By Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired)
Each one of us has more power than we generally perceive we do. Some people, in fact, do not recognize that they have any power over either what happens to them, or to how they react to what happens to them. Yet, we are totally powerful people; we have total power over what goes on inside us.
Recognizing that I am a powerful person with ultimate control over my emotions and actions is a heady feeling, and a scary feeling too. It is heady because it gives us a feeling that we can control ourselves, but it is scary because we also realize that there is no one else who can save us if we fail to exercise that power fully or competently.
When we were children, if we became frightened or sad, we could call on the god-like adults in our world to make us safe and to keep us safe. They could turn on the lights to scare away the monsters that might be lurking there when we could not reach the switch.
At some point in our lives, though, we must recognize that no one can do for us what we must do for ourselves, and that is to exercise our power to keep us as safe as possible from external events and internal tidal waves.
External events
Sometimes things happen externally that devastate our internal and external worlds: A trusted friend/family member/lover dies or betrays us, or a recession, depression, bankruptcy, or war intervenes in our carefully built and safe life that we could not have foreseen. This external event sweeps us away into an abyss of loss and despair. We see our own mortality, or that our life is half gone and we have not accomplished the “you should do x-es” that we had always thought we would do.
We let our sense of devastation externally and internally push us into an abyss of grief and pain. How do we take back our power when we feel so powerless, so naked and vulnerable? How will we ever feel safe again?
Recognizing that we are not in complete control of external events is a scary feeling, yet one that we must, as adults, face. Recognizing the truth that our plans for our future may not all be possible at this point in life is also necessary, and may sadden us.
Phases of life
Just as a child grows through various stages from birth to leaving home, adults too pass through various stages of adulthood. Erick Erickson described them as x, y, z. Unfortunately he did not describe them in great detail, but left his theories for others to expound upon.
I agree with Erickson that we go through various phases in adulthood as we move through the decades of the twenties, thirties, forties, etc. We are not the same person in each of these decades of our lives. We have different wants, needs, skills and knowledge as we move through life.
While it is easy to see that it would be an inappropriate thing for a 60-year-old woman to be sad that she could not marry, conceive a child and raise a family at that age, sometimes, we are saddened because we cannot have all the options at age 30 or 40 that we did at age 20.
Taking stock
When an external event precipitates a major change in our lives, or even an internal tidal wave of regrets or realizations of our lives makes us “sit up and take notice” of where we are on the life-time continuum, we pass through a stage where we may feel powerless over our emotions.
An encounter with a psychopath may be the precipitating external event in our lives, but it can be anything, or nothing in particular. A painful encounter, though, gives us the opportunity to take stock of where we are, where we wish to go, and who we are in the next phase of our adult lives. It is a time to truly recognize that we will not live forever, and that we are subject to the natural laws of this world, and yet, to rise above this and to find significant meaning in ourselves and in our lives.
We can use the external events to grow and refocus our lives, realizing that we do have power, complete power, over some things, and that we have no power over other things. We can live while we live, and find meaning and satisfaction in each of the stages of our lives.
Dear Reeling,
I too was a very beautiful young woman, great figure and big boobs! I didn’t realize it though, and didn’t focus on my looks until they were waving bye to me! LOL
I look in the mirror now and I see my grandmother’s face…and I don’t know where the years…where the decades….went!
But I have since come to the realization about aging and that my worth doesn’t depend on my looks or how “desirable” I am to the males in the area.
I realize that the people who love me don’t love me for my looks but because of WHO I am. How I treat them.
If people only wanted me for my looks or were only attracted to my looks then why would I want them in my life anyway?
Some of the best friends I’ve ever had were grossly obese, or not what one would consider “attractive” but they were wonderful people and I didn’t “see” their looks or their weight I saw their spirits of love and light. I think we sometimes measure ourselves by the wrong yard stick and we should measure our worth by what kind of people we ARE not what we look like.
