By Joyce Alexander RNP (Retired)
We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed. For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one’s predicament into a human achievement. When we are no longer able to change a situation just think of an incurable disease such as inoperable cancer we are challenged to change ourselves.
Dr. Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
I spent so much of my life trying to change others that it almost became a way of life for me. I was never very successful at changing others, but I never gave up trying. I have tenacity in great abundance and have succeeded in many endeavors, so I just knew if I kept on trying harder, trying different techniques, loved more, was more selfless and caring, that I could change the way others treated me. I could make them see just how much I loved them and was willing to sacrifice myself for them and they would treat me better because of that.
What I have come to understand, though, as I have started to heal from the wounds I allowed to be inflicted on me by those personality-disordered people in my life—people I loved very much, people I would have died for—is that the only person I can change is myself.
I had left my home, because my physical safety was no longer secure there, and was living in a recreational vehicle parked on some land by a lake that was owned by a friend. I felt very alone, lonely, wounded and destitute of all that mattered to me. During that time I had plenty of time for reflection, and it was also during that time that I found Lovefraud. I sat at my computer reading and weeping for 16 or more hours a day, and realized I was not alone in my pain, not alone in my woundedness, and that I wasn’t the only one in the world who was a smart, successful person who had come upon a situation I could not fix.
Man’s Search for Meaning
By chance I found Dr. Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning, which he had written after his years in a Nazi concentration camp, during which time he lost everything and everyone in this world which had meaning to him, except his very life. The book was not only about the horrors that he experienced and saw, but about his and other’s emotional responses to this horror. He realized that there was nothing he could do about his situation, but find meaning in the most awful of events. He saw that some people in the camps just gave up and sat down and died, and that others became cruel and bitter, and still others found meaning and altruism in helping their fellow prisoners.
Compared to what Dr. Frankl had lost, I had actually lost very little, as I had enough to eat, no one was beating me, etc., and I began to feel guilty for being in so much pain, but then I read his explanation of how pain “works” in us. He explained that pain acts like a “gas.” If you put a small bit of a gas into an empty container, the gas expands to fill the container completely, or if you put in a large amount of gas into a small container it compresses and still fills the container completely. So my pain was just as “total” as his was, it filled me entirely. I had no reason to feel guilty for being in such emotional pain. Like Dr. Frankl, though, I had no way to change the people who were hurting me. I had no control over what they did. No matter how nice Dr. Frankl would have been to his captors, they would still not have loved him or been compassionate to him or caring.
Out of my control
I realized that the situation with others is, and always has been, out of my control. My ideas that if I just treated others well, did loving things to and for them, that they would love me back were totally false. Not only did I not have the power to control others’ behavior or thinking, my own idea that I could do so was keeping me from taking care of myself.
Fortunately, unlike Dr. Frankl, I had the option of getting away from those who would have harmed me. I could run away. It was only when my very life was threatened that I finally did run away, literally in the middle of the night. Sometimes it takes a hard “wake up call” to get us to see that we cannot change others, that we do not have the power to make someone love us, no matter how well we treat them, or what we give them, or what we do for them.
As a mother, I thought that if I were good to my children, and taught them “right from wrong,” that they would respect me and adhere to these principles of doing good. In effect, they would develop a “moral compass” and have empathy and compassion. The truth is, though, that everyone has a choice about how they think, what they feel and what they choose to do. Other than brute force, none of us can “control” another person’s behavior, and no one can control another’s thinking except by “trauma bonding” or “brainwashing.” So instead of controlling, I ended up being controlled, being manipulated, and used by the people I loved.
Starting to heal
About the time I read Dr. Frankl’s book, and started reading Lovefraud, I also started to heal. I started to realize that as painful as it was to realize that those I loved, truly loved, and wanted to love me, did not love me, which was proven by the way they treated me. I started to redefine even the word “love” as an action verb, not a noun. I started to see that I could not control anyone else’s thinking or behavior, but that I deserved to be treated as well as I treated others.
Knowledge truly is power! Knowing that we cannot change them, accepting that we cannot change them, and then changing our responses to their behavior is our salvation. Starting with “No Contact,” which gets us out of their emotional influence long enough that we can start to think rationally and logically rather than emotionally, we begin to heal. We start to change our own thinking and our own behaviors. We learn to set boundaries for what we will tolerate and allow, not only with the psychopaths and how they treat us, but for how we treat ourselves. We realize that we deserve to be treated with kindness and respect. We deserve to have compassion for ourselves, rather than waste it on those who will not change. We can’t change the world, we can’t change others, but we can and must change ourselves.
EB,
I think your decision and your analysis are both correct.
Your mother’s desire to isolate you from your family, is apparant in her involvement in the plan to take your kids. She failed at that but she isn’t ever going to stop.
