this makes any sense at all to anyone but me. I don’t know that I’ve communicated it well. As I said it’s a new concept that I’m exploring but so far it rings true. The good news is that if I am onto something I may be able to eliminate much of the anxiety that I bring on myself. Time will tell.

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We had been friends for years. Our kids were friends. Our husbands were friends. We all spent several nights per week together in one combination or another. All of us hung out at their house at least one night almost every weekend. We went on couples’ dates together. We went on family outings together. We attended concerts, went out to dinner, had parties and barbecues…all together. They were our best friends. They were there for us when we were having marital problems and neither took sides. They were like family.

That all changed one night in July. Turns out there was a big secret lurking in their home that they hid quite well from us, despite all the time we spent over there or how close we thought we were. We knew they were having some marital problems. We knew their teenage son was having some emotional problems. We had no idea, or looking back it’s more honest to say that we had some idea, but we really didn’t know or want to know the whole truth.

My friend called and asked if I’d watch the kids. She was hysterical. Of course I said yes. It seems their marital problems were much more serious than we knew. He was threatening to leave and take all of their money. She was panicked, had some errands to run, and wanted to leave the kids with us for a few hours.

She returned several hours later and that is when the full truth came out. He was in the middle of a full-blown narcissistic rage that would only continue to get worse as the night went on. He made many threats against her, her car, our home, their home and himself. He would hang up on her for refusing to come home and then immediately call back to scream horrendous insults and threats at her. She and the kids were panicked. My kids were panicked.

At one point she was on the phone with the police and kept putting them on hold to answer his calls because she was afraid to not answer him even while on the phone with the police. The whole truth was displayed for us with all the gory details that included years and years of emotional, verbal and physical abuse against my friend and her teenage son. She tried not to let us hear but he was screaming so loudly that even at the lowest volume we could hear him clear as a bell from the next room. She finally became so terrorized that she actually believed he would come to our house and asked if we could go to my sister’s to spend the night there instead.

Of course my sister opened up her home to all of us. We stayed up until 3am talking and just sitting with her and her kids. The whole time the insane phone calls never ceased. He called his wife and mother of his children names I have never considered calling my worst enemy. He threatened suicide. He threatened to burn down the house. He threatened to bash in her car. I heard him say that she had unleashed a monster that she will never be able to escape from. He tried every form of aggression he could think of to get her to come home but she was too scared. She finally turned her phone off and we all slept on the floor in the living room of my sister’s small home.

Of course he never did any of the horrible things he threatened to do the night before. In the morning, sober and more in control, he apologized….sort of. She went home. With her kids. Alone. We offered to go with her. The  night before she had said she would be taking the police with her to pick up clothes for herself and the kids. In the morning, when he was calm, that all changed and they went home. 

My sister and I were terrified of what they were going home to. What he would do once he got them back into their house all alone. When I spoke to my friend later that day she said that they had talked and everything was fine. I imagined him standing over her shoulder or even on another phone listening. I was traumatized and shaky for two weeks afterwards. We had re-lived any given night from our own childhood and were helpless to stop it even though we are adults now.

I have not talked to her since. Her kids have not spoken to mine since that night either. I knew I could never be friends with a known child abuser but I naively thought that she and I could maintain our friendship and that our kids would not lose their friends. I was wrong. I tried for months to get together for dinner or drinks but there was always an excuse.

She and I did have an e-mail correspondence in which she mentioned that she hopes her son is happy and that she has done everything she could to make his life perfect and prepare him for adulthood. That story may still fly with the ladies at school or in the neighborhood but she knows that I know the truth. I couldn’t just go along with the delusion so I reminded her that her son is depressed and about as far from happy as he can be because of his abusive father. She didn’t come out and say why she has cut us out of her life but I can only guess that they need us out of their lives because we know the truth. His image is blown.

