dollyvee's recovery journal

[dollyvee]

After reading the article Hope posted and about Betrayal Trauma Theory, it's been sinking in that this is what I've done to protect myself. Feeling torn between seeing the loving times and all my other feelings, anger, confusion, guilt etc it makes sense that we hide/create an illusion/can't see the truth about what is really happening in the family because we need that attachment to survive.

Also, I guess maybe it's not that my mother didn't love me, it was that there was no way for her to ever see me or meet my needs. I don't know, this is a tough one because when someone is projecting all their negative feelings onto you, is envious and critical of you (which I am absorbing and believing about myself), it's hard not to feel where the love is in that.

Learning about narc mothers and how they project their feelings onto you and as children, we internalize them. They are also envious of us. It makes sense that I can't tolerate this behaviour or situations where it arises, that I minimize it or make myself overly friendly etc, as well as probably self-sabotaging so I don't have to deal with it. There's only one instance of specific envy/jealousy that I remember when I was a teenager. I feel like my m (and gm) operated from a very young place and that their feelings were never well defined, but I think I picked up on the overall message. It just left me confused as to why I was feeling like I didn't want people to be jealous of me. Maybe that's the betrayal trauma operating as well. I'm wondering now if this really loud, rock like stomping part was not a part of me but the projected feelings of my m and is also why I had to freeze them? I guess it was the same as sealing up my m part. T said at the time that maybe that wasn't a good idea but I don't think she understood what that part was (nor did I). This is also why it's hard to open up and listen to to other people about what's going on internally.

I also wonder if I've been in an EF. When I think about these feelings I had dealing with this envy, the stuff from that time, it just feels so draining, and I do feel helpless but I know that I'm not and that I have been resourceful in the past. I think I'm going to try and start focusing on these feelings and who they belong to; where is the critical voice coming from and what happens if I just say no? (All these other feelings of guilt, sadness come up but I guess that's the grief I have to work through). I wonder what part it is that feels so drained by this?

[dollyvee]

Also want to put this here because I want to remember it/think it's important and not necessarily something I did/was able to do in the past. It was definitely not ok to show emotions in my house growing up and I think it's still difficult when they come up now. It's probably still an automatic response of shut them down:

"Eventually, giving myself this time, my tears would begin to leak and then pour. The trick was to let them be. To feel them. This is difficult when you have been taught to stuff it or suck it up or not to feel anything, to be phony, to pretend everything is all right when it isn't.

Sit with those feelings. Sit with the pain. Manage the anxiety and depression that come with it so you can work through it. Don't try to talk yourself out of it. Others around you may try to do this. No one wants to see you hurt, and your loved ones may not understand how important this is, so don't listen to them. Let yourself feel! When the old denial tries to reassert itself, or the critical internal messages begin again, chase them away. Tell yourself that you deserve this time to heal.

It is common for you to feel like a wimp or to call yourself a baby. I do this on a regular basis, even now when I have feelings to process. I have to tell myself, "It's okay to be a baby right now. Babies are sweet and innocent." You won't be a baby forever, I promise. It doesn't last, because you work through it in this very way"

[Armee]

Our households sound really similar, Dolly. Thanks for sharing these excerpts and reactions to them.

[dollyvee]

Thank you Armee - I recommend it. Reading it now is helping to put a lot of different pieces together that I've been working on in therapy. I think it's very difficult to feel ok to have space for feelings when they were seen as dangerous growing up.

I think I'm definitely in an EF. I have received some cancellations with work and my mind is racing about money now, the cost of living crisis, the comments the other week that I felt were directed at me for saying something about sexual harassment - I'm not liked, I'm stepping out of line (for standing up, for being me), I'm not going to work, how am I going to survive? I'm hearing t this morning saying that I've been saying these things for the six years since I've been seeing her and it's never happened (though there are people I;ve stopped working with and who have stopped calling). Part of my job is also being sociable and making connections and I've been finding that's difficult when I have certain views about how I've been treated, and it's getting harder to accept that behaviour for me (not that it should be accepted but a lot of people do nothing and it's just "the way it is").

