Hoping my family would acknowledge it

Started by johnram, October 25, 2021, 04:33:24 PM

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johnram

Hi all,

I havent posted properly in 2 years or so, but i have been active on a healing journey, changing work to suit that also.

I spent some time today going through old notes (10 years old), and also been thinking recently that within me there is some need to either want my family to rescue me, to be better, to try.

Its this hope, but then there is also this anger, at them, for all thats happened, the neglect, the traumas, the abuse.

But for some reason i want them to acknowledge it - not sure what this is, but i feel deeply it blocks me.

I think its all a mask for the deep hurt and sadness......i think...but keen to hear any experiences similar and how you get over / through it?

thanks

Papa Coco

Hi Johnram

I will share what my experience has been: My family owes me some HUGE apologies for how they ignored me and criticized me and treated me like less than human for decades.

What was driving me crazy was that I spent all those decades waiting for the day when they would realize how much they'd hurt me. I was waiting for an apology so I could finally begin a new, more respectful relationship with my own FOO.

After I read The Sociopath Next Door, by Dr. Martha Stout, I truly grasped the truth that they were 100% incapable of ever feeling bad for how they'd treated me. That book helped me to stop waiting for an apology that I finally learned would never come. That's when I stopped driving myself crazy by waiting for an apology. It's when I stopped wanting my real family to behave how my ideal family should have behaved. That's when my chronic nightmares about them stopped for good.

For me: Waiting for an apology that was never going to come, is what was driving me crazy. LIke I was chained to my desire to have the family I always wanted, rather than who they really were.

I don't know if this is good information for you or not. I don't know your circumstances. I just thought I'd share my experience, and let you see if it fits for you at all.

Good luck. I sincerely hope you can find the peace you're looking for.

johnram

Thank you for that, that really helps, and i think dropping away that need / desire of being seen ...... is already where i am heading

need to feel more under the anger to feel the sadness and stop blocking it with this false hope


Papa Coco

I totally hear you Johnram. You're not invisible here. In fact, you're really touching my heart right now in a big way. Facing our past is a big step, but it sets us free. I hope you'll stay in touch and keep me informed as to your progress.

I live by the rule that the unexamined past is doomed to repeat itself until we stop and face it.

My family started the trend of neglect, and I've kept it going. I've felt betrayed and neglected many times since. Like I keep repeating the same relationship so I could keep feeling betrayed and ignored over and over.

But not anymore. In 2010 I finally accepted that my family was physically incapable of love. When I faced the fact that they could never give me what I needed, I broke the spell. Now I have great relationships that don't feel lonely or end in betrayal. The past has stopped repeating itself. I no longer feel invisible. I feel like I'm Pinocchio, I'm finally a real boy! (lol).

My family never hit me or burned me with cigarettes. They just didn't respect me. They treated me like a family pet. I was "loved" in words only. They fed me, clothed me, and taught me to not bother them with my problems or my own dreams of what I wanted out of life. They also made me feel like all their problems were MY fault. I lived in constant shame that I was such a problem for them. I didn't see them as abusive until I realized that other people had families who listened to them and allowed them to have the emotions and dreams that they had the right to have. Other kids were being treated like people while I was treated like a "bad dog" they were stuck caring for.

It's good medicine for us to accept that the family we wanted was not what we got. The more I learn about other people's families being as bad as mine, the more I can accept the past for what it really was. Now I can be free from the pain and loneliness they caused me.

If you have more you want to share, I'm interested in hearing it.

johnram

Hi Papa Coco

I hear you.  my situation is different (Schizophrenic mother and a few big T trauma events) but the neglect or general abandonment and lack of consideration of my needs has been the hardest thing so far to unravel, and i am still doubting myself, "maybe it wasnt so bad".....its the bloody bad programming.

