By Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired)
Sometimes my parrot will come up with a sound or a word and we will wonder “where in the heck did he come up with that!?”
We noticed a few years ago that he would make a “Whooooosh” sound when anyone opened the door either to go in or out. He did it consistently, so we knew he had associated the door opening with the sound, but we couldn’t figure out who would make that sound often enough that he had picked it up. Then one day my husband came in the house and it was very hot outside and when he came in he made that “Whoooosh” sound as he hit the air conditioned inside!
My son and I went, “Whoopee! We know where he got it now!”
It takes endless repetitions of a word or sound for a parrot to pick it up, and my husband must have done this hundreds of times before the bird picked it up. The bird is way more sensitive to the sounds in his environment than we are. We tend to “tune out” the “background” sounds that are not important to us so we can concentrate more on those sounds that actually “mean something.” Not that our ears can’t “hear” that sound, it is just that our brains tune it out and assign no importance to it.
I think sometimes people (myself included) do the same thing with situations and associations. We tune out as unimportant things that happen every day—things that we decide are not important to our world and we don’t want to concentrate on them. I have osteoarthritis just from being over 65 and having used and abused my bones and joints in the past, so I have a sort of “background” pain in most or all of my joints. I try to “tune this out” and usually succeed, because if I concentrated on this background pain, I would not be able to think about anything else.
Emotional pain
It seems to me that I have done the same thing with emotional background pain as well in my associations with dysfunctional or disordered people. The other person would make some “snarky” or disrespectful comment to me, and it would hurt just a bit, but I would push it to the background noise of my life and not concentrate on it. Just as my son and I didn’t “hear” my husband’s noises when he came into the house from outside because it wasn’t important, didn’t mean they weren’t “there.”
Pushing our emotions, our pains, into the background helps us to keep ourselves from being overwhelmed by the vast number of little pains and injuries. It numbs us to those in our everyday life so we can keep on functioning and without succumbing to the overwhelming pain. Sometimes we get a huge emotional injury and we “feel it” intensely, but even then we can put the residual pain into the background of our everyday existence.
Noticing and responding to every little slight in life isn’t the point of this, because if we did, we wouldn’t be able to function. Taking to heart and internalizing every snide remark made by every salesclerk isn’t necessary, but to “notice” and “hear” the slings and arrows of a particular relationship is another matter entirely. If we are continuing to have to “tune out” painful things from a person or a relationship, the pain will build up until there is a cacophonous level of emotional pain in the background of that relationship.
It takes a tremendous amount of energy to keep that level of background pain under control—energy that could better be put to use in establishing boundaries.
It took my parrot’s continual “Whooshing” to draw attention to one of the sounds in the background of my environment. It took tremendous pain to draw attention to the pain that had accumulated as a background noise in my relationship with my son and other family members. I had “eyes and did not see, and I had ears and did not hear,” as Jesus said about the Pharisees. It was unpleasant for me to realize that our relationships were not healthy, because in realizing that they were not healthy, I would be required to do one of two things, neither of which I wanted to do. I could continue to endure this continuing assault on myself, or I would be required to act.
Confrontation
Confronting someone you love with the fact that they have been causing you tremendous emotional pain is a scary prospect. How will they respond? Will they stop doing what they have been doing and try to salve your wounds? Will they stop treating you badly? What if you confront them and they become angry? What if they leave you? What if they punish you? All those are questions that produce great anxiety. Confrontation is risky behavior.
Confronting dysfunctional people is especially risky. It is especially painful because they do not receive your confrontation well, but instead project the problem back on your shoulders. They will tell you that you are the problem. The pain becomes greater.
Becoming aware of the background noise in our lives of abuse and dysfunctional relationships is only the first step in a painful process. Taking action is the next step. If the person in the relationship is not dysfunctional or disordered, they will work with you. If they are unwilling to do so, you can’t make them do so, and so the next decision is to continue the relationship as is, or to terminate it.
Awareness if the first and most painful step, but it leads to a life free of the pain of a dysfunctional relationship continually assaulting our psyches.
Dear Clair, glad you liked it….I realized too that the background noise/pain I had experienced with EVERY relationshit with every psychopath just accumulated like flood waters rising, ever so slowly, and eventually they got to where they covered my nose and I couldn’t breathe!
Not seeing the water we swim in is a good one. Thanks for that analogy.
Dear Clair, and Oxy, great posts! Also the analogy with the water! Very helpful were also the other enlightening comments. Have you all a peaceful weekend!
Libelle, How are YOU doing my dear? I’ve been kind of worried about you as you were pretty down the last time you posted. I hope you are taking care of yourself well. (((hugs))) and God bless.
Terrific post Oxy. Also great comments LF’rs Thanks.
In many ways you describe the process of screening out unwanted information in a down to earth common sense way that is the subject of the book I am working through at present. ( I can’t say reading because I find it a tough slog)
The healing process and trying to make sense of where the hell I had been for 27 years has led me to a keen interest in understanding the process of denial. This is four years post P and after much much reading on LF and the books about P’s.
