Recovering Gently

[NarcKiddo]

Thank you for writing all that about your husband and your dynamic with him. There is a lot in there that I can relate to and many things I can usefully think about. Mine has not done therapy, and will not, but has felt threatened by mine in the past. He thought I might complain to my therapist about him and she might say bad things about him to me, which of course is not at all happening. He takes up surprisingly little of my therapy time. Your reactions to your husband doing therapy are helping to shed light on how my husband may feel about mine.

Change and growth is hard and I think you are doing very well to think about all of this and process it. It sounds like both of you are more than capable of embracing the changes as they come.

[Gently]

It's disconcerting to recognize behaviours of mine that are not what I would want them to be towards people I care about. It gets confusing, because part of coping in life has always been to take responsibility for any conflict so that everything can feel stable. Fawning is a real thing, in essence manipulating the other person into feeling better so that I can feel better about whatever it is that is triggering me: a sense of distance, not being seen or heard, needing a boundary but being terrified that I'll loose someone when I do what's good for me.

So, when it seems that I've behaved in a way that is insensitive towards someone else because I'm so immersed in my own self management head space....

Apologizing can feel triggering because of all the fawning style apologizing that I've done over the years.

I also realize that with apologizing I am also hoping to regain a sense of balance in the power dynamic of the relationship. I recently apologized to my adult son for something I think was a reasonable apology. It was straight forward and not fawning. His "forgiveness" was repulsive to me, nauseated me. I hated his forgiveness, his "all is well". I felt like a small child who was being told "good girl, you did the right thing, look at you doing the right thing, now you are acceptable, perform, beg, fall into line and then you'll be loved". I also hated the feeling that he had some kind of relational power over me, or that I had lost a sense of relational power. I was nauseated by that. I was tempted to write something back to him that balanced the scales somehow, saved my "face", put me back in the upper position of Elder or Mother or something. I didn't. I waited, journalled, felt my feelings.

I realized when I processed those feelings that part of what I wanted with the apology was a return to a feeling of closeness, enmeshment actually, that I used to enjoy with him. But my enjoyment of that "closeness" was not healthy, in truth. I also felt the attachment wound just below my sternum. It was deep, hollow, terrified. I stayed with her, we wept together, I soothed and comforted her, held her. She is so small, so vulnerable.

The thing I had apologized for was the same kind of thing my husband had gently mentioned to me recently. My son was telling me about a difficult decision he had made. I have been hoping for this decision to take place for a long time, because I think he needs to get out of an unhealthy situation, one that I got out of several years ago. My reaction was celebratory, Yay! But he was not celebrating, he was hurting, he had been through the wringer for weeks with this decision, just as I had been when I had to go through it. But in the moment that he was telling me about his decision, all I was feeling was my own relief, and that's all I showed to him. Not empathy for his own emotional states, his own distress. My response totally minimized his emotional experience. I appropriated what he was telling me about himself and absorbed it into my own narrative, my own perspective, my own story about it, my own feelings.

I am allowed to feel relieved, yes. But that is not for him, it's for me. His life and what is happening in his life is for him, not for me. And when he shares it with me, it is for him, too. I listen to be a good friend, a good person who will listen to see and hear himself, to validate and acknowledge his experience (when I can with integrity) as he chooses to share it with me, and to be honest with him when he asks for my input.

He is not fodder for my own life. So much of this sounds like narcissistic self supplying, using others to populate my own universe. It's hard to put into words, this feeling, this understanding. I can only hope that, having been raised by a narcissist, I learned this way of being, and having experienced such trauma early in life, I developed these coping strategies.

I am comforted to know that when I am told about how something I've done has affected someone whom I care about and trust, it hurts me and I don't want to do that to them. I hate that I have hurt them. It makes me more careful with them, more gentle with them, more aware of the impact I have on them.

I have felt for so long that I don't know how people "work". I have always felt like an outsider, not having got the rule book for how to be a human relating with other humans. I have always needed lots of words to explain things in real time. When people are not explicit, clear, direct, I am lost and sometimes terrified.

So much of what I do when relating with people has been for my own self management, or to get what I need from people dressed up in what looks like being a good __________ (fill in the blank), or copying other people who seem to know how to do it. I haven't known how else to function. My examples were faulty, my attachment process was taken offline the day I was born and left with terrifying strangers in a cold, institutional, unfriendly, foreign, dangerous place, and then I was raised by emotionally immature and neglectful parents, and my M.......

