Re: Do you think being a KO has affected your career choice?

July 1, 2011

Annie,

Thank you for your valuable opinion. You give us all strength. Your reading

definitely shows through your emails. I myself just ordered about 5 books on

the subject, and it personally makes me feel better to read what's out there on

the subject. My Dad came over today to say goodbye before he and Mom go on

vacation. Of course she didn't come with him, or call to say goodbye, which is

a RELIEF - he stayed about 10 minutes and wouldn't stay longer, for obvious

reasons. He complained about how my brother, who lives in a house next to them,

would not agree to take them to the airport tonight, because Mom is with him.

He asked me to speak with him and change his mind, and I told him that I would

do the same as my brother, not take them to the airport. At that point my Dad

just said: " Now I know how you feel about me. " I said: " You sound like Mom.

It's something she would say. We would do anything you ask, but when it involves

Mom, we're sorry, we can't do it. " He was angry at that point and just got up,

said good bye and left. " He just called again, we have caller ID, I decided not

to pick up. My husband wanted to, since he may need something, but I'm just sick

of this - I'm shutting them out - they're going on vacation for a month, and I

plan on just ENJOYING our time WITHOUT their troubles! My two sisters will be

with them on vacation, the younger ones, good luck to them!!!!!

Party time for me and bro!

N

> What I personally would do, if I had good reason to believe that an elderly

person was helpless and actually being physically neglected or abused or being

financially exploited, I'd report it to the authorities. The elderly can become

as helpless and dependent as little children and as easily abused.

>

> Otherwise, in my opinion, your dad's emotional dependence on and enmeshment

with his wife/your mother isn't fixable. Its a long-term, embedded, fixed

dynamic that works for him. It must work for both of them, otherwise they'd have

separated or divorced each other long ago.

>

> Your dad's method of coping with his dysfunctional marital relationship, by

creating a " secret alliance " with you and his other children, isn't healthy *at

all* in my opinion. It would qualify as " emotional incest " , I think.

>

> How your parents relate to each other isn't something you have the power to

change, unfortunately. All you have the power to do is change the way you relate

to them, by establishing healthy boundaries and rules for yourself.

>

> My background? I'm just a KO, but I'm in my late 50's and I read a lot. Over

the last 10 years or so I've been reading a LOT about psychology and

psychological disorders, trying to understand why my nada is the way she is. I

am NOT a psychologist, and any opinions I offer here are just that: my personal

opinions. But, I hope my personal opinions can help.

>

> -Annie

>

> >

> > > Me personally, I don't recommend " the ultimatum " . Its just not a good

strategy; ultimatums can backfire and the situation can end up worse than

before.

> > >

> > > My impression, which is just my opinion to take or leave, is that you're

very fond of your dad, but you and your mom are kind of vying and competing with

each other for his attention and affection and that isn't healthy. Its not good

for any of you: your dad, or you or your mom. Its a kind of unhealthy drama

triangle with your dad in the middle.

> > >

> > > It can't be healthy to insert yourself within their spousal dynamic, and

have clandestine meetings with your dad, without your mother. Its one thing if

you have separate relationships with each of them as individuals if the other is

aware of it and thinks its great, but its entirely different and unhealthy to

have secret visits.

> > >

> > > My opinion (which may or may not resonate with you) is to take several

steps back from your parents' relationship and let them work things out between

themselves. You're really, really wanting to rescue your dad, but you can't. He

has to want a change and he has to make it happen; it won't be real if you

pressure him to change, plus, inserting yourself into their issue could end up

making it impossible for him to have any relationship with you at all. Don't

force him into the position of having to choose between you and your mother; its

more likely that he will choose his wife/your mother because he is very enmeshed

and invested in his wife and depends on her more than you; and if he chooses

you, you can't be a wife to him. That would be even more unhealthy.

> > >

> > > So, anyway. That's just my take on it. I hope things work out the way you

want them to, in the healthiest way possible for all of you.

> > >

> > > -Annie

> > >

> >

July 1, 2011

>

> > Yes... my mom prevented me from pursuing any career.

> > All I wanted to do was study...she would never let me.

> > She would stand in my doorway and scream at me while I was trying to

concentrate....for years all through my college life. She did not let me go away

to college...wanted to keep me close.

> >

> > She hated my figure skating career which I trained 6 days a week for 7

years...always trying to get me to quit. Now, I find that my contemporaries who

have stayed with it throughout the years have been successful in the sport as

judges, coaches...at the olympic level.

> >

> > I could scream.

> >

> > I gave up everything to make her happy...and it only happened when i got

married to someone acceptable to her and had kids. Then, I was a good girl.

