Messages

Great on the journaling.  I've found that journaling really helps me, when I have a lot of intense negative emotions inside of me that feel stuck.  I like how you dealt with your fear - you were gentle on yourself and accepting, instead of just trying to get rid of the fear.

How comfortable am I with the concept that I have 0 input at all in whether or not other people cast me in the villain role in the story that they are telling themselves about themselves? 

This speaks to me, a lot.  I can truly relate to this. The injustice of it is mind boggling to me.

Hello Appy Redman, it sounds like you have a very good recovery program underway.  I understand the part of keeping quiet about it with other people.  I'm extremely careful who I mention it to, because the last thing I need is to be dismissed or invalidated or gaslit.  That is usually what happened in the past. I've always felt supported and validated here.

I spoke to my older sister, and let her know that hearing her talk about what a wonderful time she had talking with the family after the wedding was painful for me to hear about, considering I was unable to go to the wedding, because of the circumstances of the family. (I'm no contact with my malignant narc mom, and younger sis).  This triggered a great deal of anger in me, and before I spoke up to my sister, I spent a long time journaling and getting out a lot of anger and rage at had at her.  Thankfully, she said she was sad and sorry that it was painful, and that she understood.   This doesn't mean I'm suddenly going to fully trust her, because she has said and done a lot of hurtful things in the past. I had spent many years in therapy dealing with my anger and hurt about the severe abuse and neglect I had from my mom, but never much therapy time dealing with my anger towards my oldest sister. I'm setting up an appointment to talk to my T about all of this.  Another thing I want to talk to my T about, is the fact that as the scapegoat of a narc family cult, I was trained to be very submissive.  Until I moved out of my parents house in my 20's, I had to sit there and take all the abuse without saying anything, and without showing any emotion.  This training has had a bad effect on me.  It has made me an easy target for other predatory people in my adult life.  I'm currently going to Al Anon meetings, and have a very supportive sponsor who is giving me the courage and strength to set better boundaries with people.  I've become aware that I"m absolutely scared of conflict, and will avoid it.  I need to work on getting the courage to stand up for myself and set boundaries anyway, so that I don't end up being such an easy target.  I think this would really help me. 

But the world we live in now is lonely and isolated. And every box I open reminds me of that.

I can sure relate to this.  I've been very isolated most of my adult life, but even more so since 2020. I can relate to the feeling of loss with decluttering. 

As little boxes of items leave the house, I feel a little bit of release from my emotional attachments. It's like all those old sayings of "getting it off my chest" or "Feeling lighter".

This sounds really good. 

As difficult as the past was, this house used to be teaming with life. OUr children lived here, Coco's mom lived here with us for 14 years. There were always extra children sleeping on the floor in the TV room on Saturday mornings with our sons. It's just Coco and me now. And I have to find my peace with all that.

I can relate to this quite well, having grown adult children as well.  It's been very hard for me. 

I hope the race with your grandson went well. 

I've been really infrequent and spotty with coming in here and journalling.  I need to realize I'm doing this for myself, and not to people please.  Thanks, Hope, for the support from May.  It has been a very busy summer - a driving trip to Connecticut from the midwest, and being busy with my yard and garden. 

I made the mistake of getting back together with my older sister, who is a narcissist, 2.5 years ago.  At the time, I was very lonely, and was remembering some of the good times we had had as kids and teenagers.  When we first got together, I though it was OK, but in retrospect, the "apology" she made to me was more making excuses, and shifting the blame for how she mistreated me to another family member, and playing the victim.  (I was ostracized from my entire FOO in the 1980's when I got married, because I didn't let my malignant narc mom control the entire wedding.  No one in the family went to the wedding, and my parents and 3 siblings refused to speak to me for over a year.  Talk about a painful way to start out married life.) To this day, I've had an extremely distant relationship with my FOO, and went no contact with all of them in 2021, because of a lot of toxic crap that happened in 2020 and 2021.  They have done so much emotional and psychological abuse to me all of my life, but I was hoping that as we have aged and are in our 60's, that at least 2 of my siblings would have grown out of the nonsense. 

