Re: new, asking for feedback, tx.

[Guest guest]

Stefanie,

Thanks so much for your warmth, support and insight.

I was looking for that book at B & N but it was out of stock. Let me know what you

think. 

I know with new insight comes emotional processing.  I caught a really bad cold

last week. Wonder if it was humidity and a/c and lack of sleep OR more a somatic

reaction to some very strong memories and feelings. 

I like your " fleas " analogy.  I see myself as profoundly shame-based and I must

struggle to let that newer, softer, saner voice counterpoint the bully in my

mind.  I read somewhere once that most of us treat ourselves like a " roommate we

don't like. "   Chronic invalidation and projection from angry and insecure others

does serious self-erosion. Shame is the worst.  It causes " confusion " which

means " fusion with. "   When " fusion with " is not healthy to someone who is

shaming you.  Sigh.

Looking forward to sharing with and hearing from you further. 

Best, lizzie

________________________________

To: WTOAdultChildren1

Sent: Sun, August 8, 2010 8:35:26 AM

Subject: Re: new, asking for feedback, tx.

Hi Lizzie,

I'm glade you found us. You are in the right place.  I can relate with so

much of what you said

it's in reading posting like yours that " I " know " I'm " in the right

place:)

I am reading surviving the borderline parent.  It rings so true for me...My

life is in every page.  As I read and remove blinders I can't help but go

thru so many emotions and feeling and remember things.  I think that's all

part of the healing we will experience.  As I read I think.. " geez  I do that

too "   Couldn't I have BP?  But I remember someone saying to me here That

those are " fleas " what we have gotten from out BP parents.

I mean think about it we have been raised by BPs  Some of what we believe

today is still from the mind of the BP.  Some of our responses have been

thought to us from a young age.  And some things are defense mecanisms..we

apply to protect our selves.  ...I tell myself if you know this behavior is

wrong..and you want to change it you can't have BP.because someone with BP

would not do that.  I say give yourself patience...We have a lot of growing

and changing to do still...  I find that so exciting!..I can't wait to get

rid of more fleas!

Stefanie

[Guest guest]

Hi Lizzie...Welcome to the board:) Most of what you wrote in your post sounds

very familiar to me--these are the kinds of KO (kid of personality disordered

parents) issues that are discussed and addressed here,so you're definitely in

the right place.

I felt a deep but painful relief when I read Understanding The

Borderline Mother,and like you said,felt that I'd found a major piece of the

puzzle.I think that book really helps to put all the bizarre nada/fada behavior

into a context that we can then start to process.And yes,the grieving part also

takes time...for years I had a handle on the details of what was off with my

family but I was floundering without the context of personality

disorder--reading UBM gave me validation for the insanity and the means to name

it for what it is.Surviving The Borderline Parent is written from a very

compassionate perspective for the KO and has processing exercizes in it.I'd

highly recommend that book too.I found Lawson's archetypes to be especially

helpful,though,to help me understand the PD craziness.

I'm the oldest daughter of a nada who was mainly Witch with me with

some occasional (on a good day lol!) Queen.I had a younger brother who had those

tantrums every five minutes too while I was not allowed to have any strong

emotions.Stoicism,obedience and cheerfulness--yes! My parents had me so

parentified I wasn't allowed to ever be a child.I was supposed to take care of

THEM.

What you said about Medusa and " the turn " ...That look and those

devastating words that turn you into stone...When I was little I was so struck

by the myth of Medusa that I played a game with one of my friends that I called

" Medusa May I " in lieu of " Mother May I " with the person playing Medusa going

into arbitrary rages when asked if the player could do this or that,on the whim

of Medusa and the person doing the asking permission had to freeze in place and

pretend to turn to stone.Which is almost impossible to do--turn to stone without

blinking or breathing--and so Medusa in our game would go into a further rage if

one of us showed any human movement which eventually made us laugh and laugh

because it got to be absurd,but what kind of game is that for a kid to come up

with? Play therapy,but sad...And everyone in my FOO was in denial about how nada

really was,so I had no mirroring of my reality/experience and even games like

" Medusa May I " felt mostly rhetorical to me.

And oh,have you ever read Albert Camus' essay on Sisyphus in which he

concludes at the end: " Indeed,Sisyphus was a happy man " ...I think not! Camus was

saying in that essay that Sisyphus must have been happy because he knew

constantly what was expected of him and what his labors would entail and that

having resigned himself to perpetually shouldering that boulder to roll it up

that hill (knowing it would roll back down),he no longer had any need of hope or

dreams or horizons but was contentedly contained in his own small universe of

ceaseless endeavor.

