I was not a rebellious teenager…at least not overtly. I was too afraid of my narcissistic mother to do anything other than slavishly follow the rules she set down to the letter. But observing the letter of the law is not the same as observing its spirit, and while I may have appeared to have internalized all of rules and so-called values, nothing could be further from the truth.
A lot of ACoNs find themselves shackled to beliefs and
values taught to them by their narcissistic parents and feel pangs of guilt,
fear, and/or remorse when they so much as contemplate violating them. Others,
like me, give the appearance of compliance while secretly doing whatever they
want within the strictures imposed by their parents. Some people actively rebel
during their adolescence, but I don’t know many ACoNs who did that…I suppose
most of us are so thoroughly bound up in the narcissist’s web by the time we
reach puberty—and perhaps sufficiently controlled by guilt or intimidated by
the N and her flying monkeys—that we are reluctant to stir up what we know will
be a hornet’s nest of reaction.
Guilt was never an effective weapon for controlling me
because I was very clear, very early on, that there was something really,
really wrong with my mother, and I was extremely angry about the way she
treated me. Her favouritism was so blatant that other family members even
noticed it…but the one time I heard her called on it, she explained it away—I
was an incorrigible child, wilful and uncontrollable, defiant and deliberately
difficult, so I deserved the ill treatment I received and my brother, by
contrast, deserved the special treatment he got. The only problem with that was
that my brother was constantly in trouble at school, had poor marks, was in
regular trouble with the local shops and neighbours for stealing, ran away from
home and even tried to set the school on fire…all before he was 10 years old!
I, on the other hand, was too petrified of my mother and her volatile
temperament that I made great marks at school (I was even skipped a grade), did
both my chores and my brother’s (because she would punish me for not “making”
him do his), and seldom spoke in the presence of adults unless bidden to do so
(“children should be seen and not heard”). My mother’s interpretation of what
constituted a “good” child and what constituted a “bad” child was just a wee
bit wonky…and I was pretty clear on that, too.
Since subtle things like guilt-tripping didn’t work on me
(although guilt works very well when
I have actually done something wrong), my mother used intimidation. If she came
home from work and my brother’s chores weren’t done, she couldn’t use guilt to
make me feel bad for not making him do his work: I was clear that I had no
authority over him and that he was bigger than I was and that what she was
expecting of me was wrong…you can’t wring guilt out of that kind of belief. On
the other hand, if my father said “I am disappointed in you” because I brought
home a poor mark or I forgot to feed the dog, the guilt would be all the
punishment I would need—I can remember crying because I disappointed my father.
My father, however, never expected me to be surrogate mother to a malicious sibling
larger than me, nor did he expect me to be a perfect little automaton.
My mother never really tried to guilt me (not until I was
well into my teens, anyway), she preferred more direct methods: intimidation,
threats, and brutality, accompanied by verbal abuse administered at a high
decibel level. For many years I believed that shouting and threatening mayhem
was how mothers communicated with their younger children and wondered what was
wrong with my aunt (who I now suspect suffered from prolonged post-natal
depression) who spent her days at a dirty, cluttered kitchen table
chain-smoking cigarettes and drinking cup after cup of coffee while her
children did whatever they pleased. I can remember my cousins engaging in
behaviour that would have instantly provoked my mother into a towering rage,
and my aunt only shrugging and lighting another cigarette. Aping my mother,
even as a child I sat in judgment of my aunt, characterizing her as lazy and
shiftless because she did not descend upon her children, belt flailing, howling
like an enraged banshee.
Many (most?) ACoNs internalize the values of their
narcissists, take them as their own, and then beat themselves up with guilt
when they violate those values…even if those values are, objectively speaking,
self-serving crap. Developmentally speaking, it is during adolescence that we
are supposed to individuate, to take those values and mores of the previous
generation, evaluate them, keep what we find valuable and jettison the rest,
creating our own values and mores to fill the void. Some parents are not
flexible enough for their kids to do this without conflict and rebellion
ensues. And some parents are not only inflexible but intimidating as well and
individuation may not occur as a result, and we go out into the world with our
parents’ values and beliefs, not our own.
I think I came out with a combination of the two since I
embarked upon my adolescent rebellion after I left my mother’s house and
believed myself to be out from under her thumb. When I did something I knew my
mother would find objectionable (like not cleaning my house) my feeling was not
one of guilt but one of triumph…Take
that, you old bat! It is MY house and I will keep it messy if I want! What
took me years to realize—because I quite sincerely believed I was living my
life the way I wanted—was that I had not left my control-freak narcissist
behind, I had carried her along with me in my head and, instead of obeying and
feeling guilty when I failed to measure up, I was rebelling and thumbing my
nose at her with every choice I made that I knew she would not approve of…and
getting an extra measure of satisfaction from the knowledge that she could not
punish me.
But the truth is, I didn’t really like the messy house or
the low-pay jobs or the flaky, exploitive men, I didn’t like always being
broke, never having a larder full of good food, living on the fringes of society.
My fear, however, was that if I embraced a conventional lifestyle, I would end
up the puppet of someone like my mother and the only way to feel free was to
consciously and willingly sacrifice some of the things I wanted…familial
acceptance, respectability and a financially secure life…for what I wanted
most: a freedom from my mother.
