Joyce Alexander, RNP (retired)
After reading Donna’s newest book on the 10 Red Flags of spotting psychopaths, I got to thinking that there are Red Flags in our own lives that we should also take notice of and avoid.
When we first start the “journey toward healing,” and I do think it is a journey, not a destination, we have to learn the things about ourselves that we need to change in order to live a healthy life, one free of psychopaths and other abusers. Our journey started out in learning the behavior of the psychopaths and abusers so we could spot these people who will not change their bad behavior, but it ends up being learning about ourselves, and how our own behavior contributed to the psychopath’s ability to continue to abuse us.
The Red Flags we can see in people who are not healthy, who are not going to “play nice,” are absolutely necessary to building a new life. (Thank you Donna for your newest book!) But we also need to learn the Red Flags of dysfunctional behavior in ourselves.
The new rules
If we want to become healthy, here are rules that I think we need to make for ourselves.
1. I will not continue to have contact with people who are abusive.
I will maintain NO CONTACT with people who have been abusive to me and do not show any remorse for this behavior. (The exception to this is if I am required by law to co-parent or otherwise maintain minimal contact.)
2. I will not behave in dishonest ways.
I will live an honest life in all ways, dealing with others as I would that they would deal with me. I will maintain the “do right” rule. If it is not “right” I will not do it.
3. I will not live in fantasy.
I will not live in the FANTASY of thinking I can control situations or other people that are out of my control. I will “let go and let God/the Universe” run the universe. I will not live in the fantasy of thinking that if I just try harder I can “fix” anything.
4. I will not be irresponsible.
I will assume responsibility for myself and those things that are my responsibility. I will support myself and my children financially and emotionally, doing healthy things and taking care of those things that are my responsibility. These may include stopping some bad habits such as alcohol and other substances, even too much or too little food or exercise.
5. I will not enable/rescue others.
This means that I will not assume responsibility for the things that others should be responsible for, even if they think I should be responsible for supporting them, or doing for them what they should and can do for themselves. The only “legitimate” rescue is to drag an unconscious person from a burning building.
6. I will not persecute others.
I will not punish others for not doing what I think is what they should do, or for living their lives in a way that brings problems upon themselves.
7. I will not be a volunteer victim.
I will not engage myself in behaviors or with dishonest or irresponsible people that will cause me to be victimized.
I will recognize that in the past I have done things that caused me to be vulnerable to being victimized by others. Because I continued to allow others to abuse me (whatever my excuses were), I know now that I must take responsibility for myself. Now that I KNOW better I must DO better.
Changing our own behavior
When I find myself “back sliding” and in a situation that is causing me distress, I must say to myself “STOP,” and then see what it is that is causing this distress in my feelings and in my life. Then I must take corrective action in the situation and change my own behavior to stop the distress.
Problems come up in our lives every day that we must solve, but if we do the best we can to live our lives honestly and responsibly, taking responsibility for those things that are our responsibility, the problems are pretty well minimized and there is little or no drama in our lives.
There may be someone in our lives that we can’t avoid, a co-worker or a neighbor who is hateful or problematic, but we can control our reaction to their behavior even though we can’t control them. We may even have to find another job, or accept that the one we have is not an ideal one, but we can tolerate it by changing our own attitude.
Life won’t always be a bowl of cherries; there will be problems. But as long as we live by the “do right” rule, and do what we know is the right way to live, the majority of the drama will be out of our lives. We will be less stressed out realizing that we are only in control of our own selves.
Clair, I recognized as a child that there was something very wrong with my family. I vowed that I would never do to my child what my mother had done to me. Note that I said “mother,” not family. I thought there was only one participant.
When I became an undergrad, I took child development courses because I realized that I didn’t know what a “normal” family was or how one would operate. At that time, I was still focusing on my mother.
I eventually got into Al-Anon, where I learned about adult children of alcoholics. It was then that I learned about dysfunctional families.
I don’t think the mental health field had even identified dysfunctional family dynamics before then. Dysfunctional families weren’t talked about before then that I can remember.
Psychology was still limited to treating the individual. They blamed certain people for some things. For example, it was thought that children were autistic because the mothers were so cold and unresponsive. The mental health field even labeled these parents “refrigerator mothers.”
It is very unfortunate that many breakthroughs in understanding seem to disappear after the initial announcements and consequent buzz that put them in vogue. It also seems that people want “the latest research” when certain things as just as valid today as when they were in vogue. It’s not old news. It’s the issue; it’s what’s going on.
You don’t hear about adult children of alcoholics anymore, but much of what is described in those dynamics pertain to children growing up in a psychopathic or sociopathic family.
As for shunning the people who hurt you, I wrote about that in one of my articles posted on LF, “Another View on Forgiveness.”
You might want to take a look at http://www.lovefraud.com/blog/2012/03/29/another-view-on-forgiveness/.
G1S, it never ceases to amaze me at how fervently “forgiveness” is argued on all fronts and from all viewpoints.
