This article continues our discussion of anger as a stage of healing after a trauma or an extended trauma, such a relationship with a sociopath.
I have a friend who has been angry for all the years I have known her. She talks about being insulted or scapegoated at work, despite taking responsibilities well beyond her job title for the welfare of the company. She has been instrumental in eliminating several people who managed her. More people were hired and she is still talking about how she is mistreated.
I have another friend who calls me to talk about how his boss doesn’t appreciate him. He details how he has been swindled out of bonuses, how there is never a word of praise, despite the fact that his personal efforts have been responsible for major changes in the company.
Both of these two have been working for these companies for years and refuse to leave their jobs. Instead, they “practice” their resentments, gathering stories to defend their feelings, performing their jobs in ways that prove them not only blameless but deserving of praise, and sharing their grievances with anyone who will listen.
To prepare for this article, I had a conversation with one of them, who reminded me of when I was in a similar situation. Working for a CEO who refused to give me a title or credit for marketing work that put his company “on the map.” Since I left there, two other people have taken credit for my work in their resumes and public statements. Just talking about it with my friend brought up all the old stories related to the resentment and injury I felt at the time.
Embedded anger
Although these were professional situations, the feelings that my friends and I experienced were not different from the ones I experienced in my relationship with a man I believe to be a sociopath. Beyond all the usual feelings about lack of appreciation, acknowledgment or validation, these feelings had another characteristic. That is, we lived with them for a long time.
My two friends are still living with these feelings, and when I talk to them now, at least once in the conversation I suggest, “You’re an angry person.” Though I’ve said this to them before, they usually pause as though it were the first time they ever heard it. Then they either ignore it (because they don’t think of themselves as angry, only aggrieved), or briefly defend themselves against the comment, saying they have reason to be, before they start telling their stories again.
The fact is that they do have reason to be, as I did, but their anger is a lot older than their work situations. They were practicing it before they took these jobs. They were accustomed to dealing with people who triggered their anger, and they were accustomed to living in circumstances that made them feel hurt and resentful. They “handled it” by trying to do a better job, or getting into power struggles about what is due them, or by telling their stories to sympathetic friends.
What they were not accustomed to doing was deciding that their internal discomfort had reached a level where they needed to make a change. At least not before things got really, really bad. When they got sick. Or started blowing up over small things. Or got so stressed they began making mistakes. Or got in trouble with drugs or food or shopping to make themselves feel better.
It’s not just that they were habituated to abuse. They were habituated to living with old anger. They lived as a matter of course with resentments that would have made healthier people run for the hills from the situation that was causing their distress, or to reframe the situation as a temporary necessity while they searched actively for alternatives.
Paradoxical responses to abuse
A therapist once explained to me a “paradoxical response” observed in some victims of abuse. Rather than responding appropriately — either defending themselves or fleeing — they engaged in “caring” behavior. They became concerned about the wellbeing of the perpetrator, and began providing service to cheer them up or relieve their stresses. As all of us on this LoveFraud know, this response is based on our desire — no, our need — to believe that our abuser is really a good soul or that s/he really loves us or both.
Many of us are paradoxical responders. And what happens to those feelings of anger that we are not experiencing or acting on?
Until these relationships, for many of us, the question didn’t matter. Many of us also are high performers, the “success stories” coming out of backgrounds that might have turned other people into addicts or underachievers or emotional cripples. Instead, we develop a kind of genius at survival through giving. We believe in salvation through love, and we create our own success through helping professions of various sorts.
We do the same in our personal relationships, seeking emotional security by giving generously. We deal with the paradoxes of depending on people who are needy as we are, burying our resentments at their failures to understand how much we have invested or how well we are making up for their weaknesses or how, in arguments or in careless statements, they characterize us by our weaknesses.
When we do get angry, we express our grief at not being understood or appreciated, our disappointment that we are not getting what we hoped from our investments, our frustrations that the other person doesn’t perform the simple requirements of our happiness — a little more attention, affection or thanks. It doesn’t occur to us to rebel against the structure of these relationships, to say we are sick and tired of tiptoeing around their egos and their needs, because we feel we have no right to say these things. We are asking the same thing of them.