I had suspected he was a narcissist. There were many clues. He always had to be in control. Once he even took the wheel when hubby was driving us somewhere because he thought he was about to hit a parked car (he wasn’t). His constant efforts to convince everyone of his perfect image and the perfect home and all the things he needed to make it a perfect home. He was obsessed with appearances including, but not limited to, a perfectly landscaped and manicured lawn. He bragged constantly about his latest frivolous purchases that no one else cared about and had to have the top of the line everything. He always had to be right. I also noticed tell-tale signs in the ways they interacted. When his glass was empty, she jumped to refill it. At parties they hosted she spent the whole time keeping everything immaculate instead of enjoying the party. I could go on and on. I chose to ignore it because we enjoyed their company and because I figured their marriage was their own business.

One night in July changed everything and yet it changed nothing. We lost our best friends but that was really only an illusion anyway, wasn’t it? For all I know we are just one couple in a long line who have been cut off when he has slipped and exposed his true nature. Nothing changed for my friend and her son. I hope they are ok. I hope she gets the courage to take care of herself and her kids. I hope she believes that I will be here for her if she does.

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A few posts ago I crowned 2007 as the worst year of my adult life thus far. I went so far as to write that I couldn’t think of a single good thing to say about 2007. I’ve been thinking about that ever since I wrote it. There must have been at least one good thing that happened in 2007. In doing so I have come up with two good things that happened in 2007. Not little things either. BIG things. And in reminding myself of these things I have also proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that money does not buy happiness and attaining your fitness goals does not provide happiness either.

Many people, particularly those of us who grew up in abusive households, spend significant amounts of time looking to the future and telling ourselves, “I’ll be happy if….”. This happens when our lives are so painful and we are so powerless that we just can’t wait to grow up and escape. It’s a necessary coping mechanism. It provides hope in a seemingly hopeless situation. The problem is that it doesn’t just go away after we grow up and escape the abuse. By then the thought process that happiness can be attained only if….something happens in the future…is firmly entrenched in our psyche. We are always looking forward to something that we believe needs to occur before we will feel happy.

Our media perpetuates this thinking. How many advertisements are we bombarded with every day indicating that our lives will be better if we buy some car, drink some beverage, lose weight, make more money, etc.?

I did it myself. If only I could grow up and move out. If only my boyfriend would propose. If only I were married. If only I had kids. If only I could make more money. If only I were thin. If only….

Guess what those two good things were in 2007.

I lost a significant amount of weight. I was a size six. I wasn’t supermodel thin but I was as close to perfect (for me) physically as I had ever been in my life. I did enjoy it. I enjoyed the feeling of accomplishment. I enjoyed the increased male attention. I enjoyed the fun clothes. I enjoyed feeling attractive and sexy. I even enjoyed the process of working out itself. It made me feel powerful and was also an incredible and healthy way to blow off steam, reduce stress and channel anger and other negative feelings.

I also made more money in 2007 than in any previous (or future) year. I’m not talking about buying-a-yacht money. I am talking about extremely comfortable money. We never had to worry about any bills. All emergencies were taken care of easily. Spending money on just about anything we wanted was not an issue. I had a full time babysitter who also cleaned the house and did our laundry every week. I bought designer clothes, purses and shoes without blinking an eye whenever I wanted. Pedicures, massages, weekend trips….whatever we wanted. It was all good.

So, I had attained my two biggest I’ll Be Happy Ifs. I was not happy. Not by any stretch of the imagination. In fact I was completely and utterly miserable. I had extreme insomnia, sometimes sleeping for a total of an hour or two in 10-15 minute spurts for months on end. I had an almost constant knot in my stomach. I started crying, and I mean sobbing, for no apparent reason. I was a mess. I couldn’t figure out what my problem was but I was so close to a complete breakdown that I started to actually think I may be crazy. As in call the men in white coats crazy.

I got myself into therapy in October of that year. I started to figure out why I was so profoundly unhappy. I started to get my act together and take charge of my life. I started to realize how I had been fooling myself for 37 years and how unhealthy many of my thought processes were.

Over two years later I’m still learning. This for instance. I only realized after I wrote about how awful 2007 was and remembered that was the same year as my weight loss and all that money that the I’ll-be-happy-if-thing is self destructive and flawed thinking. Despite what we tell ourselves and what the media tells us, I am living proof that we will not necessarily be happy if….we attain that next best thing.

