By Ox Drover
I slipped into an unhealthy lifestyle after my husband died six years ago. Slowly I let things deteriorate until I had gained a significant amount of weight, about 10 pounds a year. I started to feel bad and wasn’t really sure just why, but in the back of my mind I knew I had ignored the “red flags” of that needle on my scale creeping up. I had been in “denial” with, “Oh, it’s just a couple of pounds.”
Many times I have realized that my life has been “out of whack” just a little bit at a time, that I have been doing unhealthy things that didn’t immediately impact my life dramatically, but just a “little bit at a time.” Like a bucket filling up one drop at a time, eventually it gets full, if we don’t stop the dripping.
With my weight and my health problems beginning to become apparent, I realized I couldn’t continue to do the unhealthy things I had been doing and continue to enjoy good health. I started to have a little swelling in my feet, and I had always eaten a great deal of salt. It couldn’t be the salt, could it? I was discussing this (really, arguing with) my young physician and I told her, “Well, I’ve always eaten a large amount of salt and it never hurt me before!”
She looked at me and laughed and said, “Well, you’ve never been this old before!” I laughed too, but she was right! I had to quit being in denial that all the little unhealthy things I was doing in my food and exercise lifestyle were not adversely effecting my life and my health. I needed to alter my lifestyle, not just my “diet.”
I realize that I have done other unhealthy things as well. I have allowed others within my circle of family and friends to contribute to this unhealthy way of doing things. It isn’t just a matter of “going on a diet” and shedding a few pounds and then going back to the way things were. It isn’t just a matter of telling a person to stop treating me the way they were, and then go back to the way things were. It is a matter of lifestyle changes that are consistent and long lasting.
Stop and think
With the matter of my nutritional intake and my exercise regimen, I had to actually stop and think every time I went to the kitchen. I had to make plans in advance of how I would fix a meal and had to shop with more forethought, rather than just “grabbing” something out of the pantry and throwing it on the stove.
How many calories, how much sodium, did I have the ingredients I needed? It wasn’t quite as easy any more to put a meal on the table. It required me to actually meal plan days in advance, to shop for those items, to rearrange my budget to take these increased costs for “low sodium” products into account instead of cooking the way I had and following the habits I had for forty years.
I had to do the same thing with my relationships, taking into account the behavior of others in my life—what I would tolerate and what I wouldn’t. What would my boundaries be? Just like I don’t want to take all the taste and enjoyment out of my food in order to “eat healthy,” I don’t want to take all the enjoyment and pleasure out of my relationships either, but at the same time, I can’t tolerate a lot of substances that are toxic to my health, or relationships that are toxic to my soul.
Balance
I have to come to a balance of enjoyment and toleration. There are things I have to eat now that are not my favorites, but I know they are good for me, so I eat them. There are foods that I really enjoy but I know are not good for me at all, so I must entirely avoid them. There are foods that I can enjoy in moderation, or in small amounts. The same applies to the relationships and in people in my life.
My son and I have a friend we dearly love, but who is married to a woman neither of us can stand. While we want to maintain a friendship with him, and visit with him, we know that we must have some association with his wife as well. I sort of look at it like eating my favorite biscuits and gravy. I can have small amounts once in a while, but can’t take very much or very often.
In the past when I had weight problems, I would change my eating habits temporarily, but as soon as I lost a few pounds, I went back to eating in an unhealthy manner. I think I have done the same thing when dealing with people in my life who were unhealthy or toxic. I would get them (or people like them) out of my life for a while, sort of like a “crash diet,” but then when I felt better, go back to the old dysfunctional and unhealthy lifestyle.
Now, in my emotional and relationship life, I have made a commitment to a LIFESTYLE CHANGE, just as I have in my dietary and nutritional status. I’m not just on a “short term diet.” I am making healthy choices for life. I am working on living a balanced life, a healthy life, and not “slipping” off of a short term change, back into the old unhealthy habits.
I never was good at anger or staying angry, maybe that is why I have been chit on so much – fill er up with jet fuel..
Hens , right now I think its healthy I feel so much anger and disgust at my adult spaths,I have to ride it out, and not “pretend” to feelings of love nd forgiveness I dont feel.
Too often these feelings of disgust and anger can turn inwards on ourselves, and lead to self hatred and self disgust, and this in turn leads to depression. Depression is, I think, only anger turned in wards, where it will poison us.
Im sure in time Ill get to the place where Il freely forgive my daughters, just not there yet, all I feel for them is total disgust, and anger..
I cant go on blaming myself for the fact I was gaslighted for years and years. I remember, when I first started to learn all this stuff on LF,{June, 2009} and the lights started to come on, dispelling the FOG, I threw up for 3 days straight!It was the shock of realising what had been done to me for years and years,{and I in my ignorance}, kept on giving, and giving, and forgiving, convinced it was all MY FAULT, and that if I just LOVED them enough, theyd become nicer people. Aint happened yet!. When you know better, you DO better.
