Dear Alessa,

That was tough with your son climbing out of his crib all the time and you needing to cuddle him and hold him while he falls back asleep. If you experience body pains due to your health condition, especially during a flare-up, I can imagine it was really strenuous and exhausting. Good that you’ve thought of a solution with the chair to make things more comfortable for yourself! ❤️

You’re describing an interesting dynamic during conflict: if I understood you well, you’re saying that you’re able to set boundaries, and aren’t likely to budge even if the person is guilt-tripping you.

At the same time, you say you have a problem expressing what’s bothering you in a situation (i.e. expressing your negative feelings), and so you only discuss that later.

You’ve said something that touched me:

I guess it is just the keeping things inside. I wish that other people didn’t feel so much pain and could see me.

Perhaps you don’t feel like sharing your feelings, because you feel that the other person wouldn’t even understand you? That they expect you to be very understanding of them, full of empathy, and never show upset or other negative emotions:

I feel like people depend on me being too understanding and over managing my emotional regulation to keep things off their plate which isn’t healthy. At the same time, I recently learned that retreating from conflict is a bit reactive.

It seems you believe you need to be strong for others, and shouldn’t bother them with your needs and your feelings? And you don’t feel like expressing those feelings to them, because it would be futile? And so you withdraw from the conversation/communication (in order to protect your boundaries), but without explaining what’s bothering you?

Dear Alessa, I apologize if I’m asking too many questions and/or jumping into conclusions here. I just wanted to understand the dynamic better. But if it’s making you uncomfortable and you don’t feel like analyzing it further, I’ll completely understand and respect it ❤️

Lovely talking to you too, Alessa ❤️

Dear Alessa,

Sorry for the delay. I had to pick up his ashes and paw prints. I’m getting there now. I’ve been distracting myself with studying and my son is fighting sleep a lot at the moment, climbing out of his crib.

Oh poor you, you’re not getting much sleep then, are you?

How thoughtful to keep your doggie’s paw prints as a memento ❤️ He will forever stay in your loving memory ❤️

It’s not really being loved or accepted though is it? It can easily cause one-sided relationships and leave you in a care taker role with people who are unhealthy.

No, that love is very conditional. They only like you and accept you if you give up on yourself and your own needs, basically. But as children, that’s what we do to make our parents or caretakers happy. And if we don’t heal that, we keep doing that in our adult relationships too.

My therapist used to say to me that as a child I had a tendency for magical thinking and self-blame. I tried to be perfect and prevent mistakes. But new “mistakes” were always found. There was no way to prevent the abuse. It was just who my mother was.

Oh yes, we do that as children. We think that if our parents/caretakers treat us poorly, it’s our fault. And we try to do everything so they would be pleased with us. But as you say, we’ll never be good enough, a dysfunctional parent will always find reasons to abuse us…

I do stand up for myself in the moment. It is just afterwards. I find it tiring to hash things out, especially if the person isn’t receptive. I do still try to do it though.

Right, so you do speak up, but what you find challenging is if the person isn’t receptive, if they don’t respect your wishes and keep crossing your boundaries, right?

I try to keep conflict low in general because my health issues are stress related. After my dog dying, I’m going through a rough flare up.

Oh sorry to hear that 🙁 I hope it will calm down soon…

It is also not healthy to have conflict around a child. Not to mention my tolerance for additional stress is just lower as a parent because I’m already to some extent already stressed. Heck, with a child I barely have time to process my own feelings. Just when he’s asleep really.

Sure, being a parent brings with itself quite a lot of additional stress, that’s for sure. It’s not easy to be a parent… and since you’re a very self-aware parent, you’re trying to be maximally calm and patient with and around your son, and not to show when you’re upset with something or someone, right?

I was definitely more co-dependent and reliant on the other person to help me to feel better in the past because I was not as good at self-soothing.

Good that you’re not relying on other people anymore to feel better about yourself or to emotionally regulate. Sometimes people say something insensitive inadvertently – it’s good that it doesn’t bother you as much anymore. And sometimes people are truly insensitive and lack empathy – it’s also good that you’re not craving their “acceptance” anymore and can self-soothe if they say something hurtful.