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This quote made me laugh. It hits close to home. If my sister reads this she will definitely agree. We did not grow up in an affectionate family. There was no hugging, no touching at all really. In fact, she remembers an actual conversation in which our father told her he was going to stop hugging her because she had gotten too old. I don’t remember any such conversation myself but just thinking of hers creeps me out.

There was no overt sexual abuse in our family. There were definitely no boundaries though along with what is called covert sexual abuse. He told us about his sex life, or lack thereof. Doors were never to be locked and he didn’t even bother closing them. Tickling well past the point of it being even remotely fun. Creepy conversations like the one I mentioned above. You get the idea.

Even our extended family…grandparents, aunts, uncles….were simply not affectionate.

This has been on my mind after some conversations with my friend Consuella over on our friend Dawn’s blog recently. I write about all sorts of details of my emotional life here on this blog but still have an extremely difficult time expressing affection…even in writing, let alone in person. I’ve written about intimacy issues before but I think my issues with affection are more than just fear of rejection, although I’m sure that is a major factor.

When I first met my husband’s mother, she had a bunch of people over. She always had a houseful. As I was introduced to each new person they hugged me and gave me a kiss on the cheek. This completely rocked my world. Why were all these people touching me?! It felt so bizarre. It was uncomfortable and awkward. For me. I’ve gotten used to this practice of greeting each other and saying goodbye with a hug and a kiss with his family. Sort of. I’m much better at it than I was back when I first met his mother but there are still times I feel awkward. My sister and I, as close as we are, never hug.

I don’t have this problem with my sons. I hug and kiss them and tell them I love them all the time. I am also comfortable expressing affection with my husband. Although he may disagree, I feel like I am because we hug and kiss and say I love you every day. That’s way more than what I was used to so it may seem like more to me than it does to him, since he was used to a very affectionate family. Unless I’m caught up in a moment (which is rare) I’m still not comfortable talking about affectionate feelings.

It’s not that I don’t want to or that those feelings aren’t there. I think it’s a combination of intimacy issues, boundary issues and that I simply don’t know how. Or rather that I’m still learning how.

Take using chopsticks for example. If you grew up using chopsticks every day to eat your meals you would be an expert early on in life. I never used chopsticks to eat anything. It’s something of a novelty when we go out to dinner but I’m more likely to fling a single piece of rice across the room than I am to actually get any food into my mouth when I use them. For me, it’s the same with expressing affection. I don’t really know what I’m doing so it feels uncomfortable.

Just like the chopsticks, if I practice, I will get better. That is evident in how far I’ve already come. As I mentioned, for the most part I am used to, and even enjoy the hug/kiss, hello/goodbye that is customary in my husband’s family. When hubby and I first got married I not only shut but also locked, the door when I took a shower. I never wanted to cuddle when we went to sleep. It felt suffocating to have his arm around me. I even built a little wall of pillows at one point. Now, I’m all about spooning when we go to sleep and have even mentioned that I can’t believe I used to dislike it.

I still have a long way to go. When I responded to Dawn’s lovely post it felt to me as if I had just gushed all sorts of emotion and gotten all schmoopie. When my sister read what I wrote she said it was not at all gushy and was actually more like a butterfly hug (that’s what we call a 1/2 hug with a couple of light pats on the back – the only kind of hug that has ever actually occurred between our family members to the best of our knowledge). Even in writing, I just don’t know what I’m doing when it comes to expressing affection. Piss me off and I’ll write entire posts about it, but love and affection….my natural instinct is to go for the cocktail or my standby….”I love you man.”.

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I had no boundaries at all when I started dating. I had extremely low expectations about how I would be treated by men. Basically if a man was interested in me, was attractive and did not scream at or hit me, he was a keeper. One of the first guys I dated for any length of time during high school treated me like garbage. I only know that now. I didn’t know it then.