It was years before I realized that my sacrifices were in
vain because I carried my mother around with me in my head just as surely as those
who fear putting a foot wrong because of misplaced guilt, guilt created by a
controlling parent. The only real difference between me and them was that they
felt guilty whereas I felt angry and rebellious. Truth be told, we both carried our narcissists around with
us in our heads and we both lived our lives in response to them, one of us
trying to measure up, the other thumbing her nose rebelliously. But neither of
us were free, we merely responded to our captivity in different ways.
It was a long road to acceptance that I was still being controlled
by my mother, even though she was hundreds of miles away and we had not spoken
for years. I had learned to live reactively, so any time anyone around me did
something, I reacted to them, rather than being pro-active myself. This left me
open and vulnerable to abuse as it put me always in a defensive position:
someone acted, I reacted, usually defensively. The realization that I
approached life from a victim’s perspective was what finally woke me up…victims
react to what is done to them, victims rebel against injustices, because victims
accept the idea that those who victimize them are superior, are right, have
authority. And the only way I was going to stop being a victim was to stop
acting and thinking like one.
It doesn’t matter if the narcissist in your head controls
you with guilt or if you are rebelling against her: it only matters that the
choices you make in your life are somehow tied to that narcissist, whether it
is to obey or to defy her. It doesn’t matter if your narcissist is dead or alive,
next door or half a world away, once you have internalized the narcissist’s
values and accepted that the narcissist is the arbiter of right and wrong in
your life (even if that acceptance is subconscious), you continue to be
controlled by her, only by proxy—and you
are the proxy holder.
Changing it was no more than a matter of establishing a new
habit…the habit of reflection. I had to do what I should have been doing in
adolescence: examining the beliefs, values, mores of my narcissistic mother and
deciding if they were worth keeping or if I could do better independently. It
was tempting to throw the baby out with the bathwater, to assume that if she
believed it or practiced it, it was wrong and had to be tossed out, but I
realized that was more of that mindless rebellion. Even a stopped clock is
right twice a day, and narcissists may have some values or notions that are
worth keeping.
In the beginning I had to reflect on just about everything…first
I had to determine if a belief or attitude was mine or my mother’s and I had
unwittingly adopted it. Then, once I determined who initiated the belief, then
I had to re-examine it to determine if it was valid for me in my present
circumstances. At first it was arduous, time consuming, and fraught with
frustration. It is difficult to look at something you have believed is right
for your whole life and to toss it out. But messages inculcated into us by
self-serving narcissists, no matter how deeply believed, can be very, very
wrong and self-destructive. You aren’t useless, hopeless, ugly, inept, a loser,
born to fail—these are beliefs that serve the narcissist because it makes her
look good, feel good, by comparison. When you adopt these beliefs as your own,
you may be creating a self-fulfilling prophecy…or you may be setting yourself
up for a lifetime of stress, trying to prove to yourself that you are none of
those things. Either way, the narcissist that has taken up residence in your
head is controlling you, not you.
Feelings are clues. If you feel guilty or uncomfortable or
repelled, you have a clue that something needs examining. When you examine it
and you find that it stems from your childhood and your parent, you then have
the opportunity to choose. Believing something does not make it a fact: the
fact that your narcissist believes you are selfish doesn’t mean you are, it
merely means that she believes you
are selfish by not subordinating yourself to her. The fact that she was an
authority figure in your youth does not mean she must be an authority figure
for your whole life—as an adult, you are supposed to be your own authority,
setting your own values and boundaries and rules, and taking responsibility for
what you believe…because what you believe influences how you feel.
My journey into adulthood, for that is what this really is,
involved dumping some sacred cows, truthfully examining cherished beliefs and
letting some of the go. It also involved reinforcing some beliefs…consciously
accepting values handed to me by authority figures because, in re-examining
them, I found them to be of value.
Yes, it takes time and it takes effort. But coming to the
place where you are now, being controlled by the narcissist in your head,
believing yourself to be less than what you really are, restricted by dictates
of a person whose only interest in you is her own needs, didn’t happen
overnight. Expecting decades of abuse to be resolved in a few weeks or months
of effort on your part is unrealistic and bound to disappoint.
Procrastination doesn’t help, either. The longer you put off
self-examination, the more firmly that narcissist is entrenched in your head,
and the worse you feel about yourself…which makes it all the more arduous to
sort it all out. The sooner you start, the sooner you are finished.
The objective is to be your own person, for good or for ill,
and you cannot do that while you carry around the values and beliefs of persons
who had only their own best interests at heart. You have to re-evaluate all of it, come to your own values, values
that work for you without exploiting others in the process.
The good news is that the more you do it, the easier it
becomes. Eventually, you learn to recognize a conflict without a lot of deep evaluation
and dismissing unhealthy mind sets can become as easy as brushing away a fly.
As you get better at it, the conflicts become more obvious as do the healthy
alternatives.
When you stop thinking of yourself as a victim, others no
longer perceive you that way. Not everyone will be happy with that, of course,
and some of them may even try to intimidate or guilt you back into your role.
