When I was growing up, I had a lot of awkward moments in my life. Shocking, I know! Having skipped kindergarten made me a little socially awkward, and being a truth-teller in a world that valued social grace and smoothing things over didn't help. But many times I would get into a situation where I just didn't know what to do, and I would freeze up, smile and just nod politely until the situation ended. I didn't know what to say or do. I didn't know how to react. I almost left the room until it was over; we'd re-entered the normal universe and I could recognize what was going on.
At the time, I just glossed over it, pushed it away like it was nothing. I didn't know what to think, so I didn't think about it. But a few years ago, I read that the scientific community had expanded the concept of "Fight or Flight" to include "Fight, Flight, or Freeze," and I just about shouted in recognition. This was exactly what I'd been doing!
Throughout my childhood, I was under constant stress, not knowing if or when I was going to be yelled at, who was going to be angry about what. As children, we were too small to fight, and we couldn't flee from the house we lived in. I learned to freeze, to just hold still and try not to attract any attention. If I just stayed still, maybe they wouldn't notice me. Maybe I wouldn't get yelled at. Maybe these angry, vengeful beings wouldn't hurt me if I was quiet and apologetic enough.
Looking back, I think this behavior kicked in when I was in awkward or stressful situations, as one kind of post-traumatic stress reaction. When I was in middle school, one of my schoolmates talked with me about sex. She was a good friend, but I wasn't as knowledgeable as she was, and I didn't know what to say. If I had been calm, I would have asked questions and found things out and learned from her - I really needed to know some of these things for future reference! Instead, I froze and just survived the conversation instead of living in it.
The biggest trigger for this behavior was not just that I didn't know what to say. It's that I didn't know the *exact* right thing to say. I grew up as a gold star girl, meaning that sometimes the only positive feedback I got was giving the right answers in school. I knew the answers, and I knew what to do in a classroom. But at home, my mom made fun of almost everything I said, and if I said anything out in the world, she berated me later for saying it wrong, or told me I wasn't supposed to be talking at all. So even when she was nowhere near me, I could hear her voice in my ears, telling me I was going to say the wrong thing, and I couldn't say anything. Especially with a friendship on the line, which is something I could not afford to lose.
If I was embarrassed about something, I couldn't bring myself to speak any words about it, choosing instead to block it out completely. If something became difficult, or I sensed that someone was angry with me, or there was conflict with a roommate, I would make a joke, defer to them, bend over backwards, anything to avoid the conflict. But if it came to conflict, I was gone, daddy, gone. If I could leave, I would; if there was a conversation, I was nodding and smiling, and I am sure I wasn't really there.
I missed a lot, in those frozen moments. I'm sorry if one of them was with you.
Saturday, September 28, 2019
Monday, February 18, 2019
Peace Brings Confusion; or Dammit, I Know There Were Things I Wanted To Do Today
Most of the time children of narcissists will talk about what they lost by living in their families, trying to process their grief and anger, even just naming the things they didn't know were supposed to be theirs. Comfort when you're in pain, help when you need it, trust in other people - these are so rare as to be unrecognizable when they do appear. When people do treat you right, you think they're trying to trick you. When you feel comfortable, you tense up and look around to see what's coming your way.
But one thing that I've learned to appreciate is my ability to handle emergencies. When something bad happens, I am ready to go, ready to cope, adrenaline pumping and saving whatever day may need to be saved. Need helping moving with no notice? I can find boxes and help you pack. Need a ride three hours away to get home? No problem; I can drive you there. Receive bad news over the phone and not sure if you can get home safely? Here I am, driving behind you, making sure all is well.
I can handle my own emergencies too - moving out of an abusive boyfriend's apartment, writing a paper in the middle of the night, driving seven hours to pick up a desperate friend. All of these things are handled, usually by buying a chunk of junk food, cracking jokes with the darkest of humor, and being supportive, funny, and acting like it's nothing. Just chugging along, getting through it, getting things done.
