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.
Hi Joss,
I am by no means an expert on dealing with a sociopath but some of the pain you mentioned really resonated with me. I remember my ex telling me how much he loved and missed me but his ACTIONS always did the opposite! (In fact, the second time I filed for divorce he claims it sent him into a tailspin and that’s why he moved in and got engaged to another woman). WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND REACTS THAT WAY??? NO ONE!!!
I do believe it is in deed the TRAUMA BOND as Oxy describes that you are experiencing. I have been divorced 2 years and still struggle to overcome it.
A book that helped me recognize and start to deal was Betrayal Bond by Patrick Carnes. I really thought my childhood played no part in my choice of a mate but after reading the book I came to an entirely different conclusion.
I hope the book helps you and you need to count your blessings that you did not marry this toxic man!!!
Spaths have to devalue others GENUINE success obtained through hard work and merit. They see it as a criticism of THEM. They can’t just allow others to BE, as this is insulting to them and implies THEY(spaths) and their S O P is wrong.
Cathy Ann Jones, I tend to agree with Skylar. Based on what was said, you were targeted and it was a game of chicken.
I’ve read that suicide is a very selfish action, which used to confuse me because I thought people who committed suicide had to be very depressed and feeling hopeless. That’s how I would feel when those ugly thoughts started creeping in for me, but then I started reading that there are people who apparently do that as a last statement of selfish control, sort of, “You can’t tell me what to do. I do as I please.”
I’m sure there are probably many reasons why people commit suicide. Who knows exactly what was going on in his head. (BYW, I don’t feel that way anymore, but I do think I did because the P & S were driving me to it.)
I am very sorry that your daughters and you are suffering. I am sure it is difficult. My sympathies.
Getting back to the original idea of background noise, I believe part of that is our tendency to minimize and deny. “Oh, it’s not that bad.” “He/she didn’t mean it that way.” “If I don’t acknowledge it, it will go away.”
I also think that we carry a lot of unheard (silent to others) background noise in our heads, i.e., the “old tapes” of things said to us that either hurt or eroded our confidence. Things like “you’re the problem,” “you can’t do anything right,” or “you’ll never amount to anything.”
I took a temp job once where I was working in a small room with other temp. I was totally consumed with what I was doing and mentally singing to myself. I was happy and feeling quite productive. Suddenly he burst out, “I can’t take this anymore! This room is so quiet. This silence is driving me crazy!!”
I was shocked. I told him that I hadn’t noticed. I’d been singing to myself. I thought things were fine. I even told him that if a room is silent, I simply make my own noise. That’s why I sing to myself. Maybe I was a little too cheery when I explained it’s the proverbial, “If Life hands you a lemon, make lemonade.” He glared at me.
That was the first time ever that it had crossed my mind that maybe some people don’t always have other things going on in their heads.
If my mind isn’t already occupied with another task, like reading, going online, watching TV, or working, I’m thinking. If it isn’t about practical things, like what will I make for supper, it might be going over what happened during the day or daydreaming. Then there are the B movies that people play in their minds about what could have, should have, would have. There’s something happening up there. I do not, like this guy, have a silent, no noise vacuum existing my skull.
But to think that people have absolutely nothing going on in their heads to the point that it would cause an outburst like this guy’s, that never crossed my mind. How is that possible?
I’ve always assumed that people have something going on in their heads. Whenever I’ve been in a guided meditation, part of the initial instructions are to let go of the day’s chatter and let your mind settle down so it can be at peace and receive. If you hear a car drive by or a dog barking, let it go. Isn’t there always some kind of background noise? How could that guy been in total silence? Whatever.
On the tough days, I don’t sing to myself. My mind hits the Play button and I run the old tapes. It’s very self-destructive and a hard habit to break. At least now I am aware of it, like being aware of external background noises, and when I do catch myself doing that, I try to cancel out the negativity by consciously counting my blessings or turning my mind to something positive. Many times, I include, “They just don’t get to do this to me anymore. No more living rent-free in my head.” I’ve even heard the old tapes referred to as “The Committee.”
I liked this post. Lots to think about. Thanks, Oxy, for writing it.
G1S, you’re welcome.
Yes, we have an “internal voice” that talks to us and we DO I think have “internal tapes.”
Dr. Eric Berne called these “tapes” “Parental injunctions” and in his book, which I think you might read and enjoy, G1S “Games People Play” he explains how these “tapes” that were dictated by our parental units (both nurturing and critical) are there forever, and we can’t get rid of them, but we can HIT THE MUTE BUTTON.
The critical parental tapes that say “you are not good enough” we can MUTE when we hear it playing by saying to ourselves, “I will not listen to that tape because it is not true.” etc.
This is a GREAT book about games we all ahve been taught to play and each of our dysfunctional families may ahve had their “favorite” games but we can use this great book to learn to recognized other’s games as well.
Agree Oxy, I love Eric Berne’s book ‘Games People Play’. Gave me great insight into Ns/SPs & the tapes we carry in our heads.
It did me too, I just didn’t put it into practice for a few decades after I read it. I had a therapist from back in the day tell me that I had the “thickest pair of rose colored glasses she had ever seen.” I think that is true. VERY True and I hung on to that malignant hope for a long time.
“I hung on to that malignant hope for a long time. ”
Me too, I bet almost all of us did.
I love “How ’bout you and her go have a fight” and “Yes, but…”
Now, I (almost) don’t care what the toxic Ns/Sps do. I have no control over anyone but myself.
Clair, one time I lived in a nice neighborhood with a whole herd of little kids about 6-10 and there was onelittle girl about 9 or 10 who would play “you and her go have a fight” and get the kids to throwing rocks or whatever, and the neighborhood mothers figured her out. Her mom was not part of our group and didn’t feed the “herd” or over see them in any way, just threw her kids out of the house to join the herd and locked the door (really!) anyway we knew we couldn’t punish her in any way so what we did was we GROUNDED her.
“Tammy, you cannot come into the yard to pay with the kids for 2 weeks” so if she came into one of the yards of the other mothers we would say “Tammy, you are not allowed to come into the yard to play with X, Y and Z.”
By the end of the first week she was standing out in the street watching the other kids play, no one to play with her. After the second week we never had any more trouble with her causing problems with the younger kids.
Bless you for that, Oxy.
Hope that lesson stayed with her for the rest of her life.
Love that book cuz it does show the games people play, consciously or unconsciously.
I realized I had many people in my life who played the “Yes, but..” game & before reading the book, I’d get suckered into playing it. But, no more. I’m like, “OK, fine, buh-bye”.
“Games People Play” shows how the disordered & toxic try to keep us on the drama roller coaster.
I don’t know if it did or not! Most of the kids on the block that I still know where they are did okay, Patrick is the only one that ended up in prison. One is dead (car wreck) one an attorney, one a barber, one a wal mart manager, one a teacher, etc.
Yea, that is a book good enough to reread every once in a while. I keep a copy of it in my permanent library.