I am trying to feel into those experiences that i do remember, and all i see is neglect....
- my dad picks me up at school occasionally, and i think others think we are spending time, but he takes me to an adult pool hall to watch him and his best friend play for 2 hours (i was between 7 and 11)
- my father never taught me anything, simple things like riding a bike
- when bad things happened, no one ever asked me how i was, so i never learnt to have needs or could express negative feelings - it was all about my dads narcissism or mum's schizophrenia, or their arguments with each other

its weird, this stuff, the day to day, it cuts harder.  i have so much anger currently but i think it needs unravelling

If i may, what are you doing to work through this stuff? 



johnram

Quote from: Papa Coco on October 26, 2021, 01:51:34 PM
I live by the rule that the unexamined past is doomed to repeat itself until we stop and face it.

My family started the trend of neglect, and I've kept it going. I've felt betrayed and neglected many times since. Like I keep repeating the same relationship so I could keep feeling betrayed and ignored over and over.

But not anymore. In 2010 I finally accepted that my family was physically incapable of love. When I faced the fact that they could never give me what I needed, I broke the spell. Now I have great relationships that don't feel lonely or end in betrayal. The past has stopped repeating itself. I no longer feel invisible. I feel like I'm Pinocchio, I'm finally a real boy! (lol).

.............
It's good medicine for us to accept that the family we wanted was not what we got. The more I learn about other people's families being as bad as mine, the more I can accept the past for what it really was. Now I can be free from the pain and loneliness they caused me.

If you have more you want to share, I'm interested in hearing it.

I feel you here.  its that trend you speak of.  Its so damaging.  Its the programming. 

Agree on the unexamined past, i sometimes dont want to, as i keep unravelling, but its helping me, and from it...and thats been the hardest thing, developing some form of self love and compassion


Papa Coco

Hi Johnram,

To your question, "What are you doing to work through this stuff?" the answer is that I'm doing a variety of different things that hopefully are working together to help me grow. It's a multi-pronged approach.

I'm very sorry for how long this post is, but your question deserves a detailed answer, complete with backstory. I can't just leave it at a few words: I really want to convey the truth about how intensive my lifelong path to healing really is.

To cut to the summary, you can scroll to the bottom and see my numbered list of what I do to heal:

Trigger alert: I go into some detail about the suicide of someone and my own suicidal ideation

My history of Mob-Bullying (Agressive Isolationism) at School
I've been suicidal since 1972 when I was 12 years old in a very abusive Catholic school in a suburb just outside Seattle Washington, in the US. I was abused emotionally, physically and sexually for 8 years. In the 5th grade (1970) my best friend (Who I now recognize as a sociopath in the making) tried to give me a ring, but since I was not gay, when I didn't understand what was going on, he punched me in the face and began calling me "Homo," and turned the entire school into a homophobic mob that bullied and beat me for the rest of my life in that school. My family ignored it because the abuse was an acceptable part of being a good Catholic, which was, to them, more important than being a good person.  (ON a positive note: Having walked my thousand miles in the shoes of abused gay children, I am now a strong proponant of gay rights. I now know why they are suicidal. It's not because of who they are, but because of how nasty they've been treated by the evil, ignorant people that surround them. My goal is to not be part of the problem, but part of the cure.)

Family Background
I was #4 of 5 children. # 1 married and left home when I was 6. I never got to know her. # 2 was a narcissistic sociopath who abused the entire family with lies, gossip, and coercion for many decades. # 3, my one brother, was 8 years older than me, and was emotionally detached, a chronic liar, and aloof. My little sister, Angela, and I were the two little ones who clung to each other for our own survival in that cold, judgmental family and abusive Catholic school.

I entered therapy at 21 years of age in 1981 after two suicide attempts in two weeks. From then until 1999 I saw 6 therapists who did little more than just keep me from suicide, but never gave me any lasting help. Somehow, I didn't give up. I just kept trying to find the help I needed.

In 1982, I met my wife working in an all-night gas station. Knowing my jealous mother and "narci-sister" (A term I made up) would collaborate to find a way to break me up with her, I and my new gal ran off and married in secret 28 days after we met. Mom and narci-sister were furious with me, but what could they do now?