I guess with any conflict the issues people have are their issues. I just happen to be there. I don’t feel as threatened by it personally whereas I would take things a bit more personally in the past thinking that perhaps someone might be acting in a certain way because of how they felt about me.

Ah yes, sometimes people behave in not very caring/compassionate/thoughtful manner because of their own issues, not because it has anything to do with us. Sometimes people get easily triggered, they’re overly sensitive, and it has absolutely nothing to do with us.

It’s good that you can remain relatively calm in those situations and not take it personally, i.e. that you can step back and see a bigger picture: that the person is having a problem, but that this problem is not caused by you, but by their their inner landscape, so to speak. I guess that can help us to step back and not react defensively (fight response), but be more calm in our response.

Hmm well I have known people to change over time. But that only happens when you manage your boundaries. It’s a bit slow sometimes. You are right though, people only change as much as they want to

That’s a great observation: that people can change (or at least can change their behavior towards you), but it only happens if you set boundaries. If you just keep allowing hurtful things, people usually will just keep doing it.

Some people – mostly narcissistic – will get offended if we set boundaries and will stop communicating with us. Some will just ignore our boundaries and then if we speak up, they’ll try to guilt-trip us into giving up on those boundaries, calling us selfish or heartless. They’ll use all kinds of manipulation tactics.

I wonder if this is what you’re experiencing when you try to set boundaries? (“I find it tiring to hash things out, especially if the person isn’t receptive”.) That they try to guilt-trip you into giving up on those boundaries?

But I’m glad that some people have changed their behavior once you’ve set boundaries and expressed how you want to be treated. Yeah, some people don’t mean bad, they’re just unaware how their behavior affects us, and they’re willing to change once we ask them to.

How are you doing? ❤️

As I’ve shared on Anita’s thread, I’m experiencing some health issues again, so need to have that checked by a doctor. But I’m trying not to focus only on that and lose my head, but remain calm (or rather, less anxious than I normally would be). So it’s a new challenge, but I’m hoping for the best… 🤞

Dear Anita,

I didn’t see through her. I didn’t see that she was bluffing.. All Those Years.. I didn’t see!

You said it, “fake suicide threats”, I wasn’t sure. No one called them Fake before, not that I remember.

I can imagine no one said it out loud. However your sister, once she was already a grown-up woman and had spent decades listening to the same threat, probably realized that your mother is using it to emotionally blackmail her. Probably that’s why she told her “then do it!” You don’t say that to someone who is truly struggling with suicidal ideations, but to someone who has been repeatedly using it to emotionally blackmail you. And indeed, after your sister’s remark, your mother stopped mentioning it… because clearly, she didn’t want to commit suicide – it was just a manipulation tactic.

But as children and youth, we don’t know that. We believe our parents – and we’re afraid to lose them. So of course it works. It’s a very cruel manipulation tactic, and a very potent one, because it stops us in our tracks and we give into anything the person wants, because we’re afraid they might harm themselves 🙁

Yes, BIG TIME! Always, 100%, no nuance, no shades of grey.

Narcissistic behavior right there – it’s always someone else’s fault, never their own…

So, no way to help her.. because she’s been helping herself by being always-victim. That I figured out some time ago.. She’s been helping herself the only way she knew how.. How did I say it before, in one of my other threads: I tried so hard to help her, feeling so guilty that I failed.. while all along she was helping herself to me, at my expense. So, I helped her simply by being her victim.

Unfortunately, yes. Her playing the victim was a manipulation tactic, because she never really wanted to get better. Covert narcissistic people complain not because they want solutions to their problems, but because they want attention, they want people to worry about them, spend their time and energy on them. They also guilt-trip people for being happy while the “poor them” are “suffering so greatly”. They guilt trip you for laughing – you’re not allowed to laugh because it offends the narcissist… etc etc.

Yes, exactly! Again, I am having this strange feeling that you were there. Didn’t have this feeling with anyone before, not irl or online.