For me, “forgiveness” maintains a theological connotation – something that has been mandatedby a Higher Power and my inability or unwillingness to “forgive” marks me as a “bad person.’ I personally perfer using “moving on.” LOL!!! If I can just get past this one pothole on my healing path, I can start looking up the road a little further. Right now, I have no interest in granting “forgiveness” to someone who used me and my assets and then discarded me like a soiled tissue once my funds were drained.
In terms of “shunning” people who present an emotional or psychological danger to me, I have to work with some of these people, so I can’t very well “shun” them. But, what I can do is to acknowledge their existence by cordial responses and provide them with nothing more. No personal discussion. No disclosures. No announcements. No beliefs or disbeliefs. I give them nothing of myself that they could possibly find useful.
It’s like I wrote on another post, today – I don’t and won’t seek someone else’s approval or acceptance, anymore. I’m just not going to. By adhering to that simple boundary, perhaps anyone with “An Agenda” will recognize that boundary as being a hardwired and highly electric fence and won’t dare to injure themselves by attempting to touch it. That’s my hope, at any rate. 🙂
Truthspeak, your points are exactly the ones that I made in my forgiveness article.
Truthspeak, you in effect ARE “shunning” these people by limiting the INTIMATE contact you have with them. You are POLITE on a superficial level but you are allowing them NO real contact with the inner YOU. We have to work with these people and we must be superficially polite to them but we don’t have to become buddies with them. lots of times if you just encourage them to talk about themselves they are so narcissistic they don’t even get it that you haven’t said a word about YOURSELF. LOL
OxD….LOL!!!! And, the sad part is that I don’t even want to hear anything about them, either! I just want to do what needs to get done, go about my business, and just BE.
G1S, I think people get SO defensive because they haven’t gotten to the point where they feel comfortable in saying, “I don’t HAVE to do anything, at all!” If I don’t pass the Get-Into-Heaven Exam, well so be it. I am beginning to do what is right for me – not what other people insist is right for EVERYone.
For me, it’s enough to acknowledge that people make mistakes and that repeating things that harm other people again, and again, and again is a deliberate action. If someone is truly sorry for their actions and take measures to avoid harming others, again, that is something noteworthy!
As an EDIT addition – G1S, I thoroughly agree with your article. It was well-written, sensible, and non-judgmental. I found some of the responses to be somewhat defensive, but I think that stems directly from personal shame-cores and NOT from a space of healing. We are not required to do anything in this lifetime but pay taxes and die. All else becomes a matter of choices and good decisions. IMHO.
Truthspeak, I’m not concerned about passing a get-into-heaven exam either. I agree with you – it’s a matter of choices and, to modify a little of what you said, making good decisions based on the decisions we are seeing made.
Oxy, good point about getting narcissists to talk about themselves and being left with nothing to use against you. Of course, when you fall over asleep from being bored to death listening to them talk, they might object to that.
(((Oxy)))
(((skylar)))
(((20years)))
(((Truthspeak)))
(((G1S)))
Love you guys!! Thanks for answering!!
I used the word “shun” because in those days, I had no knowledge or awareness of Ns/SPs & LC/NC wasn’t in my vocabulary. So, I “shunned” them, but it really was LC/NC.
Oxy said “Clair, THAT IS MY LIFE STORY!!! Absolutely, and you have every right in the world to “shun” people who hurt you. You instincts are RIGHT ON!!!!! so hang in there girlfriend, you are on the right course! NC!!!!”
Thank you for that, Oxy!! It felt so good to read that.
skylar said: “I thought love meant control.”
skylar, I didn’t even realize that I was BEING CONTROLLED!!
Bleh!! 🙁
G1S: interesting what you said about studying child development in college. Had I done so, I don’t know if it would have awoken me because so much of what my N/Borderline parents did was covert or if it wasn’t covert, I thought I deserved it because I was “bad” (as they would often tell me so).
I’m having one of those post-Ns/SPs awareness days, where I’m dealing with the aftermath of the tumult/chaos that the Ns/SPs caused. I’m feeling like a dupe & a schnook, because I was “too nice” & didn’t stand up for myself. But, as my T once said to me :
“how could you have stood up for yourself? The Ns bulldozed you”.
Yup, bulldozed me, crushed/crumpled me and I DIDN’T EVEN REALIZE IT. Bleh!!!!!!!! 🙁
Reminds me of the title of an Alice Miller book: “Thou Shalt Not Be Aware”. Well, I was not fully aware until AFTER both parents were dead.
So, THANK YOU ALL for helping me to un-crumple myself.
Love to you all,
clair
interesting reactions to the word “shun”. Perhaps I should have said “avoided”. But, good use the the word “shun” here:
Job 1:8 – Then the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”
“shuns evil”
Yeah, I’m kinda liking the word “shun” 🙂
Clair,
I like the word shun also. I also liked your word
‘un-crumple’ That’s a good one. 😉
Ox Drover,
Thank you for your kind words. It is finally nice to find a community of people who understand completely what I have been through and can give me the insight and guidance to heal and move on with my life.
This is indeed a life journey and it helps to know others are walking it with me.