Now the blinders a re off, i see them in their true colours, and despite the fact its a mental illness{spathdom},they had a CHOICe whether or not to treat Mum as a good human being.Yet, they chose to humiliate me, gaslight me, deny me access to their kids,{pure torture}rage at me,lie to me, con me out of huge sums of cash,
belittle me,and scoff at me, and pour scorn on me when I was at my lowest ebb, ie, Id just been beaten up by their Dad.I was so low mentally at that point, so cowed,so humiliated, so weak and beaten down. THIS is why wives dont leave their abusive husbands, all the guts, personality, courage,confidence has been beaten out of them, both physically and mentally.
They had a CHOICe then to say,”Leave Mum alone, Dad, shes a good MUm!”but they chose to side with him, and join in the torture.THIS above all is what I CANT right now, forgive them for.They KNEW what they were doing, ie, putting the boot in when I was down.Sod them. Right now, I HATE them for what they did to me.Im sure in time this hate will go, but as I said, I NEED it right now to jet propel me AWAY from these cruel biatches!!Im being HONEST at last, this is what I FEEL NOW. Sorry Im NOT JESUS.MamaGem.
EB ,Oxy, I need to know if you think its NORMAl{whatever the heck that is!} to feel so much ANGER at my adult girls,-Ive NEVER felt so full of anger towards them as I do now. I know logically they are both Spaths, and theydidnt choose to be born without any empathy, all the same, I believe we all have CHOICES as to how we behave.All the shit stuff seems to be coming to the surface, stuff that happened years a nd yearsa go, and , of course, I never had any answers to or closure on. I never fellt so alone, the police wouldnt help me or even believe me! My ex was drinking, so was spath D no.1 I was so full of fear and dread, for YEARS, and no-one helped me.
I had to bury all this shit really deep for the last 16 years in order to get to see my GKids.{My first Ds kids}
It never went away, just festered underground.Now its all exploding out! I have to get it all out, like lancing a boil, and squeezing the pus out. Then maybe I can finally heal, amd forgive them, and forgive myself.
Love, mama Gem,XX
NIRVANA…. that is where i want to be!!!!!!! I want to go/get there!!!!
Oxy….
Your signature “Towanda” Ilove that fried green maters movie!
Mine…. Nirvana!!!!!
Feeling tired again! Gonna try and sleep!
Oxy,
Is there anyway that we cam email privately? I need some helpful advice privately.
Thanks,
NOT CRAZEEE!!!!!
gem – not oxy or eb, but i have some ideas.
i think people get in trouble with anger because we judge it, repress it and feel guilt or shame for experiencing it. what would happen if we just ‘felt’ it, like we do happiness? just let it come and go? it takes faith, and it takes modeling i think. kathy hawk has written good stuff about anger. she gets the self trust involved in feeling our way through it.
i have never been so angry about anything. ever. doubt i ever will be (but then my dad is still alive and kicking, so there is more potential for big anger in my life). the spath, and everything else in the last 2 years has pushed me right to the edge in every way. spaths are ‘special’ – they do such outrageous things – i think we just don’t have a frame of reference for it, and we take too much upon ourselves trying to ‘pretend’ they couldn’t be as bad as all that. but they are.
i don’t know if you actually saw one post i put up months ago (FULL of profanity ;)) I made a list of the things the spath did, and after each line i wrote ‘F*** you!’ It was very cathartic to name it all, and to end it with emphatic resistance. I think writing, and do i dare suggest painting, is a really good way to process these things. i don’t write as ’emphatically’ here as i once did, but i journal more.
i haven’t used the word ‘normal’ here once. your anger is what it is gem, all you need to do is figure out how to move through it, and not try to control it.
best,
onestep
Dear Gem,
Darling ANGER is a NORMAL response to injury. Sometimes as we are healing, we realize that there was an injury that occured DECADES ago but we “didn’t really” notice it at the time, but now that we get to thinking about it it we start to FEEL ANGER about something that happened 25 years ago….because we are just NOW dealing with this injury.
Even Jesus was ANGRY at injustice. Anger is not a BAD emotion, but we don’t want it to fester and rot. I think of anger as sort of like RAW meat, it is pretty good when it is FRESH but if it hangs around too long it ROTS and STINKS, so anger that is fresh, righteous and justified is good but we don’t want to repress it, as it will still STINK when it gets older and really make a mess when you try to clean it out, and we don’t want to hang on to it for too long either as it will rot and stink up OUR ENVIRONMENT.
We don’t want to embalm it so we can keep it forever either, as that is pretty nasty and is called WRATH and jesus says “don’t let the sun go down on your wrath”—in other words take that nasty, rotting, stinking vengeful anger and BURY it before it gets dark. That kind of wrathful vengeful anger is harmful to YOU, not to the psychopath. To harbor THAT kind of anger I ithink is us like someone else said, “Us drinking poisons and expecting someone else to die.”
Doesn’t work that way.