Because I'm no contact with my very abusive mom and younger sister, who are both high level narcs, and I've had such a distant relationship with my niece and nephews, I chose not to attend my nephew's wedding in June, because I knew the stress of dealing with my narc mom plus traveling just wouldn't be worth it.  I have almost no relationship with anyone in my family anyway, because of having been ostracized, and having CPTSD makes it difficult for me to relate to them, and this wedding happening just brought up a lot of hurt and sadness.  Then when I spoke to my sister, the mother of my nephew the other day, she rubbed my face in the fact that she was so blessed to be able to be with all the relatives, and it was like a big happy family reunion, knowing that I was unable to attend because of the extensive psychological damage that was done to me by this same family.  I'm very fearful of conflict, because in the past, any type of disagreement with them resulted in such painful abuse, that I didn't even say anything to her about it.  She did some other condescending BS, and also boasted about how she was so blessed by this that and the other.  All this has brought up a lot of anger, and I realize she is still abusing me emotionally and psychologically.  I realize I've made a mistake allowing her into my life.  I'm trying not to beat myself up about it.  I think I need to go no contact with her again, or at least very limited contact.  I can see very clearly that narcissists never change, and they will just keep abusing people.  I put in a call to my T, and will talk about all of this with her.  I did a lot of journaling about it this afternoon, which really helped to diffuse a lot of the anger and rage I have about being so unfairly scapegoated all of my life by these toxic, nasty people.  Narcissists really are despicable people. 

Meanwhile, at home, in my family, betrayal was just another thing to do every day of the week. My family would tell me things and make me believe them and then ridicule me in public for having believed what they'd told me. Or they'd instruct me to do something, and after I'd done it, they'd say I shouldn't have done that. In the end, my own sister wanted my share of the family inheritance so she tried to get me to kill myself so she could have my share... Betrayal.

This is cruel, twisted, and evil.  I'm so sorry that you experienced that, Papa.  It makes me angry!  They definitely put you in a now win situation.  And then to be teased and bullied at school on top of it.  I can relate.  I too was put in these double bind scenarios.  It's good that you are aware of this. 

I had a very honest talk with my sister Mg, and she was open and receptive to it! She agreed with me, and said that yes, she did have a tendency to dump.  So, I'm feeling much better about it.  I know this will not just stop because I said something about it, but at least I was able to share my truth with her, and she listened and respected what I had to say.  This is a very good sign.  She is in recovery for alcoholism, and her sponsor had told her the same things I told her, which helps a lot.  Now, I will have to be strong enough to set a boundary when she does this again in the future.  My T gave me some very good suggestions for how to do this, which I've written down. 

Hello everyone, I haven't been in here in a very long time. Not because of anything that went wrong here, I just drifted away with other priorities. 

I'm sorry to say, that the relationships with one of my 2 sisters is not going well.  All 3 of my siblings have varying degrees of narcissism, and histrionic PD.  Although there is not obvious overt abuse, there are other toxic patterns going on. 

My younger sister, I'll call her Mg, I believe has histrionic PD. 

1) I've set strong boundaries with MG not to talk about our young sister K, who is a narcissist, yet she keeps bringing her up, and when I remind her I don't want to hear about her, she says she forgot.

2) every time I talk to her, it is completely negative, it is all about her and her problems.  She exaggerates and lies about things, and it's just drama and chaos continually.  I've tried setting boundaries on this without coming right out and bluntly telling her all she does is complain and dump. 

3) she offers me no support or care at all, and the relationship is a one way street.  Not once in the last 5 or 6 months has she even asked me how I'm doing, or shown any interest in me or my life.

When I get off the phone with her, I feel drained, stressed, and depressed.  My energy is depleted.  I think she is an energy vampire.  In the past, she has said and done vicious things to me, and I think it may only be a matter of time before she reverts back to that. I'm really starting to resent this very much. 

Overall, I feel she is playing the victim, and being manipulative, which HPD people will do. My intuition is telling me that my energy is being sucked by an energy vampire.  HPD is a cluster B personality disorder, and has a lot in common with narcissism. 

So, I'm considering going back to no contact, or at least extremely limited contact.  Truthfully, I'm in a fragile and vulnerable place right now with my own healing, and this is setting me back.

I would love to have some supportive feedback about this.  I have found a very good therapist who is very knowledgeable about NPD families. I will discuss this with her the next time I talk to her.

• Moved out of my FOO's house
• Volunteered at a cat shelter for some time
• Adopted two cats
• Revisited London to replace some old bad memories
• Finished a traineeship
• Visited Hong Kong (beautiful city)
• Resolved my iron deficiency that I had since I was a child
• Got an IT job working in state government
• Bought a house
• Got a promotion (I'm a senior IT officer now, fancy!)
• Became the owner of a large online support community

This is truly amazing!  You have so many wonderful accomplishment!    I'm glad you are taking pride in your progress. 

