Saturday, November 28, 2015

Breaking the Chains of The Narcissist Family's Lies and False Expectations.

 
 
 
There is one insidious the way, narcissists damage us.  Narcissists abuse us with their endless expectations especially if we are dealing with high achieving narcissists. They lead us to set up false expectations about life, and if life does not measure up, then we can be thrown into severe depression.  Part of healing is dealing with reality and the way things really ARE, not the way we want them to be. Part of the healing process is tossing out their LIES ABOUT LIFE.
 
The other day the revelation came to me, that it was insanity for my family to expect a woman with serious Aspergers and severe physical disabilities to achieve their same upper middle class lifestyles. This was completely utter stupid cruelty.
 
 
"One of the most frequent themes of rumination that I see in patients suffering from depression is a gap between who they feel they should be, and how they actually experience themselves. This discrepancy leads to painful self-attack, which can eventually become emotionally deadening."
 
Coming out of this stuff, is finally getting rid of a lot of my depression. It's like I am FINALLY getting an OBJECTIVE view of my life replacing REALITY with the LIES they told me.
 

What are some of those LIES?
 
The false judgments on me as a person
 
The refusing to see my circumstances
 
Telling me I'd never get married
 
The upper middle class assumptions and prejudices.
 
Their views of people who have less as lesser. Even if I never personally judged the poor myself and always had compassion for them, their judgments of the poor became part of how I saw myself. My husband always worked hard. I worked hard before I got sick.
 
The belief in the system and in selling out to it.
 
This includes believing the politicians, belief in globalist wars, belief in "some animals are more equal than others" if you understand my Animal Farm references.
 
The belief that bad things happen to bad people which has actually taken over far too many Christian churches as a whole but that will take a whole other article.
 
The belief that only success counts.
 
The belief in competition at all costs. This is one reason families are breaking up in the USA, they are competing with each other. There's no more semblance of a families who stand by each other.  Do we need more proof that Americans have become a hardened crazed nation then to glance at the possibility of Trump being president?
 
I think of how all the LIEs have HURT ME and hurt me bad.
 
The other day I thought someone as disabled as me did deserve some care and help. I have met people with disabilities like my own even SINGLE ones like Aspergers who had families who cared for and helped them. They did not throw them away or call them a loser. They knew they had challenges to face the rest did not share. I think of young me even gasping for breathe and gaining weight I did not want, facing so much utter pain and fatigue and never one ounce of mercy and I came to the conclusion, "These were people are/were evil. It wasn't you! It wasn't you!"
 
I  needed to have a bowl of hot soup given to me, a pat on the back, medical help, and to be told "We will be here for you if you need us". If strangers and professionals can give me the soup, the smile and tell me "You deserve care". Why couldn't my family?
 
Since I have been busy taking out the narcissistic trash in my life, all of the people who are gone now, had no empathy towards health and money challenges, I felt relief. I do not feel alone, I feel more RELAXED. I feel HAPPIER. I feel some semblance of a light ahead and a breaking up for YEARS of depression.
 
I think about how the heavy expectations weighed on me, and how the expectations themselves were BASED on LIES.
 
There seems to be a growing expectation that we should be able to secure the perfect spouse, the perfect career, the perfect home, engineer the perfect children, and so forth to be happy and if that doesn't happen according to our plans then something is wrong that needs fixing. While we all likely believe that we should have high expectations for ourselves I wonder if unrealistically high expectations are counterproductive and destructive.

Maybe Hollywood is to blame. Perhaps watching the lives and fortunes of the rich and famous influence our views of what kind of life we should expect. For example, are we likely to feel better or worse about our lives after watching the Academy Awards later this week?  Perhaps our increasingly self centered and narcissistic culture plays a role too. If it's all about me (i.e., my needs, my pleasures, my success) then we may never secure what we feel we deserve and are entitled to. So many people seem to have unrealistic expectations of what they can expect from a spouse, a career, their children, and life in general. They want it all and they want it all perfect.
 
After reading this article I thought, Why not just be happy with WHAT I HAVE and stop listening to those who have chained me up with the chains of their narcissistic and perfectionistic codes? Poverty still stinks, but I am done blaming myself for being low on money. I believe perfectionism is a poison used by narcissists to destroy so many. Both of my parents would brag about how they were both perfectionists and that it was a positive on their life. All I saw it leading to was people who were never satisfied with anything. Even though both parents were far wealthier then me and lived easier lives, they never were good enough. I remember my father being angry he only made over 6 figures a year and not a million. My mother was never happy either. She constantly cleaned and redecorated. Seriously. It was crazy.
 