Okay, I get it now..there are such people and he was one of them. But where was my mind? How did I manage to keep accepting and excusing all the stuff that made no sense?
In VITAL LIES,SIMPLE TRUTHS, THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SELF-DECEPTION., author Daniel Goleman illustrates how our brains/sub-concious have a filter that makes a trade off between attention and anxiety. This filter acts BEFORE AWARENESS, in other words, it filters what we can be aware of without our conscious involvement. a brief quote follows :
” What can’t be seen is hard to change…..the person prevails against anxiety by sacrificing his range of attention. This failure to see our self deceits protects them.. a researcher is struck by “how suavely we simply ignore great bodies of experience , any clearly analyzed instance of which might present us with a very real necessity for change”.. our defenses insulate us from the vital lie at the heart of our misery.”
Essentially we are talking about a very primal biological survival tool, that allows us to shield ourselves from anxiety in order to function. Probably was very useful as an evolutionary survival mechanism, or else every snapped twig or roll of distant thunder would have us in a constant state of high adrenalin alert and we would not be able to function.
And perhaps we should mention the other more recent societal factor, the conditioning to “always look on the bright side” to “always make the best of things” and “always be polite” that are the fairy tails designed to keep us enslaved, on a micro and macro level.
On a completely different note, but related somehow- there is an article on line “are the rats fleeing a sinking ship?” Over 350 senior banking executives have resigned around the world in the last several weeks. And don’t miss the whistle blower article in the NYT from one of them. Basically saying they are all P’s and the entire business culture at his major firm is predatory . Great stuff! The masks are coming off.
Peace,
anitacee,k
Absolutely, we use DENIAL to keep that background “pain/noise” inaduable so that we can stand it. Just like getting used to LOUD noises in your environment….at first you can’t stand it, but then you get used to it.
Out here where I live it is relatively quiet, there are natural sounds, and a few distant truck noises on the highway, the coyotes once in a while, birds or crickets, but when I spend a night in town it is like WOW! HOW LOUD THE CITY IS! When I lived in the city, I didn’t notice the car door slamming, horns blowing, trains going by etc. but since I am not used to those things now they blow me away.
A friend of mine used to come out here and she lived in town and when she was here she couldn’t stand it she would have to turn on the TV she said “the QUIET is so LOUD!” LOL
We just do that with the abuses in our lives, we tune them out.
Daniel Goleman—great insight and great author!
Anita,
that sounds like a very interesting book.
It has also been my experience that the opposite happens when we see a clear and present danger. In other words, we can run around in denial as long as we think we can get away with it. There might be a thread of magical thinking involved, but something tells us that we will not be killed. Yet, once we see the SEMI-TRUCK SPEEEDING TOWARD US, the mind focuses with razor sharp clarity.
There have been a few times that this happened to me. One time it literally was a semi-truck breaking through the freeway barrier on a trajectory that would cross my path. My brain made everything go into slow motion. Those 4? seconds seemed like 5 minutes. I calculated that I MIGHT be able to speed up and move to the right lane and get past the trajectory path, but that I would NOT be able to slow down enough to stop before colliding with the semi. We were both doing about 60 or 65 coming toward each other for a total of 120 or 130, I think.
It seems to me that this state of mind came on as I accepted the very real likelihood that I was facing my death. There’s nothing like coming face to face with mortality to snap us out of denial and into razor sharp clarity. You suddenly see things you would usually have missed. For example, I remember seeing the semi laying on it’s side and sliding on the pavement just inches from my driver side mirror. It seemed to be sliding slowly. Even though I was probably doing 90mph by this time, it seems like a crawl as I drove past it.
my spath came to visit, after a year, the kids”it was a 2 week ordeal, of which he actually was here 9 hrs. being around him was a WOW, how he shits on me!
i kept going in other room or back in the house wen they were in the yard.
talk about background cacaphony!
i endured it for 2 wks, (of which he was actually present only 9 hrs) and it was THUNDERING and left me a basket case. i am still today trying to function at work—monday and tues both, my brain did not work well and i troubleshoot software :0
i will kill him b4 i have to endure him again”i dont think i will let him see the kids, without a court order, again. i supervised this time, but that future potential visit will be supervised by someone else”i can have nothing to do with his ridiculousness.
he keeps talkin to me too! txting me”i just ignore him..wtf do u think i want to talk to you?????
Ain’tgonnatakeitnomore,
,
WOW, I’m so sorry that happened to you and I can only imagine the 9 hours in HELL you must have endured. WOW! How awful. I hope you can get away with him not seeing them again and the courts won’t make you and if you do have to let him see them supervised, let someone else do it, hire someone if you have to, but don’t put yourself through it again.
