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I think that I have some good understanding of my childhood and the effects on me, but my sense is that I've been stalled out in two related areas:
1) experiencing painful emotions as shameful, so that shame overwhelms/masks the initial feeling
2) processing emotions from the past.
A few months back, I started doing the exercises from Toxic Parents by Forward (note: she strongly advocates a confrontation with your parents, so if you're estranged, and that's at all shaky, it might not be the book for you). The most productive exercise for me was to write the story of my abuse as a fairy tale. A rule of the exercise is to finish with a happy ending. That took months. I did not know how to get from here to there. I did an online course in Emotional Processing, and that gave me some ideas of what a happy ending might be, and a rough map for how to get there.
So here we go.

Hello,
I was briefly on the forum years ago, but wasn't ready to participate. I don't know if I'm ready now, but I've done a bit of writing for an exercise in a book that I think I want to share with folk who will get it, so I'm going to put that in a recovery journal. Then I'll see what, if anything comes next. I think this forum is great... and a big challenge that it might be right for me to work on now. Thank you.

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Hi all,

I want to recommend the blog The Invisible Scar, in general, and the particular article titled "Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) in the Movie 'Tangled': Mother Does Not Know Best."

https://theinvisiblescar.wordpress.com/2014/11/22/narcissistic-personality-disorder-in-the-movie-tangled-mother-does-not-know-best/

If you haven't seen it, the movie "Tangled" is a retelling of the Rapunzel story, with Mother Gothel as the witch who kidnaps a child for her own purposes, and imprisons her in a tower. (Please be aware that several commenters on The Invisible Scar report feeling triggered when watching the movie.) The article I like presents 19 NPD traits shown by Gothel. It's nicely laid out with the fictional behaviour and then real life equivalents.

My mother is a covert narcissist, and, for me, this article helps me to accept the real impact of all those sneaky little behaviours. It seems ridiculous as a write it, but it's really comforting to see a respectable resource (in my opinion) drawing some sort of equivalency between A) locking a child in a tower, and B) not making the effort to take a child to sports, clubs or play dates. Both make it difficult for the child to form bonds with anyone but the NPD parent.

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Hi everybody,

This is about my fourth year of very-low-contact with my family of origin. I wasn't expecting to have a hard time on Mother's Day this year, got but in the days leading up to Mother's Day the rash on my hands pretty bad (after months of almost healthy skin), and I woke up on Mother's Day from a nightmare.

I think that I've been in an ongoing flashback ever since. I feel very worried about my financial situation too, and that's all entangled with doubt and guilt over separating from my family. (I left my old, lucrative career at the same time that I separated from my family.) It's hard to carry on with efforts to bring in more money, and to judge whether those efforts are appropriate/adequate to the situation or if I need to take more drastic action. (By drastic action, I mean sell my house and find cheaper rented accomodation so that I can pay my bills without eating away at my savings.)

Possible trigger warning. The dream includes some violence, although my family was not physically violent. The text is in white, so please highlight the seemingly blank space to read it.
The nightmare was set at the family dinner table. There were two strangers there. A young man and woman of a type you could describe as "at risk." My sense was that it was my mother's idea that they were there. Suddenly the young man got up, hit my brother and knocked him into the corner. My mother got into the young man's face and told him how bad he was. Then the young woman punched my mother in the face. The dream ended with two visuals, the first of my mother's face with blood on it, and the second of my dad sitting motionless at the end of the table looking drunk, very very sick and very angry.

I think the key points of the dream are
1) that the young woman attacked my mother back, rather than being humiliated into submission, and
2) that having had no choice but to submit to my mother's idea of bringing these young strangers into the house, my dad just sat there radiating his fury with her and letting bad things happen, even revelling in them as a validation of his position.

I've written this in the order that the thoughts came to me, and I see it as disjointed. Do any of you see connections or interpretations that link my mother's day reaction with my worries about money? there may or may not be something there.

Thanks for reading
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I have posted an ad seeking a roomate to share my 2-bedroom house. I'm really scared, but I'm trying to move forward with this because the fear over my finances, losing my house and feeling even more trapped in my crappy minimum-wage job is getting stronger. And I'm also doing it because a little part of me hopes for companionship, and a way out of isolation and the shame of not having the life I "should."

Can anyone suggest questions to ask applicants to weed out anyone with narcissistic or bullying tendencies?

I've already thought of using the word "peaceful" in the ad, and asking a couple friends to help me with a second opinion of the applicants (although asking for that help is also scary).

Thanks.
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Yesterday at work, I was triggered when a co-worker came in feeling depressed, and started muttering that he was going to kill himself. (Please note, that, as his good friend told me, he's a bit of a drama queen and says these things without serious intent. He is safe.) I think it was the slightly angry/defiant/closed-off muttering that did it -- that he was acting out his feelings somewhat destructively, rather than exploring them to figure out what he needed to change to feel better. Two things arise from this:

First, I think I was flashing back to being afraid for and of my mother when she was depressed. I don't actually know that she was ever depressed, but it seems to fit. I haven't managed to feel much of that fear yet.