I sustained my life while in my personal prison of torture
Somehow, my vigor as a young man who was trying to feed and house my young family, kept me occupied enough to avoid more suicide attempts, but I can say that even though I was succeeding at life, I was a tangled mess of depression and anxiety inside. During those years I was still trying to find a spiritual answer. I'd left the Catholic church but was convinced that religion had the answer. I joined several different Christian based churches and would try my hardest to find the truth in them, until at some point, I'd realize they were just talking the talk and not any more spiritual in their hearts than the people who'd abused me in the first place. In 2000 I finally gave up on all forms of religion and began seeking my spiritual connection to eternity within myself.

The right Therapist—and the right diagnosis of PTSD:
Now that I wasn't looking for help in the wrong place (religion), In 2000 I happened to find my 7th therapist, who immediately recognized my long list of mental problems as PTSD, which was something I'd never heard of. The healing began there. He began working me through some EMDR, and Somatic Experiencing, and helped me finally come to grips with the sexual abuse I'd taken beginning at 7 years of age. But he was only able to get me so far. Somehow, I stalled at a certain level of healing, but I kept seeing him because, on a weekly basis, he was keeping me from suicide.

The Family finally became so ugly that even I couldn't love them anymore:
To make this as brief as I can, I'll list out the main events: In 2008, my little sister, one of the great loves of my life, and the rock who kept me alive in Catholic school, died by her own hand. My PTSD nearly killed me when that happened. For two years I bawled uncontrollably out of utter disbelief almost nightly. For the two years leading up to her death, our Narci-sister had been abusing her with condescending attacks, lies and gossip. After Angela died, I couldn't stop blaming myself for not standing up for her. But, my therapist today assures me that I was so under the spell of the lifelong narcissism that I just couldn't find a way to stand up to anyone in my family. Instead, I'd been just trying to help Angela find a good therapist and a good anti-depressant. When she died it very nearly killed me. I blamed myself completely for her death. I think our mom may have blamed herself also, because she became ill, vowed to not live to Mother's Day, and successfully died at home of kidney failure 9 minutes before Mother's Day 2009.

My Narcissister and my aloof brother, and his nasty wife, surrounded our dementia-ridden father, for the sole purpose of pushing me to do what Angela had done so they could inherit a larger portion of his meager estate. After two years of me trying and trying to stay in my miserable father's life, I had become so seriously suicidal, that I almost killed myself on the 2nd anniversary of Angela's death. My eldest sister (who I barely knew) from 2000 miles away had a sudden premonition that I was about to die. She called me on the phone as I was grabbing my keys to the car I was about to drive to the bridge to jump from. When I answered the phone her first words were not hello, or how are you? Somehow she just screamed "JIMMY! WHAT'S WRONG?" I started bawling and told her I was about to kill myself. She talked me down and got me in touch with the suicide hotline. A few days later, my local, liar narci-sister and idiot brother falsified an email from me to them. They printed this fake email which said I was trying to kill them all, and gave it to my dad to read. He called me on the phone. As he was screaming "I'm having you arrested!" something profoundly changed within me. I felt a sudden immersion of complete peace. I started to smile. I said, "Good bye Dad. I love you very much." I hung up. I changed my phone number and email address and never spoke to any of them ever again. That was 2010. I've since learned that the narci-sister tried to change the will, but couldn't, so she took his money while he was still alive. He fell down the stairs the next day and died a few weeks later with a broken hip, alone in a rehab center somewhere. She then legally changed her name, sold his house, and moved out of state under a new identity. I've lost all ability to know where she is. My only hope is that she stays gone for the rest of my life. Same with my nasty brother and his equally nasty wife.

My estrangement from that family is the greatest gift I've ever given myself. I wish I'd done it when I was 18, instead of 50.