Be good to yourself for a while and let your brain unwind. Let the house cleaning go, go home from work, and feed the kids pizza and take a hot bath with candles and crawl into bed!@....... God bless! (((hugs)))
Oxy, this post resonates BIG time with me. That was the first thing I noticed about my spath…. his refusal to “talk” about anything too confrontational. In the beginning (the hook) he made a point to talk about ANYTHING. I thought Oh we can talk about anything (the charm) Then little by little the insults, slights, and criticism piled up with of course NO apologies. I remember 12 years of marriage before he ever apologized. And then I felt like it was insincere and a get off my back apology, not heartfelt. He controlled me very well through the use of silent treatment, looking baffled (what are you talking about?), projection… he would say to me, “Why are YOU so angry?” and it became a self fulfilling prophesy. I fell for it WAY too many times.
He used drama and creating confusion to climb into his man cave. Now I now he would come home and pick a fight because he already had sex before he came home for dinner.
One of the biggest complaints I had at counseling (the 3rd one) was we rarely seem to resolve conflict. It is almost always “swept under the rug.” The counselor said, “Well, If you sweep things under the rug long enough, eventually you’ll hit your head on the ceiling. That time had come. I said my head was rammed against the ceiling.
My exspath also said many times, “You never let anything go. You don’t forgive anything. You perceive so many things as little slights. Actually he was wrong, I experienced outright bullying, insults and abuse NOT slights. He frequently tried to dumb his behavior down – like what’s wrong with you? He told
me going to counselor #1 that we were gonna shake loose whatever was wrong with me. I still shake my head at the abuse I allowed. Why why why?
I think I know now. He kicked my arse in our divorce and he probably would’ve won a custody battle if I had left and filed sooner than I did. Also, even we had shared 50/50 as the state likes, he would’ve turned the kids over to spathy MIL and frankly even though it was hard on me, all 3 have more much of my values, character, beliefs, and morals. YEAH !! that is why I stayed as long as I did.
He really did steal from me emotionally, physically (I did all the work around here) financially, sexually, and even socially (has no friends of his own) except a whore now. tee hee
He whittled away at all the boundary lines I had, until there were none left. I told him one time… “All that is left for you to do is rape me or kill me.” I think that is a pretty good sign it was time to start looking at how to get out.
I’m having a great life now. It gets better and better. Hopefully I’ll meet a wonderful loving man, but if I don’t … I’m good company and I have plenty of really good friends.
Donna you are so right that background noise is akin to the rattle of a snake.
Im not coping Im new to this and my mind is fried. I have background noise coming out my ears its everywhere and nowhere.
He was a liar -that was this first sound of the noise. About everything and anything. At first I pitied him for having to ‘big up himself’ all the time but it was much more insideous than that. It was the spath in him. Pure and simple.
Yes we were soul mates, yes he wanted to get married and have children straight away (were both 40)so the speed I guess wasnt surprising. He could never stick to plans, turn up on time, or respect my boundaries. He was impulsive to the point it scared me (and Im a pretty impulsive person).
He said he picked up SARS when he was living in Asia so blamed this illness on his lack of ‘remembering’ when his lies got confused.
He worked so much and was always so tired -poor thing, but yet more background noise. It just goes on and on.
I broke up after 6 months because of the lies. That I wasnt a priority and his ex girl F (20yrs younger) seemed to have more standing in his life than me. He barely fought to get me back. He was amused almost when we went for that ‘talk’.
I didnt know what I was dealing with.
Another month of breakups then I totally went no contact. He didnt give a shit about me anyway, it was all about him. His family (who apparently desperately wanted him to settle down) couldnt give me the time of day (I always have great relationships with BF’s family’s so this very hurtful) I can only guess he was bringing other girls around and / or bad mouthing me the whole time. -More noise in the background.
He had a factory of asian girl workers -god knows what he was doing with the poor things behind closed doors… my gut instinct when I went in to meet them the first time was -hes been sleeping with half of them Im sure’. The way another woman looks at you you can just tell.
So I got more and more paranoid and jealous, which he revelled in believe me. Even to the point where he picked up a price label showing some girl in underwear and started licking it. To make me jealous? is that not weird?
So I broke the nc after 3 months to get something of mine back and met up with him. Its gone down hill for me ever since.
First week of being in contact again he told me how much he loved and missed me -but never did anything to show me this. next week I txt him an evil note as I was hurting, this week I txt him to meet and talk about it being over then got drunk and called him when he didnt reply. He didnt pick up. So I emailed him to tell him how much I loved him back then and that Im still hurting. He emailed back to say he wants to see me however hes dating someone else now and its all my fault because of what I did by breaking up with him.That hes so hurt and not ‘well’ and I am beautiful and deserve much better than him.
Its such a mind game as the lies are still there, he never showed his love, it was always words words words, he was proably seeing this ‘new’ girl F months ago, and still seeing his 20yr old ex and a number of young asian girls from his factory. Or maybe Im now completely crackers??? I even get the gut instinct something is going on with his sister??? Would a spath do that?
The crazy thing is in all of this mess Im still (sickly) in love with him -attached to an evil arsehole and its only my gut that is driving me to stay away. The background noise is deafening while I self implode. Im becoming a nothing my life is being sucked away. 6months of awesomeness with 4 months of misery that aint getting better. What the hell to do. Its making me crazy sick I cant stop obsessing about it and him.