When I was a child I received and incorporated two very distinct messages:
YOU ARE BAD.
YOU MUST BE NICE
Now the obvious dilemma between those two messages presented a problem for me long after I had reached adulthood. If I was bad, how then could I be nice?
This dilemma, however, did not keep me from trying. When I met anyone I tried to be very, very nice. I was gracious, understanding, kind, accepting, non-confrontational and accommodating. Understandably, more often than not, I entered into relationships with people who were emotionally distorted and/or abusive. I thankfully now understand that they were drawn to me as much as I was drawn to them.
With such people, no matter how well I behaved I was bad.; nothing was ever good enough. Now when they called me bad, I FELT BAD and so I tried even harder to be good. But if push came to shove, and I was triggered beyond my threshold, I acted out and then I became bad, in word and indeed, as I was labeled. My overwhelming guilt would paralyze me for a while until I could commit myself to once again trying harder to be nice.
I didn't even need to be told I was bad to FEEL BAD. I felt bad each and every time I ENCOUNTERED an emotionally disordered or abusive person. As I learned more and more about my own unhealthy coping mechanisms and replaced them with healthier, functional behavior to my dismay, I still found myself attracting unhealthy people. And each time I did, I felt BAD!!! I felt that there must be a radar sign on my head that said to these people, "She is available to be disrespected and abused."
I felt that there HAD to be something about me that made me the perfect friend, girlfriend, landlord, employee, associate, student to an emotionally disordered, abusive person. I met them in DROVES -- wherever I went until I was so despondent I didn't even want to leave my house.
But then something happened. I began to see things; things that I had never noticed before. I first noticed that in relating to new people, I tended to gather information about them in my head without reacting to it. I could meet a person who was telling me the most outrageous story and register no response whatsoever. I did not engage emotionally with new people. I kept a certain part of myself removed. As I engaged with them, I noted certain things that they said and certain behaviors. I even recognized them as abusive or intolerant or paranoid but I did not associate any feelings with those observations. I never felt, "Boy this person is abusive and not safe." These feelings would not surface until the person DID something so outrageous or attempted to violate a boundary that I could not tolerate.
Unfortunately, history had proven that I could tolerate a lot. Not feeling my emotions, not reacting to the information I had gathered about a person allowed me to interact with them much longer than was safe and healthy.
This was the first piece of the puzzle.
I next noticed that once the person pushed past my boundary, I would "let them have it" with all the information I had gathered about them. I would "read them" or "tell them about themselves" and yes, there would be a certain sadistic satisfaction at knowing that intellectually, once I had the information at my disposal, I could literally destroy a person's self esteem.
A few things have to be noted in this regard. Number one, you have to understand that up until my being triggered, I was being the most gracious, kind and understanding person. This fostered a sense of trust between myself and the person that encouraged them to tell me their deepest, darkest secrets, things that they would never tell another soul. Now I don't want it to be thought that I was intentionally gathering this information with the understanding that I would use it against them later. The ability to observe behavior and assess it is just something that I developed living in the household that I did growing up. I find human behavior fascinating. I always want to understand why I and others behave as they do, so I observe behavior and note it. The problem has been my inability to use that information at the time that I obtain it.
What I've come to understand about myself is that the first message I received growing up has been in operation and has kept me from acting on what I learn about a person. I was taught: You are bad. So to combat this inner conviction, I purposed to be ULTRA GOOD. To give no one even a hint of a reason to accuse me. Doing so took all of my effort and attention. There was no room to connect to my thoughts and have emotional feelings about how a person was speaking to me and treating me.
Long ago, as a coping mechanism, I learned to split my feelings from my thoughts. If a man said something disrespectful or outrageous, I felt NOTHING -- not outraged, not disrespect, not revulsion. This continued until I was triggered.
So to recap, I discovered that I don't emotionally connect to the thoughts that I have until triggered. I also discovered once triggered, I gave myself permission to then react to the way I had been treated because now I had just cause. I was now in the right and the person deserved to be dressed down. I couldn't allow myself to feel angry or violated unless I had a real reason!
It is curious to note that in dealing with an abusive, emotionally distant, disordered person I was dealing with a person who had a very fragile ego and was attempting to use me to make themselves feel whole. I, also having a fragile ego, attempted to use them as well, to validate me as the "good girl". Once I was pushed past my tolerance for abuse, I fought back, lashing out. This in turn supported my fragile ego, and helped me to feel empowered at the expense of the other person - the same thing that the person was attempting to do to me!!!!