I needed to accept the severity of my past
It's our nature to minimize our pain. Especially when we have no bruises or cigarette burns to prove it ever happened. When our own positive self-image is taken away from us in childhood, we end up believing we somehow deserved what we got. Also, we minimize, because as human beings we're programmed to get through trouble and survive. So we say to ourselves, "It really wasn't that bad. I can walk it off." The problem with that is that when we go for healing, we only heal what we think is broken.

My family gave the appearance of being good people. I always knew that other kids were being beaten at home, so I knew I was lucky. Or was I? Nowadays I ask myself "if my life was so good, why was I suicidal at only 12 years of age?" Answer: Because it doesn't matter if someone else had it worse than me, I STILL HAD IT BAD and I STILL DESERVE to heal from what really happened.

It also felt like I was disrespecting my family by accusing them of being who they really were. I've come to know that fear disguises itself as honor. I now know that I stayed honorable to my vicious family for 50 years because I was TERRIFIED OF THEM. Honor and fear...sometimes very difficult to separate the two.

You can't start healing train crash victims until after the train stops crashing.
I immediately realized that my stalled healing, from 2000 to 2010 was due to the fact that I was still connected to my abusers. My good therapist had gotten me as far as he could, but every week I'd come back traumatized again by something my cruel family had done to me since the last session. I think of a train that's in the process of leaving the tracks, tumbling, tumbling, crashing, passenger cars are disconnecting and rolling down the mountainside. I know that you can't grab the first aid kit and start setting bones and stitching cuts while that train is still tumbling and rolling and crashing. You must wait until after the train stops crashing and the fires are out before you can start administering first aid. So it was with my family. On the day I changed my phone numbers and committed to never speaking again to anyone, ANYONE, siblings, dad, cousins, aunts, uncles...literally anyone who my narci-sister could poison with lies about me, THAT was the day my train stopped crashing and my therapist was finally able to start making good progress with me again.

It's extremely healing to write
I immediately started writing my novel. I had never written before, so I had to learn how to write novels while I was writing mine. But as soon as I felt free from all of them, I suddenly couldn't stop myself. 50 years of being hushed and silenced and called a liar no matter how honest I really was, were bursting at the seams to get me to write my story out. I chose to write a fiction novel about a boy who dealt with the same abuse I'd dealt with but who was lucky enough to leave his family at 18 instead of 50. I have often seen advice from many PTSD sources, that writing is very, very healing to PTSD. It sure was healing for me. I spent 7 years in writers' groups and sitting alone at my PC gushing out my story, cleaning it, organizing it, reliving it, and learning, learning, learning as I wrote. When I published it, I felt like I'd tattled on my family for the whole world to read. The healing release was HUGE. At first I was writing under a fake name out of fear of retribution by my horrible family, but half way through I said to myself, "They've taken everything away from me. They aren't taking my name too!" and I published under my real name. To h3II with them if they don't like it.

The arts put physical action to emotional healing
As a result, I believe that anyone who has traumatic pain due to being ignored and not valued, should find their own venue for releasing their silence through the arts: Writing novels, poems, articles, forum posts. Or expressing their pent up emotions through music, singing, piano, painting, photography, needlepoint. ANY art that allows us to speak our truth is a valuable release of the pent-up world that has been locked inside us for far too long. For me, the books I've written are a physical manifestation of what was previously only thought and emotion. Whenever we combine physical with emotional, we learn and heal much more thoroughly.

Sharing
When I began to write, I finally began to share with my friends that I was writing. Their first question was "Oh really, what are you writing about?" So I'd tell them that it was about a suicidal, sexually abused boy whose family left him out to dry...and I'm writing it because that's who I am. Their first reaction was shock. I am a former standup comedian, who was very successful in business and made a lot of friends. I was seen as a peacemaker who calmly diffused bad situations and helped a lot of people, personally, professionally, and through volunteer work. The first thing my friends would say was "I never would have expected to hear that from you." The second thing they'd say was "I've never told anyone this before, but can I tell you my story?"