There’s a book called “Crones don’t whine” and it is about becoming what used to be called a “crone” which actually was a the word for a WISE OLDER WOMAN and was not a put down.
To revel in our cronehood, to really become the crones with wisdom and no longer troubled with the child bearing or rearing, but having freedom in our later years.
I am working to revel in my crone years!
still reeling
Hi. Sorry to hear about your depression this might help.
Not saying this is the answer but CAROL S. DWECK book “Mindset” is a good book that explains “fixed and growth mindsets. Lots of stuff on the net about it.
http://depressiontreatments.net/mindset-and-how-it-can-help-you-overcome-depression/
http://experiencelife.com/article/mindset/
I’d agree that acceptance of ourselves is paramount to our ability to move forward. We can’t unfortunately start at the finish line. Tried that many times. We got to accept all the good and all the not so good about ourselves.
Get better
My 2 Cents
Ox, of course I hear you. I raised my daughter with the mindset that you are who you are *inside*, not outside, and tried hard not to appear too vain or worried about my looks. Of course, society had different plans for her with the emphasis on appearance, et al, ad nauseum. We all know how that works.
Thankfully, she is not like me, does not measure her self-worth by her looks/appearance. She is adorable, great figure, etc., but looks are not paramount in her life. Thankfully.
I have not and may never get to where you are…..the affect that my nurture had upon me along with the wiring, the way people viewed and reacted to me before and after I became “hot,” left a deep, deep impression. I am very senstive to it even today when I should be cutting myself a break. I still wince when I see guys look past me. That is a terribly embarrassing thing to admit and to feel, esp at my age. Path was so taken with my looks….I just don’t get it. But I was surely loving it!! And played to it. G-d only knows…I’m sure I reminded him of his mother (thank you Dr Freud).
Let me just say, I have today, in my possession, the photo album that my mother diligently put together, one of me and one of my brother. She gave them to us when she was in her 70’s. On the inside cover of mine is a picture of a baby, about a year old, with dark brown curls, big blue eyes, an adorable sprinkle of freckles. She cut it from a magazine and placed it in my photo album as the baby she wanted to have. It was all about looks. Even after all the health issues my brother had as a baby, (he’s 7 yrs older than I), she was still stupid dazed about looks, looks, looks. Her father was nuts and mean and had the same obsession with perfection and looks. He had 8 kids!! And all he cared about was how they looked. He treated all of them and his wife like shit. None of them got alone or even saw each other as adults. Hate was rampant.
The baby in the picture that served as an introduction to my photo album looks nothing like me, of course. She couldn’t be more opposite. But mom decided to leave it there anyway. I know she loved me, but true to her enormous self-hate and that for her father, she was always looking for a way to twist the knife. This was one of the ways she did so with me. It still hurts today because she brought me up to believe looks were everything, then let me know I didn’t measure up.
The criticisms were constant almost until the day she died, but only about me, not my brother. She adored and idolized him. There is no photo of another kid on his album. She would tell me how great he was, how he never gave them a minute’s trouble, how she protected him because he was short, had eczema on his face and she knew he was probably getting bullied at school. I completely bought this, idolized him, thought (still do think!) he’s amazing, brilliant, strong, thoughtful, caring, etc. I didn’t understand how she was twisting the knife with these comments because yes, they were true, but she was using them to put me down as much as she was to praise her son.
All through my young adulthood until today, I have struggled to understand and release myself from the shackles of low-esteem, confused identity and miserable lack of confidence my mother instilled in me. I still have not had success. So yes, I have been depressed for awhile as I’ve watched my looks fade. She truly cursed me and my ability to know and accept myself except in dribs and drabs. I believe this and where, at times, I have had better luck blowing it all off and feeling pretty good, today, after corporate America has seen fit to blow me off and not look back, then the experience with path, well who wouldn’t be depressed? Work was my one place of fairly constant support and focus. I was becoming a person of value to others and to myself, irrespective of my looks.