I was trained for this. My parents were hot and cold, either hilarious, jovial, expansive, possibly slightly drunk, or rigid, cold, angry, yelling, even storming. Also possibly slightly drunk. You never knew which version you would get. Sometimes they weren't on the same page, and one would defend me against the other. THAT was a headtrip, and really disconcerting. Mom would yell at me for something innocuous, Dad would defend me, and then next day they'd switch places. In a month, the other parent would complain about the same trait they'd defended last time!
Regardless, I knew how to handle what was coming down the pike, no matter what it was, when it was, how it was delivered. From a very early age, I was protective of my siblings, and my method was to get everything done as quickly as possible and then hide upstairs in my room. No relaxing unless they were both in the good mood, and even then, stay poised and ready for them to flip. Kitchen's dirty and they're coming up the driveway? Quick! Run to the kitchen and do as much as you can at lightning speed. Realize you forgot to start the laundry? Oh lordy, run to the utility room and see if you can make it look like it's been running for hours; find some clean stuff and stand there folding it like you washed it yourself.
I learned to fake industry. I learned to lie. I learned to get things done. Adrenaline and fear were my friends, and while it didn't work all the time, sometimes it would be enough to get the kitchen straightened and sprint upstairs, hold still and wait for an explosion. If none was forthcoming, I might dodge the anger this time.
I appreciate my ability to handle emergencies. It's helped me in a lot of circumstances. (Of course, most of those circumstances involved my inability to know a good guy from an abusive asshole, due to my upbringing, but that's beside the point. FOR NOW.)
However.
What I don't know is how to relax. I know how to get things done, and in the normal course of events, I need to get things done. I have a stressful and demanding job. I have a homestead, husband, and four cats. I write things now and again. But when I'm alone, and things are in their place, and I've completed the chores and planned the meals and prepped ALL the things ----
I'm lost.
I don't know how to act, how to start doing anything I want to do. WANT to do. Wanting to do something was never really an option. I wanted to be left alone and allowed to read so I could escape my reality. I wanted to have a parent that supported and loved and saw me for who I was. But that was so far out of my experience that I didn't know it was missing. I was gaslighted for so long that I thought my parents were wonderful, only realizing decades later the extent of their abuse.
So I have peace and quiet right now. I have my chores done. And I know there were things that I didn't have time for this week. What were they? Will I do them when I remember? How do I motivate myself without fear and adrenaline and anger? Or will I just eat sugar, play hours of computer games, watch buckets of television and give myself a headache doing the same thing I've done hundreds of times instead.
When I was in my twenties, I moved into an apartment, and months later, I still had boxes of books and other stuff stacked here and there. A guy I was semi-dating spent the night at my place, and in the morning, I woke up before he did, and started cleaning up, setting up shelves (quietly) and stacking my books on the shelves. I did more work in the hour before he woke up than I'd done in the last month of living there by myself. His energy, his presence in the apartment gave me impetus. I wasn't scared of him, but there's something about having someone else around that gives me focus, keeps me from shutting down and hiding, or even just escaping into television or books. I'm no longer alone upstairs in my room, hiding away from the monsters and getting as far away as I can before they yell up the stairs and yank me back into that life. I'm living - not necessarily for that person, but their presence grounds me, keeps me from drifting away into the surreality I used to dwell in just to survive.
In those days, I only knew who I was in the world with other people as guideposts. These days I know who I am when I'm alone; I've come that far. But I still have trouble avoiding the aimless ricochet as I bounce from mindless task to mindless task. I'm still trying to escape a reality that is long dead, running on the hamster wheel in a cage that was broken years ago. There is freedom all around me and yet I'm still hanging out in the cell, not knowing how to stand up and walk away.
But one thing that I've learned to appreciate is my ability to handle emergencies. When something bad happens, I am ready to go, ready to cope, adrenaline pumping and saving whatever day may need to be saved. Need helping moving with no notice? I can find boxes and help you pack. Need a ride three hours away to get home? No problem; I can drive you there. Receive bad news over the phone and not sure if you can get home safely? Here I am, driving behind you, making sure all is well.
