This is one of the hardest posts I have ever written. It is the reason I have written only one post in the last month…because I have been struggling with this one. I keep shying away from it…I open the page and write a few words and then find something to distract myself. I procrastinate opening the page…I feel ambivalent about writing it…I simultaneously want to write it and don’t want to. Avoidance keys in big here…I am avoiding it emotionally, even though the mature adult in me makes me keep coming back to it, like a parent saying to a reluctant kid “do your homework!”. All this tells me that this is an issue I, personally, have not yet resolved.
When I was a kid my NM used to tell me
“Children should be seen and not heard,” “Silence is golden,” and that I should
only “speak when spoken to.” I quickly learned that the safest place for me to
be was in my room, doing something she would approve of if she happened to look
in on me…something not messy, like reading a book or doing homework. If I was
playing with my toys on the bedroom floor, I would be told to “clean up this
mess,” even if I was still playing with the items (assuming this was before she
decided to “clean my closet” while I was at school one day and give the
majority of my toys to the Goodwill). It was not until I was in high school and
living with my father that I learned this was not a natural state of affairs:
my stepmother became very angry with me for retreating to my room after I
finished the after-dinner clean up. She found it very anti-social of me whereas
I was doing my darndest to be on my best behaviour, which I defined as being
“out of sight and out of mind,” as I had learned from NM was the proper way to
behave.
But I wasn’t just invisible physically,
disappearing into solitude when my household chores were done. I felt invisible
on a deeper, more fundamental level, unheard, unseen, as if nothing I thought,
said, or felt was taken into account by others. I was emotionally isolated,
feeling disconnected from everyone else. My feelings or desires were seldom
elicited and even on the rare occasion when they were, I do not recall them ever
being taken into account: if decisions were made that were in sync with my
wishes, it was coincidental, not by design. People talked over the top of me,
behaved as if I was not in the room, would not allow me to finish articulating
a thought without either interrupting me or changing the subject mid-sentence.
It was as if I was the only one who knew I was there and felt or thought anything.
In later years, I married a malignant
narcissist and his behaviour exacerbated my feelings of tenuousness and
invisibility. The child of an immature, self-interested mother who nagged and
harangued her weak, unassertive husband endlessly while wrapped in her martyr’s
cloak, he was ambivalent about his father: on the one hand he despised him for
meekly submitting to his mother’s constant demands, on the other hand, he
identified with his father and was outraged on his father’s behalf. It took
several years of marriage to this man to come to the realization that I did not
exist in his world, that I was simply a female body upon which he projected his
mother and interacted with me as if I were she, while he behaved as he believed
his father should have.
This was absolutely dehumanizing. Just as,
when I was a child and I was unacknowledged as anything other than an extension
of my mother (and a nuisance when I asserted myself as anything else), that
which was me did not exist. He saw me as his mother…even though she and I were
as different as chalk and cheese…with a different face. He and I once had a row
over…well, I didn’t know what it was over: he came home from work angry and I
assumed something had happened at work (something was always happening at work
to tick him off) but it turned out he was angry with me. As it happened, on his
commute home he had held a conversation in his head with me, and the responses
he attributed to me were things his conservative mother would have said, not
the kinds of things that would come out of my uber-liberal mouth. By the time
he got home, he was angry with me because of him attributing his mother’s
attitudes to me. Somewhere in all of this, the beliefs and values and attitudes
and feelings that were mine went completely unacknowledged. Why? Because to
him, the person who was me was never acknowledged, did not exist. I was a
convenient blank upon which to superimpose the persona of his mother.
The problem with this is that when you are
not acknowledged, when you cannot see yourself mirrored in others, when they do
not reflect back to you, like answering your questions or laughing at your
jokes or responding to your greetings in an appropriate way, if your sense of
self is not immensely secure, you begin to lose it. Jack’s anger at me, based
on his fantasy conversation, was wholly inappropriate and so to snarl at me
with that anger when I said “Hi, babe, how was your day?” was not only wholly inappropriate,
it negated my very existence and focussed instead on the projection of his
mother on onto me. To ignore my existence or, as my NM did, my achievements in
school, by refusing to attend the choir concerts in which I was a featured
soloist, failing to attend my high school academic awards ceremonies, even my
high school graduation, is to act like the person does not exist, as if she
were invisible. And if you get enough of that kind of treatment from the
significant people in your life, you begin to feel invisible, too…you begin to
wonder if there is really anything to see, since nobody else seems to see it.
It goes deeper than that, even. Have you
ever said something in a group of people and nobody even acknowledged you spoke?
Have you ever asked a question and the person to whom it is directed acts as if
you were not even in the room? Have you ever been in a group and what you have
to say is not ignored so much as it is not even heard? Absent strong
self-esteem, such experiences can make you feel disconnected, unbalanced…as if
you exist only at their pleasure and the rest of the time you don’t. It makes
you feel unimportant, devalued, diminished, invisible, shunned.