When we finally do walk away — from the job or the relationship — we have feelings we do not feel comfortable expressing. We discuss our past in understanding terms. We understand the other people. We understand ourselves. But deep inside ourselves, the thing we do not talk about is contempt. That emotion that is so close to shame. We feel contempt for their shortcomings. And because we too were in the room with them, we feel contempt for ourselves. And this is difficult to contemplate, much less talk about it. But like a song we can’t get out of our minds, this feeling is like a squatter we have trouble shooing away.
Emotional contagion
I know why these friends are attracted to me. I am a good listener. They also think I may have answers to their situations. But the more interesting question is: Why am I attracted to them? Why are so many of my friends people who see themselves as aggrieved, but who I see as people whose lives are shaped by a deep level of buried anger they don’t even recognize?
My conversations with them tend to bring up old memories of my own. In fact, these friends like to refer to my stories. Times when I felt badly repaid for good efforts. My girlfriend, in particular, who knew me through the years of my relationship with the sociopath and employment with that CEO, likes to bring up these stories and sympathize with me or offer advice. It’s what she wants from me, and assumes it is what I want from her.
But it’s not what I want. I get off these calls feeling my anger. Seeing it all again. And I do what I do with anger. I dive into it, searching for knowledge. I value the anger, because I have the habit of forgetting it, forgiving too soon before I really am finished with learning what it has to tell me. I’ve done the exercise so often now that I know what I’m going to find. First, I am angry because of what I lost — the investments, the time, the benefits I expected to get back. Then, I am angry with myself for not standing up for myself or exiting these situations when they became predictably abusive. Then I am angry at something I can’t name — My rules? My sense of the world? What is wrong with me?
Finally, I am visiting a place that I need to return to, again and again. It’s where I keep my oldest stories, ones I would probably not remember at all, except that my anger leads me to them. I see these memories like home movies played on an old projector on a raggedy old screen. I watch a bit of myself as a child, dealing with some situation that changed my understanding of the world. In the background, there is a calm voice saying, “Do you remember what you learned here? Here is the new rule you made for your survival. And here is how the rule affected your life.” And suddenly I am flying through the years, seeing how that rule played out, linking cause to effect, cause to effect, over and over. Until I am finally back in my here-and-now self again, aware that another “why?” question has been answered, another connection made that makes sense of my life, another realization that I can undo that rule now. I’m not a child anymore.
Difficulties with anger
Many, if not all people who get involved with sociopaths have difficulties with anger. We don’t welcome the message from our deeper selves. We don’t recognize it as something that requires immediate attention and responsive action. We don’t communicate it clearly with the outside world. We frequently don’t even consider ourselves angry until so much emotional response has built up that it’s eating us alive. We don’t recognize irritation, frustration, resentment, confusion, hyper-alertness and anxiety as feelings on the anger spectrum — messages that something isn’t right.
This generalization may be too broad, especially for those of us have dealt with people who we think were completely plausible until the end of a long con. But most of us faced many circumstances in these relationships when our emotional systems alerted us that something wasn’t right. And instead of taking it seriously and acting on it, we rationalized it, using our intellects to talk ourselves out of our responses.
How would we have acted if we had taken our anger seriously? We would have expressed our discomfort. We would have demanded or negotiated a change in the situation. We would have said “I don’t agree” or “this doesn’t work for me.” We would have walked away. We would have made a plan to change our circumstances. We would have made judgments that something wasn’t good for us, and acted on those judgments. We would have taken care of ourselves — which is what anger is all about, taking actions to deal with a threat to our wellbeing.
Why we have difficulties with anger is something related to our own personal stories. It is a good idea to search our history for the day when we decided that it wasn’t safe to express or even feel anger, so we can undo that rule. We all had our reasons, good reasons at the time. Even today, there may be occasions when we choose not to express our anger, or to defer thinking about it until later. But eventually, if we’re going to get really well, we have to recover our ability to connect with our own feelings.
Mastering anger
For those of us who have difficulty with anger, there are several gifts we get from the sociopath. One is a reason to get mad that is so clear and irrefutable that we finally have to give in to our emotional system, stop rationalizing and experience uncomplicated anger about what happened to us. The other thing they give us is a role model of how to do it. Though sociopaths have their own issues with historical anger, on a moment-by-moment basis they are very good at linking their anger to the cause, recognizing and responding directly to threats to their wellbeing or their plans.