But really,who can be happy living like that? I think that as KOs we

know intimately exactly what a " Sisyphean task " really is.And yeah,more myth:

having a nada (or a fada) is like being consigned to the underworld like

Persephone.Do you know the Sumerian myth about Innana going to the underworld to

see her " dark sister " Ereshkigal? Who then hangs the innocent and good willed

Innana naked and bleeding up on a hook after she has been systematically

stripped of all her veils...for me,my nada is my Ereshkigal...Who stripped me of

the " veils " most people are able to wear through childhood and then through

life: ego strengthening veils like self esteem and trust and belief in one's own

perceptions,etc...while I got hung naked on a hook...

A nada threatening abandonment and total rejection when their kid

expresses some developmentally appropriate acting out is very typical and is

mentioned often here,like what you shared about your nada coldly packing your

clothes when you were three.That must have been terrifying.My nada did something

like that to me too,telling me to leave and go out on my own from the age of

four,that I remember, whenever I protested about how I was being treated by

her.Honesty bringing punishment! I don't know if PD people can apprehend what

reconciliation is.What you mentioned about willing versus unable is also a topic

that has been discussed here.I'm inclined to think at this point that my own

nada was too mentally ill to be able to properly mother me but I also continue

to wonder if some of the things she did (or failed to do) were because she was

in fact *unable* to be a mother OR if she couldn't be bothered with me,hence

unwilling...but the fact of the mental illness itself is without a doubt

disabling to their maternal capacity and I personally think that some of their

unwillingness issues from their disability although it can *seem* like plain old

stubborn willful nastiness--hard to tell at times where it starts and what

motivates it and what they could actually modify or not...There have been

discussions here about how our nadas can manage to be polite and calm in public

and then go ballistic in the privacy of the home but intimate relationships seem

to be a severe and in many ways impossible challenge for BPDs.I could relate

very much when you said that you are haunted by the pain of discovering your

nada is incapable of emotional intimacy with you.That one haunts me too and it

still slays me.It feels to me like a vast whistling void where my mother was

supposed to be...

Anyway,welcome again to the board and please feel free to post any

thoughts about being a KO here~

>

> MY,

>

> Thanks so much for the reachback.  I am going through Understanding Borderline

> Mother book for the second time.  It will take time to process it and grieve

it,

> but for the first time in a long time I feel like I finally found a MAJOR

MAJOR

> MAJOR piece of the puzzle. I have hope after feeling serious despair lately. 

>  All the struggling all these years to make sense of my profound fear and

> anxiety.  My trust and esteem issues.  So severe though I fake bravado really

> well.  I have spent so much time recovering from the codepency re the

alcoholic

> family, but I knew the issues with my mother were especially profound. She was

> the codepedent/enabler.  And a lot of survivor guilt.  Well, all 4 PTSD

> symptoms:  1) falling into infant time when traumatized as an adult,

helplessnes

> and panic; 2) psychic numbing, 3) hypervigilance, 4) survivor guilt.  I think

> those are the ones I once looked up in a book.

>

> A situation with me and a friend whose hubby has Alz.'s triggered such a

strong

> reaction from me. I realized I had embraced the old role with her and her

> struggling husband as my BP and father surrogates, and when my friend punished

> me for asserting some boundaries I freaked as did she right back at me.  Which

> of us or maybe both were pathologically and irrationally reactive?  It

whammied

> me.  I realize so many past relationships, as conflict happened, I left

> prematurely, hopeless that mutual understanding could be achieved.  " Learned

> helplessness .... hopelessness. "   Honesty brought punishment not

reconciliation.

>

> When I was three I told my mother at one point I hated her.  (My brother threw

a

> tantrum every five minutes and there was no over-reaction.  As the girl I had

to

> be compliant.)  Anyway, after I told my  mother I hated her she coldly and

> deliberately went into my bedroom and began packing my clothes.  I thought to

> myself, " Doesn't she know I am too little to make it on my own? "   She played

> hardball with me. That was one of Dr. Phil's defining moments, a negative one,

> for sure.  And I couldn't understand the double standard with me and my

> brother. The family over the years referred to it as the time she used

> " psychology " on me.  Not psychology I came to appreciate.  Terror. 

>

>

> I think what really haunts me was the pain when I discovered my nada was

> incapable of emotional intimacy with me, when I finally was strong enough to

> acknowledge that along with pity and gratitude toward her for what she did and

> tried to give, I had tremendous dependency on her and also FEAR, but then

> asserting myself having those others in family network, whom I probably

> " trained " to nurture and pity her, rush in to help her and regarded my

standing

> up for myself as so unnecessarily insensitive to her, with a lot of their

> underground issues of fear and fight for denial probably triggered. And my

> protectiveness of family secrets and her hypersensitivity to ANY perceived

> disloyalty made me isolate and not take risks of trust and what would maybe

have

> been healthy exploratory disclosures.  Loneliness. To lose my support network

> and allow her need, and her irrational or manipulative account of our

> conflict to pre-empt my dependency needs with my primary and secondary

family. 