I think it’s a combination of my personal experience and other people’s experiences, which they’ve shared on youtube, as well as those expert videos. It seems those personality patterns are quite universal, i.e. people with a certain personality type behave quite similarly and use similar manipulation tactics. I think that’s why I may appear so “accurate”, when in fact I’m just listing the common features of this kind of parents, unfortunately.

mission impossible, rogers that.

Yeah, that’s a heavy realization (that we can’t really do anything to please them), but for me, it was a freeing one as well. How is it for you at the moment?

L.Y.I.N.G. It makes me angry!

Oh yes, a lot of narcissistic behavior is anger-inducing! And it’s a real skill to communicate in a detached way (if we choose to communicate with them). That’s why I’ve been mentioning emotional detachment so much – that’s one of the key preconditions for healing from narcissistic abuse. But it’s a process, and it’s okay to feel angry first, because that kind of behavior is certainly abusive… and we have the right to feel angry.

Now mostly in my shoulders, back then they were everywhere and more severe, every single voluntary muscle tic-ed. It was difficult to fall asleep, and the social embarrassment was acute.

I can imagine it was extremely hard for you, both physically and emotionally, specially during those sensitive teenage years 🙁 If it’s any consolation, I’m glad that your tics have lessened over time, which is I assume the result of healing and processing some of those emotions?

As a teenager, I clearly remember my head jerking from right to left, as in saying NO. That tic happened a lot when she was talking to me. I remember thinking: Doesn’t she see me “saying” no? Why wouldn’t she stop talking..???

Right.. your body was expressing what you didn’t dare to: your protest, your NO. And you’re rightly asking how come your mother never stopped to ask you what’s wrong.

But unfortunately, it only goes to show how narcissistic parents are insensitive to their children’s needs, how self-absorbed they are: it was more important for her to meet her “need” of criticizing you than to inquire about your well-being, when you were clearly and visibly in distress… 😕

Dear Anita, have to go now, but hope to reply to your 2nd post a bit later…

❤️

Dear Anita,

this time it was less than 12 hours. There were times power was lost for days at a time, 3 days- the longest in my experience.

Wow, 12 hours is a long time, not to mention 3 days!! No wonder you felt at times it would never come back…

(I am still afraid to say the wrong thing, and VERY motivated not to.. so please let me know when I do, or when I might, just like you did above).

Please don’t worry about saying the wrong thing – each of us might do that from time to time, inadvertently, because we can’t always know what another person is sensitive about, what they’d rather not talk about, and suchlike. The good thing is that we can express our preferences to each other, without either party getting offended or defensive. That’s the beauty of non-violent communication, which I too have been learning about in recent times…

So please don’t worry, you did nothing wrong by mentioning it, it’s just that right now, at this point, I’d still like to believe that I won’t need surgery. 🙏 But thanks for your concern and offer anyway ❤️

I like your “perplexed face emoji” (cute).. let me fetch it.. 😕

Thanks, I’ll copy it in a doc file for future use 😊

Fingers crossed for you, Tee. I mean, really.. really I so wish that things will get better again, that you will be hopeful and mobile again soon!!!

Thank you so much, Anita! 🫶 ❤️

Dear Anita,

thank you for your offer, but it’s actually my spine, not my knee. I have problems in both of those areas, but the spine problem got better in the last 1-2 years, and now reappeared out of the blue. So this needs to be checked. My knee is a separate problem, and the goal there is to delay total knee replacement.

I’m really glad our conversation has been helping you, and will try to get back to you ASAP ❤️

Hope your electricity comes back on soon, and the storm calms down too 🙏 I can imagine it’s not fun…

Dear Anita,

I’m glad that yesterday, when you woke up, you felt a sense of calm and something within you settling. And that some things are getting clearer for you regarding your mother, which perhaps will help you accept and process the pain more easily. 🙏 ❤️

I won’t be at the computer whole day today, so won’t be able to reply more thoroughly till tomorrow, most probably. I very much appreciate your feedback and am really glad that this conversation is helping you. I am loving it too. 🫶 ❤️

Wishing you a nice day today, and see you later! 😊 ❤️

Dear Anita,

glad it was helpful 🫶

Yes, I know now more than I knew before. Actually, for the longest time, I didn’t know at all. I was too enmeshed with her to see anything clearly.