Once people saw me open up to them, they suddenly wanted to open up to me. I was as shocked about the horrors of their lives as they were shocked at the horrors of my own. Many of them said, "My life wasn't as bad as yours though," but then they'd tell me stories that curled my teeth. They were doing to themselves what I had done to myself, by minimizing their own abuse just as I had minimized my own.

Summary
I'll apologize again for how long this post got. To sum it up, here's a list of the things I do in concert to keep myself on a constant healing trajectory. I'll never be someone without an abusive past, so I'll never be "cured." But every year, I'm a little better than I was the year prior. As long as I keep getting better, then I'm on track with my healing.

1)   I stay in therapy with a good, empathetic, caring therapist (NOT a cognitive therapist. I've had 6 of those. They don't help me in the least).

2)   I read the recommended books about CPTSD, Narcissism, Spirituality and Enneagrams. This keeps my knowledge up as to what the experts are learning about my condition.

3)   I estranged from my abusers so that I could stop taking the abuse while I am healing.

4)   I've worked hard to keep my addictions under control. I used a rehab center to stop drinking, I've quit smoking. I still struggle with eating disorders, but I never stop trying to keep my addictions from stopping my healing progress.

5)   I practice spirituality by realizing that life is bigger than what happens here, and in the scope of eternity, this life, and all it's abuse, is just a tiny nit on a long timeline.

6)   I write because it applies physical expression to unseen thoughts and emotions.

7)   I still feel pain. I still have emotional flashbacks. But I'm gaining more and more control over them. I'm open with my wife about the days I'm EF-ing. We have an agreement that she doesn't get scared at my mood swings and I promise to take care of them with my therapist and, if needed, temporary periods of medication when needed. 

8 )   I share my pain with others, and I invite them to share theirs back, because feeling alone and isolated is what did ALL the damage to me. I'm very sorry my friends have endured the pain they've endured but knowing I'm not the only person who feels alone on a crowded planet gives me the strength to carry on. I now say that I can endure a world of bullies as long as I have but one trusted ally at my side.

9)   I stay active on this forum because being helped by others while I'm helping them in return is a powerful way to stay connected to my own healing.

I've said a lot here. I may have even missed some thoughts that'll come to me later. But if you (or anyone at all) wants to talk or expand on any of the things I've said, I'm very open to starting a private chat with you on the My Messages feature of this forum. We're encouraged to keep our posts shorter here on the open forum, so if you want take it offline and go deep with your own story, I'm happy to do that with you--or anyone at all.

johnram

Hi Papa Coco

thank you for that long response, i appreciate the time and effort. 

I am heading off for a few days, and so havent had a chance to reply.  Hopefully early next week on return.

Just wanted to say this incase you felt i had ignored it


pt_1112021

Hi Johnram & Papa Coco --

I'm new here and don't mean to intrude ... but, well, I'm having a bad day and this thread really resonated with me.  My family is utterly horrible, too.  I find myself so incredulous at the things they say and do that it tears me to shreds inside.  I freeze, fight, appease and flee (sometimes all at the same time!)

I walked away from the whole damn lot of them.  Moved to a new state with my kids.  Cut them off.  But they find "minions" ... they dig for things to blame on me.  The latest is that they've convinced my mother's nursing home that they shouldn't allow my mother to have any contact with me.  My sweet mother was the only person who believed me and stood by me when my abusive ex was crushing the life out of me ... she now has dementia.  She's trying to starve herself to death.  She lived with me and my children for 14 years.  She loves us and misses us but they have her locked away and refuse to let her talk to any of her friends or loved ones other than them (they weren't present in her life for years).

So.. I'm all over the board at the moment.