In this way, I have been able to see how the abusive, emotionally distant and disordered people I've attracted are actually mirror images of myself.
So now we move on to my second revelation. Aware now that I was battling an inner conviction that I was bad and attempting to be nice enough and good enough to those who were unhealthy and unsafe so that they could validate me, I now began to look at how I did so.
I thought of how many people through out the day, whom I consider unhealthy, emotionally distant or down right abusive, engage with me and I came to a startling conclusion.
In being charming, gracious, understanding and attentive, I made the perfect candidate for providing a disordered person with what they craved the most -- an audience!!!! I suddenly realized that disordered people were ALWAYS trying to recruit a person to co-sign their reality, it's just that not everyone responded.
Those who had healthy boundaries either did not interact with disordered people at all or they maintained a healthy distance that sent a clear message: I will not tolerate any abuse.
I, on the other hand, focused only on coming across as a "good girl" and did not have that healthy buffer between unsafe people and myself.
Once I made that startling discovery I became able to see myself in a new light. The old lie, the internal message that said I was bad began to change into a new internal message. YOU ARE GOOD, BUT YOUR CHOICES ARE BAD.
So now I am determined to change my choices. In contemplating how I might do so, I came to the most startling revelation of all.
As a child my mother could not relate to me. Her own self-loathing and corrupted self-image caused her to reject my love and goodness and project her own badness onto me. She could not relate to me as myself, she needed to make me as she was so that she could "see me". Thus I became BAD.
As an adult I see the same reoccurring pattern. People of all walks of life are attracted to me. I am smart, attractive, articulate, kind and generous. But when these people are unhealthy, no matter how "good" these qualities are they cannot abide by them in me! They are envious. They see in me qualities that they would like to possess but do not. Because they do not have those qualities, they find it hard to relate to me, the genuine person that I am. They begrudge me for having those good qualities because it so clearly shows what qualities they lack, and so they seek to destroy the "goodness" in me.
THAT IS THE TRIGGER.
When I start to feel that the person is trying to change who I am, to make me into a bad person because the same light in me which attracted them in the first place has now revealed their own lack, their own self-loathing, I fight back, with a vengeance.
The strength of my attack is commensurate with my perception of the threat that I am under -- the threat of the annihilation of myself.
So often in my past the continuing struggle has been the other person attempting to destroy that which I am and replace it with an ugly, distorted label of who I was, for the sole reason of then being able to connect to me.
I have fought against that my whole, entire life.
Very interestingly, this very same scenario played out tonight on an online chat forum. A person who suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder took offense at my utilization of the term "personality disorder" when discussing dysfunctional behavior. I was primarily talking about Narcissistic Personality Disorder but she, obviously being BPD, took personal offense and felt that the wording was too broad and could mistakenly be interpreted as meaning Borderline Personality Disorder. The accusation came out of the blue that I was purposely using the term "personality disorder" to address her because I knew she had asked that the term not be used. I was told, not by her, but by another person she recruited to speak for her, that she found it hurtful and felt I wanted to purposely hurt her.
On the heals of that accusation, came an assessment that I, myself, must be NPD, as she has dealt with people like that in the past who had no conscience about their behavior. Another one of her confidants had set the conversation up, speaking up BEFORE HER and hinting that there was a person who was upset by something I'd written and suggesting that conversations about mental disorders should no longer be discussed. I balked at the request for censorship and asked specifically for anyone who felt that I had written something offensive to address me directly. She piped up then, claiming that she had told me several times how hurtful my use of "personality disorder" was and I was purposely ignoring her. She also said I wanted to hurt her and took pleasure in it.
I told her that she NEVER addressed me at all,but this information was of course ignored. I pointed out that I always followed the words, "personality disorder" with, "such as Narcissistic Pervasive Development Disorder", but she continued to maintain that I was purposely being obtuse and mysterious, hinting that I was talking about all disorders but most especially BPD.
You can image that nothing I said could dissuade her from her belief that she was being persecuted. The other two people who had appointed themselves her spokesperson did not help. They instigated and launched their own personal attacks against me.
