Escaping. a form of NC but not aware of it.

[suffersilence]

Hi.
This is something that I was told by a counsellor and I was taken aback because I didn't think it was the main reason.  I remember myself always going out for bike rides for hours and hours, just to escape the family dysfunction. It got so bad, that when I got opportunity to go to university (it was 3,000 miles away) I took it and went. When I was in university I had a sibling who got mad at me because I simply forgot to keep in touch.  I returned back because I don't know. I felt the need to go back home. but then the dysfunction was so bad, that I decided to find a job in another town about 4 hours away. I returned back to my family, only to discover nothing have changed. so I decided to move away, then I moved further away, then further away, until I decided to move out 3 hours away. It was then i decided to start NC with my Mom after a really bad argument that was triggering to me.   My counsellor told me that it was my way of subconsciously trying to set up boundaries to separate myself from my FOO's dysfunction by moving away farther away.  Have anyone experienced the same as what I experienced?    Now I find myself feeling a little bit ashamed for letting my NC go on for so long because I see my siblings cheerfully contacting my mom, while I am still filled with dread and anxiety when I am even mulling the thought of contacting her.

Silence

[dreamriver]

Hi suffersilence - yes. As a child I would be on my own/alone a lot and as a teenager I moved out of my family's house to be on my own. It wasn't until the past couple years and CPTSD recovery that I realized I was trying to get away from my family subconsciously, constantly trying to be out of that house.

I just thought I was being angsty. Well, that's what they chocked it up to and I believed them at the time. I was invisible and fairly neglected and was kind of surprised they were so upset when I left. I thought, I didn't even really matter that much when I was around? It was just control.

I came back around to be more connected with family sometime after college. Things were totally OK for 4-5 years maybe. I wasn't ever LC or NC at any point but this past year things got so bad I went very, very, very, very low contact. I have long lived way far away from family because I've never been at the center of things, and the same thing sort of happened again: I moved even further away (moving out all over again). They got upset about that and that's the source of things getting very bad....again I was shocked they'd even care, and that's when I started to see the pattern of control, rather than love. And I realize I've always tried to keep distance from them for good reason, even if I wasn't aware of it.

[suffersilence]

Thank you dream for sharing.
As a teenager I worked very hard to be the "peace maker" trying my best to make sure my mom was calm, and happy. It only took me when I enrolled into University to make me aware of what was missing in my life. When I was in university, i was happy to make new friends, but at the same time, absolutely clueless on what goals and ambitions do I have for career planning and stuff because I spent so long focusing on others but never on myself, spent so long on being detached and numb, escaping through reading books, riding my bicycle.  It took me a long time to finally deduce that I have the symptoms of CPTSD.  I have seen some videos that says that CPTSD can be resolved and healed. But I sometime wonder, can it?

Silence

[SonOfTheLoveless]

Hello Suffersilence,

I have a similar thing.  I was born in the Netherlands, and about 15 years ago I moved to Germany (after finding a job there).  I rationalized this to myself at the time as wanting to see another country.  But the reality was that I simply felt hemmed in, pressurized, and needed to get away.  About 4-5 years ago, I finally discovered that what had been going on all along is that my parents (and also my whole family) are narcissists.  So the moving to another country was my "unconscious self" escaping.

Now, 15 years later, I am very very glad that I left the immediate geographical surroundings of my parents.  I did not go totally No Contact at first, but only later.  But the geographical distance did help me hold on to sanity, and I think it helped me develop.

Question to you: Have you thought about the possibility that your siblings (who still are contacting your mother) might be narcissists as well?  (Or that they may be so deeply "brainwashed" by the narc parenting that they do not even perceive the narcissism themselves.)  My whole family is narcissistic.  Literally NO ONE in my whole family seems to understand what Love is (one crucial aspect of Love is, I think, that you accept the other person as a full individual, and leave the other person the space to be themselves, to be their own person).  Maybe your case is similar.  Families create a kind of "mental space" in which they live, in which habits of thought reside.  It is hard, as a member of a family, not to be infected by the habits of thought that live in the family.  Children of course unconsciously copy the habits of thought of their parents.  Maybe your siblings simply do not know better.

I have a similar situation with my brother.  He is a relatively nice person (who does not pressure me in any way) and we communicate relatively well, and to some extent he has understood that our father (who is much worse than our mother) is narcissistic.  I've gone completely No Contact with my father, but my brother currently is still keeping contact with him.  My point is that I believe that my brother still has not FULLY understood what narcissism is.  One symptom of this is that he still has not understood what Love is.  In that regard he has not yet escaped the unhealthy habits of thought that reside in my family.

So my point is that it is not enough to escape from narcissistic parents.  You also have to escape from the habits of thought that reside in a "narcissist family" and that the family keeps propagating to its newborn members.

Infected family members facilitate the narcissists, by their social pressure to keep in contact with your parents.  I think the point there is that these family members simply DO NOT KNOW BETTER.  They are acting out of ignorance.  So in that regard they are not to blame.  However, the upshot is that unwittingly they do pressure you, and this pressure is harming your healing process.

So your siblings, since they do not see what is going on, are in fact unwittingly HARMING you by their peer pressure.  Therefore you can not rely on your siblings in your process of healing.  The burden for getting better is on you.  You yourself are the guardian and protector of your sanity and health.  Find people *outside* your family that you can talk with.  Create your own group of friends, your own "family".

Be well and be strong.
Greetings from Germany.

[Kizzie]

Have anyone experienced the same as what I experienced?    Now I find myself feeling a little bit ashamed for letting my NC go on for so long because I see my siblings cheerfully contacting my mom, while I am still filled with dread and anxiety when I am even mulling the thought of contacting her.

Absolutely!  And there are almost 30,000 members at our sister site Out of the Fog who have had similar experiences trying to deal with PDs, especially NPD which seems so prevalent. I went LC/NC with all of my family of origin because they are so bound up in the NPD behaviour, it's like a sticky web you can't free of.  And once you go NC/LC if you get too close you are likely to become stuck again. 

It's really tough having to go NC/LC I know    And I get the shame too.  It takes some time to fully grasp that we don't have much choice if we are to protect ourselves and more importantly grow and live in healthy ways.