> >

> > So now, I have no career.

> > I am super talented...no career. I am 48 and have my self-taught computer

graphics to fall back on, but it's not what I wanted for myself.

> > I could kick myself around the world for letting her interfere in my every

decision.

> > How could I have been so innocent...so naive...to let her derail me for so

long.

> > I want a do-over so bad.

> > Amy

> >

July 1, 2011

Growing up with a nada definitely influenced by career choice, and not for the

better.

Nada was potty about animals. (Of course, now I can see why...she can't get

along with people and never could. Only an animal will love her no matter

what...because it can't understand what is coming out of her mouth.) When I was

growing up, I had almost no thoughts at all in my head that weren't hers first.

She always had a flock of neighborhood children around her, and it was all think

what she thought, like what she liked, be interested in what she was interested

in. I thought it was being a good girl to be exactly like her, because Mommy

was right about everything. When I was four I said I wanted to be a

veterinarian, and she loved that and discouraged every attempt I made to find

any other interest after that. (Most attempts were feeble anyway, because

growing up in a nada house with no self esteem, the only self esteem I had came

from grades, teacher approval, and the fact that " I was going to grow up and be

an animal doctor! " Oh, brother.)

My mother would haze us if we liked music she didn't like, or TV shows we didn't

like. If we liked it it was stupid and dumb, and we got bitched and bitched and

bitched out, sent to bed in the middle of our shows, and talked badly about to

others in the family because we liked " that stupid thing. " Since TV was the

only major point upon which my taste differed from hers, that really sucked.

Once our local PBS station ran " All Creatures Great and Small " the summer I

turned nine, I think. Well, that was a BBS show, and the actors were of course

British and spoke with strong accents and talked faster than we Americans do.

My nine year old ears could understand nothing. So I was bored and didn't want

to watch. She bitched and bitched and bitched about it, trying to shame me into

doing what she wanted me to do and liking what she wanted me to like. " Wants to

be a vet and won't even watch this show! " I can just hear it now.

I had a bad feeling about applying to the school when it was finally time. I

cast about for some other career choice, but after 18 years of nada, when I

asked myself what *I* really liked and what *I* really wanted to do...there was

no answer. I had the grades and passed the interview, and I hated school so

much I knew if I took any time off, I'd never be able to flog myself into going

back. And I had to have a way to support myself, so I did it.

It hasn't worked out very well. Part of the reason is, have you ever heard the

saying that " Nurses eat their young " ? Well, they aren't the only ones. Most

people above the rank of intern in veterinary medicine are PRICKS. Many, many,

many people in veterinary medicine treat other people exactly as a nada treats

their child. YOu won't see it in the exam room, but there are those who have a

reputation among students, staff, and other veterinarians. They treat less

senior people like crap, and I had already spent my whole life being treated

like crap and thought I was crap. Plus, I had no understanding of the real

world and how it worked, and no social antenna to tell me what residents and

professors really wanted from me. So I was constantly misreading and

disappointing people, and they were constantly telling me I was stupid and an

idiot. Which I of course believed. And then the clients will act like that as

well.

And the work load was and is HORRIBLE. Anyone can stand doing something they

are finding they don't deeply love if it isn't 24/7, and they get a chance to do

what they do like, too. Not so in vet school and in your first few years out.

I forgot what it was like to have time to exercise, cook, read a book for

pleasure, or sit down and watch a TV movie. I felt like a slave, and I felt

like I was too stupid to ever be successful. But by then I couldn't leave,

because with every month I spent in school, the student loan debt ticked up and

up and up. If I didn't have a good job, how was I going to pay?

The third thing that was bad was, living in a house with a nada, and being hit,

screamed at, terrified, and gossiped about every time I did something she didn't

like had made me very, very anxious. In school, they give you plenty of time to

do your surgeries, and you never get any feedback about how long you are taking.

In all, I did very few surgeries in school...most students don't. I hate to say

this, but you get all your practice on the job.

So you get out of school, and your boss is standing over you almost with a stop

watch in his hand. " You're too slow. You're too slow. Hurry. Hurry. Stop

using so much suture material. " And then want to leave you alone with difficult

surgeries long before you are ready. If you didn't get any complications in

your student surgeries in school, you don't know how to handle those, and a boss

who isn't around to help you or is angry that you need help makes things worse.

Coupled with the intense fear I had of anyone being angry at me for any reason,

and taking to heart as I did anything anyone said about me that was bad, I soon

developed a surgery phobia that was alive and visceral. I had a boss that

bitched because I scrubbed too long before surgery. Well, when you've had three

attacks of stress colitis on the way to work...