Beyond that, in the course of these relationships, a kind of emotional contagion affects us. By the time we emerge, we feel ripped off and distrusting. We are at the edge of becoming more self-sufficient than we have ever been in our lives. To get there, we have to move through several phases while we overcome our obstacles to learning. One of those hurdles is overcoming our fear of our own anger.
People who have been suppressing anger for most of their lives have reason to fear it. Once we finally get angry about something, once we recognize the validity of own emotional reactions, there is a history of moments when we should have gotten angry that are ready to move to the surface of our consciousness. We are afraid that we will be overwhelmed or that, in our outrage, we will destroy everything within our reach.
Here is the truth. We will stop feeling angry when we acknowledge our right to feel angry in each and every one of these memories. That self-acknowledgement is what our emotional system wants. The message is delivered, and we naturally move on to what to do about it. If the circumstance is long gone, the simple recognition that we had a right these feelings is often enough to clear them.
The other truth is that we will not remember everything at one time. Once we allow ourselves to have these feelings, there will be an initial rush, but then the memories will emerge more gradually as we become clearer about our need for respectful treatment or about our grief at something important we lost.
Beyond recognizing that we were entitled to have our feelings, another thing we can do to clear them is have conversations with the causes of these feelings. We may want to speak to people, alive or dead, face to face or only in our journals or our thoughts, to say that we do not condone what happened to us. That we have feelings about it, and we want those feelings recognized.
We may think we’re looking for apologies, but the real benefit of these conversations is that we are validating ourselves and our own realities. We are getting real with ourselves. Eventually some of these conversations often turn out to be with God. Don’t worry about it. God can handle our feelings. Even the Buddhists encourage experiencing this human incarnation fully through all your senses and feelings.
The goal here is to clean house emotionally, so that you can experience anger in the here and now that is not tainted with old anger. So that you can plan and live your life in ways that are not unconsciously shaped by anger, fear and grief. Mastery of anger begins with the ability to link anger to cause, instead of expressing deferred anger in situations that really have nothing to do with it. Perfect anger is like the tit-for-tat strategy. It’s an appropriate and measured response that is equivalent to the threat or the trigger.
Beyond that, anger clearly felt in all its subtleties and permutations opens a new world to us. We find a new range of speaking voices — snappish, impatient, cold and unsympathetic. (Sound like anyone you know?) All things we need to deal with certain situations. We find new facial expression and body language. In allowing ourselves to become judgmental about what is good for us, we become more grounded about who we are and what we need.
Most important is that anger opens our ability to become powerful in our own lives. Without the ability to respond to threats and obstacles, we have no ability to envision and plan our lives. Anger is not only the voice of what we don’t want, it’s is also the voice of what we do want. What we want badly enough to work for, to fight for, to build in our lives.
Later we will talk about eliminating the residue of anger, learning how to forgive. But for now, our work is to link cause to effect, to honor our feelings, and to become real with ourselves and our world.
Namaste. The calm and certain warrior in me salutes the calm and certain warrior in you.
Kathy
Dear Kiindheart,
Your life lately has been a frantic “drama” which you have orchastrated for yourself, acting out I think of rage….bur for what reason? I’m not sure. The person you seem to have been “punishing” is yourself, by acting out things that you KNOW are not in your best interest, but you seem to be justifying your own actions by how toxic HE is.
There has to be a “happy medium” of feelings and actions. Feelings aren’t going to destroy you, you can validate that “Yes, what he did was wrong, and I am very very VERY angry at him and wish I could pay him back”—-but actually TRYING to pay HIM back, only hurts YOU.
I would suggest that you look back through your life and see if this has been a pattern for you.
Maybe some “alone time” will be good for you, it gives you some time to THINK and INTERNALIZE all the good things that you have learned in the program and also on LF. Use this as an OPPORTUNITY TO GET IN TOUCH WITH THE YOU that is in such pain.
Striking out at others when we are enraged is totally a “normal” thing, NOT A GOOD THING, but a NORMAL way of feeling and wishing we could do. But, because we are HUMANS we have enough of a brain that we know that what we would LIKE TO DO, and what we SHOULD do are not necessarily the same thing.
Believe me, in my own pain, I too have struck out at others, even others who were there to try to lift me up, but I had to FORGIVE MYSELF of the fact that I did this, and that was more difficult for me than getting the bitterness out of my heart toward the Ps and the damage they did to me. ALL of this takes TIME and a peaceful contemplation and conversation with yourself.