The second thing I have to deal with is going back to work tomorrow while feeling ashamed of my weakness. i told my co-workers that it was ptsd and I ws probably feeling fear from the past when my mother was depressed. I think that I could see them finding it strange that I couldn't stop crying for hours. My inner critic is always very active on the subject of emotion being weak and shameful, and it may be extra amped-up because if my mother ever was depressed, it would have been particularly bad for me to be unhappy at that time.

I don't want to have to go back. I don't want to have to be extra good and useful to compensate for secretly being awful. I don't want to try not to feel anything bad, when I know that doesn't work

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M mother called me out of the blue last night. We've been estranged for 4-ish years. She still shows up at my door or calls about 3 times a year. I often want to yell the question, what the * are you trying to accomplish by saying the same things to me over and over?

As usual, I feel doubt and guilt. I try to remember and analyze everything, so that I can pick out something obvious and outrageous that will finally form a proper justification. It's an endless, non-productive, non-specific circling in my head (like the Tasmanian Devil's dust cloud, with dirt and claws flying out). Usually, I back away from it because it because it almost hurts. Sometimes intense, repetitive physical activity will make it easier to approach, but, honestly, I think that the best I get to is kind of tidying up the edges.

Last night, my mother started with inane trivialities, and when I said I wasn't interested in talking about trivial things with her, she went on to demand that I clarify whether I was going back on my previous statement that I would return to the family. I think that happens a lot, that she suggests my explanations are unclear, non-specific and inconsistent (which equals imaginary).

She also said that I'd said part of the problem was she hadn't "supported" me enough. Well, no. That's twisting it a bit, because I never wanted more of the same, I wanted different -- completely, f___ing opposite, in fact! I think the conversation she was refering to starting with me saying that I often felt worse when she got involved in a problem I was having. That's when she said that she'd done her best to support me in grade 6. What I remember from grade 6 is her saying "they're only doing it because they can tell you're the kind of person who would be upset by it," and that's victim blaming, not support!! And when, as an adult, i said "bullying", I got an outraged gasp of "you never used that word then."

The phone call went downhill from there.
-   I said that I'd observed what looked like a horror of dysphoric emotion; she demanded specific instances, said that "your father" would shoot her down if she expressed an emotion, and that "your father" says she has too many feelings.
-   I suggested counselling to learn new skills so that her life could be easier; she countered that she'd offered to go to counselling with me (heavy on the emphasis that she was willing to drive down and willing to pay).
-  Somehow we arrived at her exclaiming that I'd told her it wouldn't suit me if she divorced "your father," so what was she supposed to do; I nearly yelled back "I was a child" and added that I had no memory of that conversation.
-  She sniffled that "you and your father" have taken away all her power, control and autonomy, so that she doesn't know what she can do; I said I was sorry she felt that way and hung up (and immediately called a friend so I didn't have to worry that the phone might ring with her calling back).

I actually do know why she uses the same tactics again and again, always expecting that the 2nd or the 6th or the 19th time my response will be completely different and what she wants. In the past, that worked. If she kept banging on under the assumption that all my concerns were internally generated, that she only had to change me, not my environment or her own behaviour, then I would eventually give up. I would back away from that dust cloud because I couldn't get through it and it hurt too much to be near it.

Conflict with her always ends with complete submission: you can't just accept that you won't get your way, you have to admit that you shouldn't have wanted it, that the wanting is evidence of a fundamental defect to be fixed (and hidden until it's gone).

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I worry that I don't have the right to be as messed up as I feel. I think that about sums it up.

We were a nice, close middle-class family. They hugged me, and said that they love me, but I don't think I ever felt loved. I always knew that they wanted me to be different, that I was a shameful burden to them, that I was defective, that I needed to be grateful I had such a capable mother to tell me that I was wrong, and I was to blame for not putting in enough effort to be better. It's been a relief in the past few years to resolve the contradiction between how I felt and how I understood our relationship; it's not love, even if they use the word.

I took a self-improvement workshop in 2009 because I really wanted my life to be different and to feel less disconnected from people (maybe less frightened of connection is more accurate). I was enthusiastic about the workshop at the time, but a couple months later I was badly depressed and started counselling with a social worker/EFT practitioner. I'd been getting progressively more sick every time I visited my parents (eyes swelling nearly closed, like an allergic reaction), and I started reducing contact with them. I gave notice at my job at about the same time (and my career in environmental science, as it turned out). I spent the next two and a half years going to counselling and volunteering. When money got really tight, I found a job dishwashing and then baking bread at a restaurant. I worked there for a year, until I left suddenly to escape the bullying behaviour of the bakery manager.

I've been licking my wounds and job hunting for a month and a half. I feel ... shame and despair (??) at the mess my life has become. Unemployed, stressed about money, worried that I've screwed my future by making my old bosses mad at me, and sniffling from a cold – I'm finding it hard to believe that I'm making progress toward something good.

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