We worked together at a part-time after school job. We didn’t go to the same school. We did have some mutual friends. He asked me out and our first date was to be at a Halloween party. I was scheduled to work that night but called in sick. My boss, used to dealing with lying teenagers, gave me a hard time about it.

He stood me up. For our first date. I waited for hours making up excuse after excuse for his possible tardiness in picking me up and lack of communication about what was keeping him. When I finally stopped rationalizing his behavior I was devastated. I spent hours crying and trying to figure out what I had done wrong.

By the time I saw him at work a few days later I had already resolved to not let him know it bothered me at all. He did apologize but gave me no real explanation other than none of his other friends were bringing dates to the party. He said he still wanted to go out. I resisted for about a week but finally gave in and agreed. His chasing me was flattering. This time he was punctual. My parents loved him because he was tall, blond, good looking and behaved respectfully towards them.

He had recently been dumped by a long term girlfriend. She was a cheerleader. He was still pining over her. He even had a little shrine to her in his room complete with pictures of her and little mementos she had given him. It creeped me out but I rationalized this by telling myself it was a recent heartbreak that I would help him get over. Can you smell the co-dependency in the air even then?

His parents grilled me about my grades, what I wanted to do with my life and what extra curricular activities I was involved in. They were still pining over the ex-girlfriend too because they mentioned her and all of her activities often. I knew I could never measure up to her but I was determined to win them all over with my sparkling personality. The truth was, my after school activities involved making sure dinner was on the table as soon as my parents walked in the door and avoiding being hit or screamed at. I couldn’t exactly tell these fine, upstanding, cheerleader-loving people about that dirty little secret.

I can’t remember how long we dated but it was longer than I had dated anyone else. I was on the pill (that’s a post in itself) and decided I wanted to see what sex was all about. With him. I was extremely innocent, having done nothing more than make out with boys previously. I was curious and protected plus I figured he’d be less likely to dump me if we were having sex.

We were at his house alone one day making out on the couch when he suggested we go up to his room. I probably beat him up the stairs I was so eager to please. We were in bed, my clothes strewn about the floor of his room, about to do the deed when his parents came home early. He jumped out of bed, collected all of my clothes, threw them at me and pushed me towards the stairs telling me to get dressed in the bathroom downstairs and to hurry up. I did as I was told.

We went out once more after that incident, to one of his friend’s parties. He ignored me and flirted with some other girl the whole night. On the ride home he broke up with me. I acted like it didn’t bother me.

Once home I cried and cried, again wondering what I had done wrong. What I had done wrong! He had done everything wrong and wasn’t worth a second of my time. Reliving this is making me cringe. I want to build a flux capacitor, rent a DeLorean and travel back to 1986 to smack some sense into my 16 year old self. There are so many things wrong with the way I saw myself and my thought processes that I don’t even know where to begin. I shudder to think of what I would have become if I had had sex with him. I know I would have assumed that he broke up with me because I was bad at it and probably would never have tried it again. I’d be the creepy-spinster-cat-lady on the block most likely.

This all came up because I’ve come to the realization that I still have boundary issues and allow inappropriate behavior from men in my life. It’s not them, it’s me. I send off this signal that gives them the green light to behave badly. I allowed all sorts of nonsense from my own husband for years before realizing we had to change our relationship or end it. Luckily that worked out.

It’s other men in my life where I continue to find myself in uncomfortable conversations that I should not be allowing to continue. I was recently having a conversation with a man about a very serious and painful subject. He kept bringing the conversation back to sex. I kept laughing as if he were joking and then changing the subject back to the topic at hand. I made excuses for him since he is going through a lot right now. That’s horse-shit. I don’t care what he’s going through, nothing is a good enough excuse for this married man to be soliciting me, a married woman, for sex, “joking” or not.

This is not the first man with whom I’ve had these sorts of conversations either. That’s how I came to realize that it’s my lack of boundaries, not their behavior, that’s causing me confusion and feelings of being used. It feels just like it did to be the aforementioned asshole’s “girlfriend” back in high school. It’s time to challenge these “absolute truths” and stand up for myself once and for all. If I don’t insist on appropriate behavior I will continue to feel like that pathetic discarded 16 year old. I don’t need this type of attention from other men to feel validated anymore. It never validates me anyway.

