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Making connections

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Re: Making connections

Postby Truth too late » Mon Jul 06, 2015 2:10 am

Pangloss wrote:
Philonoe wrote:About your answer to Pangloss :
But, you enjoy valid valuation don't you? Isn't that what love is?

That's really interesting definition of love.

So what is the definition of "love" to pwNPD?

It's interesting you posted that question. Last night I was thinking about replying to @Philanoe. It was the first thing on my mind this morning.

After my feelings disappeared (the event which started this thread), I've been realizing I don't know what love is. I always heard the saying "in love with the idea of being in love." In the same way I always knew I had a problem, I always knew that saying applied to me. I've described how my emotions always simmered just beneath the skin. I was ruled by that without realizing it. To me, love was the feeling I got. It had to be maintained. Whether it was overwhelming feelings of infatuation, or calm security. Whatever it was, I had to feel it because that was my primary sensory mechanism. It wasn't cognitive. Without the feelings I wasn't in love.

I think that kept me from seeing the other person's individuality, their needs, being willing to let them live their life for their needs (instead of existing to satisfy my systemic emotional bruise).

I don't think I knew that until the past 3 weeks when I've been more cognitive, assessing my feelings for my ex. (Or, more accurately, the sudden disappearance of feelings after 2 years of feeling intense sorrow/shame for what I did to her, which now appears to have been nothing more than 2 years of feeling sorry for myself.).

What caused me to think about replying to @Philanoe last night:

I realized a song was playing which would normally tear me up badly about my ex. My first thought was to turn it off before it slammed me. However, I realized I hadn't even noticed it was playing. So, I let it continue. This is the song:

Passenger - Let her Go


For the past couple years the bombshell lyric ("and you let her go") would hit me hard with feelings of my loss, my mistake, my regret, my shame, my wanting to go back and fix it. (Me, me, me.). I never realized in the past how it was about me. I thought the strong feelings demonstrated sincerity. More "true" love than I'd ever known.

I still had a reaction last night. But, it was more cognitive. I wondered what does the song mean to me now?

My first thought is that I "let her go" in a psychological sense. I'm not using her anymore to ruminate about myself, to feel what I thought was genuine love. I could see her as a person, the value she added to my life (which I have been more cognitively aware of the past 3 weeks as I searched for how to think about her after my emotional yardstick disappeared). The fun times we had together, that she enjoyed (not the trainwreck I enjoyed picking through so I could "feel" for myself.).

I thought about the paradox of the lyrics. You don't know love until you let it go. It seemed profound, and I didn't like it because to me that's the antipathy of the stability, security which my core fears were based upon. Like the old saying from the '70s ("If you love something, set it free.") always sounded like fluff to me.

But, now I think I'm seeing love is boundaries (compared to the walking bruise I used to be, "make me feel, make me feel"). It's more cognitive. A true valuation, not emotional meth. More acceptance of the other person's needs, their view of themself. Finding a way to make that coexist rather than the world revolving around myself and fitting that person into it (the "narrative"). I feel better about how we coexist now (apart), accepting why (what I did) and how she helped me (the value I didn't see when I overvalued her due to my propensity to hemorrhage). It's a calmer realty. Not an inner feeling that isn't in the "here and now."

I think I would have said I believed that before. But, the emotional overload I always lived with (without knowing it) prevented me from thinking about it realistically. I think the cognitive aspect wasn't there. That's what seems to be different now. I think it's more like love.
Last edited by Truth too late on Mon Jul 06, 2015 2:27 am, edited 1 time in total.
I never seen you looking so bad my funky one / You tell me that your superfine mind has come undone (Steely Dan, Any Major Dude)
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Re: Making connections

Postby SpeckledUnicorn » Mon Jul 06, 2015 2:26 am

Doesn't everyone fit everyone else within their own narrative though? i guess I'm still finding this confusing. I mean I know not everyone manipulates people to their own needs as overtly as an NPD and has more empathy for the other person.

However, I don't see how other people don't do the same thing to an extent because everyone's view of the world is through their eyes so it is impossible not to make others fit your own narrative or serve some sort of function in your life for you own needs.

Maybe I just don't understand that 'accepting the others needs" and 'being cooperative' excludes fitting them into a narrative. I guess however , maybe NPD are just on the extreme of this already human phenomeon to where their needs aren't tied into the other person's like most people's are. Most people seem to have a need to give to other people's needs and work with them because it makes them feel good and it fits the way they want to think of themselves. I guess an NPD though warps that to where their only need is to have the person feed theirs and to not work with them but take from them?