YOU deserve to be taken care of by YOU—and you need to put yourself FIRST—in the end, Kind heart, the ONLY person who will and should and has an OBLIGATION to take care of us (adults) is OURSELVES. Hang in there, sweetie, get in touch with YOU….you deserve it.
greenfern, particularly vivid and disturbing dreams can also be a reaction to a psychotropic drug. If you’re taking something, you might look up the side effects. A friend of mine had a similar reaction and she had to get her meds rebalanced a bit.
You didn’t say if the dreams are meaningful. Like you wake up in the morning and feel like you worked something out in the night, or you wake up with an insight because of the dream. Or the locations or characters in the dream are things that you’ve dreamed about before. If that were the case, your therapist’s comment makes sense.
But if they’re just scary dreams that seem to be coming up from nowhere with no redeeming characteristics, I’d definitely talk to your prescribing doctor. It could be a treatable chemical imbalance.
Dear Kindheart,
I think we posted on top of each other….I know what you mean about not wanting to eat. It is important that you DO eat though, so this is something that you will have to make yourself do, but don’t over do it. Just eat a little something frequently.
Yes, stress does rip you a “new one” and that is the truth for sure! Do your best to keep your INNER STRESSES at a minimum, and to think about positive things most of the time. If you hae a sad/mad phase, just tell yourself I am going to think about this for 10 minutes then I will focus on something positive, then DO IT. It will take WORK on your part, but is doable.
You will not get over the effects of months (years?) of stress and chaos in one week or one day, and probably closer to 1-2 years, but it is important that you take that first step, that first day and work hard on keeping yourself CALM and your surroundings peaceful and positive.
Coming here is a good way, read all the old archived articles, and you will get some good information that will validate you, support you. Just read the articles for now not the blogs beneath them until you have gone through them all.
Read also some kind of calm, meditative book. If you believe in God or a higher power, read the Psalms or some other calm and reassuring book that talks about God’s love and care for us.
Do positive self talk. “I will be okay today” and “I am doing well, I am taking back control of my life.” whatever comforts you and make it a “mantra” that you chant to yourself. BELIEVE IT, but even if you don’t, say it to yourself.
Pray for wisdom, calm and peace in your life.
Reassure and validate yourself. When I was in the FOG I felt a need to ahve others validate me, but eventually I came to where I could validate myself, I regained trust in myself to act appropriately to do what was best for myself even if I might not ahve wanted to.
Count your blessings. Look for the positive things in your life. Like I told someone else while ago, start with the blessing that YOU ARE A CARING PERSON. That you can love, that you can have empathy for others.
Those are BIG blessings that we have that the Ps do not, and never will have.
I’m not sure what your other blessings are, but count them…I do know that if you are healthy can walk, can see, can speak, those are bigger blessings than quite a few people have who can’t do some or all these things, and we don’t appreciate those blessings until they are gone. Just being able to read is a blessing, having access to a computer, a roof over your head, food to eat (even if you don’t want to eat it) all these things are blessings. Accentuate the positive! (((hugs))))
Kindheart, I’m going to write some of your words here so you can see them.
just sitting here still rumerating over the dam s and his new woman.
i don’t think i can see anything positive that is coming from all of this
im sitting her feeling almost paralyzed
I guess it must just be plain stress, and i wonder if im not punishing myself but why.
Stress of all the crap has finally take a toll that i can’t even make myself want to eat.
KH, what Oxy told you is right. when she said that your life has been a frantic drama that you orchestrated for yourself. She said she wasn’t sure why, maybe that you’re punishing yourself. But I have another idea. Maybe right. Maybe wrong. But here it is.
I have another friend who is an alcoholic, but sober for a number of years. When she gets upset, she sounds something like you. Kind of going faster in circles, and everything gets worse and worse. I’ve been listening to her for a lot of years, and I finally started to hear that she was feeling so damned alone, like a lost little kid, and she wanted someone to take care of her. She was kind of angry, but more upset that there was no one there for her. When she was really upset, she sometimes talked about everyone abandoning her.
When I think about your life, even though you’re doing stuff that other people might see as sort of irresponsible considering that your trying to go NC, I see a thread of high responsibility running through it. Helping the ex’s daughter. Worrying about the new woman. Worrying about the dead ex-wife. Worrying about your son. Worrying about yourself in the sense that you want to get your feelings under control and you want to stop doing things that hurt you.