I am proud to say not once did I act out or feel triggered. I apologized for the confusion and said I did not realize that those words offended her and would not use them again. My apology was ignored. I was called a bully and rude. I once again apologized and asked the two self-appointed spokespersons to allow the woman and myself to resolve this issue without their interference. I was ignored.
I was called narcissistic and self-centered. I reiterated that I was sorry and appealed to the woman to let us remember that we both grew up in abusive homes. I told her that I know trusting is difficult but I wanted her to know that I wanted only good for her and was truly sorry. My apology was ignored. Two messages came from the appointed spokesperson calling question to my intentions, motives and the truth of what I was saying. I made a statement that I had apologized and could do nothing more than that. I asked if there was anything that I could say or do that would help them see the sincerity of my words?
I want to point out here that my continual apology was my being true to myself. I was sincerely sorry for her obvious self-induced anguish, and I truly had not known that there was an issue with what I wrote. I could have pointed out that the woman was acting in typical BPD fashion, overreacting to a simple issue, taking words spoken in general personally, engaging in black and white, first you are good now you are bad behavior, and behaving in a way that was hostile and mean, but I kept that knowledge to myself. I kept that knowledge to myself because I had already mentally categorized this person as someone who is unsafe to deal with and made a note to no longer engage her. I will not be interacting with her again.
I am beginning to learn how to prevent a person from remaking me in their own image, by maintain my own self, despite their anger and attacks and disparaging remarks.
I am who I am, and I am beginning to know it from the core of my being!
Footnote: I want to also add that what I've noticed is that people who are unsafe in this way, who are looking for others to validate their identity and reality never seem to go away. In borderline fashion, they blow up at you and attack you and then once a little time has gone by (a minute, an hour, a day, years) they try to engage you as if nothing has happened. They seem to have abandonment/rejection as their primary triggers and try over and over again to get a reaction/response. Their actions say: If you do not respond to me the way I want you to, I ( as I imagine myself) do not exist. An honest response to their dysfunctional behavior highlights the dysfunction in themselves, something that they cannot tolerate. No response to their dysfunctional behavior leaves them in a frenzy of need, a need to have the false, unhealthy dysfunctional self validated. This is why when attempting to deal with a person like this, you are damned if you do and damned if you don't.
This dilemma, however, did not keep me from trying. When I met anyone I tried to be very, very nice. I was gracious, understanding, kind, accepting, non-confrontational and accommodating. Understandably, more often than not, I entered into relationships with people who were emotionally distorted and/or abusive. I thankfully now understand that they were drawn to me as much as I was drawn to them.
With such people, no matter how well I behaved I was bad.; nothing was ever good enough. Now when they called me bad, I FELT BAD and so I tried even harder to be good. But if push came to shove, and I was triggered beyond my threshold, I acted out and then I became bad, in word and indeed, as I was labeled. My overwhelming guilt would paralyze me for a while until I could commit myself to once again trying harder to be nice.
I didn't even need to be told I was bad to FEEL BAD. I felt bad each and every time I ENCOUNTERED an emotionally disordered or abusive person. As I learned more and more about my own unhealthy coping mechanisms and replaced them with healthier, functional behavior to my dismay, I still found myself attracting unhealthy people. And each time I did, I felt BAD!!! I felt that there must be a radar sign on my head that said to these people, "She is available to be disrespected and abused."
I felt that there HAD to be something about me that made me the perfect friend, girlfriend, landlord, employee, associate, student to an emotionally disordered, abusive person. I met them in DROVES -- wherever I went until I was so despondent I didn't even want to leave my house.
But then something happened. I began to see things; things that I had never noticed before. I first noticed that in relating to new people, I tended to gather information about them in my head without reacting to it. I could meet a person who was telling me the most outrageous story and register no response whatsoever. I did not engage emotionally with new people. I kept a certain part of myself removed. As I engaged with them, I noted certain things that they said and certain behaviors. I even recognized them as abusive or intolerant or paranoid but I did not associate any feelings with those observations. I never felt, "Boy this person is abusive and not safe." These feelings would not surface until the person DID something so outrageous or attempted to violate a boundary that I could not tolerate.
Unfortunately, history had proven that I could tolerate a lot. Not feeling my emotions, not reacting to the information I had gathered about a person allowed me to interact with them much longer than was safe and healthy.