Ohg man this is so very confuddling to me.
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Re: Making connections

Postby Truth too late » Mon Jul 06, 2015 2:41 am

JPKAS wrote:I mean I know not everyone manipulates people to their own needs as overtly as an NPD and has more empathy for the other person.

That's a good question. I think it's a matter of degrees and an ability to test the narrative with reality. To step away from it if it's not real, or to talk to the other person about how your needs aren't being met.

For me, the narrative turns into who I am. People should see it for themselves. If they don't, silence should help them.

A good example of this is how, after she told me what she did 2 years ago which caused me to admit something was deeply wrong with me (the 2-ton wrecking ball), one of my first rationalizations to her was that I felt I was sacrificing myself for her benefit. I thought I accepted she didn't want me. When I pulled away, I thought I was doing something like therapy for her -- letting her figure out for herself what was best. And when she decided to leave, I thought my therapy had been beneficial. She chose.

I likened it to Transactional Analysis. Parent-child if that's what she needed (when I thought she stopped responding to me as adult-adult.).

IMO, this is super revealing because psychologists theorize narcissists turn their super ego into an idealized, sadistic parent. We turn the ego into a despised, devalued child. And then we go through life repeating this pattern.

When I began this thread it was about how I discovered how my mother treated me. One of the first things I did was ponder: "I wonder what she looked like to me." My first thought was: "how I looked to my ex."

I had even gone so far as to rationalize it in justifiable terms.

So, my point is: it's really hard to compare what we do to what normal people do. There is a basis in truth. It's not completely wrong. But, it knows no boundaries. It has a life of its own. A reality of its own.

That's why it's like that Memento movie I mentioned earlier. I highly advise watching it (you can find it online free). That's exactly what it's like. There is a constant loss of continuity. And yet you feel like you have perfect continuity (the narrative). I lied to myself. The notes were my narrative. Like the subject of the movie, you reach a point where it's too obvious. You have a choice to admit it, or to write another note to keep it going.

But, now I struggle with what you describe. I think I'm tremendously self-aware. But I have no idea what is a healthy level of doing things for myself. If I were to compliment someone, I would second-guess myself if I expect to get something from it, and if so, is it normal.

I have no idea about these things. I guess that's where the practice comes in (which @CBD and others stress).
I never seen you looking so bad my funky one / You tell me that your superfine mind has come undone (Steely Dan, Any Major Dude)
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Re: Making connections

Postby pajaro » Mon Jul 06, 2015 10:58 am

Wow! I'm blown away by this whole thread. Too amazing for words! There's so much to think about here.

I'm not arguing that point. But, as a self-aware N, don't normal people welcome valid valuation of themselves? If you did something kind for a needy person at the grocery store, and your partner said that's what they like about you. If he pointed it out and meant it, wouldn't that validate your own sense of value?

I know you're saying that feeling good about yourself doesn't depend on someone else telling you what to feel good about. But, you enjoy valid valuation don't you? Isn't that what love is?


Yes, in a parent-child or any adult-child relationship, this is absolutely what love is, the exact kind of validation a child needs from a parent steadily, every day, all through childhood and hopefully well into adulthood. Kids need this from teachers too, from aunts, uncles, grandparents, babysitters, any adult who touches their lives.

If we do get this validation all through our childhood, I think we grow up with strong self-esteem, able to do this for ourselves, just like Pangloss. That's the healthy goal we're all aiming for, right?

If we didn't get this kind of validation as kids, I think we grow up paradoxically and simultaneously starved for it and distrustful of it. We desperately need to get it still, but after decades of being beaten down instead of validated, we don't believe we deserve it and use our various split-off coping strategies to try to get it out of other people in whatever twisted way we can get ourselves to believe it.

psychologists theorize narcissists turn their super ego into an idealized, sadistic parent. We turn the ego into a despised, devalued child. And then we go through life repeating this pattern.


Doormats or BPDs or whatever the opposite childhood split is do the same thing. When you were describing the "Presence" I realized that I have one too, and that it's my sadistic mother who was always in my head, also above my head on the left side. So weird. Ns create a 3rd fake persona to protect and hide the despised devalued child, and doormats just put their despised, devalued child right out there in public view in the hope that someone can see how to help them fix it. But it does feel like it's the same problem with two different solutions.