Sorry to have gone on, but I’m so irritated with myself for allowing this person to turn me inside out all my life, keeping me an eternal child with no confidence, no center. Godzilla just helped bring all that back to me and nail it into place. I know he and my mother are/were both sick but I have not been able to rise above this and be whoever it is I’m supposed to be without fear of rejection.
Therapy after therapy has not helped. It will not be taken into my gut. I do not like myself. I have accomplished nothing in my life. I do believe in many small ways I have made peoples’ lives better, maybe a little happier in my lifetime, but generally I’ve just tried to look good and get people to like me. This is why the focus on work has always been so important to me. It was a place to forget everything else, bad feelings, incompetencies, etc. I was a good worker. Now I don’t have that and haven’t since my 2010 layoff. The year at Godzilla’s place was a joke…made me despise myself in terms of the job, which was really a non-job, so disorganized, run by 20-somethings who they paid no $ and who had no idea how to work with people. It’s not their fault. They had no experience. Definitely smart kids but so lacking in maturity, even for their ages.
Spoon, thank you for your post and the links. I read both and definitely agree that I and all of us need to focus on the growth mindset and move away from the fixed, unless we are happy there. I’d take any mindset that will lead to peace.
Sorry to have again rambled, but if anyone has had this experience with a parent and is wired like I am, they will get it.
PS – as long as I’m being obnoxiously selfish and wordy, just want to say that another big issue for me is that I am constantly fighting the urge to do exactly what my mother did and still does in my head….twist the knife. It causes me huge discomfort and simultaneous feelings of self-hate and zero self-esteem. Sometimes I will praise one of my daughters’ friends (a huge success in life way beyond any of the other girls in their wonderful group) on FB for another of her incredible ongoing accomplishments and I know that it hurts my daughter. Or at least I think it hurts her…it may not. So WHY do I do it? I also praise my daughter hugely and openly to compensate. But I still know I am twisting the knife by praising the friend.
My mom would say similar things around my husband who doesn’t have a college degree and has worked hard to get into IT without it. She’d talk about her friends’ sons who were doctors, lawyers, had prestigious degrees, etc. There was no reason to do this. When something like this slips out of me, I just detest myself more.
I want to get back into that mindset I was in before I got canned by the fortune 500. I was enjoying growing older, still worrying about death, etc., but was cutting myself breaks right and left and because of that, my attitude, outlook and mindset were so much healthier. I blew off so many negative feelings, just saying, “Hey, I’ve been there, done that and it’s all OK.” When someone said something that I might have considered hurtful at one time, I blew that off too, thinking, hey, they probably didn’t mean it as I took it, remember whose daughter I am!!! Persecution complex to the nth!!
It is my goal to get back there and without the inclusion of a path or anyone else. I have the tools – I just need to choose to use them. And stop thinking about death. BTW, I have read Kubler-Ross. Those arethe 5 stages I think you were referring to alive, correct?
OK, again, my apologies for rambling, but again, hope it resonates with some of you and you know you aren’t alone.
Still reeling I found some contradictions in your post above as well as some self defeating things I will list them here and then comment underneath when I am done listing.
1)I know she loved me, but true to her enormous self-hate and that for her father, she was always looking for a way to twist the knife. This was one of the ways she did so with me. It still hurts today because she brought me up to believe looks were everything, then let me know I didn’t measure up.
My comment: I do NOT think your mother “loved” you, I think she was disappointed in you for whatever reason and the family ROLE that you filled was the one of the SCAPE GOAT, and your brother who could do no wrong was the GOLDEN CHILD.
In dysfunctional families this family “drama” has set parts for various members to play and in the children there is the “golden child” who can do no wrong, my son Patrick plays that part in my family for my mother. Even in prison for murder he is the golden one, and must be protected at all costs–the family enabler is the protector and protects him. The SCAPE GOAT is the role I fill now since I refused to accept the enabler role. My son C was the family failure and would have been the scape goat if I had accepted the enabler role. He and I both chose to opt out of our assigned roles but my egg donor goes along playing to an empty stage…alone on her stage and the community is her audience.