Rereading what I wrote this week and I wonder if it stems from writing about my gf. He was the financial support in the family and we had to do everything to make him happy otherwise we'd be cut off (ie wouldn't survive which I think is how it felt framed by my gm). I went out and did my own thing, did get cut off, but he also helped me out later (which I basically had to beg him to do [help with my tuition for my masters- this was important as long as it was education it was ok, anything else probably not] even though he said he would at first because I chose a school in a country "he didn't like"). I think a lot of  adult time in this career has been proving to them (my family? myself?) that I can make it and I can survive, but I don't think that's the right mindset. As in, it just has to be safe so I can eat etc but it's not necessarily about putting myself into it. I think it's always about survival. I do feel like I could be more engaged/more creative but I am always worried about being liked and hired again. I can see how that is maybe similar to having to please my gf for money (as well as proving myself and my work for my m's approval) and would bring up feelings of not being able to survive.

Funny how I can seesaw between those two feelings so fast as well - I'm liked and things are going ok in the other post to I'll never work again and I'm a terrible person.

When I found the doctor's notes about my gm's treatmemt, it was really apparent how she couldn't be on her own, doing things for herself, that there was always some sort of failure. She was cold calling but it wasn't working. She couldn't get her real estate career together and she was going to work as a check out person. I remember her telling me it was because these guys came in at work and undercut her. In the notes she kept going back to my gf even though he didn't treat her well and I don't think he was supportive of her career. I think she was dependant on him and in her mind, she needed him to survive and that was that. Perhaps she self-sabotaged her opportunities because she thought she couldn't make it on her own. Meanwhile, she told me about the men that held her back etc. She found someone to take care of her in my step gf and she never worked again. I felt like I always wanted to make my own way and not be dependant on someone like that, but it's also eye opening after I just read what I wrote, that maybe I am repeating her self sabotaging patterns. There's that thing in me telling me I'm not good enough, I'm not going to make it, that I need someone else to do it. I think these things are also maybe generational as the times did bascially dictate that women were to be in the home but I also feel like it's something deeper.

tl:dr am feeling like the anxiety coming up around work has to do with the internalized messages I received from my gm about being dependant on people and are a form of self sabotage as well as standing up for myself in my family and acknowledging what was going on meant I was cut off from real support, which meant survival. Even though I know I'm resourceful, it's hard seeing past these messages but maybe I need to recognize that they're not my messages/not my parts.

[dollyvee]

So last week I had a dream (I didn't write it down because a part of me was scared I think) where I saw the women that came before my gm. I think there were five of them? Thinking about my entry yesterday and it brought me back to legacy burdens and how there is a continued way of thinking in my family and in me. There's also a fear in me about letting it go - what will happen etc. Maybe this (self-sabtoge?) is part of it too. I'm trying to remind myself that I am an adult now and not the young, helpless part I feel when this anxiety about letting go comes up.

I look at my gm who went back to a man who didn't treat her well because she thought it would provide (like a prince charming); my mother did it as well, choosing my awful sf instead of herself (and me); and I see it in myself too, ruminating about this guy the other month and the fantasy relationship I thought it might be (though it's come up before with other guys). I think it was also this way with my gm's mother as her father didn't sound like a nice person and when I looked at photos of the two of them, her m seemed to be enamoured with him. I would like to give this stuff back, or unburden it, and not carry it anymore. I also don't want to be scared about letting this stuff go.

It also strikes me how real this stuff is. This anxiety following me has consequences, that it impacts my behaviour and I fall and hurt my shoulder. The pain in my shoulder is now connected to these things. Anyways, this is not the lala land how things were supposed to be in my family, but a real cause and effect behaviour. It's not that my gm is always right and that is the way the world works (as she said) but this pattern of thinking brings about these things in my life; I'm organizing my life subconsciously in a way that makes what she said true or not.

I felt good after my entry yesterday. I felt less disorganized and more settled which was nice.

Listened to the Ann L Sinko talk on shame and legacy burdens today. I want to know more about this but there's not a lot of information out there. She said that these burdens get passed down through the rules of shame which are: be perfect, be in control, don't talk about anything or be vulnerable, don't trust. I mean that's my family creed right there.

[dollyvee]

Also listened to the Michael Elko (?) IFS talk on shame and he said something that I thought was really profound for me:

IFS sees anxiety as parts that think they're bad.

How often did I feel, was I told that something I was doing wasn't right where I now second guess myself or feel anxious without even knowing where it's coming from - it's just always there. I think I need to connect to the part that is feeling/creating this anxiety and understand the shame or feeling of why they feel bad in the first place.

