powerful brainwashing techniques

[Guest guest]

my mother told me that it was either her or my boyfriend of 7 years...she told

me i couldn't love them both at the same time.

my mom always told me that nobody in this world will love me like she did...

and I thank G-d for that.

amy

it has been such a painful relationship, i still can't even believe all this is

true and that i lived thru it...but not without battle scars.

Re: BPD and Inappropriate reactions

Thanks for explaining how that works, . I think my nada is pretty much

having a break with reality most of the time, then.

In the present when nada perceives incoming emotional information as

negative/hostile because of *her* cognitive distortion and reacts as though she

is being attacked, that could be interpreted as paranoia and " frankly

psychotic " , then when her (distorted) perceptions and reactions become memories,

" psychosis " becomes " fixed delusions. "

I probably rarely or barely exist for her as a separate, individual person, I

probably always have been just a mirror to her and whatever thoughts or feelings

nada herself was having at the moment she would " see " in me. If nada was

feeling angry or rejected or inferior, that's what she saw coming from me, and

when nada was feeling good about herself, she projected that and " saw " it in me.

An inability to perceive that another person is not yourself, and has her/his

own unique thoughts and feelings... that seems pretty psychotic to me.

-Annie

> >

> > Yes, it is confusing. My nada's version of her childhood is not

corroborated by her own sisters; they are bewildered by nada's claims that all

three of them were beaten often by their terrible-tempered dad, with a strop.

My aunt's version is that their dad, one time, after much verbal remonstrance

and reminders, had come into their room and spanked them briefly on top of the

several layers of sheet/blankets/quilt, because they all kept giggling and

keeping him awake. Her sisters don't understand at all why my nada claims that

their mother rejected nada and preferred her oldest daughter, and my aunts were

poleaxed with astonishment when Sister shared with them that tales of abuse and

neglect had been fed to us since babyhood.

> >

> > It made it highly bewildering when I was little, to be told one day how

frightened my mother had been of her dad, how angry and violent he was, but that

she loved him anyway (!?) and how her mother didn't love her at all... and then

the next day be told with delight that we were going to visit granny and grandpa

for Sunday dinner! Then I'd watch as my nada gushed and fawned over her parents

and watch as my grandparents behaved just like they always did: like normal,

regular, sweet, kind people...? (No violence from grandpa, ever. No coldness

from granny, ever.) When I was very little I believed my mother and was leery of

my grandpa, scared of making him angry, but as I grew older I could see that

there was a big disconnect between what my mother claimed and the reality I

experienced. It was very, very confusing.

> >

> > My nada is the only adult I ever saw pitching red-faced, screaming,

spittle-flying tantrums out of rage, being physically violent, and verbally

attacking others (me, Sister, dad, and her own older sister.) Like in the story

you mentioned, I think my own nada had always been the tyrant in her foo and she

simply projected her own tyranny and violence and rejecting behaviors onto her

foo members.

> >

> > My nada also made a point for most of my life of disparaging and denigrating

her older sister to me, I suppose hoping to make me hate her as much as nada

did, yet this aunt is and always has been a sweet, dear, lovable person who

never held it against me that my mother is (or used to be) so hateful to her.

In that one respect, my nada has mellowed. The last time she attacked her

sister in my presence was about 8 years ago, and my Sister has told me that nada

even had a visit with her older sister not too long ago. I guess miracles can

happen.

> >

> > I don't understand enough about abnormal psychology to understand why the

long-term fixed delusions that my nada appears to have are *not* considered

psychotic? This tendency of hers to re-write history to fit her feelings (her

insisting that my dad had affairs all the time and beat her, for example), her

" selective memory " (her denial that she ever hit Sister and me, for example)

why aren't things like that considered to be psychotic?! My nada has an

alternate reality she's living in in which she is perfect and a perpetual

victim, and (apparently) the only thing that keeps *that* from being " psychotic "

is that it doesn't include her hearing voices that aren't there or seeing people

that aren't there. But its everything BUT that. I don't get it; how can living

in a reality that's 80 degrees off of real be anything *but* psychotic?

> >

> > So bizarre, so confusing, and so at odds with itself, this personality

disorder stuff.

> >

> > -Annie

>