You know you are an ACON when...

Thank you, HowPredictable

Ember wrote:

WendyTorrance wrote:Important question.
My son has an amazing father. No matter how strange things would get, there's always going to be huge amount of respect. Towards him and those rock solid values, I myself fail to keep/hold on to.

Yes, I find that people underestimate the endurance of children. If they have at least one good role model at the appropriate time, they can handle a great deal of adversity and develop into healthy adults.

I agree - my father is a good man and I think I would have grown up into an NPD myself if he hadn't been there - not that BPD is much better, but I feel like there's a great deal of empathy in me, although it tends to fly out the window when I'm hurting badly. My mother is a cold cold woman.

You know you are an ACON when you dread going home for Christmas and have to get drunk just to endure the actual day itself.

My mother gives Christmas presents that are cleverly designed to insult me. I'm not sure how to explain it, but it just sucks.

Callalily wrote:In my case I learned really early that my father was completely uninterested in me except in two capacities: 1) as a creature he could live through, a beautiful, accomplished, popular and ambitious sophisticate who would achieve everything he never did, and 2) as an audience. He was generally uninterested in my thoughts, but if I showed interest in his passions, he would be animated, happy, loving and engaged with me.

And of course when you're a kid you don't really question whether or not this is a healthy foundation for selfhood. It all feels familiar and acceptable. You are getting rewarded for hard work, which school teaches you is a good thing. You are showing kindness and understanding toward another person, which church teaches you a good thing. You are learning about Cool Adult things, which your friends tell you is a good thing. Before you know it you've internalized this behavior and come to actually feel and believe in it, so that 30 years later you will say "I love expressionist German cinema" without even questioning whether or not that's true.

Of course, no matter how hard you work, your N parent will never actually really love you or see you or know you, so you spend the rest of your life chasing that carrot. Meanwhile, your whole personality grows in crazy bonzai fashion because so little of it is rooted in self-love or self-understanding; it is built around meeting the impossible expectations of another. This affects every aspect of your adult life: if it feels easy and doesn't require suffering and sacrifice, it can't be right.

Callalily, I really enjoyed reading this; partly because it's so well-written and partly because it echoes my childhood relationship with my N-father so well. I also have an N-mother (though not the dramatic, emotionally-abusive type that such mother often are. She was more the typical N, but of the sub-type that basks in the reflected glory of her children's accomplishments -- real or imagined, and regardless of whether they came naturally to us or were the product of her high expectations).

You seem to have a great handle on how your father's PD affected you; so have you managed to translate that awareness into a successful strategy for your own relationships?

Even being very self-aware, this is something that I constantly struggle with.

isn't that the name of a black rapper? acon

HowPredictable wrote:Callalily, I really enjoyed reading this; partly because it's so well-written and partly because it echoes my childhood relationship with my N-father so well. I also have an N-mother (though not the dramatic, emotionally-abusive type that such mother often are. She was more the typical N, but of the sub-type that basks in the reflected glory of her children's accomplishments -- real or imagined, and regardless of whether they came naturally to us or were the product of her high expectations).

You seem to have a great handle on how your father's PD affected you; so have you managed to translate that awareness into a successful strategy for your own relationships?

Even being very self-aware, this is something that I constantly struggle with.

I missed that, thanks for pointing it out.

Also, I think everyone struggles with trying to be self-aware.

I liked much all the comments on this thread.

Personnally, one thing I struggle with is having my own space and enjoy it.

I think it has to do with my mother needing all space.


Now, to stick to the thread (in my personal case) I'd say :

You know you are an acon when you are able to forget your needs.

You know you are an acon when

you go to see your mother and she watches you in the eyes and says something destructive.

then you go to take something in your hand to concentrate on it and survive emotionally.

just knowing you can share on this forum is a relief.

Short time later, you say : I have to go

And she says : please don't abandon me.


(just wanted to share - short piece of my life)

You know you're an ACON when:

1. You remember your mother turning what was supposed to be a discipline talk into a 1 hour session about how she is supposedly "over" the brutality of her own parents. Thus, going away from the discipline needs of the child.

2. Feeling a compulsion to be there for others needs but intense difficulty being their for your own.

3. Having a primal fear of abandonment and worthlessness triggered when you want to or do speak up for yourself.

4. Having addictions to soothe the inner hatred/turmoil instill by the NPD parent

5. Mother telling you as a child (in a non joking manner) that you should write her a thank you card on your bday since she gave birth to you.

6. Feeling as you are coming up short all the time compared to others

7.As an adult, mother calling you immature when you tell her that you are angry at her insulting you and that you are going to take a time out and check back in an hour later, hopefully to resume a CIVIL conversation. (NPD projection: she is calling herself immature).

My mother gives Christmas presents that are cleverly designed to insult me. I'm not sure how to explain it, but it just sucks.

That's the ONLY kind of present my mother ever gave. I'm so glad to see someone else gets that too! N-moms can be so subtle in their constant put-downs that a bystander won't even see it. They're private jabs that only we can see, that no one else would believe, and that give our N-moms complete plausible deniability.

You know you are an acon when you go to see your mother and she watches you in the eyes and says something destructive. then you go to take something in your hand to concentrate on it and survive emotionally...Short time later, you say : I have to go, And she says : please don't abandon me.

Yes!!!!!!! In my case it would be raging, "Get out of my house and don't come back! You are no longer in my family. I never want to see you again." So I leave as quickly and quietly as I can. Then the next day she calls and lectures me on how "evil" I am, how it is my fault that she's in the helpless position she's in because I spent my "whole life trying to destroy her," and now it's my "responsibility to help take care of her," and how I need to "get over to her house immediately or I will never see her again." On and on and on and on. Raging at us to drive us away, but really it's a test to see if we'll stay. When we don't get that and leave, panic that we left.

NPDs are terrified of being weak and create these personas that rage in order to feel strong and in control. ACONs look like the weak victims. But we are the NPDs stability. We're their rock. We're the ones who hold their life together, take care of them when no one else will, stabilize our own families and everyone around us. WE are the strong ones! My N-mom was jealous of my strength even when I was a little tiny girl. She would rage at me and give me some impossible task to do as a test, and I would go do it. I was terrified of her! I just HAD to figure out a way to do whatever she told me to do. So then her jealousy would go crazy when she saw how strong and capable I was. In the end, just before her death, she finally recognized in a couple of tiny ways that I had strength that she needed, and she finally stopped beating up on me for it in the last few months. She actually thanked me once for rushing to take care of her - something I had never heard from her before and had no idea how to deal with! In my ACON way, I just had to make a self-deprecating remark of course!

And yet, I have to recognize the fact that in my soul's journey, living with my mother made me the very strong empowered person I am today. Maybe I chose this path in order to find this strength? Strange idea, but I can't deny that it worked for me.

You know you're an ACON when your mother does something truly horrible all by herself with her own hands right in front of you, and then spins the story so it was all your fault, and makes you actually believe that story for years and years and years. <sigh>

when you sing locked up
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOmIBUW2p3Q