She never loved me either…and I filed the family whipping boy post for quite some time but due to the fact we have a small family, she needed someone to fill the family enabler role when she died.
In role theory people may change roles when a piviotil role goes unfilled in the family through death or leaving the family.
It isn’t about love…your mother didn’t love you…she really didn’t love anyone, even your golden child brother. It was all just a family play, a drama.
2.Therapy after therapy has not helped. It will not be taken into my gut. I do not like myself. I have accomplished nothing in my life.
ANSWER: Obviously you haven’t found the right one, or you haven’t gone into it with the proper mind set. As long as you BELIEVE it will not help, it will not help, it is a self fulfilling prophecy. You must change your thinking before it CAN work.
3.It is my goal to get back there and without the inclusion of a path or anyone else. I have the tools ”“ I just need to choose to use them. And stop thinking about death.
ANSWER: yes, you need to CHOOSE to use them. Just because you got canned from your fortune 500 job doesn’t mean you are a failure or worthless….your worth does NOT depend on anything outside yourself, unless you let it.
4.)as long as I’m being obnoxiously selfish and wordy, just want to say that another big issue for me is that I am constantly fighting the urge to do exactly what my mother did and still does in my head”.twist the knife.
ANSWER: You make a reference to being OBNOXIOUS and SELFISH because your post is long. I say WHY? Why do you think you are obnoxious or selfish? Do you really think this or are you just saying it because you think it is expected to say this?
Why are you allowing a woman who is dead to determine how you feel? (you don’t have to answer any of these questions to me or anyone else, but only to yourself.)
Why is it bad to praise one of your daughter’s friends? Why not ASK your daughter if it hurts her when you praise her friends rather than ASSUME (mind read) what she thinks by passing it through the filter of what YOU feel or think?
Reeling I hope you will look at these points I have made and THINK about them…and then go back to therapy with a different mind set….
Sure your mother labeled you the family failure, you failed to live up to her expectations, and your brother was labeled the golden child who could not fail.
YOU CAN opt out of that role, or playing it inside your head.
I was labeled that in my family I never lived up to my mother’s expectations or demands. I was never perfect and only perfection was good enough.
You said you have the tools, I hope you will USE them and not to stay in a self defeating…I CANNOT DO IT. You CAN do it, but only if you bring yourself to BELIEVE you can do it. Good luck.
still reeling
Sorry for the pain. Do know what it is like there. Good thing is it’s not permanent. And no need to apologize. We feel what we feel. Doesn’t mean that what we feel is true. But we do have to work from where we are.
The reason it didn’t get into your guts is you didn’t change how you saw [beliefs] the past events. As Ox pointed out about your mother. What she did had to do with her. How she felt about herself. It was never about you. Yes it was dumped on you. And as a child we normally take it as we’ve done something wrong to cause this and if we can’t, as a child come up with a reason like we broke this or that then all that is left to us is we are bad. But that is the understanding of a child. Now we can’t change the events. But we can change the meaning of the events. My mother was full of crap and didn’t know how to love a child. Her crap is hers. Her crap is not mine. Lots of different ways to say it.
The beliefs we have are mostly half truths. And most of our beliefs we created when we where kids. So if we ever want to see them in action go watch some 5 to 7 year old’s. Ask them about how they see the world.
Now one of the problems we run into is the emotional side of the equation. And by what you wrote I’d say that is where your trapped. You can’t move forward because you don’t know how to or don’t want to let go of all the emotions associated with your mother. Sometimes we can even get some sense of satisfaction with the constant arguments in our heads.
The other thing about the emotional state is it can over power our intellect. The higher the emotional state the harder it is for us to negate it.
For the emotional stuff I know of a technique that will remove the emotions from past events. When you strip the emotions from the event it becomes like any over none meaning event. It has no effect on us.
To remove the emotions from a remembered event.