I can handle my own emergencies too - moving out of an abusive boyfriend's apartment, writing a paper in the middle of the night, driving seven hours to pick up a desperate friend. All of these things are handled, usually by buying a chunk of junk food, cracking jokes with the darkest of humor, and being supportive, funny, and acting like it's nothing. Just chugging along, getting through it, getting things done.
I was trained for this. My parents were hot and cold, either hilarious, jovial, expansive, possibly slightly drunk, or rigid, cold, angry, yelling, even storming. Also possibly slightly drunk. You never knew which version you would get. Sometimes they weren't on the same page, and one would defend me against the other. THAT was a headtrip, and really disconcerting. Mom would yell at me for something innocuous, Dad would defend me, and then next day they'd switch places. In a month, the other parent would complain about the same trait they'd defended last time!
Regardless, I knew how to handle what was coming down the pike, no matter what it was, when it was, how it was delivered. From a very early age, I was protective of my siblings, and my method was to get everything done as quickly as possible and then hide upstairs in my room. No relaxing unless they were both in the good mood, and even then, stay poised and ready for them to flip. Kitchen's dirty and they're coming up the driveway? Quick! Run to the kitchen and do as much as you can at lightning speed. Realize you forgot to start the laundry? Oh lordy, run to the utility room and see if you can make it look like it's been running for hours; find some clean stuff and stand there folding it like you washed it yourself.
I learned to fake industry. I learned to lie. I learned to get things done. Adrenaline and fear were my friends, and while it didn't work all the time, sometimes it would be enough to get the kitchen straightened and sprint upstairs, hold still and wait for an explosion. If none was forthcoming, I might dodge the anger this time.
I appreciate my ability to handle emergencies. It's helped me in a lot of circumstances. (Of course, most of those circumstances involved my inability to know a good guy from an abusive asshole, due to my upbringing, but that's beside the point. FOR NOW.)
However.
What I don't know is how to relax. I know how to get things done, and in the normal course of events, I need to get things done. I have a stressful and demanding job. I have a homestead, husband, and four cats. I write things now and again. But when I'm alone, and things are in their place, and I've completed the chores and planned the meals and prepped ALL the things ----
I'm lost.
I don't know how to act, how to start doing anything I want to do. WANT to do. Wanting to do something was never really an option. I wanted to be left alone and allowed to read so I could escape my reality. I wanted to have a parent that supported and loved and saw me for who I was. But that was so far out of my experience that I didn't know it was missing. I was gaslighted for so long that I thought my parents were wonderful, only realizing decades later the extent of their abuse.
So I have peace and quiet right now. I have my chores done. And I know there were things that I didn't have time for this week. What were they? Will I do them when I remember? How do I motivate myself without fear and adrenaline and anger? Or will I just eat sugar, play hours of computer games, watch buckets of television and give myself a headache doing the same thing I've done hundreds of times instead.
When I was in my twenties, I moved into an apartment, and months later, I still had boxes of books and other stuff stacked here and there. A guy I was semi-dating spent the night at my place, and in the morning, I woke up before he did, and started cleaning up, setting up shelves (quietly) and stacking my books on the shelves. I did more work in the hour before he woke up than I'd done in the last month of living there by myself. His energy, his presence in the apartment gave me impetus. I wasn't scared of him, but there's something about having someone else around that gives me focus, keeps me from shutting down and hiding, or even just escaping into television or books. I'm no longer alone upstairs in my room, hiding away from the monsters and getting as far away as I can before they yell up the stairs and yank me back into that life. I'm living - not necessarily for that person, but their presence grounds me, keeps me from drifting away into the surreality I used to dwell in just to survive.
In those days, I only knew who I was in the world with other people as guideposts. These days I know who I am when I'm alone; I've come that far. But I still have trouble avoiding the aimless ricochet as I bounce from mindless task to mindless task. I'm still trying to escape a reality that is long dead, running on the hamster wheel in a cage that was broken years ago. There is freedom all around me and yet I'm still hanging out in the cell, not knowing how to stand up and walk away.