In the end we have to stand up to the idealized, sadistic parent and banish it forever from our brains. Then we have to become the loving validating parent we never had for ourselves and try to teach ourselves to be the kind of person our parents never taught us to be. Therapy helps of course! But when it's all said and done, we do each have to find the path that leads us to a strong, healthy, realistic way to live, and for me.

Truth, you're certainly doing that!
We can have a million and one acquaintances, but if none of our connections feel intimate and meaningful, we will ultimately feel alone.
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Re: Making connections

Postby Pangloss » Mon Jul 06, 2015 1:32 pm

I absolutely agree this is a great thread. I can't ever get the two Ns (an ex BF and current estranged spouse) to talk or embark on any internal journeys, it's too painful for them, and yet I want to know. I am focused on my own recovery, I should cut Ns out of my life, and they are all behind me now. However, I do want to make sense, forgive and to feel compassion for them again. It is such an "empath" thing to do, some might shake their heads but it's in my core too.

From my own experiences of Ns, they don't "love", as Truth TL posted, they NEED, it's not the way Nons love, and that is one of the most devastating things to discover in the course of the relationship. Need stems from a place of fear, fear of being alone, fear of loss of security, fear of loss of NS, it has nothing to do with me as a person.

I love that song, I know it, but I understood it differently - to need her is selfish, if you are not right for her, if you can't love her, then let her go, because it is in this act of generosity that you finally place her needs over yours. That could be love.

I can't describe what love is, words fail me, it is bliss, it is pain, it is fire, it is rain, it is walking around with my heart somewhere at the back of my throat ready to pop out, ....it certainly isn't a cliche. I am keen to hear from others.

However, I have a strong opinion wrt spinning narratives - Ns are putting words and thoughts into Nons' mouths and minds, like a puppet master, it is an act of dehumanizing the Nons in your life.

My N made up such terrible narratives about me to throw at me, at the slightest shadow of evil intent and possibility. Recently, he forgot to pay the internet bill, so the company called me about it. He claimed he didn't receive any notices. I said to him "You should send the check the 1st of every month regardless if you received their notices." He then went crazy "Are you blaming me AGAIN?"

These narratives are "crazy-making", do stop.

Nons do not make up stories about others, WYSIWYG, if I'm wondering about someone's thoughts and feelings I'd ask them and take them at their word. If in doubt, I try to think of a benevolent motive rather than the opposite. It is simply kinder to others, as well as for my own peace of mind, this way. Know what, I am 80% right, and I don't care about the other 20%.

Ah, as to my childhood, it was idyllic until my parents divorced and my mom left my father to marry her old sweetheart. My father went on to marry the cruelest N I have had the misfortune to know, the proverbial malignant stepmother. I won't bore you with details, but I clung onto shards of memories of my mom placing loose flower petals in my bath she bought inexpensively from the florist, I ran often to my nanny's home to huddle close to her and her daughters, I survived on such. My father was cowered by her tantrums, a shriveled shadow of a man who used to come home full of books to stock up his personal library of world literature, theory and philosophy which I eagerly pored over.

I was never in doubt that I was mistreated by my stepmother, I could draw clear mental boundaries about what was right and what wasn't. And I kept hitting good grades in school, intent on leaving home as soon as I could live on my own. Unfortunately, I didn't suspect that she had nonetheless sickened me from within, insidiously planting a seed that would affect my life to this day, despite how hard I fought to stay normal.
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Re: Making connections

Postby realityhere » Mon Jul 06, 2015 7:10 pm

This is one of the best threads, but it is painful stuff for anybody, PD'd or not, to read.

I have vivid memories as a young child of my N sister's bullying and lying and those memories still rear their ugly heads whenever I'm in the same room with her. My younger sibling and I did everything we could think of to escape both her physical assaults and twisted emotional abuse. Always happened when our parents were away on errands, trips, etc and they believed the N sister's lies at first, but later believed us. They must have figured something wasn't right when two younger children couldn't possibly fabricate the kind of stories (lies) that my N sister said about what happened. Especially when the bruises and slap marks showed on us and not on her...