But I wanted to say to Papa Coco that your long response here was hugely helpful to me - I might even print it so I can read it more closely!  I saw somewhere else that you said you wrote too much - an apology, even.  Just wanted to say don't feel bad for writing too much!  Your words helped someone (me).  Please don't stop sharing :)

Papa Coco

Hi PT1112021,

Thank you for the response. I worry about my long responses. For most of my life, my family hid their sins by keeping me quiet. The church did the same thing to me. So in order to keep their sins from getting out, they either told me to be quiet, or they convinced the world I was a liar so no one would believe me if I started hemorrhaging the truth. If I ever did get help, and they found out about it, WOW! There was heck to pay then. So I learned, for 50 years, to just keep my mouth shut and accept every lie they told about me. Today, I feel free to tell the truth, and I'm like a dam that's burst. I am compelled to tell the truth so much I can't stop talking once I start.  But>>>PTSD is the gift that keeps on giving, so once I've blabbed and tattled on my church and family, I become very paranoid that I'm about to be thrown out and discredited again. This is NOT a comment on the people of this forum, this is trauma. Left over trauma that has stuck into my brain and comes up from within. The people on this forum are the cure. Most of us know what I'm going through, because most of you have felt the same torture yourselves. We're birds of a feather.

Also, now that I'm finally able to articulate what my life has been like, I'm hard to stop when I get started. I just have to pay the price of being open by going into a trauma-induced emotional meltdown after every time that I tell the truth about family and church. (small price to pay. The EF only lasts a couple of weeks, but the truth lasts forever. So I spew it all I want). For most of my life, I had been gaslighted so badly that whenever I tried to explain what family and church were doing to me, my freeze response would ignite and confuse me so badly I'd start to babble and make no sense. Pretty soon even I didn't believe what I was saying. That's what Gaslighting is designed to do. Make YOU into a babbling noise that can't finish a sentence and can't tattle on your tormentors to anyone who could help.  When anti-bullying campaigns say "just tell someone" they are naively assuming you're not too confused to be believed. Our abusive families discredit us so that when we try to beg for help, but can't articulate our pain, they get to say "See? I told you he/she was crazy."

We victims of narcissists and sociopaths know WHY we can't "just tell someone."

I've been on a break from posting, only because I've been overwhelmed by my own Emotional Freeze over my own family mess.  A week or two ago more than one member of my current family (My son, wife and best friend) had dreams that my horrible sister was going to try to connect with me. It's been 10-11 years since there's been any contact of any kind. Knowing she stole about $360k from my dad's estate, and knowing how out of control she is, I know that she's been out of money for a long time now, and is no doubt looking for someone to blame. Sociopaths ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS assume YOU have millions of dollars hidden someplace that you are choosing to not share with them. I hear it all the time. So even though my wife, son and friend were only sharing dreams, wow...the threat that she's on the warpath looking for cash makes this a plausible threat that the old monster will reappear, pretending nothing bad had ever happened between us, and demand I give her money or a place to live.  Even though they are only dreams, they dredged up a lot of emotional scum that I thought had pretty much settled at the bottom of the tank.  My heart has been racing for two solid weeks. Almost no sleep. That's the power of PTSD.

I really feel for you. I'm so sorry your nasty family is blocking you from your mom. I know what that pain feels like and my heart truly goes out to you now. I always say "It isn't the lies people say to me that hurt. It's the lies they say ABOUT me."  Families with sociopaths in them are not safe places. My narci-sister took my father away from me by lying to the entire family about why I was trying to stay in his life. I didn't care about his money, but that was the only thing she wanted. Sociopaths always, always, ALWAYS confess their sins by accusing you of what they are guilty of. A thief will accuse you of stealing. A liar will accuse you of lying. A rapist will accuse you of raping. Their brains are wired like a 3-year-old.  To a narcissist, no one on earth is important except themselves. So naturally when they talk, they only really talk about themselves.  If they say "you're ugly" it's because they believe THEY are ugly. If they call you a criminal, it's because they are a criminal. ONLY the sociopath is important to the sociopath. Every word they speak is about themselves.

The problem is that they aren't the ones to actually administer the torture. All the sociopath does is tell the lies. It's the Flying Monkeys that perform the damage for them. In psychology terms, Flying Monkeys are the scores of people who do as their told for the sociopath. Hi7ler never kiIIed anyone. He pointed and shouted...his armies did all the kiIIing. EVERY sociopath builds an army of Flying Monkeys so they can point and lie, and the Monkeys rush to action to do the torture.