[dollyvee]

I think I'm learning more about how my internal world is organized/process information. I realized on a walk a couple weeks ago that I haven't meditated really since I got back from my visit with family last Christmas. I was thinking it feels like I stop and start things, or pursue something and it fades out, but I don't think it's like that. It feels like I had a shock to my system that maybe froze or changed my thinking? Maybe another part came in and started running the show? I thought things were a certain way with my gf and then pow. I think it's a good example of how narcs operate and leave you with a false sense of reality. I'm also learning that children of narcissists have a very disorganized sense of self, which makes sense that there's no continuity when things like this happen.

I also felt that with IFS as well. I had great insight and some which I return to still now, but something happened and I wasn't able to progress further. I wonder if I got to a layer and  there was a protector that was like nope, but it doesn't feel conscious really. It's just like my attention shifts and maybe there's busyness inside, and when I try to check in it feels like it would be futile, or I'm just wasting my time (I don't know how to put it). Writing that down, I can see that that's just the essence of a protector and firefighter doing what they're supposed to do.

I took a different strain yesterday in MD'ing and I knew it was more potent and reduced my dose by about 1/3rd but I didn't realize how much more potent it was. I had an image of me pop up that was (I don't know how to really describe it accurately here as well) like bratty, a bit cunning (street smart?), greedy, trouble maker. My intention that I set beforehand was to find out more about the part(s) that are running the show that I guess I'm not aware of (thinking to above where I'm blocking out the poss NPD behaviour of my gf ). It made me think about the shadow self and am guessing that is my shadow.

I'm also trying to figure it out in a parts sense, but I haven't really resolved that. Shadows are parts of ourselves that we repress, so in a way they can be exiles? But I don't feel like this was an exile. I wonder if parts are experientially created in response to something that happened and the shadow is a manifestation of the things that were suppressed if that makes sense. So, a shadow is what happens because of what the exiles are exiled for, protectors protecting? I don't know if it's something we have direct access with.

It made me think about the times I was with my mom and felt I didn't measure up. That there was no room to be bratty etc. I guess parents don't want their kids to be that but I think in other families those things are talked through and resolved. This was something I had to cut off because it was unacceptable. I've been trying to work on being more open to that part/side and maybe hear what it has to say (though I don't think it's an exile?). I also did and exercise in another book called Children of the Self Absorbed a while ago where you were supposed to list your accomplishments and then recognize the positive qualities that helped you do that. It was really difficult to do that. I think we were supposed to list 8-10  accomplishments and I had maybe 2 at best, which I don't think is accurate. I'm finding myself coming back to that and thinking about it quite a bit - what stops me from recognizing these things. I think on some level I'm still locked into thinking about my life and self in a way that is safe and acceptable for my family. Doing things because it's what they would have thought was "good for me." Even now I wonder why it's so hard to question that. I guess there is the bratty shadow side that rebels against that but it's not like I give it a lot of credit for doing so, or understand the motivation for doing so.

Anyways  I will go back to reading Stanislav Grof which I'm really enjoying and hopefully cleaning the flat.

[Papa Coco]

Hi Dolly,

Your post makes me think about how all aspects of humanity are in all of us. Well....Maybe not in Sociopaths. But within the rest of us lives both goodness and brattyiness.

I can look back at my young adult life and clearly see that I had been taught how to love by people who were selfish, accusatory, jealous, controlling, sarcastic, transactional...  They'd taught me that was what love was. So as a young man, I may have been a lot kinder than any of them, but I was also using the tricks of the sociopath to get what I wanted at times. They were learned behaviors. I wasn't an actual sociopath, but I'd learned how to use some of their tricks. Today I look back in disbelief at how I behaved so differently than I do today. But I guess that comes with awareness. 

Again: Maya Angelou said it best: "Do the best you can until you know better. When you know better, do better."

On a spiritual plane, I think that we are all cut from the same cloth. Truly evil people came from the same human origins I did. There is a tiny little evil person within me too. I, however, also have a strong empathy for good, so I choose to live my life being kind.