As I got older, I grew bigger and taller than her and could give as good as I got when cornered, that's when she started to keep her physical distance but the emotional abuse continued. When she left for college, there was this collective sigh of relief...the oppressive walking-on-eggshells atmosphere was gone.

I can never trust her...ever. That's what years of living with a N relative does to others.
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Re: Making connections

Postby Truth too late » Mon Jul 06, 2015 10:50 pm

pajaro wrote:If we didn't get this kind of validation as kids, I think we grow up paradoxically and simultaneously starved for it and distrustful of it. We desperately need to get it still, but after decades of being beaten down instead of validated, we don't believe we deserve it and use our various split-off coping strategies to try to get it out of other people in whatever twisted way we can get ourselves to believe it.

That's a good way to put it. I always viewed my supply-acquisition (the consequences, lost friendships, treating people badly) as simply bad luck. When I realized I am cNPD I felt grotesque about it.

But, you're right. It's just getting something we never got -- in the only way we know how. It's neither good nor bad (as a motive). It's just that the consequences are bad. The benefit to ourselves is fake. We could have just written the words "you are special" to ourselves and it would have been as real as what we extort from others. And, the consequence to others makes the motive irrelevant. (Which explains why nons come here steeped in terms like "monster.").

The above is a good example of why the movie Memento made such an impression on me last night. The world that guy lives in is a metaphor for the motives and coping skills behind NPD.

Pangloss wrote:I love that song, I know it, but I understood it differently - to need her is selfish, if you are not right for her, if you can't love her, then let her go, because it is in this act of generosity that you finally place her needs over yours. That could be love.

Yes, that's what I felt. I felt something, but it wasn't the crushing emotion I would previously feel for her. Nor the pining for such emotion (which I would have felt if I couldn't tie such a song to a specific loss.).

When I considered what I felt, it's what you described. But, that bothered me initially, like I didn't want to "give in" to that kind of thinking. It was too "in the past" (or, me being "in the present" without something I need.). I don't want to feel (as a verb) at such a low volume or intensity. I might not notice it. It's too cognitive and I might lose track of why I "feel" (in this new way).

It's paradoxical to me because it's like this 2-year journey has caused me to see her in a way I never did. Ending up with the unemotional feeling of letting go is like a culmination I didn't want. When I emotionally abandoned her I felt like I was cognitively letting her go. Now that I have cognitively let her go: it feels like the last thing I should want (because the ability to do so is entirely due to her, the one-in-a-million chance of meeting someone who treated me like she did, which was the only way I could see myself and work through it).

But, I'm not sure I let her go. It seems more like I let something else go which prevented me from ever feeling for her to begin with. I'm merely recognizing that. It's more like I'm feeling a more normal level of regret that I didn't see her for who she was.

The paradoxes of this whole process have been remarkable. I think it's just the result of being so wrong in my views. Driving toward more "right views" ends up looking like paradoxes. It's hard to reconcile because either the past was delusional, or I'm being delusional now. Neither seems possible (because the past was so real. I lived it.). So, it seems like so many paradoxes.

Pangloss wrote:I ran often to my nanny's home to huddle close to her and her daughters, I survived on such.

I can relate to that. When I lived among my family (father, step-mother and two step-sisters) for 4 years I loved my step-mother's sister's family. I felt like I fit in with them. I always enjoyed being with them and didn't want to leave. They seemed "normal" in a way my family didn't. But, my family was normal. It was just me who didn't fit in. For some reason I felt I fit in with my step-aunt. (I guess because I got to choose them.).

I never thought about this until now: I never saw them even once after I returned when I was 19. That seems strange to me now that I recall how much I idealized them as the family I wanted to have.

I think it has something to do with the panic attacks which struck me upon my return. I wrote about that elsewhere. I think the onset of the panic attack was part of me subconsciously realizing the prior 4-5 years being on the run (the episode of stealing a car, riding a freight train, living with my grandmother who made excuses for all my bad choices) was just delinquency -- not doing better than I would have with my family. When I think back to how I didn't re-establish contact with my step-aunt's family it was probably because I was ashamed. I.e., the three step-cousins whom I fit in with had grown up, matured in ways I hadn't, moving on in ways I didn't know how to.