I didn't develop a Self, an Ego, from which to relate to other Selfs. I think I've only begun to develop that Self in the last few years through self parenting and self love and self compassion. It feels like I never really knew what love felt like, really felt like, in my body, until I started showing myself love and compassion. I've had to teach myself that it is real, that it can be good and safe and wonderful to rest in the loving embrace of someone. I still have a hard time feeling that feeling in my body from other people.

But it feels really good, love. If I stop, now, and recall the warmth, joy, and energy of the loving feeling when I've turned my Loving Gaze towards myself, it feels like all is well, all is possible, and I am good and the world is a good place. It changes everything.

My grandson has this in his life from so many people. He has this Loving Gaze upon him from his parents (my son and his wife), his Lola and Lolo (the other grandparents), and from me and my husband. We all adore him, and take loving care of him, and he is secure and happy and trusting. I want that for him, and I delight in being able to offer it to him, to contribute to this rich environment of love. I hope it goes into him, I hope he feels it like the ocean he swims in, like the way he is and the way the world is.

And I wonder what that would feel like, for love to be so familiar, understood, normal. Expected.

I'm taking an online writing course, and there is this advice for the discussion forums:

"When you don't know how to respond, do so with empathy and affirmation, care and generosity."

That felt like a revelation to me. I need this advice. And it makes me sad that I need it, and that I don't naturally know how to do it.

[HannahOne]

Gently, thank you for sharing your experience. I see you carefully thinking through, processing, feeling, noticing, and allowing. These are all healthy relational skills. It makes sense that these don't feel "natural" to you, having CPTSD, yet you have access to them at least when you're alone and processing here.

I can relate to feeling you don't know how to relate, and copying others, second-guessing and analyzing my emotional and verbal responses trying to be both safe and good, trying to be ok and make sure the other person is also ok. I guess from my own perspective, I would make a distinction between being relieved for your son, and using him as narcissistic supply. Noticing that your immediate emotional response to your son wasn't "for him" and didn't resonate with how HE was feeling seems to me to be the opposite of narcissism. Our beloveds do populate our internal worlds, and we do have our own feelings about them. I think it's the lack of noticing the difference between us and them and the lack of adjustment for that reality that is abusive if it's constant over time. That you can both notice on your own that you've misattuned to someone, and also receive feedback when alerted, seems to be just the stuff of relationships: rupture and repair. And the stuff of healing from CPTSD: what's me, what's you? How DO I feel right now, and how do I both manage that, the attachment wound in the sternum, and also remain fully present to the person in front of me?

I'm so sorry you have that wound, and that you didn't have that loving gaze under which all of this could have developed naturally and been easier and less fraught with worry and fear. Still, I felt like cheering you on as your thinking unfolded as you show so much awareness, good intent, and willingness to figure out the boundaries, and that is so lovable, so delightful and beautiful, I just wanted to cheer.

[Gently]

Thank you, HannahOne and NarcKiddo, for witnessing my journal and for your thoughtful comments.

I am reminded of the question that has been asked: How do you know if God hears you if he doesn't answer? Or, sometimes people would say that they feel like their prayers "hit the ceiling".

Here, I feel that my "prayers" go out and land somewhere, and then I hear back.

As for actual prayers, these days I am inclined to think that the function of prayer is more an opportunity to hear ourselves, to know what we think and feel, and then feel okay to ask for help.

Because we all need help. And it's okay to ask.

[Gently]

Gently, thank you for sharing your experience. I see you carefully thinking through, processing, feeling, noticing, and allowing. These are all healthy relational skills. It makes sense that these don't feel "natural" to you, having CPTSD, yet you have access to them at least when you're alone and processing here.

I can relate to feeling you don't know how to relate, and copying others, second-guessing and analyzing my emotional and verbal responses trying to be both safe and good, trying to be ok and make sure the other person is also ok. I guess from my own perspective, I would make a distinction between being relieved for your son, and using him as narcissistic supply. Noticing that your immediate emotional response to your son wasn't "for him" and didn't resonate with how HE was feeling seems to me to be the opposite of narcissism. Our beloveds do populate our internal worlds, and we do have our own feelings about them. I think it's the lack of noticing the difference between us and them and the lack of adjustment for that reality that is abusive if it's constant over time. That you can both notice on your own that you've misattuned to someone, and also receive feedback when alerted, seems to be just the stuff of relationships: rupture and repair. And the stuff of healing from CPTSD: what's me, what's you? How DO I feel right now, and how do I both manage that, the attachment wound in the sternum, and also remain fully present to the person in front of me?

I'm so sorry you have that wound, and that you didn't have that loving gaze under which all of this could have developed naturally and been easier and less fraught with worry and fear. Still, I felt like cheering you on as your thinking unfolded as you show so much awareness, good intent, and willingness to figure out the boundaries, and that is so lovable, so delightful and beautiful, I just wanted to cheer.

