Resubmitted (hoping to clear the excess print):

Dear Worldofthewaterwheels:

(I am adding the boldface feature to the quotes in this post): “A study in loneliness and rejection... Lately I feel everything is a rejection… I feel totally rejected by society…  if I really go for something I want.. I get rejected even harder by others, things get even more crazy. It feels like the world is against me. I’m old enough that I don’t even cry anymore, its internalized…I’m so sensitive and reactive to things… I want to write about it and then I think ‘who would want to read that?‘… I write my own ideas down and disregard them, I somehow can’t formulate anything coherently or smoothly, even in art I was never satisfied with what I did because it just didn’t have the right effect. But not being able to turn left or right.. that fear of choice.. it’s mind-blowingly hard.. if I could figure that out maybe something would move forward?“-Rejected by society, rejected by self

Cleveland clinic. org: “Rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD) is when a person feels intense emotional pain related to rejection. The word ‘dysphoria’ comes from an ancient Greek word that describes a strong — if not overwhelming — feeling of pain or discomfort. Though RSD isn’t an officially recognized symptom or diagnosis, it’s still a term that experts use in connection with recognized conditions. While rejection is something people usually don’t like, the negative feelings that come with RSD are stronger and can be harder to manage or both. People with RSD are also more likely to interpret vague interactions as rejection and may find it difficult to control their reactions…

Dear Worldofwaterwheels:

Thank you for the explanation. I will reply further after you respond to my longer post of today, if you will. Please take your time and if you choose to respond, do it at your convenience, when you are calm enough.

anita

Dear Worldofthewaterwheels,

I can relate to a lot of what you are saying, because my mother, although not a narcissist, made me feel bad about myself and criticized me a lot, while at the same time presenting herself as a good mom and a martyr. My father was her enabler, so to speak, because he wouldn’t protect me – his main goal was to keep her anger and sadness at bay, to keep the “peace” in the family. He never demanded her to go see a counselor and deal with her own issues, but minimized the problem and gaslighted both me and himself that things aren’t so bad.

I can imagine that with a narcissistic mother, emotional abuse is even more severe, because she is also in competition with you and is trying to pull you down, being jealous of your successes. There is a great youtube video about narcissistic mothers and the damage they can do to their children. The title is Signs your Mother is a Covert Narcissist & How to Recover, by Barbara Heffernan.

The sad truth is that being raised by a narcissistic mother (and I am assuming an enabler father?) does a lot of damage to the child, because it ruins both the child’s self-esteem and also trust in other people. As Anita said, the first “society” you knew was your family, and if you felt rejected by them, and even bullied, it would make sense that this is how you see the world now in your adulthood, and encounter such experiences as well.

Our core beliefs about ourselves and the world develop based on those early childhood experiences – because that’s the “world” that we know and that we get socialized into. So we see everything through that distorted lens.

I totally understand your pain as you go through life and encounter more and more of the painful experiences, because they probably make you believe that you will never get out of this nightmare, that you will never have it going for you.

My suggestion is to take a step back and realize that indeed, you grew up in a nightmare, but you don’t have to keep living in one. And that there is help. There is healing. And that you are capable of healing.

Apart from finding a therapist who knows how to deal with victims of narcissistic abuse, the first step in healing is always self-compassion. Try to have compassion for the little girl that you were, being deprived of true love and tenderness, and being manipulated by a mother who only cared about her own needs. Have compassion for that little girl who, like every other child, was in a huge need of love and appreciation, and received so little.

You can help yourself and help that little girl get what she needs. With the help of therapy, you will be able to slowly but surely meet your basic needs. Maybe you can start with self-care: do something that soothes your body and soul, something that you enjoy.

It can take years to recover…to meet someone compatible to me so i can finally relax a bit more, enjoy life more..ive been like a soldier for so long, there is no mistake when people say this.

You don’t necessarily need to wait till you meet someone to relax and enjoy life. Try to relax your body in a warm bath, try to create for yourself small, simple experiences of relaxation, and try to enjoy and savor those moments. Start small, with something that you can create for yourself, not waiting for others. That would be a part of self-care, and so crucial for starting to meet your basic needs, both physical and emotional. It’s a long road, but it starts with self-care and self-compassion…

I hope this helped a little… I am rooting for you, Worldofthewaterwheels!

Dear Worldofthewaterwheels,

You are welcome!