I had to look directly into his eyes, if I looked away he would slap me. Every time I looked into his eyes though, it hurt me so bad. I was looking at someone who I thought was supposed to care for me, but I just felt so unwanted, so un-cared for.

My narc mom did the same thing to me.  While she was abusing me, I had to look into her eyes.  Pure evil. From what you described in your first post, your father sounds like he was very abusive.

 

since you're so fragile from your parents' abuse, you seek comfort from someone else - to which they end up being abusive as well.

Been there, done that, got that t-shirt. 

Well I told him and he got so angry, he cursed me, told me how much of an idiot I was and I got so many raw feelings bursting out. I probably shouldn't have done what I did but for once I 'fought back'.

He sounds like he as abusive as well.  You have a right to break up with someone, and tell them that.  He didn't have the right to call you an idiot and curse you. 

I'm also just generally struggling with my "relationship" to my family.  I am in this place where I feel like my parents don't like me.  They don't really try to reach out anymore and if I send them a brief update of something neutral, I don't get much of a response. 

I feel sad about this.    if OK. 

I think my struggle is with the pressure for how things are "supposed to be" and how they really are for me.  I feel a lot of anxiety and shame.

I resonate with this.  I'm feeling empathy for you and your situation right now. 

And my brain starts in on me with the voice of my parents.  It's telling me my choice of activities isn't valid, that I am a loser, that I don't have a life, that what I like to do isn't good enough.

I'm going to try to say kind and compassionate things to myself. 

It sounds like the inner critic, which was installed by our parents as children.  Pete Walker has some good things to say about how to deal with this.  If you go to his website at https://www.pete-walker.com on the upper left there is a link "shrinking the inner critic".  Just a suggestion, take it or leave it.   

I still need to work on being kind towards myself in those respects too in order to get better back on track. Being kind is different from not being strict.

This sounds like a good middle ground.  We can be kind to ourselves, yet still try to have some self discipline about doing things to take care of ourselves.

after writing that maybe I can see a bit better how and why I'm feeling that it would just be better if I weren't in peoples' lives,

It makes me sad that to hear this.  You sound like a very thoughtful, insightful, kind person to me. 

Because my m was neglecting me and spent a lot of time "partying," I did spend a lot of time with my gps and can understand how I would feel caught in the middle, or made to feel like I had to take sides. Perhaps I was a respite from what was going on with them, where like in the reports, was the thing that brought them joy/distraction from everything else that was going on. Maybe scapegoated in a different way than the usual criticised version? That as long as things were fine with me, it buried all their problems?

From what I understand about triangulation, it is when a dyad (2 people) drag in a third person, and this third person acts as a buffer for the tension between the original 2 people.  It is not fair to the 3rd person, and I believe that it would be a stress factor on that 3rd person.  For a child, I can see why this would be emotionally abusive and traumatizing. 


 

I don't know if other people feel uncomfortable with his behavior.  He has his favorites in the group.  He is a walking bird encyclopedia, and doesn't respect those of us who are newer at birding, such as my husband and me.  Personally, I suspect that a normal person without CPTSD would find his behavior rude and disrespectful, but probably wouldn't get triggered to the extent that I do.  I personally find him to be very arrogant, and he has a tendency to shame people for complaining about the weather, or for not being specific enough when describing where a bird is, or for being late to the group.  He seems to jump someone's case for trivial things.  He not only gets irritated, he talks down to people with contempt when he is irritated.  I find contempt to be very toxic and shaming.  However, as a caveat I will say I'm very sensitive to the slightest hint of contempt.

Here is an example.  One guy complained because there was a hawk flying in the sky, but he couldn't see it because it was close to the sun.  In a sarcastic way, the leader said "Well, I can't move the sun". 

When I'm in the group, I feel the need to avoid him, and walk on eggshells.  This is not very healthy, and it feels similar to being back in my FOO.  No, he isn't someone I would want to be around, even if I didn't have the triggers. 

I'm still torn as to what to do.  My husband keeps trying to convince me he is just a crotchety old man.  Maybe he is, I don't know.  My husband wants to keep going because he likes a lot of the other people in the group, and I do too.  However, my husband has a tendency to downplay and minimize problems.  For now, I'll avoid him and the group.  I'm in an emotinally fragile state at the time.  Maybe someday down the road, I'll try again.  I don't want to do it just because my husband pressures me.  But it's hard for me to know if maybe I'm seeing this leader through a distorted lens, and I'm doing the repetition compulsion, because I'm maybe projecting a lot of bad feelings about my mother onto him.  Does this make sense?