That's an example of the "narrative." It's an internal rationalization. Forcing the truth to go away (and the people who make the truth evident). Finding convenient excuses/distractions. Having future goals that will "someday" make me desirable. (Not just presentable, but they'll seek me out. In fact, the way they didn't make an effort to see me made me feel the significance I placed in them must have been one-sided!) Ahh. The narrative begins! No need to question why I would overvalue them. The source of the problem becomes "feedback" to the problem, perpetuating it through explanations. (Like the movie Memento, where he constantly edited the police report to fit his new reality.).

realityhere wrote:I can never trust her...ever. That's what years of living with a N relative does to others.

What if she became self-aware and demonstrated such awareness through moderation of her traits, sincere acceptance of how her traits affected you?

Can an N be forgiven? I have trouble understanding that. I can see how it "wasn't my fault." I can go easier on myself like that. But, I don't think it's my place (being the abuser) to even consider if someone I affected should see it that way.

It's like straddling a fence between accepting what I know about myself (the context of why I do what I do) versus knowing others have a real reason to hold it against me (perhaps not caring to see any significance in the context).
I never seen you looking so bad my funky one / You tell me that your superfine mind has come undone (Steely Dan, Any Major Dude)
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Re: Making connections

Postby realityhere » Tue Jul 07, 2015 1:00 am

TTl,

I know now that what my N sister did was projection of her self-hatred onto me and my younger sib. It was a part of her need to get rid of what she didn't like in herself (True Self, as referred to in psychology), the little needy and vulnerable kid that pajaro refers to, but as a young child, I only knew that something was not right about her, didn't have the resources to understand that she had a PD in those early days. The mistreatment makes someone who has experienced the abuse at an early age to distrust the abuser, hypervigilant even for life, at any move she makes. I don't think someone like that can ever overcome that hypervigilance around such a person, even if that person becomes aware of her disorder. The family spent years living with an 800-pound elephant in the room yet the disorder itself wasn't obvious to the very person who has it. The rest of us were not in denial, it's just this dilemma of how to present this family awareness of a PD to a pwNPD without her going into narcissistic rage and projecting blame on everyone else? We knew it was a no-win situation, as some of us have hinted or been downright blunt with her and the flaming was inevitable.

I don't know what, if anything, triggered her "core" problem in childhood, that's for her to tell us, if she knows what that is to begin with. I don't know how I would act if she told me she was an aware pwNPD and was working on her issues. Of any of us in the family, I'd probably acknowledge her awareness and willingness to change/ modify her defense mechanisms, as I've done a lot of research into this disorder, and I cognitively understand the disorder, but emotionally it would take a helluva lot of showing thru her actions that she means what she says. Seasoned nons can detect the bulls***ting from a lifetime of being blamed for things they had nothing to do with. Forgiveness is not an easy thing for anybody to do. Same goes for the pwNPD who had an abusive parent, I can imagine.
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Re: Making connections

Postby easyfromhere » Tue Jul 07, 2015 6:23 am

I've added a post on my fareastofwest wordpress blog spot, someone might find it interesting about love, giving and recieiving.
About giving compliments, have a post 'its complimentary' which addresses this.

Delving into the past can be productive as a means to an end, but when it becomes and end in itself, with every negative happening not just acknowledged, but analized, dug into, why they did this or that, probed and picked at like a sore that is never allowed to heal.... it can tend to take away hours of life that could be used for delving into 'what things make me happy'. Be careful not to define yourself or others to fit some label, whatever the label is.

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Re: Making connections

Postby Truth too late » Tue Jul 07, 2015 7:23 am

easyfromhere wrote:I've added a post on my fareastofwest wordpress blog spot, someone might find it interesting about love, giving and recieiving.
About giving compliments, have a post 'its complimentary' which addresses this.

I don't see a link(?)

easyfromhere wrote:Delving into the past can be productive as a means to an end, but when it becomes and end in itself, with every negative happening not just acknowledged, but analized, dug into, why they did this or that, probed and picked at like a sore that is never allowed to heal.... it can tend to take away hours of life that could be used for delving into 'what things make me happy'. Be careful not to define yourself or others to fit some label, whatever the label is.

I remember reading something like that when I first read Vaknin's 9-part essay. He warned that a self-aware N can make their condition the "narrative." That thought comes to mind occasionally. It's hard to find a good balance -- especially when there's a deficit in discerning what's normal and what isn't. A self-aware already struggles with assessing their own motives. And then they have to struggle with how struggling too much can lead back into the same reverb chamber.

I imagine I made people walk on eggshells, and now I walk on them. More irony.
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