Maternal “love” + hurt

[Marcine]

My mother set distorted emotional equations as facts.

Her predatory behavior + emotional blackmail = "mommy love"

My self-expression + autonomy = "evil child"

Therefore, her verbal rages included "I will always love you."

So receiving love was set equal to denying my needs, tolerating abuse, having no voice, terror, suppressing myself.

This has echoed throughout my life. How could it not? Those equations were givens. And they were lies.

Love ≠ abuse.

Care ≠ raw harm.

Self-expression ≠ threat.

I'm curious if anyone else identifies long-ago-embedded, faulty logic, emotional equations?

[zen_racer]

I had not realized this yet or thought of it as anything like this.  But this is absolutely the kind of treatment I've gotten from my mother.

Even as an adult, she has tried to teach me to be afraid of every single thing I've ever gotten into that I truly enjoyed and she couldn't be a part of.

I think reading this from you will definitely help shape how I view things as I come to understand more about the abuse I went through, and how it is continuing to affect my life.  I kind of think I need this as a post card to look at every time I have to talk with my family.

[NarcKiddo]

I think our mothers must have bought the same manual, Marcine. Your equations totally apply to my experience.

Mine has always sworn blind she loved us. Would never say it to us, though. Only in the third person, using family nicknames, along the lines of "Mother Hen loves its offspring". In our case she also made sure to inform us regularly that fathers do not love their children, so she was the only one we could turn to. Our father lived with us. He was very distant so it was easy to accept what she said. It might even have been true. My father is also a brand of narc, I think. She also made it clear that we were the most appalling burden on her and said she performed all these maternal duties out of her abundant love. This created a great toll on her nerves so it was my job to see to her emotional needs at all times. It was also my job to submit to all these maternal duties when she was minded to perform them - suggesting she not bother did not go down well.

For me love meant total denial of self and concern only for her. I bought the lie that she was denying herself so much out of love for us. It was my duty to reciprocate. I was conditioned early so I have absolutely no memory of any time when I tried self-expression in any meaningful way. I guess I already knew what the response would be by the time I reached an age where I have much in the way of memories (age 6).

ZR your line about yours trying to teach you to be afraid of things she could not be a part of resonates so much it hurts. Mine tries to seep in everywhere. Where she cannot be involved she tries to plant seeds of doubt and fear (and succeeded way into my adult life) so I will not enjoy the thing. I was also taught to be afraid of everything that could possibly result in injury. It would be dressed up as concern that she did not want me to get hurt but if I continued doing whatever it was (usually an innocent childish thing like walking along a low wall instead of on the pavement) she would quickly remind me of the tiresome duties she already had in looking after me and was damned if she was going to have to take me to the doctor when I fell off the wall. I am excruciatingly risk averse as a result, and then occasionally I will throw caution to the winds in sometimes quite drastic ways. In my youth this usually translated into things like going to the home of some random man I had just met in a nightclub to have sex, blindly trusting that he wasn't an axe murderer.

The themes have echoed throughout my life too. It is sheer dumb luck that I ended up marrying a good and kind man who does actually love me and who has coped with me for decades as I have thrashed about with life. It's certainly not because I had any sense of self-preservation or wisdom when it came to choosing men. How could I? I did not have the vaguest idea of what love actually looks like. My first husband was off the scale messed up and my short marriage to him was eventful to say the least. As for boyfriends - best draw a veil over that. I think I exuded a sort of naive vulnerability (I of course thought I was sophisticated and mature) that appeals to good men as well as bad, and got more good than bad. However, the emotional equations of the good men did not compute so I got rid of them pretty fast.

[Marcine]

I had half hoped no one would relate to this topic, then I could bundle all this away in a compartment deep inside, labeled "my fault".

The other part of me hoped I wasn't alone in this.

ZR and NK, I am deeply sorry that we understand. Reading your responses brought me feelings of tragic camaraderie, righteous anger, and grief.

I've rewired so many faulty, sabotaging, emotional connections in myself over decades. And still, on special occasion, these original ruts of programming show up.

I'm not a fan of book burning, but really, NK, we gotta put every last copy of that infernal manual up in flames.

[zen_racer]

I'm sorry that we understand as well.  It is definitely not your fault.

I'm having issues right now even getting to righteous anger.  That's the point of the letter I'm supposed to be writing.  But I seem to be avoiding anger until it builds up enough and goes straight to righteous rage.  I guess it makes sense though, because I was taught that I wasn't allowed to be angry.

[Kizzie]

Just putting my hand up here as someone whose M was an N and did what your M's did.

I think it's part and parcel of the monster that is N. It seems especially important for M's to hide their true intent behind "I am such a good M and you better love me because if you don't always show me love and loyalty you are a horrible, selfish child".

It's was all such a lie and deep betrayal.

You are absolutely not alone in this Marcine 

[TheBigBlue]

It obviously resonates with me too, although my emotional reaction is a little different.

I don't experience my mother as narcissistic or intentionally manipulative. I think she is herself a survivor of developmental trauma. When she becomes dysregulated - which is not uncommon - she can unintentionally harm the developing self of the child in front of her. I call it "inconsistent caregiving".

Not intentional, but that's not an excuse.

Looking back, I think one of the "faulty emotional equations" I learned was:

Love = responsibility.

From a time before I could walk, I felt responsible for making sure my mother was okay. At all cost.

And that cost was self.

I had to carry way too much of a burden far too early. My attention was often focused on whether she was distressed, overwhelmed, frightened, or alone. The developing question was not "Who am I?" but "Is Mom okay?". And the (sad) truth is that my 57 year old still feels that way.