The unrealistically high expectations that the article refers to are indeed destructive as hell.
When my parents expected a young woman with Aspergers who had severe physical disabilities to make 6 figures too, they entered the realm of insanity. They left reality far behind and they took me along on their crazy tour. I was lied to about myself, about my life and even about what reality was. My view of myself and my life was put before an insanity mirror of "you can have it all" and that to be a success, I had to fulfill these endless tenets. Don't forget she even showed up at my blog to call me a "loser". Who does that? It's insane.

It is so cruel how I was set up. My health was destroyed. They almost succeeded in totally breaking me and destroying my mental health and then they kicked me in the face for not "succeeding" and not "doing" enough.

The illusions are being vanquished, and it is taking time here, but I have worked through these things step by step.
 

This is a major one I am facing now. I was TOTALLY LIED to and under severe pressures. I have realized most people who were sick and as Aspie as me were taken care of by their families, some even for their entire lives. I had a friend once tell me, that even me becoming an art teacher in the shape I was in was rare and extreme. For a person who was sick most of my life, early on, I worked hard to stay alive. Facing reality is where forgiveness of myself lies. Facing reality is where even understanding and admitting truth about loved ones lies too.
 
My mother was cruel to my husband, putting him down for being laid off from and losing his jobs. She ignored reality in her cruelties. She ignored the economy. He got older, he was a caretaker for years to a severely disabled woman who almost died multiple times especially early in our marriage. Our marriage was vastly improved when I was listening to litanies of my husband's shortcomings by people who had no understanding what he faced.
 
This was their prison and prison bars. Their lies about REALITY and their prison bullwhip, can and cat-on-nine tails to whip me into submission. "You are a loser!" "You aren't good enough!" etc etc. All based in their Disneyland fantasy view of the world and love for the system.  Accepting reality is what is needed. For many ACONs we suffer under the lash of the narcissist's delusional worlds.
 
Once we see reality, we can relax and no longer beat the crap out of ourselves, just like the narcissists loved to watch us do. We do without or innovate. We do what we can do and realize that is all we can do. We know we do not control everything and that many things happen beyond our control. We do not live in constant fear feeling that we have angered and disappointed these narcissistic overlords. We make our own choices, and live life for what we deem is important and see ourselves as normal people in a world that is not easy. A world that many times can be difficult. We understand and acknowledge that many live under severe oppression, many who are judged and exploited by the system.
 
I've been beating head on wall too long. No pressures to fulfill long lists or to dos or measuring up. Come on in this body even them judging me by the rules of their psycho contest made them literally insane. Now I can be free of this garbage and deal with reality and be more prepared to deal with life. It has changed my view of myself and allowed for more self-love and care to come in the door.
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16 comments:

  1. I am really glad to hear that you are finally learning to live and accept yourself. I mean think about it. You had serious autoimmune issues that came from your family. Then they blame you for it?! How insane is that.

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    1. Thanks. It is insane. I'm not sure if the health problems come from them or some of them but either way it's insane.

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  2. For everyone reading this blog please take each and every horrible abusive statement that any Narcissistic person has ever said to you and flush them away. You were not wrong. They were!

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  3. With Narcissists all love is conditional.

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  4. Yes, they are all lies. I was told to be rich and famous too. As an abused child, so much was expected out of me. I will no longer beat the crap out of myself either. It hurts that they never truly loved us, only used as fodder to abuse. I have to override everything I've ever been taught. Justice will be sealed, I am so certain of that.

    I could never be abusive to a sick child. The whole idea is nuts. And not to worry day and night over my children, is impossible. I hate narcs.

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    1. Yes it was all lies. Yeah the focus on being rich and a "success" got insane. They only care about using children to show off as trophies to the rest of the world. Glad you won't beat yourself up either. Nope there was never any love, and I having to uproot a lot of their delusions they unloaded on me. I think it's sick they are abusive to a sick child or even adult. Narcs never worry. Well my mother did, never showed one ounce of fear or worry to me in her entire life.