I think you’re putting out and putting out and putting out. And that somewhere inside you, you’ve been hoping that something would come back from all of this. (And your son doesn’t count; I know he’s a friend to you, but there is only so much a mother can lean on a child.) While you’re so busy worrying about everyone else, whose shoulder can you rest your head on?
And if that’s the case, it makes sense that you’re going over and over the ex-S, and suffering over him telling some other woman loves her. Because he was the last, best hope you had for someone who appreciates you. And now you’re left here with just you and taking care of everyone else.
This doesn’t have to make exact, rational sense. But it might be a reflection of an essential drama in your life. Something between you and your mother maybe, that’s been coloring your life for a long time. And booze might have been a way to “take care of yourself” and then there was this guy who really seemed to understand and care until he didn’t.
And now, what do you have? You do what you know how to do, which is worry about people and try to take care of them. You’ve been doing an awful lot of it in the past few days. But it doesn’t change the pain of this fundamental drama. Either they’re not hearing or understanding you, or what you get back isn’t enough to change things.
kindheart (and what a good name for you, if this is the case), there actually is a door out of this.
I think that the first step out of it is for your to think about whether you deserve better. Whether you deserve more back for the efforts you’ve made for other people. (Again, your son is out of this.) Consider the time, energy and caring you’ve put out. Was what you got back equal?
I know you may be tempted to give other people a break and say they had this or that problem, but don’t do that right now. Just look at what you put out and what you got back, and think about whether it was fair.
If you don’t think it was fair to you, you may have a lot of feelings about that. It may bring up anger. I might make you cry. It’s okay. You have reason for those feelings. Just don’t turn them around on yourself. This isn’t about you at all. It’s about whether other people gave back in equal measure what they got from you.
If it brings up tears and anger together, that would be perfectly normal. You feel ripped off and have reason to. But you also might be crying because you’re so disappointed. Your plans and your best efforts didn’t work out. And these people in your life are just not who you wanted them to be. Who you hoped they were when you put all this concerned energy into them.
That’s something to cry about. And if you start crying about that, you may find you’re having a big cry about a lot of things. If this is truly the base of your pain, you may have been afraid to cry because it feels like there’s a big well of sadness back there, and you’re afraid you won’t stop. But you will, I promise. And sooner than you think, though you might find yourself slipping into tears for a few days or maybe even a week or two.
Even though you’re afraid of them, maybe, I think you’ll like these tears. Because you’re crying about the right thing. And grieving the right thing is like getting angry about the right thing. It cleans out your emotional system. It makes you feel more whole, more like you.
But here’s the other good thing that happens, this grieving lets you give up on them. Really give up the idea that any of them can give you back what you need. Even the ex-S who created such a nice illusion for a while of being perfect. He took it back, like an Indian giver, no matter what you did to earn it back. You couldn’t trust him to appreciate or understand you, not the real you who is worth loving.
And if that statement brings up all your worries about what’s wrong with you, try to put it aside for a moment, and think about this. Who is the person who has been taking care of you all these years, the one who got you to right here and now, despite all the difficulties and disappointments? Whatever you have now, who is the one who got it for you? Who is the one who figured out what you needed, and did the best she could for you?
Okay, so you’re not perfect. You’re human. But as a human being who has survived and accomplished some major things, including being a model for your good-hearted, smart and responsible son, don’t you think you deserve some good treatment? And maybe some kindness? And understanding? And maybe some optimism and faith in what a good, strong, sensible, caring and lovable person you are?
You’re hurt. And you’re frustrated because people aren’t giving you back what you need and deserve for the way you treat them. But, kindheart, you’re the one who has to ask for it, if you think you deserve it. And you’re the one who has to go out and find people who are capable of giving it to you. And if you wonder, after all these years, if anyone will believe you deserve it, you know they will if you do. They’ll trust you to know what you deserve. They’ll follow your lead.
Do you think you can do that? You can, if you look back and see how well you done for yourself under tough circumstances. And how much you’ve given other people and probably changed their lives in large or small ways. You deserve appreciation and kindness, and first you deserve it from yourself.