Shunning is “…the act of social rejection...
Social rejection is when a person or group deliberately avoids association
with, and habitually keeps away from an individual or group. This can be a
formal decision by a group, or a less formal group action which will spread to
all members of the group as a form of solidarity. It is a sanction against
association… Targets of shunning can include …anyone the group perceives as a
threat or source of conflict. Social rejection has been established to cause
psychological damage and has been categorized as torture.
“Shunning is often used as a pejorative
term to describe any organizationally mandated disassociation, and has acquired
a connotation of abuse and relational aggression. This is due to the sometimes
extreme damage caused by its disruption to normal relationships between
individuals, such as friendships and family relations. Disruption of
established relationships certainly causes pain, which [may] be an intended,
coercive consequence. This pain, especially when seen as unjustly inflicted,
can have secondary general psychological effects on self-worth and
self-confidence, trust and trustworthiness, and can, as with other types of trauma,
impair psychological function.
“Shunning often involves implicit or
explicit shame for a member who commits acts seen as wrong by the group or its
leadership. Such shame may not be psychologically damaging if the membership is
voluntary and the rules of behavior were clear before the person joined.
However, if the rules are arbitrary, if the group membership is seen as
essential for personal security, safety, or health, or if the application of
the rules is inconsistent, such shame can be highly destructive. This can be
especially damaging if perceptions are attacked or controlled, or various tools
of psychological pressure applied. Extremes of this cross over the line into psychological
torture and can be permanently scarring.
“A key detrimental effect of some of the
practices associated with shunning relate to their effect on relationships,
especially family relationships. At its extremes, the practices may destroy
marriages, break up families, and separate children and their parents. The
effect of shunning can be very dramatic or even devastating on the shunned, as
it can damage or destroy the shunned member's closest familial, spousal,
social, emotional, and economic bonds.
“Shunning contains aspects of what is known
as relational aggression in psychological literature… Extreme shunning may
cause traumas to the shunned (and to their dependents) similar to what is
studied in the psychology of torture.”
A key word in this explanation of shunning
is “rejection.” Ignoring someone, treating them as if they do not exist, is a
passive aggressive form of rejection. In very young children, this is perceived
as being life threatening: if their primary care giver does not acknowledge
their existence, they cannot be entirely sure that their survival needs will be
met. If the passive rejection is habitual, is it any wonder the child becomes
habitually anxious with respect to his survival and even questions his
existence? When you don’t seem to exist to another person, when you are
acknowledged in only the most necessary ways…and when that acknowledgement
often includes a negative or critical component…a child’s self perception is
inevitably damaged. Such children may become shy, withdrawn, fearful. But not
always…
“… sometimes the Invisible Child can hide
behind an effective façade of the bubbly center-of-attention favorite friend.
In private the Invisible Child puts the mask away feeling more unseen and
unknown than before. The Invisible Child often feels alienated from society and
from what they refer to as ‘normal’ people. It is difficult to claim the
physical body, to make opinions known and to voice feelings. Thus, the poser
becomes the preferred method for surviving in a social world. The Invisible
Child becomes masterful at creating an image that others find acceptable and to
behave in a way that others approve of in order to be seen. This only engenders
feelings of inadequacy and self-rejection…”
The best analogy I can think of for this is the Invisible Man: it is not
until he puts on clothes that he is visible to others, and even then, he is not visible, only his clothes; when an Invisible Child put on a mask, assumes a
public persona, the Invisible Child is still not seen, even though the faux
personality may attract both attention and even admiration.
This pretty accurately describes how I
lived most of my life and, to some extent, still live it today. If you were to
meet me in person, you would find me friendly, effusive, outgoing, even funny.
I am known to be an entertaining storyteller, a thoughtful hostess, and
fearlessly assertive. You would never guess that I actually prefer to spend
hour upon hour of quiet time alone, that I am “on” when others are around, but
I am actually quietly introspective and prefer quiet, solitary pursuits over
loud socializing.
Psychologist Joseph Burgo, PhD, writes
about a patient who does not wish to terminate therapy, even though he believes
she is ready: “Lately, I’ve also been thinking about a parenting style that
isn’t overtly abusive but vacant or largely withdrawn instead. In such a case…the
person also develops a sense of unreality, as if he were invisible. It’s as if
she looked into the mirror of her mother’s face and found no reflection
whatsoever…On some level, she’s afraid that without me and my attention, she
would cease to exist. As a child, she must have felt that way in the absence of
parental involvement: as if she were invisible, a ghost child without physical
substance.”