The reason to do this is, it is not the event but the meaning we gave the event that we keeps us reliving the event. And what is causing it is the emotion(s) that we have attached to the event.
The higher the emotional state the harder it is to over come it intellectually. So in most cases the emotional state will always trump our rational thought process.
The simple explanation of the removal process is you are going to play the memory in reverse. This can also be used on the crap we say to ourselves. And any emotional state that is causing problems.
The steps.
1) Sit down and replay the event in your head. When you feel the emotions from the event reach over and pinch yourself, doesn’t matter where and hold it. It doesn’t have to be hard, just so that you feel it. What this does is anchor the emotional state.
2) Now let your mind go back in time to where the event happened. Now go past the event if the emotional state drops off then go back to the event and go to the next step.. If it doesn’t then continue going back in time till you hit the next event and check passed it. What we are looking for is where this emotion first started. But if you don’t get the first one it’s no big deal. If the emotional state shows back up just go kill it again.
Now that we have the problem event we want to Killing the emotions hooked it.
Pretend your setting in the projection room of a movie theater. There is a thick glass window and nothing can get to you. [you can let go of pinching yourself.] Now play the movie of the event backwards about double speed. When it ends, the screen goes blank. Play it again. Screen goes blank. Play it again faster. Each time it ends the screen goes blank. Now around the fourth time let the movie screen start sliding out and keep running the movie and just let it keep sliding until it disappears.
When it has disappeared step back into the event right before it happened and follow it back to the present then watch it continue on into the future. This will clear out any other events that use this emotional state in the past and in the future.
If you have trouble seeing the movie not a big deal. You know it is there. The effects will be the same.
If you have trouble finding the seed event. This is where you have followed it all through your past but you can still feel it out there beyond you. Simply turn your head toward the feeling. This one you will kill by turning your head through the feeling. You will feel the pressure of it like a bubble. With this one you’ll butt it up against your temple and then move your head until it is passed the other temple. For most left to right. And you will feel it as it passes from temple to temple. Do this repeatedly. Then when you can push it out and let it slide out just like the movie exercise.
The effects is you can still remember the event but you will not have the emotions. So no more need to relive it. Plus you’ll have a hole in your head. You may be more emotional, cry, angry etc.. Sleep can be messed up for a few nights. The bigger the emotional state that was killed the greater the effects, will be. And it can open up other things you have suppressed or forgotten about. This is a good thing. If it is in you then it will effect you until it is dealt with.
And each time you kill something. Smile that crap is no longer going to bother you. Tell yourself good job, way to go etc. Then bring on the next one. Because the sooner they are killed the sooner you can have your revenge. And that is to have a happy life.
The steps will shorten as you do this a few times to the point that you will no longer need to do the projector room you will just play the move backwards, letting it slide out of sight and follow it back to the present and let it move on out to the future.
Another pointer is any time you find one that you want to kill but you can’t do the exercise at that moment. Just anchor it with the pinch and with this one pinch a little harder but don’t bruise yourself. Now when you have the time pinch the same place and the emotional state will pop up and you can follow it back and kill it. Make sure that you pinch a place you will remember. Like squeeze the middle finger. In a sense your flipping off the emotional state.
For a test you can use one like this “I still wince when I see guys look past me.” Run this one through the technique. Then go test it out. If you still get a wince anchor it. Then follow it back and kill it.
There is another if your having problems getting the picture of someone out of your head. The exploding smurf.
Let the picture of the psycho or who ever you want out, form in your head. Now turn it blue or any bright color(s) will work. Now start shrinking the picture of the blue psycho until it is very small-tiny and if it talks make the voice squeaky where you can’t even hear or understand it. Now grin and push the button that makes the psycho smurf explode, very very violently, a massive explosion. The blue covers your whole field of vision. Open your eyes. Now try and see the picture of the psycho.
Hope this helps
Still reeling,
yes, that was what I was referring to from Oxy’s site reference..