Sunday, January 27, 2019
How Can You Go Out In Public Dressed Like That??!!
When you grow up in the household of a narcissist, you grow up as a bonsai tree; you're shaped into whatever your narcissist wants you to be. Your personality, your reactions, your feelings - they're all dictated under a steady stream of rules. What the narcissist thinks, feels, believes: these become your reality, the box you must live inside to keep their approval or at least tolerance. Any opinion you may have outside of those dictates is dangerous. As a child, you learn to keep those questions inside. If your narcissist is violent or scary, you believe that your life hangs in the balance, and you may be right.
You become a receiver, knowing exactly what they're thinking at any point in time. You know their moods from the way the car sounds coming up the driveway, and your adrenaline hits in a certain way when the tires sound more crunchy, or the car moves more quickly. The slightest different in the door opening will send you into controlled panic: What did I do wrong today? Is the house completely spotless? Did I forget to do something they left on their list/they asked me to do this morning/they complained about two months ago and haven't mentioned since? What Will Be My Crime Today?
You become completely attuned to your narcissist. You know what they're thinking and feeling; you know how they would react to something, and you know you'd better have that same reaction if you don't want to be yelled at.
So what happens when you step outside into the wider world? Here's what happened with me.
My mom was completely focused on how things looked. This is really common among narcissists; they always require perfection, and they're terrified of people seeing through their disguise to the human imperfection within. I was told I was ugly so many times that I believed it. My mom would pick one thing to criticize every day, and after years of contempt barely masked as concern, I believed I was fat. (I'm pretty sure 5'9" and 150 pounds doesn't qualify.) I'm lucky I never developed an eating disorder. But clothes, stomach, shoulders - all were fair game. Looking back, my mom purposely sabotaged my appearance for years, frying my hair with bad home permanents every six months, yanking on my tender scalp, the chemicals burning my eyes. She did this all with a self-sacrificial air, since she was helping me, sacrificing her time on the weekend to "make me acceptable." By my sophomore year in high school, I subconsciously dodged her plans and cut my hair short in a cut of my own design. For the most part, I've had a version of that cut ever since.
Once I hit college, I wore whatever the hell I wanted. I pushed back on society's appearance standards. I didn't believe that I would ever measure up to society's standards if I dressed by their rules - years of conditioning told me I was ugly - so I did what a lot of people do when they're raised in a pressure cooker: I opted out. I shaved my legs, but only in stripes. I wore jean jackets with my favorite song quotes written on them. One of my favorite outfits was a black tshirt with a crossbones and smiley face, with tiger striped tights, cut off jeans & jean jacket, black fingerless gloves, and two chains around my wrists. The Far Side cartoon says it best:
For me, appearance was a river of fire, so I just hopped over and opted out and said nope. In later years, I'd find really nice vintage dresses, and wear them with Converse high tops. Caring about appearances was shallow, hypocritical, and all of the other things I didn't want to be. The thing that scared me the most was becoming like MY MOTHER. So I walked away from appearance entirely.
Over the years, I've worked on this off and on. I know I'm not ugly, but that's one of my biggest insecurities. When I feel bad about anything, my first thought is usually about how gross I look, or fat I've gotten, or how badly I dress. And then I hate myself for having those thoughts, because those thoughts don't really belong to me. They're hers, and I hate my default settings - that I allow her programming to override what I really believe in. I'm not someone who cares about appearances, and that's something that's really important to me. But if I've developed one of my core values in opposition to someone, is it really my core value? Or just a reaction to how I was raised?
What a nest of snakes it becomes, and a lot of ways just like an ouroboros. But these things I rest on: I'm happy in my life. I know who I am. I will always struggle against how I was raised and the things I was taught had value. And allowing that struggle is the most revolutionary thing I can do. I'm not a bad person because I struggle with these things. I'm a good person because I love myself even as I struggle with these things. I can say, Yes, this is hard. Yes, this is tough. Yes, this isn't fair. And you deserve love even as you struggle. You deserve your freedom, your life, your family of choice and your kitties. You deserve to be you, and to be happy.
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