When you are talking about a spath, everything is 180 degrees the opposite of what it appears. It’s not that you are disposable, it’s that she wants you to come crawling back to her and accept her control. She thinks that if you have nobody else, you will need to accept her.
It’s amazing how your story parallels mine. Because of my spath, I finally understood what my parents were. And they knew what my spath was but it served their purposes to allow him to destroy me, so they sat around and waited for it to happen. It was supposed to drive me back into the nest for their “protection” (control). I see it clearly now because I recently found out that my father’s mom, did a very similar thing to her youngest son – at age 25. He’s in almost 70 now, but AFAIK, he still doesn’t know what was done to him.
I’m sorry your mother has managed to kick you in the gut one more time. I’m sure it hurts, a lot, EB.
You deserve so much better!!
I love Skylars suggestion of the overwhelming gardenia bush, and I’m with Oxy, I would sign my name!!! I think it would make your mom look foolish and petty.
And anytime anyone commented on the lovely scent of the gardenia’s, they would be told,”oh, EB sent them…
I can imagine it happening over and over, again…each and every time causing your mother to squirm!!!
It’s obvious that you have been a gracious and caring neice, and I’m sure your Aunt and cousin know it, too. One day, I’m sure they will be very ashamed of themselves….as they should be.
Anyway EB, joke ’em if they can’t take a f***.
You are the bomb. You are obviously the bigger person. I’m proud to call you my friend!!!!
EB, my heart truly goes out to you.
I rarely check the blogs on here – too hard to keep up. Today God, or the fates, must have intervened for me to log in and see this conversation. I honestly never thought I’d ever hear about another situation like my own, but here it is.
I’m sending you all the thoughts and good wishes I possibly can. I know you’re a very strong person, but I know how horribly much this hurts, and how awful you’re feeling.
I thought only my spath mother could sink so low. I should have realized that this is just another item in their playbook. I’m just so sorry that you had to experience it.
In my own case I accidentally discovered that my father had died, and no-one had attempted to contact me. This was years after I had discovered (when I was separating from my ex-husband) that my mother had been spreading the usual psychopathic slander to my ex’s family that I was a drug addict, had been committed in psychiatric institutions over the years, and had a criminal record. Of course, the truth is that I was a straight “A” student, and almost a caricature “good girl”. When my current husband and I were coming back from vacation and made a trip to visit my grandparents grave we discovered that my father was buried there too. To say I was in shock was putting it mildly, so I think I have some appreciation of how you feel Erin. Sick, betrayed, abandoned, cast aside, grief-stricken, tortured, maligned: those were all the things I felt and I imagine you’re feeling that too. You deserve every support you can get.
Earlier that day I had popped by my grandparent’s old house and took some pictures: I knocked on the door, introduced myself to the current owner and asked his permission. Didn’t understand why I got a very strange look, and it looked like he attempted to write down our license number as we left. Unbeknownst to me (I didn’t know him) he had known my grandparents and my father and had been at the funeral. Best I can figure out since is that some ‘story’ had been spun about why the evil daughter didn’t show up, and the reality of my appearance obviously didn’t fit the story he’d been given. BTW – I don’t usually do this, but that night I called a crisis line, and got a VERY unhelpful response – someone else having no concept of NC, and blaming me for not being a good daughter. Of course, that’s partly true. It was my mother who was the monster – but in those days I hadn’t completely seen her for who she was and the only thing I knew was that I was in the midst of insanity and no-one in my family was safe to trust so I had gone NC with all of them.
My husband did some internet sleuthing and found out where and when my father had passed, and he contacted the minister at my grandparent’s church (who also didn’t know about my father’s burial – apparently there were some strange things going on. Go figure…). He arranged over the phone for her to do a service at the graveside just for us: me, my husband and my in-laws.
You might want to consider doing something like that for your uncle. If he is the person who was there for you it’s important for you to grieve. And you don’t need to involve yourself or your Aunt in the drama your mother will bring to the funeral to do it. The ceremony of saying good-bye is important – both for your and your children. But you can do it on your own terms, in a way that’s truly respectful of your uncle and honours your relationship with him.
Of course, my mother managed to screw mightily with the service we finally held and traumatize me some more (details of which I won’t go into here), but I went in in shock and without my proper defenses – mainly because I’d spent my years of therapy being told that I was now a grown-up and imagining things: “mothers never harm their adult children…” You, on the other hand, know the truth of your mother and can plan accordingly.
Everyone who matters who attends the funeral will be more than aware that it was you, and not your mother, who showed maturity and respect for your uncle, your family, and the situation. The ones who don’t get that, don’t matter.
So please accept my heart-felt condolences for your loss. I hope that you can find a way to grieve your uncle’s passing and honour your love for one another with whatever amount of ceremony you need. My one suggestion would be to protect yourself as much as possible from your mother’s machinations during this time, but otherwise leave her out of it and don’t let her take this over. Make it about honouring the relationship between you, your children, your uncle, and whomever in his family you feel is safe or deserving to be part of whatever you do.
