Why protect them?

[Dyess]

stillhere,
<<The lack of open discussion is one more piece of it. >>
??

[BigGreenSee123]

Now the key, perhaps, is to learn to be angry without the fear of disempowerment. 

Well put. Definitely something to work towards.

[Dutch Uncle]

I am reading an article and I think this quote fits the issue at hand here:

"Anticipate and expect that you'll be experiencing some mixed/conflicting and difficult feelings for awhile, once you walk away from this relationship. This is extremely normal, which is why you've put off leaving for this long. We're programmed from an early age to think that 'right' choices or decisions result in good feelings, but that's seldom true. Sound/healthy decisions require a lot of courage, because they're the hardest ones to make. Emotional fallout usually follows, which tests our integrity and the strength of our convictions. Whenever hard emotions follow correct choices, we second-guess ourselves, and presume we made the wrong choice! This could leave you doubting your perceptions of that relationship after the break-up, and thinking you should return. I know this part feels lousy, but you've made the right decision, so stick to it."

[arpy1]

that's very good, where is it from, please? 

[Dutch Uncle]

It's from http://www.sharischreiber.com/fiftyways.html
It's a site that deals primarily with Borderliners, and how to deal with them.
Which usually is, in her point of view: "Run away!"
A lot on that site is dedicated to what happens then. Internally, emotionally with the 'runaway'. And how to deal with the inevitable backlash.
I think a lot what she says applies to victims of abuse and crazy-making in general. It applies to me, more often than I feel comfortable with, for sure. 

[tired]

Depends on who you're telling. 

[Indigochild]

My little 2 cents Trace,
I understand how people can act in certain ways - ie. abusers-
because I have been tough and made to be like my mother-
and because i learnt how to be watching her as I was growing up-
I do behave like her sometimes-
ie. having boundaries that are too big and pushing everyone away.
I watched her do it to us and my dad, and my mum mother (our nan) would do it to her husband (out grandad)
Of course its not ok, but its also not my fault.
I am working to change things right now.

That understanding comes after anger, when I empathise with my mother for example in my head, it may be a defence, it may not be.
If looking for a mother figure in others and desperately wanting that, is really - pain transferred onto another human bieng-
then their is a lot of pain and want there,
so perhaps believing It was my fault and empathising with parents is a defence-
same as putting that mother need onto another woman.
Don't know.
I hope you can get out of this Trace, i know its hard and ive only just began looking at this.

[unisus]

Thank you for all of these observations.  They're giving me something to think about.

Only a few weeks ago, a close friend suggested that I was "protecting" my uNPD mother, despite everything she'd done.  My friend expressed frustration, suggested that I might work a bit harder to access my anger.  Of course, I wouldn't be expressing it at anyone – so, Trace, the point is not to be heard. 

Until then, I'd not understood my inability to be "appropriately" angry as a form of protection.  So what is it?   A habit?  Dutch Uncle, I'm not so sure in my case.  I've been NC for more than twenty-five years, and patterns of interaction have long become dormant.  Mourningdove, I see your point about the remnants of childhood dependence.  But it's also something else, at least for me.

I've told myself that I also feel sorry for members of my FOO. My parents had pretty hard lives early on, or at least I'm sure my father did and suspect that my mother was a CSA victim (unacknowledged by her).  So I sometimes explain away their behavior.  Is that a form of protection?

I think people protect narcissists because narcissist actively refuse to take the blame. They are emotionally blind, so it becomes a lot easier to believe that somehow they are the victim. The truth is that they simply don't know what they are doing; the problem comes in when people cannot criticize their actions, reject them, establish boundaries, talk about how to deal with them, or feel differing emotions at time including anger.

When the response is black & white, it often stems from an inability to distinguish a flaw with their actions and how to handle it. It needs to be confronted, talked about, & deal with. A lot of times people get weened into the emotionally blind person's dynamic of relationships as with all relationships. You become comfortable & accustomed to what they do, and the false narratives they believe in ... from an egotistical standpoint on their end. They truly believe the world revolves around them, and what they say goes.

So, to them, "freedom" means the ability to defy collective reasoning—and to modify collective reasoning as much as possible—rather than there being a much more concrete, coherent, and empathic form of handling reality one-on-one with everyone.

A child may grow up under the narratives the narcissist weaves for them, and they believe it. For instance, a child may create a piece of artwork and the parent may take that artwork, startup a gallery, place the child's name on it, and then keep the funds. Now, the parent may start a business with these funds and the child's artwork & style as it grows, including handling a community that arises. The child may grow to feel powerless & unworthy, told that they are just a child and their artwork was just for pleasure.

Eventually the child becomes an adult who believes they are worth nothing, and that there is a world "above them"; that is, "those who sell & do—and those who produce and produce and get cheated". They believe in it and protect the narcissist because they were too powerless to do anything about it. It feels comfortable to be lazy and believe the lie; this is the trauma.

[Dutch Uncle]

After I came out of a massive dissociative period I may have gained some insight on it.
Or at least I hope so.

When I finally snapped out of it, and in the few days following, I started to get a pretty strong feeling I had left my denial of events finally behind me. Mind you, I'm still drawn back to denying it all, but I think I've definitely passed it.
The past year on this site, and the years before I found this site, has been an exercise if fighting denial. Two steps forward, one step back, baby steps, you all know the mantra's.

This process has for me been tied with an excruciating need to JADE. To my friends mostly (external) but probably even more so to myself (internally). The JADEing to my friends was actually a spillover of the internal process.

Why do we need to defend them? Because we have been indoctrinated/brainwashed by their own defensive talks. Their gaslighting, their circular conversations, their lies, their cons, their tricks, their sleight-of-handmind etc. etc. etc.

It's their defense-mechanism we are acting out. And it takes guts to simply say: I don't believe any of this anymore, and I'm not going to explain anything! I will just act unexplained (which is a different thing than unexplainable).
But the world we have grown up with, and have played a part for so long to keep up appearances (as we have been told) has just been a fabrication we were made to believe. Like Santa.

Then, so few people can fathom the depth of the emotional and psychological abuse, and even of the physical abuse (I have no experience with sexual abuse) people tend to say "Ah, yeah, I've had that too." Though they did not experience anything of the kind we did.
Or perhaps they even did, but they are still in denial. And berate us for being on the path to get past the denial. Lest they have to go there themselves. Seeing us in agony, that makes it even scarier.