This was why when I hung up the phone after telling my father that I would always love him, I shut out the entire family. EVERYone. I figured that if I let even ONE person back into my life, my narci-sister's lies would flood back in and I'd be taking the blame for her sins all over again. Just like I did for 50 years. They chose to believe her, so that made THEM the most dangerous people on earth to me. I pictured myself as a ship. And if I opened a dialogue with anyone who knew my narc-sister, it would be like opening up a crack in my hull, which would let the full force of the ocean of her lies right back in to sink my entire ship.

The Sociopath Next Door by Dr. Martha Stout.  This book really, really, really helped me to learn how to articulate what had really happened in my first 50 years. I recommend this book to everyone.  Easy read. Powerful eye opening book on how to never be dragged around by another sociopath for as long as I live.

I believe that the unexamined life is doomed to repeat its abuse. I used to say "Cr4p! I just got rid of one pscyho and now I've got another one just like it!"  That all stopped after I read this book. Once we stand up and face what happened--once we learn the reasons for the abuse--the repeated cycle permanently ends.

I hope the best for you. I'm here to vent on any time you need to just babble on. I'll hear you. I'll believe you. You will be heard here.




Armee

I like that you write a lot, Papa Coco. It really sucks when those EFs roar to life and we can't even sleep. I wish this threat of your sister contacting you wasn't hanging over your head. Since it is, I'll offer a hug, if they are helpful, and a warm cup of tea instead.


:hug:

Papa Coco

Hi Armee,

I recieve your hug and send one back.  As Empaths, we can truly feel eachother's virtual hugs. 

Thanks so much!

I'm off my break now. I've calmed a bit. People have been advising me that if my narci-sister is sending empathetic hate waves at me, that I'm prone to feel them because we shared a 50 year connection. All I need to do is stop thinking about her. NOT give her the energy she's trying to instigate. Love begets love. So I want to focus on the love I feel from my friends. My wife, kids, grandkids, and all my friends on this forum.

This is the healing I came here for, and I've truly found it.

THANK YOU for listening, and for the virtual hug. Maybe I'll have a nice cup of tea in your name now. :)

Papa Coco

Another quick thought for PT_1112021:

You said your nasty family is isolating your mom from you and all her friends.  Spoiler alert: My experience with narcissists, sociopaths, natural-born-bullies (And all other toxic genres) is that they isolate for a reason. They want something. In the case of families, it's usually money or the family home. Tied for second place is raw attention and/or to shut them up so they can't tattle on them for some serious crime that's been committed.

I assume your sibs are tryiing to get your mom's money, but my narci-sister was also always booby-trapping any of our accomplishments or birthdays because SHE wasn't getting the attention that day.

Money first: Attention second.

Sadly, your mom is paying the price for their greed.

I'm sending you a virtual hug now too. I'm sorry this is happening to you and your mom.

dollyvee

I never equated isolation and narcissism before but I think I see this in myself. I often feel like I am isolated from others and not always because I want to be isolated or use it as a coping mechanism. I think family members distilled a sense of mistrust in others in me as a child which is something I'm beginning to look at.

Pt_1112021 & Papa Coco my family is also very much about greed and money and has left me feeling very, very alone at times dealing with their actions. I'm sorry that you both have to go through that.

Papa Coco I enjoy the sincerity that comes with your posts and I hope that you keep making them.


Papa Coco

Thank you Dollyvee and Armee,

Your kind words mean the world to me right now.

I'm sorry I get so afraid that I've said the wrong things. It's part of the Trauma that still has a grip on me. I keep getting better at trusting that I'm not a total joke. I'm better than I used to be...and as long as I keep working at my trauma responses, then year from now I'll look back and see that I'm even better yet. Healing from childhood trauma is a lifelong process.