But when that happens, instead of being afraid or alarmed, you can view it as
proof that your hard work is paying off: as you shrug off the shackles of the
narcissist in your head, the narcissists may go into a panic, trying to keep
you as their go-to person for Nsupply. They will reveal themselves by either
punishing you (silent treatment, threats, spreading lies about you) or by
becoming as manipulatively seductive as they know how (guilting, gifting,
promises you know they won’t keep). You will see, by their own actions, who is
happy for you learning to stand up and be your own person and who feels
threatened by it. And this is valuable information because before you can
devise effective strategies to combat the Ns, you first must know who they are.
There may be a price to pay for your mental and emotional
health, but I guarantee you, it is nowhere near the price you continue to pay
while that narcissist sits inside your head.
This is a lot to digest - I'll be re-reading it over the next few days and absorbing it- but I wanted to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving in the meantime!!!
ReplyDeleteExcellent article, and very inspiring!
ReplyDeleteLike most ACoNs I am highly resourceful. I simply wasn't allowed to have problems when I was young. If I had a problem, the last thing I would do was discuss it with an adult. I just figured it out as best I could. If I couldn't, I was stuck and stayed stuck. I am not surprised you could buy a new car for such a good price because I think ACoNs are a lot more resourceful than most people.
ReplyDeleteBut I realized that I still do this - I can often figure problems out but if I can't, I stay stuck. Asking for help didn't occur to me. It wasn't an option that even entered my head until now. I think asking for help is a sort of skill that I never grew up with.
One day I was walking by a construction site with a companion when a painter accidentally spattered us with paint. I went home and scrubbed all the paint out of my clothes until they looked good as new. My friend went to the site office and asked for compensation. She got $80 which was pretty generous at that time. I was amazed; never in a million years would I have thought of doing that. It never occurred to me that the painter was careless. I was an adult but subconsciously still thought all problems were my fault and I didn't have a right to complain. I think that if I had been 14 and living with my parents when the paint splattering happened, I would have got a stiff lecture along the lines of why can't I watch where I'm going and stay out of the way of people trying to make a living and what's the point of buying me clothes when I just spoil them. It would have been my fault by definition.
"The objective is to be your own person, for good or for ill, and you cannot do that while you carry around the values and beliefs of persons who had only their own best interests at heart."
ReplyDeleteI've been living this truth since going no contact almost a year ago and it has been an eye-opener, for sure. Although I live far apart from my FOO and only had contact with them occasionally, I had to make the decision to cut ties with them in order to truly be able to get away from all their noxious stuff in my head. Also Violet, like you said, it makes a world of difference to start acting for yourself instead of always taking a defensive stand. That's so, so true! I love everything you wrote here. Thanks!
I started to read this and the tears came. I have never read anything that spoke to my condition as a child as what you wrote here. My mother kept me in fear: intimidation and fear and guilt (she had breast cancer when I was 15 and for some reason, I believed that I had something to do with this...) I was also not rebellious...I was too afraid of her and the repercussions....until I ran away from home at 19 and didn't go back ever to live there...5 miles away. That one taste of freedom, me, my violin and my Betsy=Wetsy doll (which I still have at 66) and I knew that I would rather starve than face the emotional abuse as before.
ReplyDeleteBut you are right: we carry that damn narcissist in our heads. It's been forever, and here is no logical reason to carry abuse in the form of our mothers, but we do. I think because we are not twisted as they are: for some reason, we developed compassion, empathy when we were denied it so early on.
I will be reading this marvelous post this week. It will take me a week to digest, but it goes straight to my heart and similar experience.
Thank you.
Jane (Lady Nyo)
Outstanding post, Violet! Thank you!
ReplyDeleteUpon reading this post I realized that I could have written it too. Your story is my story, especially when you write about the favoritism. It was so blatant that other family members noticed it. My MNM was actually so proud when her own mother brought it to her attention that she told me about it years later...wore it like a badge of honor. I have lived with her in my head all my life. She somehow manipulated me enough to take on her guilt and consequently, I had been crippled with guilt for years. I have worked for 13 years through recovery groups, therapy, supportive friends, energy work...anything for relief and change. This NPD mother would follow up a covert verbal assault with "I just wanted to be like you." The difference with her was she was a pretend Christian woman always hiding behind this religion...wore a big thick cross around her neck. No "fruits of the spirit" shown here.
ReplyDeleteDisecting this takes years of commitment and hard work. But we are resourceful and courageous. We can do it. I have to be NC though. I tried LC for 9 years and that didn't work. The players stayed the same, the games were the same, and the abuse continued. Granted, I became better at identifying it and I worked through my fear, but in the end, I was brought down. I'm still human...I got hurt. All because I wanted a relationship with my GC brother who was not even available. He was too busy reporting back to his NM and abusing by proxy. Probably not even aware of what he was doing. My NPD mother is so good at acting pitiful because she wants you to feel sorry for her. She recently lost her husband and she's really putting on a performance now. Even as a little girl, I could see her for who she really was. Her behavior and words were incongruent. I think these narcissists know we see them and by knowing the truth, we automatically (have to) become their scapegoats.