I have since heard that I wasn't the only one. I started doing relief work with

the stipulation that I will not do any surgeries, and then I started hearing

stories from staff about other vets freaking out in the middle of surgeries,

crying, and refusing to do surgery. Now you know why surgeons act as if they

are God...it really does take that attitude, because complications in surgery

can literally scare the shit right out of you. I also know there are excellent

veterinary surgeons out there. And those people are people someone has spent

calm, patient time with, allowing them to progress at their pace, not the

boss's.

People in veterinary hospitals tend to look up to those who are good surgeons

and make fun of those who are not, so there was yet more of that to deal with.

Plus, at least in years gone by, if you don't do surgery, you aren't as

employable as someone who does, and you aren't worth as much money. So I have

suffered financially as well, not had the health insurance and retirement

benefits a lot of people get, and pretty much have no future when I am too old

and sick to work anymore. (Then again, these days, who does, anyway?)

It sure would be nice if you really could start over in midlife. Sad to say you

can only do that if you are wealthy enough. Money is the thing that buys the

time to do what you want. If you don't have that, it's not going to happen,

especially if what you want is something maybe one in a million people ever make

any decent money at anyway.

No, this wasn't a good career for a KO, not at all.

July 1, 2011

I don't have a career and I think that is a direct result of being a KO. My

therapist wants to evaluate me for PTSD, LOL.

I am not in a profession that helps anyone, I clean an office building seven

nights a week. I am pretty much unable to work with other people. I end up

targeted from BPD/NPD types and I am just generally unable to communicate on

that 'medium chill' level that has been posted. I think reading that has been

very helpful to me now that I know that a huge part, if not the main part, of my

problem has been listening on such an intense level to people and going right to

the sub-basement in terms of the depth of the level on which I communicate on,

to everyone, whereas the superficial removed and detached level that you need to

be a professional on the job I cant do. My nada and fada destroyed this boundary

for me systematically, mostly from my having to be nada's lay therapist all the

time growing up and then when my fada attacked me which was pretty much every

day she told me it was my fault because of the way I behaved because I was so

rotten and ungrateful or whatever because she didn't want to have to *see* what

she was married to. Many times this was right after she'd spent hours crying on

my shoulder about how awful he treated her.

There is a concept in physical disability where people refer to the reverse

prejudice against disabled people as " supercrips " , i.e. framing them as people

who have jumped over their limitations by leaps and bounds and acheived amazing

things; disabled people talk about this stereotype as being seen this way when

many see themselves as normal people with disabilities.

I am definintely not a 'supercrip' or superkobpd...

I feel like the damage from the PD parents and the sexual abuse would have

landed me on disability in a just world. Right now I am looking into trying to

start some sort or business where I work for myself because I have a great work

ethic and I am reliable as all get out, I just completely drown in situations

where I have to work with groups of people or with the public.

>

> Just wondering what everybody's thoughts are on this. I've just recently

finished nursing school and thought maybe having been a sort of protector for my

four younger siblings from nada growing up had an influence, even

subconsciously, on the decision to go into that field.

>

> What do you all think?

>

July 1, 2011

I can so relate to the qualities of truth and justice in terms of being raised

in a BPD household. Wow. There was little if any of that. My mother's childhood

was so traumatic that any reality she doesn't like she changes mentally, so it

can change from one moment to the next, a truth she can accept one day she will

deny the next, or say I'm mistaken, or outright accuse me of lying or

exaggerating. My father is a pathological liar and I didn't even figure this out

until the last few years, even with all the evidence, thanks to my mother

reassigning me all his negative traits.

I swear to god it's like she looks at the world as magnetic paperdolls on a

refridgerator, you take a pair of pants off one and put it on the other, move a

shirt in the other direction, etc, arrange everything so you have to do

absolutely NOTHING and I realize this comes from being powerless as a child and

not being ABLE to do anything, but still, it smarts to be a witness to it. Man

was she ever no help to me at all growing up. In fact, truth is, she made

everything exponentially worse.

Congratulations on getting through law school and becoming an attorney. That is

a momentous acheivement and you have so much to be proud of. I totally can see

how growing up in that insane BPD househould can make you cling to truth and

justice and want to make that a big part of your life's purpose.

I am in the same condition on two levels as you are with your dad. I have come

to the conclusion that nothing is going to make my brother see that his wife is

BPD and nothing is going to make my mother see that my father mistreats me on a

daily and sometimes hourly basis and has for 4 decades and not the other way

around. Nothing, nothing, nothing. I have tried, oh lawdy, have I tried. I could

literally break into a few verses of " Nobody knows (the trouble I've seen)... "

at this point. It's a very common theme on this board. These folks that are

married to or other children that are in more desirable roles like the 'golden

child' as children of bpd's are ACTIVELY protecting themselves from the truth.