> I never dreamt the estrangement would go on so long.

>

> My Dad was an alcoholic.  A lot of physical trauma and frustration there.  I

was

> told by my nada it was up to me to get him to stop drinking for years.  I was

to

> have a future AFTER I helped THEM find happiness.  It's the path of burnout

and

> loneliness.  Three things required of me, stoicism, obedience, and

> cheerfulness. I always felt I was on a tightrope without a net.  I thought

there

> was something terribly wrong with me to consider I must walk on a tightrope

but

> when I finally challenged the tightrope walking in a modest way for my adult

> age, all hell broke loose. A lot of self-blame that I wasn't strong enough to

> rise above the conflict.  But growing up, there was never hope of conflict

> resolution when such a significant family member was not capable of trust. I

was

> a human doing not being and searched for my identity in her eyes, could only

see

> it reflected in her eyes from the reflections I made in other's eyes by trying

> to people please.  I did not feel that unconditional love which she did not

have

> for herself and did not receive either sadly. And which today I struggle to

give

> to myself.  And the horror of being viewed from such a young age as a

" stranger "

> and " evil " suddenly.  That " turn " description was so moving. The Medusa look

> that chilled.  And there was never followup remorse or reference to the

chilling

> and shame inspiring rage that came out. If I walked on the tightrope I could

> keep the Medusa at bay I felt and there was a very vulnerable and sensitive

> and sadly paranoid human being I struggled to bond with.  Who did give me a

lot

> I do want to acknowledge, and had such stoicism herself and such strong

> character in many ways but I felt like Persephone and also Sisyphus from

> mythology. 

>

>

> I wanted my nada to acknowledge that she was wrong in her take on the reality

of

> a crisis with us, the one that triggered our dramatic separation, and she was

> incapable of doing so.  I thought she was unwilling.  But it seems sadly and

> tragically she was incapable. So much time I spent trying to make that happen

> and trying to mourn that it couldn't.   

>

> Remember Ordinary People, that movie?  Tyler character squares her

> jaw and leaves. What armor.

>

> Sorry to go on so much, but I know the truth does set us free. 

>

> You take care of your precious self and thanks again!  Your story of your

ailing

> mother.  Wanting to give to her, but the sadness of that " facade " .  Must be

> challenging. Being asked to give what one can't give.

>

>

> I once read a really wonderful book,  Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By

> You.  Two intentions in life and you can't follow both at the same time. The

> intention to explore, the healthy one. The intention to protect, the isolating

> one.  When the intention to protect is so ferocious life contracts.  When it 

> has been role modelled for us.  When we have a fear we don't even know

why, the

> fear is anxiety because we don't even know what the heck the fear is really

from

> since it is second hand.  And maybe it was fear passed on from their parents. 

> Ekhart Tolle in A New Earth speaks of the pain body and the EGO. That was

> helpful reading, too.  Okay, I have gone on a lot, but it is so cathartic!   

>

>

> Take care.  Best, lizzie 

[Guest guest]

Hi Lizzie...Welcome to the board:) Most of what you wrote in your post sounds

very familiar to me--these are the kinds of KO (kid of personality disordered

parents) issues that are discussed and addressed here,so you're definitely in

the right place.

I felt a deep but painful relief when I read Understanding The

Borderline Mother,and like you said,felt that I'd found a major piece of the

puzzle.I think that book really helps to put all the bizarre nada/fada behavior

into a context that we can then start to process.And yes,the grieving part also

takes time...for years I had a handle on the details of what was off with my

family but I was floundering without the context of personality

disorder--reading UBM gave me validation for the insanity and the means to name

it for what it is.Surviving The Borderline Parent is written from a very

compassionate perspective for the KO and has processing exercizes in it.I'd

highly recommend that book too.I found Lawson's archetypes to be especially

helpful,though,to help me understand the PD craziness.

I'm the oldest daughter of a nada who was mainly Witch with me with

some occasional (on a good day lol!) Queen.I had a younger brother who had those

tantrums every five minutes too while I was not allowed to have any strong

emotions.Stoicism,obedience and cheerfulness--yes! My parents had me so

parentified I wasn't allowed to ever be a child.I was supposed to take care of

THEM.