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  5. With my mother she made her lies up as as she went along with absolutely no intersection with any known truth, so even if we wanted to defend ourselves from her we had no way of knowing what she was going to say or when she was going to say it. She would concoct the most bizarre stories. None of them approached the truth. I am pretty sure we could have had her committed if a psychiatrist ever had her for a patient long enough for her to drop the mask, but that was never going to happen. Anytime, anyone, even hinted at her need for professional help she would create a situation that would consume the culprit or deflect attention off her long enough for us to forget she was crazy. I watched a show about Warren Jeff's the latter day Saints guy and one of the people there investigating him said that you have a guy that has made a religion up as he went along and is crazy by any definition of the word. Factor out the religion part and you have my mother.

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    1. Yes, they make up total lies. Near the end when I was waking up, mine lied as naturally as brushing her teeth and it was stupid stuff too. I am questioning some of the stories I was told by her and about others. She told me she came home from her vacation home once and her whole house almost blew up from gas, that seemed some kind of plea for drama. Yeah none of them would even show this stuff to psychiatrists, they would appear "reasonable" without measure. Oh sure they know how to deflect attention off themselves and go for any available scapegoats as needed. I've read books about Warren Jeffs that is one complete sociopath, he's got so much power he even can tell men who obey him, that their families are no longer theirs and are being transferred to another man. Think about that one. He sexually abused both boys and girls. Probably was possessed. Yes makes things up as he goes along. Yes that tells me how bad your mother is. Strong narcs all run their own little mini-cults even if they don't become famous in the religion world.

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  6. When I make myself stop picking on myself, there is like this huge void. Then I have to fill it back up again with self-acceptance.

    I wonder were we even born this way. The need for constant validation, reassurance, or if we were just born filled up. I wonder what it would feel like to never have that void and just always feel good.

    Like for instance, always having to reassure yourself for poverty, that it is not your fault. Or just be willing to accept that it isn't your fault and never knowing how to blame yourself.

    With me, I blame myself for whenever someone treats me badly, and its hard for me not to. Or in any circumstance, that we blame ourselves in, its feels impossible not to.

    So that is what I mean by that void. Once I stop blaming myself, its like now what? Well, I have to tell myself that I am enough, I'm loved etc. I hope I make sense, and if anyone else has encountered this same thing.

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    1. I agree about the self acceptance, I get into that mode. I am so used to beating myself up with their shrill voices in my head, that getting away from that, has definitely helped. I agree, always having tor reassure myself for the poverty can be hard. I am glad my husband was able to escape some of that self blame--his parents grew up in WW2 so let's just say hardship was not considered something to blame one's self for in that family. I know we got trained to blame ourselves whenever someone is mean to us, how does that work? It actually is one way they set us up for the future abusers and predators. I have to tell myself the same things, to get through the day. Bashing one's head on the brick wall got tiring.

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    2. Oh yes this a good one. Or blame ourselves for going grey early, or for not being as pretty as the others. Now wouldn't that just be plain silly.

      Its good your husband has the background emotional resources for not blaming himself, that was given to him by his family. I can imagine the pain of WW2 and the way they lived, and I'm sure if they too, could have it another way, they would.

      When I start picking on myself, I say, "oh no, not allowed to do that." Its a big burden off my shoulders. I agree they set us up for predators. And the evil of it. I still remember my mother telling me about all the other pretty girls at my grade 8 graduation. From that I got I was ugly, and not worth anything, and everyone was better.

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  7. Congratulations, Peep. You sound far more at peace than ever before. I remember when you stood fearfully uncertain on the precipice from VLC to NC. You couldn't go back and you were afraid you couldn't fly. But you did it anyway-isn't that what Courage is?
    For you (and Mr. Peep too:)
    "So ring the bells that still can ring
    Forget your perfect offering
    There's a hole in everything
    That's how the light gets in..."
    - Leonard Cohen
    TW

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    1. Thanks TW:) Yes I remember those VLC days. I have told people on message boards be careful of LC as a "solution" too much was taken out of me even with the little contact. I know every person has to determine what is right for them, but it is a warning I have given. Yes the whole "feel the fear and do it anyway" as courage. Like the lyrics, A LOT.

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  8. Excellent post Peep. It is exactly what has been running through my mind the past few months, just beautifully put into words. I really enjoyed it and can relate to every single thing you wrote and every single lie you've heard. Even the ridiculous "you'll never get married" crap. Wishful thinking on their part I guess...

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