Yes, I myself only learned about emotional enmeshment with my mother in the last few years. I didn’t know it either for the longest time… I was still hoping for something from her, her opinion of me was important to me.

I didn’t realize I was actually hoping for her validation. I was hoping she would see me and understand me, and that she wouldn’t judge me. But then I’ve realized this would never happen… and so I let go of the need for her to see me in a good light. To approve of me.

Also, I stopped trying to make her happy, because I’ve realized she is the kind of person who doesn’t want to be happy. And so me trying to cheer her up and comfort her are futile attempts…

It doesn’t mean I have no empathy for her, e.g. when she has some health issues, I’ll always try to help and comfort her. But I’m not attached to how she would receive it – and I’m not attached to making her feel better. In other words, I’m not attached to changing her emotional state – because that’s impossible. She is responsible for that, and only she can choose to look at things more positively… but refuses to.

Yes. I am feeling it right now, this moment. It feels like love, undying love for her. I need to keep the love, remove the object of this love. To love the wrong person, a person that’s eagerly tries to destroy you.. me, is indeed a trap, one of the prey sacrificing its life so to please the predator.

Yes, we as children have a huge love and need for our parents, specially for our primary caregiver, which is often our mother. It’s like we’re holding our arms stretched towards our mother, wanting to be taken into a nurturing embrace, wanting to be comforted, soothed, protected…. in that embrace, we would ideally get all of our emotional needs met.

But we often don’t get it… instead, we get rejection and abuse. But our arms keep being stretched towards our parents, and we keep thinking that if we only become a better child, our mother will finally take us into her loving embrace… We’re trying to adapt, to become more “lovable”, thinking that we’re not lovable enough…

Our love remains unchanged and equally strong, and we’re trying to change ourselves to become more lovable. Which with toxic parents is of course a dead end…

Now thinking about it, it’s not that our inner child should let their hands down (as in give up on love), but rather, we, our adult self, should pick up our inner child and take it into a loving embrace. We should be that loving parent to our inner child. We don’t give up on love, but we don’t seek it anymore from those who cannot give it to us.

It’s worth it, to heal at a later age. It doesn’t feel like it’s too late. It feels very good.. It’s about time for me to feel good about me being/ becoming me!

I’m happy you feel that way, Anita! Yes, it’s never too late to heal and become the fullness of who we are meant to be ☀️ ❤️

W.O.W, I couldn’t have said it better. No one has ever said this to me, anything like it. So clear, so exact.

Thank you, Anita. It’s probably watching hours and hours of youtube videos on childhood trauma and narcissistic abuse – I kind of picked up the gist 🙂 But in all seriousness, it’s my personal experience plus the explanations by experts that helped me wrap my head around what I’ve been through and what others in a similar situation might be going through. In any case, I’m really happy it is helping you 🙏

To me, our conversation is life-changing. From suspicion, distrust, hostility on my part to => softening, trusting (because you are trustworthy!), a shift. Feels like I am rejoining the human race, the Togetherness lost so long ago, dissolving the separateness.. Because of you, Tee, because of your very intelligent input and understanding, because of your grace and forgiveness, and my ability now to receive it.

I’m so happy you feel this way, and that the distrust and fear are slowly melting away ❤️

You’ve made a major step towards that opening: you’ve let go of your defenses and mustered the courage to hear even painful things about yourself, which is not an easy thing. You had the spaciousness, the openness, the vulnerability to say “I see your pain, even as I am feeling my own pain.”

And that I think is your True Self in action – a part of us that has compassion both for ourselves and others, that is willing to listen with an open heart and mind, that feels togetherness with others… I think you’ve stepped into your true, authentic self and this is the shift you’re experiencing… and to me, it is beautiful to behold and be a part of ❤️