What you said about Medusa and " the turn " ...That look and those

devastating words that turn you into stone...When I was little I was so struck

by the myth of Medusa that I played a game with one of my friends that I called

" Medusa May I " in lieu of " Mother May I " with the person playing Medusa going

into arbitrary rages when asked if the player could do this or that,on the whim

of Medusa and the person doing the asking permission had to freeze in place and

pretend to turn to stone.Which is almost impossible to do--turn to stone without

blinking or breathing--and so Medusa in our game would go into a further rage if

one of us showed any human movement which eventually made us laugh and laugh

because it got to be absurd,but what kind of game is that for a kid to come up

with? Play therapy,but sad...And everyone in my FOO was in denial about how nada

really was,so I had no mirroring of my reality/experience and even games like

" Medusa May I " felt mostly rhetorical to me.

And oh,have you ever read Albert Camus' essay on Sisyphus in which he

concludes at the end: " Indeed,Sisyphus was a happy man " ...I think not! Camus was

saying in that essay that Sisyphus must have been happy because he knew

constantly what was expected of him and what his labors would entail and that

having resigned himself to perpetually shouldering that boulder to roll it up

that hill (knowing it would roll back down),he no longer had any need of hope or

dreams or horizons but was contentedly contained in his own small universe of

ceaseless endeavor.

But really,who can be happy living like that? I think that as KOs we

know intimately exactly what a " Sisyphean task " really is.And yeah,more myth:

having a nada (or a fada) is like being consigned to the underworld like

Persephone.Do you know the Sumerian myth about Innana going to the underworld to

see her " dark sister " Ereshkigal? Who then hangs the innocent and good willed

Innana naked and bleeding up on a hook after she has been systematically

stripped of all her veils...for me,my nada is my Ereshkigal...Who stripped me of

the " veils " most people are able to wear through childhood and then through

life: ego strengthening veils like self esteem and trust and belief in one's own

perceptions,etc...while I got hung naked on a hook...

A nada threatening abandonment and total rejection when their kid

expresses some developmentally appropriate acting out is very typical and is

mentioned often here,like what you shared about your nada coldly packing your

clothes when you were three.That must have been terrifying.My nada did something

like that to me too,telling me to leave and go out on my own from the age of

four,that I remember, whenever I protested about how I was being treated by

her.Honesty bringing punishment! I don't know if PD people can apprehend what

reconciliation is.What you mentioned about willing versus unable is also a topic

that has been discussed here.I'm inclined to think at this point that my own

nada was too mentally ill to be able to properly mother me but I also continue

to wonder if some of the things she did (or failed to do) were because she was

in fact *unable* to be a mother OR if she couldn't be bothered with me,hence

unwilling...but the fact of the mental illness itself is without a doubt

disabling to their maternal capacity and I personally think that some of their

unwillingness issues from their disability although it can *seem* like plain old

stubborn willful nastiness--hard to tell at times where it starts and what

motivates it and what they could actually modify or not...There have been

discussions here about how our nadas can manage to be polite and calm in public

and then go ballistic in the privacy of the home but intimate relationships seem

to be a severe and in many ways impossible challenge for BPDs.I could relate

very much when you said that you are haunted by the pain of discovering your

nada is incapable of emotional intimacy with you.That one haunts me too and it

still slays me.It feels to me like a vast whistling void where my mother was

supposed to be...

Anyway,welcome again to the board and please feel free to post any

thoughts about being a KO here~

>

> MY,

>

> Thanks so much for the reachback.  I am going through Understanding Borderline

> Mother book for the second time.  It will take time to process it and grieve

it,

> but for the first time in a long time I feel like I finally found a MAJOR

MAJOR

> MAJOR piece of the puzzle. I have hope after feeling serious despair lately. 

>  All the struggling all these years to make sense of my profound fear and

> anxiety.  My trust and esteem issues.  So severe though I fake bravado really

> well.  I have spent so much time recovering from the codepency re the

alcoholic

> family, but I knew the issues with my mother were especially profound. She was

> the codepedent/enabler.  And a lot of survivor guilt.  Well, all 4 PTSD

> symptoms:  1) falling into infant time when traumatized as an adult,

helplessnes

> and panic; 2) psychic numbing, 3) hypervigilance, 4) survivor guilt.  I think

> those are the ones I once looked up in a book.

>

> A situation with me and a friend whose hubby has Alz.'s triggered such a

strong

> reaction from me. I realized I had embraced the old role with her and her

> struggling husband as my BP and father surrogates, and when my friend punished

> me for asserting some boundaries I freaked as did she right back at me.  Which

> of us or maybe both were pathologically and irrationally reactive?  It

whammied

> me.  I realize so many past relationships, as conflict happened, I left

> prematurely, hopeless that mutual understanding could be achieved.  " Learned

> helplessness .... hopelessness. "   Honesty brought punishment not

reconciliation.