So while I strongly relate to the distorted emotional equations being discussed here, mine may have looked more like:

Love = self-sacrifice.
Love = vigilance.
Love = carrying someone else's burden.
Love = making sure they are okay first.

I am still trying to untangle those equations.

I am still trying to learn how to prioritize myself without feeling as though I am destroying her - someone I love deeply. In fact, I used to call what I now understand as horizontal enmeshment "loving her too much."

Reading everyone's responses, I am struck by both the differences in our stories - and yet where we ended up: with distorted emotional equations that emerged from our experiences.

[Marcine]

I appreciate the perspectives and support being shared. 

TheBigBlue, I too had to adopt those emotional equations you wrote. They are very familiar to me: Self-sacrifice, vigilance, carrying someone else's burden, making sure they are ok first— at the cost of developing a self.

"Love" was letting my mother feed off me and consume my energy whenever she wanted. "Love" was letting her dump toxic goo in my realm with no boundaries. "Love" was constantly turning myself inside out trying to manage her emotional states. She was the addict and treated me like her drug, and I had no choice.

Leaving the family/ cult was set equal to death. "You'll be back grovelling on your hands and knees. You'll see! No one understands you out there like we do. You'll never make it without us, you ungrateful..."

My father set whole other equations.
"Love" = his control (financial and physical) + my submission

"Love" = unquestioning blind obedience

"Love" = silent acceptance of his sadistic behavior

"Love" = never asking him to be accountable for his actions

I feel sick to my stomach seeing these equations spelled out as the force-fed facts they were purported to be.

I think us declaring the lies and the distortions— that have run in the background since forever— is an important step towards casting them out for good and creating space and freedom for our true equations of love and emotional expression.

Even as we have lived our unique experiences, we share similar legacies that are now ours to manage.

[TheBigBlue]

Marcine, reading your post about your father brought up a different set of emotional equations for me.

My mother's equations were mostly about responsibility and self-sacrifice.

My father's were about worth.

My father is a narcissist and appearances matter greatly to him. My younger sister - his spitting image - was very clearly the golden child. Even as a young child, I knew something was unfair about it. I remember telling him, "You always prefer her." His response was usually laughter, "You know how she is," or "You are the older one, the responsible one."

Looking back, I think some of the equations I learned were:

Love = being chosen, and I wasn't.

Love = worthiness, and I wasn't worthy enough.

Love = achievement.

Love = giving someone something to brag about.

Part of me believed that if I fixed enough things, like my weight, my flaws, my problems, accumulated enough accomplishments, then maybe I would earn a little attention.

The strange thing is that I saw much of this clearly even as a child. I called his mistresses "his bees" (I was six). I challenged him (for example, insisting that he smoke outside). For years I referred to him as my sperm donor rather than my father. I knew something was wrong.

And yet I am still surprised by how much it hurts when he forgets my birthday for what feels like the gazillionth time.

A few months ago, I found myself crying unexpectedly while thinking about what I would feel when he eventually dies. What I realized was that I was not grieving him. I was grieving the hope that one day he would love me.

I think that's because understanding faulty equations intellectually and being free of them emotionally are not the same thing.

[Kizzie]

"Love" was letting my mother feed off me and consume my energy whenever she wanted. "Love" was letting her dump toxic goo in my realm with no boundaries. "Love" was constantly turning myself inside out trying to manage her emotional states. She was the addict and treated me like her drug, and I had no choice.

When I was at OOTF members likened N's as vampires who suck the blood (life) right out of us, they feed off us and as hard as that was to look at and see clearly, it absolutely fit my experience.

Leaving the family/ cult was set equal to death. "You'll be back grovelling on your hands and knees. You'll see! No one understands you out there like we do. You'll never make it without us, you ungrateful..."

And like you I was so enmeshed with my NM that I feared falling apart if I stepped away from her and she did her best to make me feel that way. What kept me from doing so for such a long time was that I knew she had experienced trauma and that's why she was the way she was.  I finally had to say it's her or me because it was hurting me and I chose me. Plus, I realized that what she did was at least to some extent a choice.   

The sky did not fall when I did go Low Contact but I was terrified of de-enmeshing from her as I said and IMO that is the deep wounding and existential crisis so many of us face not only as children but as adults.  Fear of death of the soul and/or the body as you've said.

[NarcKiddo]

I, too, have a M who is the product of deep, deep trauma. I think my M is terrible, but hers was off the scale. Adult me can give her some grace in that regard, but adult me also remembers that the way we treat others is, in the end, a choice. Trauma is not a 'get out of jail free' card to do what you like. Adult me also remembers that I feared not being able to protect my children from her. Or maybe even from me. So I did protect them. By not having any. That's a drastic solution, but it is still a solution.

[Kizzie]

Trauma is not a 'get out of jail free' card to do what you like.

Adult me also remembers that I feared not being able to protect my children from her. Or maybe even from me. So I did protect them. By not having any. That's a drastic solution, but it is still a solution.

I was really afraid of this too Narc Kiddo. It's just incredibly sad that we face choices 

As it turns out my NM did try and get our son to love and side with her and undermine me/us when he was fairly young. That was one of the times I showed real anger and it set her back on her heels. She never did anything after that so she knew exactly what she was doing.

We moved around a lot so my son wasn't in touch with her a lot but when he was he did not let her guilt him or manipulate him which was awesome because I was afraid he wouldn't see what she was doing. It was a real source of anxiety for me until I knew he was his own person which is exactly how we raised him and so he could both see and fend off N behaviour. Yay!