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I have to preface this post with a BIG thank you to my friend Dawn over at Morse Musings for providing me with this quote. It couldn’t be more perfect. Thanks Dawn!

1 + 1 = 2

This was most likely our first math problem. We were not born knowing the answer. We learned it. At first we practiced by holding up one finger on one hand and one finger on the other hand and counting them. One….Two. We probably continued to solve this math problem by counting for some time before it finally became indelibly etched in our brains. We do not remember the struggle to learn the answer but the knowledge of that answer will never be forgotten. It was the first building block. We went on to learn more complex math problems but it all started with this one. Once we mastered this problem we stored the answer in our brains as the absolute truth and never questioned it again.

And so it goes with everything we learned as children. We may not immediately recall how or what we learned but we learned the building blocks to everything we now believe when we were young, most of it from our parents. Once we learned something and came to accept it as the absolute truth, we never questioned it again.

As an example, growing up with two narcissistic and abusive parents, I learned that I was bad. Not that I did bad things but that I was bad. Not worthy of love, affection, respect and deserving of abuse at the hands of my own parents. I learned to rely on the stingy scraps of praise I was given for a job well done, or at least for a job not horribly botched. I learned that just to avoid being hit, called horrible names, snide comments, cruel “jokes” and being screamed at, I had to be hyper-vigilant and never ever screw up anything. To make a mistake brought the wrath and rejection of  my parents. To do well got me neutral and sometimes even positive feedback from them.

I had to do more, be better and not do anything to garner their disapproval just to attempt to gain what little comfort I found in a day or even a few hours that passed without any abuse. As children do, I saw my parents as all-powerful and believed that they tried to love me but that I was just constantly failing and falling short of their expectations. The knowledge that I was only worthy of a pat on the back or at least worthy of being spared from abuse when I was doing something well was the absolute truth. I forgot many of the instances that taught me this lesson but the lesson remains.

And so this is where my debilitating fear of failure, of making any mistakes, comes from. The point of bringing this up is not to whine about my childhood or blame my parents for my problems. It is to clearly see the reality of what I believe about myself and question it. Where did it come from? When the answer to that question is unknown I can be certain that it came from my childhood lessons. I know then that I must challenge that particular “absolute truth”, retrace my steps, figure out how I learned the lesson, discard it as untrue and learn a new, healthy, realistic lesson about myself to replace the outdated one.

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I jumped online tonight to visit all my usual spots for information on narcissists. Instead I decided to just do a google search for “narcissist lies” and landed on Dr. Ludger Hofmann-Engl’s site. He wrote exactly what I was looking for in the last sentence of this page (italics are mine):

Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Lies

When dealing with a narcissist (or a person with borderline), we face one major problem, and this is the narcissist’s attitude towards lying.

While the majority of people will have learned that not only that lying brings about devastation and destruction, it ultimately leads to total isolation and loneliness. This is, it hinders any sincere communication and hence the narcissist will find her/himself increasingly on the outside and excluded.

However, as much as the narcissist notices this isolation and reacts with increasing panic, it does not bring about a modification of the narcissist’s coping strategy.

The attitude of the narcissist towards lying is very childish and simple: If the narcissist lies and gets away with it, (s)he interprets this as being clever and superior to others. In this sense, while common sense clearly sees lying as a social ill, the narcissist views lying as an excellent tool to obtain what (s)he wants and as a means to demonstrate how stupid others are.

A person now, who wishes to engage in real communication and shows openness will be viewed by the narcissist as an utter fool who deserves to be exploited. Willingness to communicate and to show openness will be seen be the narcissist as weakness and stupidity.

When dealing with a narcissist, extreme care must be taken and events need to be recorded. It also is important to communicate with others who have to deal with the narcissist in order to counter-act splitting. This is, the narcissist uses lies in order to set up people against each other. In general, this is quite simple: The narcissist tells a person A that person B doesn’t like person A and the same the other way round. This then prevents A from talking to B and hence both parties can be manipulated through the narcissist’s lies.

