Re-Post -- from June 6, 2012
[This may seem like an odd choice for Valentine's Day. And its being an over two and a half years ago re-post. But for me it does have a lot to do with an important kind of love that seems essential to all other kinds -- unconditional self-love that can only come from unconditional self-acceptance that, in turn, can only come from abundant self-understanding.
Why does it too ofen seem much easier for me to love and honor others more than myself? A psychologist once wrote, "We often treat ourselves like a roommate we don't like."
I've been peeling the proverbial onion for self-knowledge for decades. It took a lot of intellectual enlightenment and emotional courage to publish two personal blogs on Open Salon, one about my father and his alcoholism and its impact on me, and this one about my mother and her borderline personality disorder and its impact on me. I appreciated the abundantly supportive and enlightening feedback I received from this community for both.
My 12-step recovery work has taught me that by doing industrial-strength honest inventories of our parents and our pasts, we learn to stay awake, honest, fearless and unconditionally self-forgiving in conducting healthy, ongoing inventories of ourselves and our current life connections and shame-threatening manifestations of seemingly hard-wired dysfunction.
One of my favorite slogans from the 12-step "recovery world" is "F-E-A-R" as an acronym for "Face Everything And Recover".]
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We are not ourselves in their eyes. Separate, precious and wondrous human beings. We are their security blankets, trophies or punching bags, considering the time of day or given day.
We are the trash receptacles for all the contempt they feel for themselves. Now they have us to punish and push away to escape their own inner ego-monster of perfectionism. They have us to tyrannize and push to be their perfect AVATARS or HOLOGRAMS so they can congratulate themselves for inspiring us and directing us there or get the payoff of punishing us for disappointing them when they invested so much faux-faith in us.
We are their p.r. department that promotes their impression management campaign which additionally cripples us since we are covering up their dark surreality with us. While we create the illusion of their powerful goodness all the while the profound erosion of our spirit is taking place by them.
We have been so profoundly confused by them -- confused means "FUSED WITH" -- and at times we PITY them and try not to notice how much we FEAR them. We hustle to be as convenient as possible in their world of paranoid, brittle hysteria.
We don't understand their disorder. We don't understand the nature of their paranoia. Trust with them is not global, not a long-standing reservoir of good will. It is specific to a limited narcissistic moment with them. It is earned by us second by second -- one more step on a tight rope with no net.
There is no resilience and capacity with them to accept us -- even for one tiny moment to accept us -- if they don't understand us. IF THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND US WE ARE A THREAT TO BE BULLIED AND PUNISHED TO GET IN LINE. If we take the focus off their needs, even if we must since our ignored needs are rushing in and demanding attention, we become their ENEMY and they threaten us with all they have to get us back into line.
They are disordered. They cannot see us. They are the PLAYWRIGHTS, DIRECTORS and MAIN CHARACTERS of their life drama and everyone else in the cast must read from their scripts and be waiting in the wings for their cue to come on stage and circle them and it is their show. Even if you have a bit part, you must be available at all times and watching their show and participating in their show and GOD help you if you want to star in your own life. It is treason. Improvisation is TREASON. Invites total rejection.
If you blow your role, you are gone in a heartbeat. Banned and shunned by them and they demand that the cast and crew shun you as well. They act out on their stage themselves as an inconsolable victim of your selfishness. They hook others to enable them and rescue them from cruel, heartless you who had been their main enabler seconds earlier.
You thought the role you had been playing at least meant something to the MAD GODDESS or GOD of the theater, enabling her or him in an oh-so-vulnerable and needy survival mode always. But there is no will or comprehension in them to communicate with you because you are not nor ever were a fellow human being. They are not capable of respect and intimacy, only affinity on THEIR TERMS. THEY ARE WILLFULL, NARCISSISTIC TODDLERS, stuck in that arrested development.
You were a kind of machine that has now broken down and deserves their rage and replacement INSTANTLY. They are not capable of hearing about you and your needs because they never were really all that important. Sometimes they convinced you they cared, but that was in the role they were playing, not in their ego-controlled and numbed out heart as director and playwright. You got suckered by the role they sometimes brilliantly performed, but, alas, it wasn't real at base. You got snookered.
You are bereft, because the only thing you have experienced was being the second-guessing security blanket, trophy or punching bag for the MAD GODDESS or GOD. Your trauma is some Godawful baggage to sort out. Alone and confused you are with your identity so beaten up. Well beyond recognition. Your capacity for trust is shot. And you still don't want to believe the tragedy or pathos of it all. That is your albatross, your addiction still to the denial.
Scott Peck said it is evil to "tit suck from and control the same person" and that is what they did for years and years. He also said recognizing "evil" -- and it is one helluva "evil disorder" this ubpd (unrecovered borderline personality disorder) -- in a parent is the hardest thing a child can do in a life time. Most can't and stay enthralled.
"Hope was the last temptation of Christ," it has been said. Look what happened to HIM! Hope has to be surrendered by you for your own survival. "Recovery is learning to let go of what you never had" another saying goes. What a hard step that is. Processing -- accepting -- your heart-breaking reality.
We were trained by them to over-identify with them to the exclusion of our own identities and basic needs in life. They do deserve pity, but they have lost that right with us since we have been so victimized by their disorder. They exploited our pity so unbelievably much and our basic need to be loved and cherished to keep us locked in our victimization. Our sense of entitlement to our own God-given and satisfying life must be re-learned. Somewhere back then we were hoping for their permission and blessing to build our own life, since they were playing God over us. There is a God or Higher Power and that BEING is NOT them. And that is the source of unconditional love for us as bereft adults now, not our lost parent. That God is our parent's parent, too. Not us. Not our job ... and it never should have been.
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R&R "...peeling the proverbial onion..." Twenty some odd years ago I sat in a chair for the better part of a year remembering everything I could, taking notes and holding each memory up to whatever light I could muster and thinking: Yep, that's the way it happened, or shaking my head as I thought, Nope, not that way at all, you're a legend in your own mind.
BTW: This is for you to play the next time you feel like the bastards are grinding you down,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4LbU8w7Th4
BTW: This is for you to play the next time you feel like the bastards are grinding you down,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4LbU8w7Th4
Libby,thank you for your courage for once again trying to tackle one of the worst nightmares a child can cope with.This one is twice as hard because it's caused by one's own parents.
You have been very brave by challenging this and by sharing it here at OS.
Happy Valentine's day, slightly delayed.
You have been very brave by challenging this and by sharing it here at OS.
Happy Valentine's day, slightly delayed.
My mother was both borderline and alcoholic. I was also extremely fortunate to be raised in a close knit extended family. This meant my grandmother and aunt were able to provide for much of my nurturing needs when my mother couldn't.
I wish you all of the worthiness God intended for you. Growing up with caregivers who are incapable of caring or giving has to be the greatest crime against humanity. As a child we are not yet able to protect ourselves and that makes up eminently exploitable by pathology. Interestingly, this same pathology dominates the world and is neither capable of caring or giving. And they keep us in a "wounded child" state that makes us eminently exploitable by their pathology.
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