>

> When I was three I told my mother at one point I hated her.  (My brother threw

a

> tantrum every five minutes and there was no over-reaction.  As the girl I had

to

> be compliant.)  Anyway, after I told my  mother I hated her she coldly and

> deliberately went into my bedroom and began packing my clothes.  I thought to

> myself, " Doesn't she know I am too little to make it on my own? "   She played

> hardball with me. That was one of Dr. Phil's defining moments, a negative one,

> for sure.  And I couldn't understand the double standard with me and my

> brother. The family over the years referred to it as the time she used

> " psychology " on me.  Not psychology I came to appreciate.  Terror. 

>

>

> I think what really haunts me was the pain when I discovered my nada was

> incapable of emotional intimacy with me, when I finally was strong enough to

> acknowledge that along with pity and gratitude toward her for what she did and

> tried to give, I had tremendous dependency on her and also FEAR, but then

> asserting myself having those others in family network, whom I probably

> " trained " to nurture and pity her, rush in to help her and regarded my

standing

> up for myself as so unnecessarily insensitive to her, with a lot of their

> underground issues of fear and fight for denial probably triggered. And my

> protectiveness of family secrets and her hypersensitivity to ANY perceived

> disloyalty made me isolate and not take risks of trust and what would maybe

have

> been healthy exploratory disclosures.  Loneliness. To lose my support network

> and allow her need, and her irrational or manipulative account of our

> conflict to pre-empt my dependency needs with my primary and secondary

family. 

> I never dreamt the estrangement would go on so long.

>

> My Dad was an alcoholic.  A lot of physical trauma and frustration there.  I

was

> told by my nada it was up to me to get him to stop drinking for years.  I was

to

> have a future AFTER I helped THEM find happiness.  It's the path of burnout

and

> loneliness.  Three things required of me, stoicism, obedience, and

> cheerfulness. I always felt I was on a tightrope without a net.  I thought

there

> was something terribly wrong with me to consider I must walk on a tightrope

but

> when I finally challenged the tightrope walking in a modest way for my adult

> age, all hell broke loose. A lot of self-blame that I wasn't strong enough to

> rise above the conflict.  But growing up, there was never hope of conflict

> resolution when such a significant family member was not capable of trust. I

was

> a human doing not being and searched for my identity in her eyes, could only

see

> it reflected in her eyes from the reflections I made in other's eyes by trying

> to people please.  I did not feel that unconditional love which she did not

have

> for herself and did not receive either sadly. And which today I struggle to

give

> to myself.  And the horror of being viewed from such a young age as a

" stranger "

> and " evil " suddenly.  That " turn " description was so moving. The Medusa look

> that chilled.  And there was never followup remorse or reference to the

chilling

> and shame inspiring rage that came out. If I walked on the tightrope I could

> keep the Medusa at bay I felt and there was a very vulnerable and sensitive

> and sadly paranoid human being I struggled to bond with.  Who did give me a

lot

> I do want to acknowledge, and had such stoicism herself and such strong

> character in many ways but I felt like Persephone and also Sisyphus from

> mythology. 

>

>

> I wanted my nada to acknowledge that she was wrong in her take on the reality

of

> a crisis with us, the one that triggered our dramatic separation, and she was

> incapable of doing so.  I thought she was unwilling.  But it seems sadly and

> tragically she was incapable. So much time I spent trying to make that happen

> and trying to mourn that it couldn't.   

>

> Remember Ordinary People, that movie?  Tyler character squares her

> jaw and leaves. What armor.

>

> Sorry to go on so much, but I know the truth does set us free. 

>

> You take care of your precious self and thanks again!  Your story of your

ailing

> mother.  Wanting to give to her, but the sadness of that " facade " .  Must be

> challenging. Being asked to give what one can't give.

>

>

> I once read a really wonderful book,  Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By

> You.  Two intentions in life and you can't follow both at the same time. The

> intention to explore, the healthy one. The intention to protect, the isolating

> one.  When the intention to protect is so ferocious life contracts.  When it 

> has been role modelled for us.  When we have a fear we don't even know

why, the

> fear is anxiety because we don't even know what the heck the fear is really

from

> since it is second hand.  And maybe it was fear passed on from their parents. 

> Ekhart Tolle in A New Earth speaks of the pain body and the EGO. That was

> helpful reading, too.  Okay, I have gone on a lot, but it is so cathartic!   

>

>

> Take care.  Best, lizzie