I just wanted to tell you, that yes I do understand you and I feel all the same emotions as you. I want to share with you that Ox makes direct and great points that for me are hard to swallow because I dont want to believe anything different than what I perceive and how I can excuse and protect myself…or protect my mother (and father, for that matter) for raising me the best they knew how to in that era….
however, today in therapy, and actually for the first time in years, was filled with anger (a lot the anger surfaced with the reading of Women who Love psychopaths) (my therapist was happy about my anger:))….but before we actually started into the depth of the session, she expressed herself (which she normally does not give opinions, only education) she said that I should have been raised in foster care and that I was completely neglected as a child!! I thought, no..i was always groomed well in my youth and maybe in my teens she was not there because my father died and she had to work and would come home every day raging!! and yes I was the scapegoat…but the point is, I dont want to believe that is true…I dont want to see the bad, when she told me with her words and hugs how much she loved me and then she would tell me what I needed was a good beating and proceed to do so….I thought I must deserve it because I fought back to express myself…
Personally, today, I think I had my first major breakthrough in therapy after years and years and years…My therapist said above all to be kind to myself and not to shame myself by blaming myself and telling myself, that I should have known what the “P” was doing and doing to me…that I stayed in for the long run regardless…etc, etc…
I also have been on antidepressants for at least 18 years and struggled to get off of them as the “P” said I was crazy when laughing at me and being cruel to showing how much he loved me, telling me to get off of them and he was going to be there the whole time as I got off of them and love and support me through it…I tried, but could not as the one I was on was very difficult to get off of…however, 2 years later from his demands, I finally somehow did get off the strong one while I had added a nonaddictive (or one that does not build up in your system, a much lighter one?) simultaneously…I am still on this light one (although I told him I was completely off of all med) I really like this one because I lost 10lbs with it and my eating issues really keep me on it…my point is, they do help and until I feel that I can manage “life” and my bouts of depression do not go so deep etc, I will remain on them…they do keep me from totally sinking although, i usually thought they were not working because I felt that I was sinking..I just never went down for the kill…..and yes, over 18 years, I had been on many different meds until I found the one that worked for me…
I do recognize and relate to all that you are saying about your life…but our perspectives have to change…and they will if we keep on keeping on!! 🙂
Hi All,
I have been reading LF for over a year now and thought I could manage the roller coaster emotions alone by reading and learning.
While I’ve been somewhat able to put the S episode behind me (2.5 years of his nonsense)… I haven’t been able to fully function as I was before I met him. He really did a number in my life.
I’m angry, feel alone (even w family around), and lost. Ive been taking anxiety meds for almost ten years. While they might supply a little ray of hope each day….I just keep getting sucked back into memories of despair regarding Him.
I’m going to try the mental imaging as posted above and Posting here. I haven’t really posted before and it’s worth a try, huh?
So, “hi”! 🙂
Dear it takes two, welcome to LF and glad you are posting not just lurking! Knowledge is power, so take back your power and keep on learning! God bless, and again, welcome!
Thank you Ox.
Last July, after much reading here, I decided to go total NC. He lives in the UK while I’m in the USA so at that time only email exchanges as I hadn’t seen him well over a year. I finally felt relief without too much despair as I was happy and felt I could finally move forward without him.
then….
I continued reading comments here about how the S will probably try to contact his victim again and I thought, No way! as the last emails had gotten off track and rude on his part all of the sudden (probably had his next victim then) That is when I went NC.
Sure enough, mid January I get an email saying he’s working in the USA and that I could call him if I want to chat.
I was shocked to hear from him again! He’s high functioning, ‘CEO’, NS variety creep.
At that moment I felt very powerful and proud of myself for keeping NC. I knew he was expecting me to call or email him back and I didn’t do either.
It is because of this blog and all the people here that turned on the lightbulb for me, that I have rid myself of the biggest Rat in the UK. I hope his huge Ego burst into a splatter when I never responded. I’ll just have to imagine that it did.