I can really relate to this feeling: when I
was about 7 years old, my mother drove a very distinctive car…my father had had
it painted hot pink for her. I remember walking home from school one day, along
a very busy road, and seeing my mother’s car pass me en route home. I jumped up
and down and waved and screamed “Mommy! Mommy! I’m here!” but she drove on
past. Obviously, she didn’t see me trudging along the bridge, and I was
crushed. How could she not see and recognize me? I cried for the next block or
so, feeling painfully invisible, but dried my tears and put on my “cheerful,
ebullient” look before entering the house…I might only have been 7, but I knew
I was not allowed to be sad, hurt, or unhappy about anything in front of her…to
do so was to invite punishment.
Many of us carry this invisible feeling
with us into adulthood and as a result, many of us see rejection where it does
not exist. One of my most formidable tasks of recovery has been to puzzle out
when I am being consciously, intentionally ignored and when I am simply being
part of the background, like everybody else. I have learned that I tend to
insert value judgments where they do not really exist…like when a conversation
is going on and my contribution is not acknowledged, I default to “I am not
important, what I have to say is not important, they don’t want to hear what I
have to say, they act like I’m not here, they don’t like me…” this can escalate
mentally and emotionally, to an extreme degree (i.e. “nobody likes me, I am a
terrible person nobody likes”) unless I consciously step in and stop that train
of thought and remind myself that it is simply a conversation and my
contributions are not, at this time, especially relevant to the rest of the
group…which is a normal thing for everybody from time to time. Sometimes I have
to consciously remind myself that I am not being intentionally marginalized,
rejected, or shunned, however much my emotions default to that sad place. And sometimes
it is hard…really hard…to force myself to seize reality from the despair my
early conditioning foist upon me.
That is not to say that there are not
people who deliberately treat us this way, and that has been my big challenge:
to differentiate one from the other. My second biggest challenge is, when
recognizing someone is marginalizing me, to not fall into that feeling of
invisibility but, at the same time, not overreact and become over the top in my
response. It is a balancing act that, fortunately, I am not called upon to deal
with every day but when I am, it remains a challenge to me. I am particularly
called upon to exercise this when out in public and someone steps in front of
me in a queue, as if I was not there, or someone steals a parking place that,
with turn signals blazing, I intended to take. I am especially provoked when
someone makes assumptions about me or my motives, refusing to listen or
acknowledge my assertions and preferring to substitute his own perceptions.
This happened not too long ago when the spring in the door of my SUV (luxury
SUV with super-heavy doors and a heavy duty spring) got away from me and bumped
the mirror cowl of the car I was parked beside. I immediately snatched the door
back and was examining the mirror for damage when the owner showed up and
started screeching at me, accusing me of intentionally damaging her car (it was
unscathed), and telling me she paid for the car and I had no right to damage
it! I said “It was an accident, the door popped out of my hand,” and she just
continued to shriek accusations and abuse right over the top of me. And I felt,
simultaneously, invisible and the recipient of an unwarranted public tongue
lashing. And so I said, in a voice calculated to be heard over her unending
tirade, “It was an accident and your car is unhurt! You don’t have to be such a
bitch about it!” and walked away.
That may not have been the best way to
handle it, but I was suddenly visible to her, perhaps for the first time since
she opened her mouth. It was not characteristic of me…I am a person who would
die before creating a scene in public…but at least I was not paralyzed,
standing there silently for her unwarranted public dressing down. My husband
was shocked…this was the first time in the 12 years of our acquaintance he has
ever seen me speak out in such a manner…usually I apologize if warranted or if
not, I ignore the person and complain quietly to him later on. But I am working
on not falling into that passive, accepting-of-abuse childhood pattern that was
forced upon me in childhood, working on learning how to tell when I am
intentionally not being heard/included/acknowledged and when my “invisibility”
is just a normal thing for the time and place.
And that has been one of the big
realizations: that everybody gets ignored, overlooked, disregarded from time to
time, not just me. And they don’t react to it with anger, like Jack would, or a
feeling of humiliation, like my husband, or by feeling shunned and invisible,
like me. No, they roll with it, wait for another opportunity, and try again.
They make themselves known in ways that do not embarrass or attack or offend
others, they look for a way to fit into the situation seamlessly…to neither
stand out unnecessarily or to be noticed for their reticence. And while I tend
to be adept at this in social gatherings…that false persona of mine is very
adept in social situations like the office or at parties…it is much harder in
one-on-one or very small social groups, like with another 3 or 4 people at
dinner.
I don’t feel invisible like I did when I
was a kid, but I would be lying if I said I was past that problem at this stage
in my life. It was not until I saw a thread on Facebook, however, that I became
consciously aware of this, that I still struggle to deal with it, that the
feeling of invisibility still creeps over me in some situations and I have yet
to master it. I can only be thankful that my NM is long dead and not adding to
it with her drama…