There was no violence, no shouting even but my mom was always at the top and my dad often seems incredibly weak

Indeed, there are similarities with our families, although there was yelling in my family – my mother couldn’t control her emotions and she would have angry outbursts at my father and me. When I became a teenager, I started yelling back, so there was conflict.

But my father never wanted conflict and he tried to appease my mother and calm her down. He allowed to be yelled at and insulted. I think he suppressed his own anger and numbed himself emotionally. I guess that’s how he could stay mostly unaffected by her insults and accusations (I mean, he could go about his life, he had professional successes and was respected at work. Just not at home).

But for me as a child, my mother’s constant complaints, bitterness and misery were devastating. I grew up in it, and it formed me. I never felt good enough and no matter what I did, it couldn’t make my mother happy. She too blamed everybody else (specially me and my father) for her unhappiness. She fits your description very well: “My mom could victimize herself easily with him being very apologetic.”

The result of it all is that I grew up believing I was bad and that there is something terribly wrong with me. Similarly like you believe about yourself: Its like there is something wrong with me and i cant put a finger on exactly what.

A bit more specifically, this is what you said about yourself:

i do loathe myself in the sense that, i cant seem to put a foot right..just nothing works out for me. Like i seemed to discover, oh! im a dork…not a creative nerd. A real loser who can only fuck up.

The false core belief would be: I am a dork. I am a loser.

I am guessing it has been formed based on many instances of being put down and ridiculed by your mother. Or compared to others. It has been formed based on your mother’s general attitude to you: that there is something wrong with you.

First your mother believed you were not good enough, and was sending you this message, and then you started believing it too. It became your “truth”. Because as children, we believe our parents, they are our mirrors. Their behavior towards us tells who we are and if we are lovable and worthy or not. And if they say bad things about us, if they mistreat us, we believe them. We always blame ourselves, not our parents.

When we grow up, we still have that same false core belief working in us. And we sort of attract more of the similar experiences of failure and embarrassment. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Basically, if deep down you believe that you are a failure, you will indeed fail. And I think that’s been happening to you all these years.

***

You have another set of core beliefs, which is about other people. You believe that everybody is jealous of you and nobody wants you to succeed. I think that too is the result of your mother being jealous and competitive with you, even to this day when she isn’t happy when you achieve success but goes silent.

These are your experiences (in your adulthood) of people being jealous of you and trying to undermine you:

When i really did well, there was always someone in the crowd visibly unhappy and it would bother me.

There has always been someone more accomplished vying for my job, or next to me or coming up behind me. Always a boss who wanted more and made me feel like i wasnt enough. A boyfriend who needed more of something i didnt have. I never mastered a corner of the room for myself that somebody else couldnt do. So therefore i feel fairly worthless.

You get crushed by the people who are out there looking to win against other people. I feel like there is always a lot of jealousy around me and i cant control it, how others react to me, but it ruins everything.

I often feel angry that other people are rude, mean or wonder what their problem is. I know what it is though…they want attention.

When you read the above examples, does it apply to your childhood as well? Because my guess is that you’ve experienced something similar in the relationship with your mother, even as a child and young adult, and that’s where the main wound stems from.

The main false belief in this area of your life (area of relationships) would be: People want you to fail. People want to hurt you. People are not to be trusted.

This unconscious belief is what directs your relationships and how you see people. And that too becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

As Anita said, there were for sure instances where people wanted to harm you and take advantage of you. But there were probably also instances where you misinterpreted their intentions, or where you approached them with mistrust, ready to defend yourself (i have to defend myself against what i perceive as possible danger right?), and they didn’t like it.

My take is that a part of your experiences (not all) is based on these false beliefs that run in the back of your mind, and attract such events. I am writing this not to dispute your reality, but to tell you that there is more to experience, that there is a broader reality, in which not everybody is out to get you, and in which you are not a dork but a wonderful and creative person.

These false beliefs were created due to repeated negative experiences with our parents, but they can be reversed, with healing.

What do you think of all this?

Dear Worldofthewaterwheels:

You wrote earlier: “Trying to navigate social communications is like a minefield to me“. I’m thinking that given the complex nature of the communication on your thread, it’s better that you will communicate with one member at a time, not with two (or more) members at one time. It will make it simpler for you, I hope.

I read Tee’s reply right above mine, it is insightful and so very well written, and I hope that you continue to  communicate with her. Sometime in the future, if you’d like my input (here on this thread or in another that you may start), please let me know.

anita