While a normal person will be embarrassed when found out lying, not so the narcissist. The narcissist will see this as a threat to her/his superiority and will straight away think of ways of how to overcome this threat and this is by forming new lies.

To say it in one sentence: For the narcissist lying is fun and a tool, and anybody who doesn’t lie is a fool in the eyes of the narcissist. Trying to communicate with a narcissist is therefore pointless.

- Dr. Ludger Hofmann-Engl

I had actually started to believe that possibly my mother was no longer a narcissist. This happens to everyone involved with one of these individuals. Over. And over. And over. This is why most experts and anyone who has escaped from a relationship with one of them usually strongly advise that once you determine that someone is a narcissist, you have no further contact.

I have confirmation. She has not been magically cured. It’s been so long since I’ve had any issues with her that I believed she had changed. It is me that has changed. There I go again handing all my power right back to her.

She’s a fanatic about safety. Seriously obsessive. My son’s bus stop is two houses away from ours. She stands out in the driveway just watching him until the bus comes each morning. It’s creepy. My son has told me it creeps him out. Early last week I asked her to stop because it’s embarrassing.

Today she told me that she asked him if it bothered him to have her stand in the driveway and that he said no. She also mentioned that she had asked him if it was embarrassing to him for her to wave at him while he was at the bus stop and he said no. I thought nothing of this except that I must have misunderstood my son when he and I had talked about it, shrugged my shoulders and said, “ok”. I thought it was sort of odd that she felt the need to tell me such mundane details but I got busy making dinner and forgot all about this conversation.

At dinner, my sons were both telling me about their day and told me a funny story about their grandmother trying to figure out the remote. Since she was now the topic of conversation, my 11 year old remembered overhearing the conversation between my mother and I from earlier. He said that she never asked him if standing in the driveway was embarrassing, only if waving to him was embarrassing.

I immediately jumped to the conclusion that she just forgot their conversation. She is getting older. This is a perfectly logical conclusion when dealing with a normal person. My son wanted to know why she would say that she had asked him something that she hadn’t. That’s when it hit me. The lies. Narcissists lie for sport, for no apparent reason at all. They also lie to protect their precious images and to get what they want. She lied because she didn’t want me to think she was embarrassing my son and she wants to continue to stand in the driveway to watch him without me insisting that she stop.

I realize that this sounds like a petty, minor detail that can easily truly be a misunderstanding. I know better when dealing with a narcissist. It’s not petty or minor at all. I’ve lived within a web of these types of petty, minor lies and great big lies my whole life. They all eventually add up to low self-worth, confusion and therapy. I told my son the truth.

I was searching online to try and figure out if I should even bother confronting her about this. I knew before I found my answer that she would just claim ignorance, say that I must have misunderstood her or that she must have misunderstood him, and turn it around by asking me why I’m overreacting and making a big deal over nothing. Typical manipulative behavior. “Trying to communicate with a narcissist is therefore pointless.”. Thank you for the reminder Doctor.

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Oh but if I take my heart’s advice I should assume it’s still unsteady

Oh I’m never really ready, I’m never really ready

I’m in repair, I’m not together but I’m getting there”

- “In Repair” by John Mayer

Today, November 3rd would have been his 72nd birthday. The 10 year anniversary of his death was last month. We received a piece of junk mail addressed to him today. He never lived here. We bought this house 2 years after he died.

Ten years. It seems like a lifetime ago.

I don’t believe one of the things I said in last year’s post. I know I believed it at the time.

“I forgave him and grieved for my lost childhood a long time ago.”

No. That’s simply not true. I have never grieved for him or my lost childhood. It’s too much. Whenever I come even close to wrapping my brain around any of the emotions that surface when thinking of him I have to back away. The many forms of abuse I endured when he was healthy are so complicated and so much a part of my identity that I have to deal with my recollections in small doses.