If you know that, you’ll start thinking about other things. Like about how to start taking care of yourself to give you the life you want. And how to clean house of all the things in your life that are dragging you down. And how to be honest about what you expect back from other people in return for the caring they get from you. If you don’t get it, you wipe them off your list of people who are valuable to you.
I’ve read your posts. You’re halfway there. There is a strong sense of what you need and what you need to do next inside you. There is a portion of you that already believes in you and is taking care of you.
This other stuff — this obsessive concern about him and how you’re reacting — is about being hurt and disappointed, about being treated badly and unfairly for what you gave in the relationship. That’s all. You have a right to those feelings, being mad and then having a good cry over how disappointed you are. It was a loss of all your good energy and time. But it’s gone, along with him, and it’s all because he was not who you wanted and hoped he was.
I wish I could give you a big hug. And I wish I could send a kind of Mr. Clean there to just let you put your head on his shoulder and take him with you while you go out and sweep out all these useless people from your life. But you’re just going to have to imagine your own Mr. Clean, dream him up, place him right behind your shoulder like your bodyguard, and go out and do it yourself.
You’ll feel a lot better when you start “rearranging the furniture” of your life and tossing out the old junk. It might seem a little scary to not have any helpless or screwed-up people to take care of, but you’ll get used to it. And you can put all that energy into taking care of you. Being a diva for change. Can you imagine? Fix your nails. Do your hair. Cook what you like for supper. Blow air kisses at your skinny new self in the mirror and think about how envious all us chubby types will be when we meet you.
I hope all this makes sense. I hope I haven’t wasted my time. I hope I haven’t offended you. This is me and I need you to pay attention to me now, kindheart. I want you to be well. Kind hearts are strong hearts in disguise. I want to see you rip that little flowered dress off your heart and wrap its Supergirl cape around it. Will you do that for me?
Kathy
Kathleen, and Oxy, thanks for all the concern and yes kathleen at one point today i just crawled into bed with my uggs on and pg’s very not like me as im usually so high energy(adhd) and i was crying thinking how my own family (mom died of alcoholism at 50) Dad and brother don’t know anything of what’s happened to me nor do i really think they care, they are too wrapped up with drinking and themselves and i only have heard from them when it comes to money. The farm my dad lives on is in Trust to me as i was the only one who looked after my Grandma(named Kathleen Adelaide) and she had alwasy owned it. Recently they or i should say my Dad called and said we needed to talk about the farm as my bro would be home from the West (he’s just gotten divorced and into oil out west drinking) and i was like what do they have up their sleeves now. My brother has probably gone through at least half a million of my grandma, dad, moms money over the years. I got off the phone and thought the will is done what are they talking about as they only scream and tell me what to do like im an idiot. The funny thing is im the one who is good with money and can live with my son at poverty level and still do well, bought myself a cute saturn Sky. They never have money and have alwasy conned me over the years , my brother could always manipulate me and i’ve alwasy sought my fathers approval. Anywy, my step mom called shortly after as my Dad had left for his shop and said it’s up to you but i wouldn’t talk to them and don’t let them manipulate you into anything. My point i guess is i was crying in bed thinking why don’t i have a family that cares when im so sick and why don’t they know about my life. My sons care but they are young and don’t understand. If it wasn’t for some good friends from AA and out of the program i don’t know what i’d do but it does hurt that they are my only family and they don’t even know what i’ve been through but i’ve never let them know either. I went out to get a donut and i thought i’ve got to get over this as im making myself sick and i know it’s not the life i could be living. I got a call two days in a row from a young woman in detox(involved with a controller ,declared bankruptcy, his fault, her fault , who knows) anyway i will go with another member to pick her up but im in no condition to help anyone else at this point. Im not even sure i should get involved at all and this is where i get into trouble. Where to draw boundaries but i at least know that im too sick to take her on and i told her so. This might sound selfish but im going to have my friend drop me off at the mall and ill shop for a bit while he goes to pick her up. This guy said you better accept that she’s prob going to be drunk within a week and i said i know. It is scaring the hell out of me what i’ve done to myself with all this stress. all i can do is try and crawl out of it and i’m trying bu t you ladies are absolutely right and it’s not going to happen overnight. Im seeing my physicatrist on tuesday concerning swithcing the adhd med to something my ins. company covers and i’m ging to tell her about the contact etc. I actually felt so spent over this recent drama i thought of putting myself into the