So many things to engage with here...

Thank you, this is really helpful. My mind told me this too, that since I am asking the questions of myself and taking some responsibility.... but then that reminds me of when I would take responsibility for everything to make things smooth over because of the attachment wound. So I'm not being abusive to the other because I reach out to repair when I see that I've misstepped, but what about when I'm reaching out and repairing more than the other(s) do?

Which leads to your other question, which I hadn't spent time on, or tend to spend too much time on, or think I shouldn't spend time on...

"How DO I feel right now, and how do I both manage that, the attachment wound in the sternum, and also remain fully present to the person in front of me?"

I felt that he was telling me his story while completely forgetting that I was in his exact same shoes three years ago, that I had walked that road of realizing the church was unhealthy, that I needed to leave, and he watched me and my husband do it, and it was wrenching and awful, and he stayed to try to "help", and I waited while he worked himself to the end of the covert narc who has groomed the whole community. I feel unacknowledged by him, while I work hard to acknowledge him.

It seems like I do so much more work to acknowledge and be attuned to the other person when things feel like they go sideways. I am way more concerned about repairing a rupture, way more worried about the potential damage to the attachment.

As I wrote about his situation just now, I am reminded of how young my son is in life experience, and how much I have expected him to be able to be an emotional peer.

Maybe the thing that tortures me is the attachment insecurity, my very low tolerance for tension or misunderstanding in a relationship, a whiff of the possibility that I may be misaligned with someone, that feels catastrophic. It feels like a crisis that I need to avert immediately or all will be lost.

So I go in and repair, quickly and often. Others don't feel it as keenly as I do, perhaps, and if they do they are not as alarmed by it. Perhaps they modulate their behaviour in future rather than doing a formal apology, perhaps they simply say "sorry" next time they see the person.

I want the apology to do two things, something for them, and something bigger for me: recover my sense of attachment security.

Perhaps for them it was a blip, or not nearly as huge as it feels for me. They are not feeling the need to repair a mortal attachment wound. It's not as serious for them as it is for me.

I seem to have needed a really deep level of repair, much deeper than others seem to have needed throughout my life.

So, I am disappointed that my son did not acknowledge my shared experience to his when he told me his news, and I am disappointed that my son did not acknowledge my situation when he accepted my apology. I wanted something from him, relationally, that he did not give me.

But, after all this, I felt angry about the lack of mutuality. And that anger allowed me to feel the distance, the detachment I need to feel so that I can be a separate person from him. That anger lets him do what he is doing, and feel what he is feeling, while I am "over here" being a totally different person doing different things and feeling different things. It better lets me allow myself to feel and be different, to not need to have the same knowledge, thoughts, experiences, feelings. It lets me off the hook, too.

That anger lets me off the hook, too. That anger also feels way more tolerant of the differences, and even the tension and misalignment. That anger doesn't care if he is annoyed by my different feelings to his, because that anger is protective of my own Self and that I am in a different place than he is.

This is all so mixed up and hard to describe in a clear way, but what I think is happening is some form of differentiation.

It's not just me not attuning to my son's situation, it's wanting to be enmeshed, that I want him to be totally attune to me and I think I need to be totally attuned to him and that's the only way to be "safe" in that relationship. In any relationship, maybe, now that I think about it.

So I scramble to restore total attunement, and I'm the only one scrambling, and I'm tired of scrambling.

There is this delightful rebellious feeling when I let the anger empower me NOT to scramble and just let the chips fall where they may. Let them feel whatever they need to feel and just blithely carry on.

I can feel that little glimmer of resistance to this part of me that wants to be a supplicant to keep things stable.

That supplicant part feels relief, too, when the grown up part says "no thanks" and takes charge.

That grown up part has way more confidence in herself, and even in other people. She's not anxious, and makes a healthy presumption about other people's attachment to her.

There are a lot of parts scrambling inside of me right now. So many conflicting feelings and emotions and perspectives and thoughts.

This situation has stirred up turmoil in my system. This one is deep, this thing with my son. It's going to need more of my attention. I'm going to have to pay more attention to this change that is needed in the way my system relates to him.

I know that I want freedom in it, from it, I've felt that now.

It's strange to go from feeling the need to apologize to him to this, to needing freedom from him, in a way.

Not "I've done something wrong" but "I need something for myself".

When I think about it, this is the place where I have landed in most of my processing in recovery: I need something for myself.

That's a good place to land. I know how to do that, now.

With the help of my friends.