This was the first piece of the puzzle.
I next noticed that once the person pushed past my boundary, I would "let them have it" with all the information I had gathered about them. I would "read them" or "tell them about themselves" and yes, there would be a certain sadistic satisfaction at knowing that intellectually, once I had the information at my disposal, I could literally destroy a person's self esteem.
A few things have to be noted in this regard. Number one, you have to understand that up until my being triggered, I was being the most gracious, kind and understanding person. This fostered a sense of trust between myself and the person that encouraged them to tell me their deepest, darkest secrets, things that they would never tell another soul. Now I don't want it to be thought that I was intentionally gathering this information with the understanding that I would use it against them later. The ability to observe behavior and assess it is just something that I developed living in the household that I did growing up. I find human behavior fascinating. I always want to understand why I and others behave as they do, so I observe behavior and note it. The problem has been my inability to use that information at the time that I obtain it.
What I've come to understand about myself is that the first message I received growing up has been in operation and has kept me from acting on what I learn about a person. I was taught: You are bad. So to combat this inner conviction, I purposed to be ULTRA GOOD. To give no one even a hint of a reason to accuse me. Doing so took all of my effort and attention. There was no room to connect to my thoughts and have emotional feelings about how a person was speaking to me and treating me.
Long ago, as a coping mechanism, I learned to split my feelings from my thoughts. If a man said something disrespectful or outrageous, I felt NOTHING -- not outraged, not disrespect, not revulsion. This continued until I was triggered.
So to recap, I discovered that I don't emotionally connect to the thoughts that I have until triggered. I also discovered once triggered, I gave myself permission to then react to the way I had been treated because now I had just cause. I was now in the right and the person deserved to be dressed down. I couldn't allow myself to feel angry or violated unless I had a real reason!
It is curious to note that in dealing with an abusive, emotionally distant, disordered person I was dealing with a person who had a very fragile ego and was attempting to use me to make themselves feel whole. I, also having a fragile ego, attempted to use them as well, to validate me as the "good girl". Once I was pushed past my tolerance for abuse, I fought back, lashing out. This in turn supported my fragile ego, and helped me to feel empowered at the expense of the other person - the same thing that the person was attempting to do to me!!!!
In this way, I have been able to see how the abusive, emotionally distant and disordered people I've attracted are actually mirror images of myself.
So now we move on to my second revelation. Aware now that I was battling an inner conviction that I was bad and attempting to be nice enough and good enough to those who were unhealthy and unsafe so that they could validate me, I now began to look at how I did so.
I thought of how many people through out the day, whom I consider unhealthy, emotionally distant or down right abusive, engage with me and I came to a startling conclusion.
In being charming, gracious, understanding and attentive, I made the perfect candidate for providing a disordered person with what they craved the most -- an audience!!!! I suddenly realized that disordered people were ALWAYS trying to recruit a person to co-sign their reality, it's just that not everyone responded.
Those who had healthy boundaries either did not interact with disordered people at all or they maintained a healthy distance that sent a clear message: I will not tolerate any abuse.
I, on the other hand, focused only on coming across as a "good girl" and did not have that healthy buffer between unsafe people and myself.
Once I made that startling discovery I became able to see myself in a new light. The old lie, the internal message that said I was bad began to change into a new internal message. YOU ARE GOOD, BUT YOUR CHOICES ARE BAD.
So now I am determined to change my choices. In contemplating how I might do so, I came to the most startling revelation of all.
As a child my mother could not relate to me. Her own self-loathing and corrupted self-image caused her to reject my love and goodness and project her own badness onto me. She could not relate to me as myself, she needed to make me as she was so that she could "see me". Thus I became BAD.
As an adult I see the same reoccurring pattern. People of all walks of life are attracted to me. I am smart, attractive, articulate, kind and generous. But when these people are unhealthy, no matter how "good" these qualities are they cannot abide by them in me! They are envious. They see in me qualities that they would like to possess but do not. Because they do not have those qualities, they find it hard to relate to me, the genuine person that I am. They begrudge me for having those good qualities because it so clearly shows what qualities they lack, and so they seek to destroy the "goodness" in me.
THAT IS THE TRIGGER.
When I start to feel that the person is trying to change who I am, to make me into a bad person because the same light in me which attracted them in the first place has now revealed their own lack, their own self-loathing, I fight back, with a vengeance.