hospital and then i thought what are they going to do thre anyway. Im about therapied out at this point. My gf even thinks i should hol d off on the book the Betrayal Bond as i’ve been anylysing this thing for way too long and she’s right. I thought it would help and then i think am i feeding the obsession, even this site, i have one male friend wondering if it is keeping me focused on him. I think i read awhile back when i wasn’t blogging another person was wondering the same thing. all in all i think it’s been helpful as i’m getting validation of what im experienceing but i’ve stopped my AA meetings and i need to still keep my foot in the door. They say that drinking is only a small percentage of our problem, it’s living life on lifes terms. Im smiling reading the posts and yes underneath this skinny little worn out girl is a very fun, adventurous, risk taking , and sppontaneous woman and i know she’s in there somewhere i really do. It really is mind boggling how someone can take all my energy and do this and that is where i’ve gotten into trouble , i have to admit that people can emotionally drain me, no matter how strong or full of energy i am, it’s happened enough times that i have to throuw the towel in and say for better words f*** it, i want to have fun again and live. I hope i’ve finally hit my bottom, emotional bottom and i know im not the person i can be. Your analogy of old junk is right on, old junk(people who are toxic) gone, all of them. People have been preaching to me in AA to get rid of the wishbone and get a backbone and now i see what they mean. No more free rides. thanks to you all for all the support.
kindheart, thanks for not complaining for how long it was. That even broke my record.
You sound good.
I know you don’t need me to tell you this, but you don’t need your dad’s approval. And your brother isn’t watching out for you. No wonder you’re susceptible to users.
They’re junk. I know that’s sort of extreme to hear. But they are. You’re not.
KH, remember the two magic phrases:
“I don’t agree.”
“That doesn’t work for me.”
And then try to keep your distance, if you can. Your ex isn’t the only toxic one in your life. The toxic ones are the ones who drain you, make you feel bad. Dangle the carrot and then use your hopes to take something else away from you.
Junk.
About that Supergirl cape. Forget that. Throw a nice black turtleneck on that heart, and practice saying, “I have limits” and my favorite given to me by the girlfriend who taught me prosperity consciousness, “I’m too rich for this.”
All of these things are about “no.” No, no, no.
Get that down and you’ll probably start to have fun again.
kathleen, your post makes alot of sense. Codependency is a sickness all in it’s own. For years i worried about my moms drinking, going to fix it with an intervention way before they were in vogue and it was too late. I have given my whole life to so many , mostly people who could not return it and didn’t appreciate it. My husband at the time , was someone i didn’t give to and he deserved it. The s . i’ve given till there is nothing left , he and that meth daughter have bled me dry and do you know what they’ve given me, zero . Yes i thought they’d appreciate it but they could care less but that doesn’t change that im bled dry basically lying on the side of the road. Then i wonder why the anger is so immense. I feel as though all the people i’ve tried to ge t to love me or see me and my qualities can’t or don’t. I do know that you ladies, gentlemen and alot of my real friends do. They tell me im special and i beleive them but the ones i’ve really given to can’t or won’t and that’s a hard pill to swallow. The only person i forgot to give to is me and that’s so evident right now. I wonder if maybe i don’t feel i deserve it. Im going to try though as i have no other choice, when my younger boy comes home from Banff and the end of the month and sees me the way i am looking now, he will be very upset to say the least and i know they worry about me , my mental health , weight etc. When my older son was talking to his dad today which is rare about the fact he is def in the military , going to Montreal, i kept thinking, if my ex (im crying now) could see me and how all this stress has taken a toll , why can’t he help with the boys, i’ve been a fulltime mother and part time father and it’s just been too much. I’ve tried to tell him and i know he knows financially im strapped but he has remarried with a four year old and pretty much divorced his kids too. I just need a break from everything. The trauma/addictions program wasnt’ really a break that i thought it would be as i was in a cohort with a woman(military) who was they said the angriest person the dr. had ever met in 39 yearw of working there so i spent most of the time peacmaking with her and others(typical codependent) as she liked me but was very controlling. I had to leave weekends just to get away from the strong personality etc. and trying to keep everyone getting along. So that was not a picnic but i did learn alot about the boundaries, this woman was aske d to do program all over as she did nothing but get into everyone else crap, creating problems. I really had no choice with such a small group only 5 left but to get along as best i could and if nothing else i managed to do that remarkably, but yo usee that is the other problem, i try to hard or i should say i don’t assert myself and just people please all over the place. I am a master of that role but im not really pleasing myself if any of this makes sense.