I’m not even sure how to go about grieving for him. It’s so surreal, losing a parent. The hospice nurses told me that it’s actually more difficult for children who lose parents with whom they had a less than loving relationship. They warned me that I may not grieve at all but that somewhere down the road, “maybe even 10 years from now”, it will hit me, and hit hard.

I moved out just as he was beginning to get really sick. After I moved out I mostly only saw him at the occasional obligatory holiday and the seemingly endless emergency hospital visits and eventually in the nursing home. My only memories of him as an adult revolved around pretending everything was normal and his illness. That’s it.

I think that’s why it’s been easier for me to reconcile my relationship with my mother. She’s still here (thank God…or whoever). I never got to know him as a healthy adult.

I wonder how different my life would be if he were still here and healthy. I wonder how he’d have treated my sons. I wonder how he’d have treated me. I’ll never know.

I have to deal with all these conflicting feelings at some point. It’s obvious that avoiding them has caused most of my problems, especially my weight and body image issues, my anxiety and my trust issues. It’s just so overwhelming that I’m not sure when I’ll be able to do it. I’m in repair. I hope wherever he is, he is too.

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This was to be the topic of my last post but that ended up turning into a post all on it’s own. What I wanted to write about is mothers who are in abusive relationships. Again, I am no expert, just a woman who has realized the effects childhood abuse had on me and witnessed, as an adult, women who are in abusive relationships and how that affects their children.

As has been well documented here, I am extremely interested in psychology and am back in college pursuing a degree in psychology myself (I will probably be around 87 when I actually get there).  I am constantly studying and researching anything and everything having to do with the way we humans behave and why.

If you get into therapy, you will get at least one diagnosis. Even if you don’t, you may recognize patterns of destructive behaviors on your own. This diagnosis or recognition can be helpful. Knowing that diagnosis is not necessarily a good thing. Why? Because it can result in a perpetual victim mentality.

For example, I have been diagnosed with seasonal allergies. I have several different options for dealing with that diagnosis. I can take an over the counter allergy medication every day to avoid all symptoms and complications (sinus infections, etc.). I can sign up for desensitization shots in which I am injected with all of my allergens every week for the next five years. I can ignore it completely and suffer during spring and fall. It’s all up to me. Because I did the 5 years of shots as a child and they wore off in my early 30′s, I really don’t feel like dealing with the weekly hassle and expense for the next 5 years, knowing it probably won’t last forever anyway. I choose the over the counter allergy medication and very rarely have into any symptoms. Problem solved.

The same is true for many psychological diagnoses and even just emotional problems that have not been diagnosed. For example, I have been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. Sounds ominous, possibly even crazy, right? No. It basically means I worry too much, am high strung and am frequently on high alert for trouble.

Armed with this diagnosis, I could do nothing and just deal with the symptoms. I could choose to work on getting to the root of why I have developed anxiety while taking anti-anxiety medication. I could choose to not deal with getting to the bottom of it and just stay on anti-anxiety medication for the rest of my life. I chose working on it.

Let’s look at what would happen if I chose to do nothing and just accept the fact that I am an anxious person and “stricken” with this “disease”.  I would not sleep well. I would be irritable. I would have a difficult time concentrating. All of that would result in other health issues, problems within every relationship I have, and problems functioning at work. In fact, problems functioning at all. It would mean complete chaos for me and anyone who chose to stick around me. My kids would suffer when I was irritable. Our finances would suffer when I performed poorly at work. My whole life would be a mess. I would focus primarily on whatever was worrying me and everything else would fall by the wayside.

That, in a nutshell, is the problem I see with accepting a psychological problem or diagnosis and doing nothing to work through it, especially in the context of mothers who allow their children to be abused. It would be much easier for me to just say, well, I’m a victim of this disorder and you all just have to deal with the consequences. Sorry. Or, I can take responsibility for working it out, getting better and finding ways of managing it, for myself and my family.

I am not a victim. I have allergies and I take measures to control them. I am anxious and I take steps toward controlling it and eliminating it. This is the difference between simply accepting a victim role and taking personal responsibility for my life. I believe this applies to any problem.  We either give up, blame our problems on someone else or some disorder or we fight for better health and a better life. It’s our decision, the professionals can only help inform and guide us. What we choose to do with that is entirely up to us.