The strength of my attack is commensurate with my perception of the threat that I am under -- the threat of the annihilation of myself.
So often in my past the continuing struggle has been the other person attempting to destroy that which I am and replace it with an ugly, distorted label of who I was, for the sole reason of then being able to connect to me.
I have fought against that my whole, entire life.
Very interestingly, this very same scenario played out tonight on an online chat forum. A person who suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder took offense at my utilization of the term "personality disorder" when discussing dysfunctional behavior. I was primarily talking about Narcissistic Personality Disorder but she, obviously being BPD, took personal offense and felt that the wording was too broad and could mistakenly be interpreted as meaning Borderline Personality Disorder. The accusation came out of the blue that I was purposely using the term "personality disorder" to address her because I knew she had asked that the term not be used. I was told, not by her, but by another person she recruited to speak for her, that she found it hurtful and felt I wanted to purposely hurt her.
On the heals of that accusation, came an assessment that I, myself, must be NPD, as she has dealt with people like that in the past who had no conscience about their behavior. Another one of her confidants had set the conversation up, speaking up BEFORE HER and hinting that there was a person who was upset by something I'd written and suggesting that conversations about mental disorders should no longer be discussed. I balked at the request for censorship and asked specifically for anyone who felt that I had written something offensive to address me directly. She piped up then, claiming that she had told me several times how hurtful my use of "personality disorder" was and I was purposely ignoring her. She also said I wanted to hurt her and took pleasure in it.
I told her that she NEVER addressed me at all,but this information was of course ignored. I pointed out that I always followed the words, "personality disorder" with, "such as Narcissistic Pervasive Development Disorder", but she continued to maintain that I was purposely being obtuse and mysterious, hinting that I was talking about all disorders but most especially BPD.
You can image that nothing I said could dissuade her from her belief that she was being persecuted. The other two people who had appointed themselves her spokesperson did not help. They instigated and launched their own personal attacks against me.
I am proud to say not once did I act out or feel triggered. I apologized for the confusion and said I did not realize that those words offended her and would not use them again. My apology was ignored. I was called a bully and rude. I once again apologized and asked the two self-appointed spokespersons to allow the woman and myself to resolve this issue without their interference. I was ignored.
I was called narcissistic and self-centered. I reiterated that I was sorry and appealed to the woman to let us remember that we both grew up in abusive homes. I told her that I know trusting is difficult but I wanted her to know that I wanted only good for her and was truly sorry. My apology was ignored. Two messages came from the appointed spokesperson calling question to my intentions, motives and the truth of what I was saying. I made a statement that I had apologized and could do nothing more than that. I asked if there was anything that I could say or do that would help them see the sincerity of my words?
I want to point out here that my continual apology was my being true to myself. I was sincerely sorry for her obvious self-induced anguish, and I truly had not known that there was an issue with what I wrote. I could have pointed out that the woman was acting in typical BPD fashion, overreacting to a simple issue, taking words spoken in general personally, engaging in black and white, first you are good now you are bad behavior, and behaving in a way that was hostile and mean, but I kept that knowledge to myself. I kept that knowledge to myself because I had already mentally categorized this person as someone who is unsafe to deal with and made a note to no longer engage her. I will not be interacting with her again.
I am beginning to learn how to prevent a person from remaking me in their own image, by maintain my own self, despite their anger and attacks and disparaging remarks.
I am who I am, and I am beginning to know it from the core of my being!
Footnote: I want to also add that what I've noticed is that people who are unsafe in this way, who are looking for others to validate their identity and reality never seem to go away. In borderline fashion, they blow up at you and attack you and then once a little time has gone by (a minute, an hour, a day, years) they try to engage you as if nothing has happened. They seem to have abandonment/rejection as their primary triggers and try over and over again to get a reaction/response. Their actions say: If you do not respond to me the way I want you to, I ( as I imagine myself) do not exist. An honest response to their dysfunctional behavior highlights the dysfunction in themselves, something that they cannot tolerate. No response to their dysfunctional behavior leaves them in a frenzy of need, a need to have the false, unhealthy dysfunctional self validated. This is why when attempting to deal with a person like this, you are damned if you do and damned if you don't.
0 comments:
Post a Comment