Makes perfect sense, KH. We have a lot in common. Though I don’t sound like it these days.
You do need a break. No question.
Part of what is hard about learning to be more assertive is that you have to get specific about what you want.
Like telling you ex-husband, “I want you to take more responsibility for the boys. I want you to spend more time with them. Specifically, I want you to have them for weekends, and to plan several weeks at a time during the summer. I want a break.”
Like telling this woman who was so dominant and controlling, “I am tired of all this drama. I’m going to get myself a cup of coffee, and when I come back I hope it’s over.” or “Please stop involving me in your drama. It’s taking over the conversation, and I want more time to work on my issues.”
Like telling your father and your brother, “I’m not looking forward to this visit, and I think I’m going to skip it. If you have some proposal for me, put it in writing and mail it to me. I’ll get back to you with my decision.”
Like asking your sons, “Would you help me? I want you to get the food on this grocery list and I want you to pack all the recyclables up and put them on the porch.”
If you’re not used to doing this, it may sound hard. If you’re a lifelong codependent, it may sound unbelievably rude and you might think the world will melt immediately if you stop being accommodating. Trust me, it won’t.
You might get some backlash (especially from people who have a stake in keeping you down and them top dog). But if you talk about yourself — I feel, I want — they’ve got nothing to argue about. When you get in trouble is when you talk about them.
When you say “I feel” or “I want,” you are not required to explain yourself. It’s none of their business. They may say they don’t care how you feel or what you want, but then you’ll know to stop talking with them at all. Because you don’t bother with people like that.
The people you do bother with are the people who care. They may have feelings and wants that conflict with yours, but if you both care, you can find a solution. That’s the nice part about dealing with functional people. They’re nice and they’re flexible (to a point, as long as their integrity isn’t compromised).
So here you are, expressing your feelings and your wants. And you know absolutely what you’re going to get from the users in your life. A lot of crap designed to separate you from your own feelings and your certainty about what you want.
So what do you do in those situations. You repeat yourself. You feel. You want. They’ll either give in, walk away, or if they’re the violent type, they might try to beat you up. Which is why you keep your distance from violent types. (Including not visiting your male relatives at the farm, who are not nice at least, and may get even less nice if they discover they can’t manipulate you as they always have.)
Here’s an example from my life. Yesterday, I was dealing with the third or fourth time an executive at one of my client companies was trying to horn in on my work area. This time he did some damage.
So I called him up and said, “This is my project. If you want to talk to the people involved or have information for them it goes through me.”
So what did he do? He backed right off and apologized for misunderstanding his role. I said thank you for understanding, and it stopped there.
But today in another marketing meeting, he tried to sabotage me by changing the subject every time I tried to get an agreement from the group. When I kept dragging the conversation back to my agenda, he blew up at me and said he was trying to talk to the CEO.
I said, “I’m terribly sorry, this is my fault. I didn’t say what I wanted so that it was clear enough. This is what we’re talking about, and this is the question that we’re on right now. Does that make sense to you?”
And he backed off again, and the rest of the meeting went fine for everyone, him included.
Can you see what I’m doing? Just staying right where I am. With what I want. It’s an amazingly powerful thing, and it doesn’t mean your have to be rude or mean.Just direct and clear. I feel. I want.
You have to do the work of deciding what you want. But it’s not that much work if you just look at what’s irritating you and “turn it over” to see the want on the other side. You complained about your boys’ father. I saw the want in your complaint.
Make sense? You can do this. You may have to practice a little, and you might be a little shaky at first. But if you do it with safe people first — your kids, your AA friends, people who want you to succeed — you’ll get the hang of it.
Kathleen, i got a chuckle out of the mail it to me one. That was a good one. It would be too complicated for them to mail something, can’t bully me that way.
I spent the evening with my son’s, daughter in laws, x wife and grandchildren had a wonderful time, I came home and realized I had not even thought of X – for several hours he didnt own space in my head at all~~!!! Hey I am proud of myself what can I say? HOORAY or Towanda I dunno was just kinda pleased about the whole ideal of not thinking of him..