Believe me, Gem, we’ve all had plentyy of reason to be angry at the way we have been treated—anger that goes back years and years, but as we “clean out” that nasty closet of our old angers, don’t “feed” them or keep them around, but don’t just pretend they are not there either—deal with them. DEAL with them. Accept them. Acknowledge them. Validate them. Then if you have to hold a little “ceremony” and bury them in the back garden.
Like Natalie Holloway’s mother said after her interview with Joran Van der slime in the prison in Peru (he still won’t answer her questions about where Natalie is) after he suddenly broke off the interview in the middle and she cried…she said “he tookk my marriage, my daughter, my job and my life from me….but I am not going to let him ruin the rest of my life just because he murdered my daughter” Natalies mom is taking back control of her life from joran. Even without her daughter’s body to bury, she is NOT LETTING HIM CONTROL HER ANY MORE….he is no longer in the driver’s seat. Of course he won’t tell, it is the only way he has of getting ATTENTION and TV cameras to come to his cell in Peru…but if Natalie’s mom can let him keep his “secret” and still make her life okay, then HE HAS LOST HIS POWER OVER HER LIFE.
I think that is what we have to do, Gem, get angry (sure) but resolve that anger by taking away the POWER we have given them to control our lives—even by making us angry—we can decide when we’ve been angry enough, long enough, and move on. TOWANDA baby!
(((hugs))))
Gem,
You know I talk alot about not letting them slime us and not holding onto the anger, but I have to admit that I still have anger too. But my anger is more toward my family than it is the the exP, even though he was my “family” for 25 years.
The flesh and blood family was supposed to be there for me for 44 years and they weren’t, even though they made me believe that they were. It was all a lie and they still keep lying, that’s why it’s so hard to forgive. It seems to be harder to get rid of the anger towards our family because we feel “entitled” to be loved by our flesh and blood. That is a deeply ingrained belief, that is maybe impossible to shake. But one thing that I’m learning is that a sense of entitlement is the root of narcissism. We aren’t entitled to anything. We are only allowed to be grateful when we have it, but never should we feel entitled because, like Job in the bible, it can all disappear one day and we have no right to rage over it. Read the book of Job for a great refresher.
I read the book, “why does he do that? Inside the minds of angry men” by Lundy Bancroft. Please read it to better understand what a sense of entitlement is and what kind of thinking, emotions and reactions can evolve from it. Anger is a sign that we feel something we are entitled to has been taken from us. Pure and simple. None of us without some ego, so we all feel it. But that is exactly what the P’s use against us: our own sense of entitlement.
The great thing about having known the poster child of sociopathy is that I’m so much better able to know myself. When I think of that, my anger toward him is replaced with gratitude.
…but I’m still angry at my sociopathic family. Lundy Bancroft uses a great story to describe the sense of entitlement that comes with any belief you’ve held since childhood and that has been reinforced for many years. Even knowing that you are not entitled does not remove the SENSE of entitlement. It’s something you have to practice I guess. How do we practice feeling that we are NOT entitled to be loved by someone who has no love to give, even though they are our flesh and blood?
sky – interesting perspective. my father stole from me and lied about it. it took me ages to realize this. i had to get to that understanding before i could be angry, and from that understanding i can take action.
everyone else around me that he was exceptionally self centered,(now, i would say N) except me. it wasn’t until i felt some sense of entitlement that i could stand up for myself. i fought seeing the lie and the theft, because it involves money – and because it involves money, i didn’t want to get into a sense of entitlement – and it is the thing that has made it harder for me to call it as it is – i don’t want to be ‘that’ person, or be perceieved as ‘that’ person. but really, his actions have made it about money…he doesn’t care, and has stolen money from me…so what else is it to be about? i don’t hope to get love from him, i wouldn’t pursue getting the money back as a way of staying connected to him. I do want to stand for myself, and not roll over, as i am expected to. women in my family get to be cowed, passive aggressive or ‘the crazy one’. I actually think i can backspath my dad better than i could the spath – on some level my anger toward him has gone to white steal, and i can be very focused from that place. is part of this to assuage my ego? probably. i will treat him like a bad business deal. it’s shocking to me, but there are few other options. he will never be in my life again, i don’t need to make nice, and i need what he stole from me.
geminigirl.
You are a human being who has suffered many injustices (via your family members), so feeling ANGRY is acceptable and normal. I was raised in a family that didn’t talk about feeliings – we didn’t acknowledge our feelings. Not a healthy way to live. As an adult, this is when I started to become aware of my feelings. Sad. You have been hurt by people (like the rest of us). You possibly stuffed a lot of your feelings down inside of yourself which are surfacing. Get them out. Yeh, your daughters’ didn’t ask to be born with sociopathy, but they are human beings who can inflict pain on others (just like the rest of us). I feel badly that you had three sociopaths harming you at one time – the fact that you made it out mentally intact is awesome. For whatever reason, your ex-husband and daughters targeted you, being unjustly cruel toward a loving, caring human being.