During my formative years, my family discredited everything I said as either stupid or a lie. That's how they kept anyone from believing me if I tattled on their abuse. But in those rare times when I said something that someone DID believe, HOKEY SMOKES did I pay the price later. They'd make sure I knew that my careless blabbing of words had hurt them beyond repair, making me feel like I deserved to die. Then they'd follow it up with that thing that hurts me the most: they'd ignore me as if I was no longer welcome in their lives. They'd keep it up until I apologized and promised never to say anything like that again. The church did the same thing. I wasn't a cherished child in their loving Christian school, I was just a tuition generator. As long as I was kept quiet, or as long as every word I spoke was received as stupid or a lie, their sins against me were safe from being exposed, and my parent's checks would keep coming to the church. Who is going to believe a lying little idiot? Right? It's a tactic used in the media every day: Discrediting viable sources of the truth so they won't be believed if they talk.

Today, I just need to keep remembering that I'm not what they said I was, but as you know...EF's happen anyway. And my fears of overstepping my bounds on the forum are part of the trauma I'm still rising up from.

I know the sense of isolation. I've always felt lonely in a crowded world. For most of my life there were two teams on earth. Everyone versus Me. Like you, my family did it to me on purpose. In a lot of ways I didn't fit in with people my age, but it was because my family made sure of it. In high school I wasn't allowed to date girls more than one date per. I've hurt a lot of wonderful people by breaking up with them just as we were getting close. But I had to. My mother was too jealous to let me have a friend, or a girl, that wasn't her. I wasn't allowed to join any sports teams or music programs, which made me into an outcast in school. Mom made my clothes, and she always made them adult XL when I was 100-pound 14-year-old. I'm pretty sure I was intentionally made into a "freak" so I wouldn't mix in with my own peer group. Mom and all my adult sibs always made sure I knew that my friends were all idiots, and I was an idiot for hanging out with them. Because of how Mom cut my hair too short and dressed me too large, I would be taunted by strangers in the mall. My family made absolutely certain that I wasn't accepted anywhere.

Until I was over 40 years of age, no matter how many people loved me, I never felt loved. The loneliness came from within. And I knew that the people who reported to love me the most, were the most dangerous, because their lies carried more weight than people who didn't know me. My family figured out how to isolate and discredit me without having to use actual chains on my ankles. How are we supposed to trust the people who love us, when we know from experience that the people who love us can hurt us more than anyone else on earth?

The lies that damage us the most are spoken by those who we love the most.

Narcissists have only ONE power. Words. And their usual go to strategy for making YOU miserable is to use empty words as a weapon to Divide and Conquer. They tell lies to you and about you to intentionally make you believe you are alone. They'll never say, "I don't like your haircut." They'll say, "We all see that your haircut makes you look ridiculous." I call it the "We all" trick. Also, instead of saying "You should learn to sit differently in that chair", they'll say "Everyone knows that's the wrong way for a boy to sit in a chair." Making YOU feel like an isolated freak is their conscious strategy. The "WE ALL" and "EVERYBODY KNOWS" tricks are meant to make sure you feel utterly outnumbered and worthless to "everyone." It's a lie. A manipulation. A trick.

I'm sorry your family did it to you too. These monsters are everywhere, and the more we learn to spot their tricks, the less power they have to falsely make us believe we're all alone against the world. The absolute truth is that empathetic people like you and I, and all of us on this forum, ARE the healing power of the earth. Some religions call us "the salt of the earth" Which is in reference to salt's healing properties, it's preservation properties, and its ability to flavor otherwise tasteless foods.  We are not isolated, but the jealousy of our families needed us to THINK we are. They did it to us on purpose.

The more we learn to love ourselves, the more our love will spread to others. By the power of our empathy, we can spread love around. I see it on this forum every day. The way we speak kindly to each other is healing many of us a bit more every day. That's why I believe we are the healing power of this otherwise cruel planet. We just gotta stick together and get better and better at no longer believing the lies that were meant to keep us from spreading our love to the world around us. Our families were wrong. If anything, they were afraid of us. That's why they tricked us into believing we were less than we really are.