It works for them. You know what it reminds me of... Letterman, years ago,

putting on that velcro suit and jumping from a trampoline onto a velcro wall.

And just hanging there. That's what it's like, you just hang there attached to

that person pleading and cajoling them and it's like you remain completely

stuck, to them, whereas before you were stuck to the bpd. And you are like, *I*

see the truth, I am free now, why won't they come with me? You just have to

unstick yourself, and get down from the wall, and let it go, because they won't.

It reminds me of in AA where they talk about the alcoholic taking the 'first

drink' after having been sober, and not knowing why, after all the damage they'd

caused and been a victim of, they did it again. (I have actually met someone who

was hit by a train while drunk and almost paralyzed and still continued to

drink). They talk about the 'strange mental blind spots' where the alcoholic

'can't remember' the turmoil they'd been through, and drinks again. To me that

is what this feels like when I am around my brother or mother. They have this

massive blind spot with regard to their spouse and NOTHING, not even the welfare

of their children, can break through it. Inevitably, it's a betrayal of their

children to not see the reality about their spouse, but at this point I have

almost zero hope for either one of them. I honestly think there is very little

that you can do, that you have not already done. Hugs.

>

> > Just wondering what everybody's thoughts are on this. I've just recently

finished nursing school and thought maybe having been a sort of protector for my

four younger siblings from nada growing up had an influence, even

subconsciously, on the decision to go into that field.

> >

> > What do you all think?

> >

>

July 2, 2011

Thank you llel,

Your email was uplifting! My Dad calls me last night, just before traveling

with BPD Mom with one question: " Did the Psychiatrist diagnose Mom with BPD or

did you? " At that point I was flabbergasted. Of course over the last few months

I have been saying to him that the Psych has diagnosed her and he was listening

all along - how come now he comes and asks me this question? My probable

answer: BPD Mom has said things to him causing him to mistrust what I've said,

and he wanted to make sure again. So, as you say: It's a losing battle - no

matter how much sense I speak and try to get Dad to see the light, he will

always be under her " spell. " At the end of the day, I may get a few lucid days

out of him, which are not worth the huge effort of trying to convince him. It's

like a child running to Dad saying " I saw a monster in the room " , and the

monster being really there, and Dad saying " don't be ridiculous dear, Monsters

don't exist, we all know that. " And that sense of urgency you get in these

horror movies as the child just goes back to the room to face the monster ALONE.

That's how I feel.

Thanks, it was a monster effort to graduate from law school and become an

attorney, of course with Mom not standing by me one bit, and actually trying to

talk me out of it - I understand what you mean about not being able to work in

groups, sometimes it takes a bigger effort to be around people - when I meet

people I almost always am warm and welcoming and share a lot of information

about myself, while people are usually more superficial at first - I think you

hit it on the nail - this is the legacy of growing up BPD, since Mom almost

always used us as psychiatrists listening to her - only now I understand that

this part of our characters, which are loved by others (they see us as warm and

loving) is because we lived in a BPD Household - which is why I label alot of

people as " cold and uncaring " - I think that affects me particularly - I expect

all people to be warm and sharing about their lives, and less superficial, just

like me - but that isn't how the world works, and we feel stung by people

sometimes because of that. I feel like I'm discovering new parts of my

personality everyday with this list! Thank you all!

Hugs,

N

> I can so relate to the qualities of truth and justice in terms of being raised

in a BPD household. Wow. There was little if any of that. My mother's childhood

was so traumatic that any reality she doesn't like she changes mentally, so it

can change from one moment to the next, a truth she can accept one day she will

deny the next, or say I'm mistaken, or outright accuse me of lying or

exaggerating. My father is a pathological liar and I didn't even figure this out

until the last few years, even with all the evidence, thanks to my mother

reassigning me all his negative traits.

>

> I swear to god it's like she looks at the world as magnetic paperdolls on a

refridgerator, you take a pair of pants off one and put it on the other, move a

shirt in the other direction, etc, arrange everything so you have to do

absolutely NOTHING and I realize this comes from being powerless as a child and

not being ABLE to do anything, but still, it smarts to be a witness to it. Man

was she ever no help to me at all growing up. In fact, truth is, she made

everything exponentially worse.

>

> Congratulations on getting through law school and becoming an attorney. That

is a momentous acheivement and you have so much to be proud of. I totally can

see how growing up in that insane BPD househould can make you cling to truth and

justice and want to make that a big part of your life's purpose.

>

> I am in the same condition on two levels as you are with your dad. I have come