My own personal belief is that we have caveman wiring at our absolute core. It's what my T calls our "lizard brain." That wiring is for survival and procreation. Sociopaths and NPDs are born at a rate of about 4% of the population. They stop advancing there. They are three-year-olds who never grow past the selfish desires to take what they can, to protect only themselves, to scream and pout and cry when they don't get what they want, to lie without reserve, and to survive, survive, survive at any cost. Healthy people, the other 96%, continue to grow emotionally past 3 years of age. We eventually grow consciences, personal accountability, open mindedness, love, care for others, patience, kindness, selflessness, and a deep appreciation for our connection to all other humans.

But at our core, that lizard brain lurks. It's our base wiring. All of us.  After my experience with alcohol and recovery, I personally came to believe that to be the reason addiction turns us into temporary, honorary sociopaths. Many addicts I know personally have told me that they remember the day a switch flipped off in their heads and they suddenly didn't care about anyone else anymore. Getting their booze, or drugs, or gambling, or whatever, meant everything to them, and family and loved ones became sources of cash to feed their addiction. These same people have told me that when they entered recovery, they also remember the day the switch flipped back on and they suddenly began to care about their loved ones again. It is my own personal observation, that the addiction eventually turned off the evolved brain, and left only the lizard brain to run its course unchecked.

So, in summary, I believe we're all sociopaths who grew consciences that keep our lizard brains in check. So there's a tiny little monster inside of me too. There's an angel on one of my shoulders and a demon on the other. But unlike a true Narcissist, I love and respect the angel more than I do the demon.  But that little Narcissist is deep inside each of us, making sure we survive each day.

[Hope67]

Hi Dollyvee,
You wrote so many interesting things here, and I hope to come back and re-read them, as I am interested in the shadow side of parts, and to the potential of repressed parts of ourself etc.  I am also hoping to look up Stanislav Grof now as well - or at least sometime soon, as I am intrigued.

I wanted to send you a hug of support, and also say that I appreciate you sharing your experiences.   

Hope 

[dollyvee]

Thank you Papa Coco and Hope 

Papa Coco I can relate to what you're saying. For a long time (and I still do if I'm being honest), I thought is it me? Am I broken? Am I a narcissist too? They were things that we had to learn to do a certain way to survive in our families but also we weren't those things because we could never do them to someone else. I know if I do this it will have an effect on someone else that might upset them and I don't want that. Of course, the backlash is there too when setting boundaries. I'm hurting this person because I'm setting a boundary. Or that's what I'm perceiving. Oh that's actually healthy for me to not give everything to someone else? No one taught me that in my family of course. I'm still navigating healthy selfishness and narcissism too 

Hope - his work is really interesting for me right now. I think it makes me feel a little less crazy knowing that someone is writing about these experiences for what they are and not labeling them as psychosis or that the person is defective in some way.


I had a couple of disturbing dreams this week after watching the Prince Andrew video I spoke about elsewhere. I don't really know if those things are speaking about me or I'm just reacting to stuff that's going on, but it was very present this week in my thoughts and feelings.

There's a lot of stuff coming up right now. I feel like I had a power struggle this week with someone where I was standing up for my own internal world and they took it negatively. I was trying to ask for clarification about certain things so I could fit it in with my understanding and they were really condescending/short/took it as a challenge to their authority. Maybe on some level it was. So I left. I feel like this happens a lot. I have things that have happened that I need to make sense of, so I ask questions and am told who do I think I am (or where did I go to school - these were both doctors who told me that everything was in my head) . It's sad and alienating in a way but I also feel like I'm being true to myself for doing it. Then I feel like I always have to do everything the hard way 

Anyways, I went and read more about the thing I needed to and found that it can happen in different ways. Maybe they said that and I misinterpreted what they were saying? I don't know. I know there is a big element of mistrust in my family and I wonder how I'm taking that on and maybe isolating myself because that belief is still operating somewhere in me.

I was doing energy work for the first time (well second technically) and was having issues orienting in the task, so I went and asked if any protectors operating could step back. I saw one and it looked like they were showing me a very bumpy road of what might happen. When I shared this, people seemed enthusiastic about it, but I couldn't help feeling/thinking about my gm being enmeshed with me because she didn't want me to get hurt/make the same mistakes she did, and feeling how much doubt I carry/have about my own actions because I worry if I'm making a mistake. This is for me to live my life but it's like on some level, that is stopping me from moving forward because what if?