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Interesting related post about:  Playing The Victim by Dr. George Simon.

Interesting related post about: Moving Beyond the Victim-Role – Taking Personal Responsibility by Dr. Marcia Sirota

Another interesting related post:

“This excuse that “I would be lost without him, which is why I couldn’t do anything about it when he abused my child” is complete nonsense — especially today, at a time when therapeutic and financial resources are made available to anyone. It makes my blood boil. The children suffer from the mother’s betrayal almost as much as from the abuse itself. Our criminal laws pay insufficient attention to the moral culpability of mothers.”

- Dastardly Dads

In my last post I mentioned an intense conversation that I was involved in last week during which I had some disturbing revelations.  It was a deep conversation.  I was being probed and challenged.  I was sort of free associating in order to keep up with the rapid-fire pace of the conversation.  It’s kind of a blur now.  I may remember more details as I continue to ponder that conversation.

In the meantime, I do remember one thing I said.  One sentence.  I don’t remember the questions leading up to what I said, including the exact question to which I was responding when I said, “Men are scary.”.

Yes, you read that correctly.  Men. Are. Scary.

I’ve never said that in my life.  I don’t recall ever even thinking it.  I believe this is exactly the sort of thing that Carl Jung was referring to when he said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”.

I don’t feel scared when I meet men or when I’m in the company of men.  In fact, more often than not at parties I am more likely to be debating religion or politics with the guys than discussing PTA goings-on or other mom-stuff with women.

Nonetheless, those words came straight from my brain and out of my mouth. I’ve been giving this a lot of thought. I have a lot of male acquaintances through work and my kids’ activities, but no close male friends.  The last man whom I considered to be a close friend turned out to be….well, not who I thought he was.

Looking back, I’ve had very few close male friends. There was a “man” I was close to in my early twenties.  That turned into a romantic relationship. Hubby and I were not married and on one of our many breaks at the time and I dated this friend briefly. It turned out that he wasn’t who I thought he was either. The reason I bring him up is that, although we were on a break, hubby was not happy that I was dating him and asked me why. My response? “He’s nice to me.”.

That was all it took. Nice. He turned out to be not so nice but that’s not the point. The point is that my expectations of men (or expectations of how I deserved be treated) were so low that all it took was the appearance of “nice” and I was hooked, not romantically anymore of course, but still hooked into friendship. Until proven otherwise, and I mean with huge big neon signs, if a man appears to be nice then that’s pretty much all it takes for me to consider him a friend. Mostly I just keep them all at a comfortable distance. They are acquaintances, co-workers, neighbors, etc. but not close friends. Men rarely penetrate the protective wall I have unknowingly built.

Even with the most recent man who I considered to be a close friend, it took two years for me to truly open up and feel comfortable with him. I believe it’s because deep down I feel, like I said…Men. Are. Scary.

This revelation is so shocking to me because of the way I actually react when a man truly is behaving in an abusive or aggressive manner. I don’t run, hide, cry or cower. I fight back. If I even hear of a man behaving in an abusive or aggressive manner towards someone else, I secretly wish he would pull that crap on me or even in front of me so I can let him have it. That fight or flight response? I used to pick flight at first, avoiding conflict at all costs. Once I was forced into a confrontation and felt threatened, I was all fight. I still am.

Clearly this is a result of my father’s abuse and my subsequent daddy issues. I grew up with a big, loud, abusive, narcissistic, seemingly all-powerful father. It only makes sense that combined with the men who I’ve known who have not been so nice, that I would have this deep-seeded unconscious fear of the entire male gender. Sad. But true.

Hubby is different. Despite our many ups and downs, he truly is one of the good ones. I feel safe. We’ve both done and said things that caused each other pain and almost resulted in divorce. Having said that, I have to wonder now how much of that was a result of my underlying belief that men are scary and my instinct to fight.

More on this next time…

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