[dollyvee]

Going back to your comment PC, it brings up stuff and parts that I've seen in me that aren't mine but my m's (and probably gm's and her parents before her etc). I've been asking myself if that's the narc part of her (that I internalized willingly or not) because I saw it and knew it didn't belong to me? I do feel like the shadow was maybe a bit similar but not those things? I've been ruminating on it. I feel like the shadow was the bad stuff I had to get rid of to make me into the person they wanted me to be, which might be seen as just normal traits in other people. Something I'm trying to make sense of.

[Armee]

I think a lot of us raised by narcissists/bpd always question..."wait is it me? am i the narcissist?" When I've had the same fear my T always reminds me that people who ask that are never the narcissist. You're not. Not at all.

I'm sorry people were condescending to you this week. When we've been told to not trust ourselves our whole lives it can be pretty devastating to try to trust ourselves, advocate for ourselves, and then be told we don't know what we are talking about. Keep trusting yourself. You know yourself best.

[dollyvee]

So I had a bit of an odd session at the chiropractor yesterday. The day after I went last week, I started developing a rash over different parts of my body and torso and had some pretty big bruises in different places. I don't think he really did anything different, but maybe some more lymph work? I thought the mycotoxins might have moved out of the lymph glands. I don't know where he's intimating this from, but he asked me if I had a loss around 28 years old. My gf died when I was 30. I've been writing some stuff about him here lately and I guess having some realizations. He also said that it could be the kidneys and I don't think I've been drinking enough water really especially when I'm detoxing this garbage (mycotoxins) out of my system.

I also know that I developed a weird thing with something I was told in my early 20s wasn't a concern when I started IFS. It started developing cancerous like symptoms, which the dermatologist again confirmed wasn't cancerous. She told me it likely rubbed against my underwear, even though I've been wearing them for over a year and have more than one pair. I'm wondering if a part had a reaction to some of the work I did this week?

So, my intention for doing the energy work I did was to see the parts that were "running the show," which, even though I couldn't do the exercise, I did I think see one of those parts. Success I guess. It became really apparent that cptsd is a thing. I read up on this kind of work and it involves a lot of right brain activity. The left brain is the planning, analytical side exactly what we need to operate when we're hypervigilant. I found and article that describes the activity in brain hemispheres that also sums this up, that in PTSD the right side of the brain basically underfunctions, or there is disordered integration.

Psychological and physiological responses to stress: the right hemisphere and the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal axis, an inquiry into problems of human bonding

"Several studies point to physiological dissociation of hemispheric functions during alexithymia. This raises the question: What has been lost if in this condition the right side no longer fully contributes to integrated cerebral function? Right hemispheric damaged children lose critical social skills and in adults the related sense of familiarity critical for bonding is lost. Such losses of social sensibilities may account for the lack of empathy and difficulties with bonding found in sociopathy and borderline personality: conditions now believed to result from repeated psychological trauma during development. On the other hand, systems that promote right hemispheric contributions provide solacing access to a "Higher Power." They also appear to protect against socially disordered behavior, substance abuse, the failure of the HPA axis and some aspects of the pathophysiology of chronic disease."

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8117582/

I found that a way to increase right and left side integration is to do the cross crawl which I'm going to start incorporating into my routine a couple of times a day. I do feel sort of different when I try it.

[Hope67]

Hi Dollyvee,
I remember having a rash appear on my body after doing a 'session' with someone who used a technique that appeared (in retrospect I realise this) to have communicated with an inner part of me.  So I'm wondering if the chiropractor has also somehow channeled into communicating with a part of you, and it's resulted in a rash of reaction.

Really interesting what you mentioned about the brain functioning and hemisphere differences. 


Hope 

[dollyvee]

Thanks Hope 

When I thought about it some more, I realized that I was 28 when I moved overseas. I guess that could be a separation/loss from my family, more in the sense that I was finally on my own and going after the life that I wanted. I wonder if it has something to do with separating from my gm at that time who didn't want me to move away. It was also something that was so hard to do in a way but also felt very necessary. This also makes me think of my association that came up in my energy work with of my gm. Although, I don't really have a handle on everything there yet.  There's more random bits that came up during the energy work that could be associated with the things the chiro did, but I don't know/see quite how they fit yet.

The chiro today also told me that I'm left brain dominant which is interesting.