I’m so very sorry to read about this, and I’ll pray for you.
Annie
EB
I took a little break from LF b/c I had been outed to my husband by one of his minions. They threatened me. I laid low and read offline. And got stronger and smarter and feistier and ADAMANT b/c of YOU.
I AM BACK and I AM NO LONGER AFRAID. I am outing myself back in my little adopted town. I have posted on public site the truth that yes, my husband doesn’t want me, cheated on me, has help from his family/friends and that it makes me sad but what made me more sad was that it was kept secret from me. (is that backspathing? b/c I think it is. backspathing. putting it on them what lowlifes they are but not calling them lowlifes, just putting the entire towns focus on them behaving like lowlifes. and yes, the entire town will talk of it. they LOVE drama and sticking their nose in it. WELL I LEARNED IT FROM YOU!!! You sweetheart, you precious one.)
I am sorry to read what has been done to you but you have way better sisters, cousins, brothers, nieces, friends, confidants, etc etc here. If you want more contact, Donna will forward an email to me. I’m on facebook! With my real name and lots of smart alec comments, ’cause I like poking fun at the ridiculous, the self involved, and the hypocrites.
Blessings to you. Claim the best of this time, chose what feeds your soul, and do for yourself what you inspire for us.
Katy
Annie,
Great post to EB! Thank you for sharing!
I’m so sorry to read what has befallen you EB. Ironically I wrote a similar story as that of Annie and yours regarding how my father was kept from knowing his father had died. We were mentioned on the death letter invitation for the funeral. But we were only informed 3 months after his death. There, both my grandfather and especially my Narcistic aunt had been the culprits. After my grandmother had died (who probably caused my aun’t narcism through overprotection in the first years of her life, she was the enabler, but not pathological herself, though an emotional simpleton), my grandfather changed tactics all of a sudden and wished to play games with my father, using the inheritance as a carrot on a stick (he was the harsh and cold one). My father opted out of that and chose my mother, me and the sisters of my mother as his real family. He was very bitter, always thinking my grandmother had been favoring my aunt by her emotional doting, and my grandfather being the fair one. But it turned out that my grandmother had been the balance force at least on wanting to share the material equally. So, in any case my father and grandfather were only communicating through lawyers. But that never lessened the hurt for him for being rejected at the end as the black sheep of the family all over again, whereas my father is the sole one of those four who is both fair, honest and loving.
There are laws here that enforce warning direct family in case of someone dying. Notaries are enforced to warn the direct family after the death regarding the will. Nothing of the sort was done, until 3 months after the death. Meanwhile we were named as family in the death letter and invitation, to which we of course never showed, proving to the whole of the community and remaining family that we were the bad stock. We didn’t even know.
I have only one good afterthought about it. My grandparents were all my narcistic aunt truly had. Of course some of the remaining third line cousins might remain courteous to her, but she was never much liked. She’s of course divorced for close to 4 decades now. And her sole daughter moved to Naples, Italy, to live with her Italian husband and raise her children there, and can only bear my aunt for so long. She can have all the gold and money she wants for all I care. I wouldn’t trade it for her loneliness. The sole family in her immediate nearness (us) doesn’t want to know her. Friends she never had. My father has friends, a daughter (me) that loves him, a wife that loves him and in laws that love him
For you it’s even worse. This is the death of someone you loved and who loved you truly back. And your mother has the power to influence living relatives to whom you still wish to be related. I’m so sorry for that! I like the gardenia idea that was suggested. I think that your aunt and her direct family do know that you are a good woman. Deep down they know. But they are so bereaved at the moment that the last thing they desire is a show down between you and your mother. It’s not fair that they let her dictate who has the right to pay their last respects at your uncle’s funeral and very sad, but it’s not strange.
I wish you strength through this grieving process, strength I do not doubt for one minute you have.
;
EB, i am sorry to hear about your uncle… and how awful
your family is acting. you are in my thoughts and prayers.
My gosh! You guys are the BEST!
My mind has been all over the place today….this morning was good…..and tonight the tears came again.
Annie….thank you for sharing your story…..It is very painful and time is needed to process this and ‘see’ the reasons for this and where it’s taking me.
Kimmie, Thank you for being there for me! I am going to send a letter to my aunt in a card…..beginning with…..If I was allowed to attend Uncles Memorial….this is what I would have shared about him.
Short, sweet….and high roady…..but not dismissing the fact I was ousted. She can read my thoughts and take whatever she wants from it. I’m giving it back to her.
Skylar: “Your mother’s desire to isolate you from your family, is apparant in her involvement in the plan to take your kids. She failed at that but she isn’t ever going to stop. ” Yep…..you nailed it! Thank you for your wisdom. I don’t know why……I was caught off guard.
Shalom; Thank you for the uplifting visual! 🙂 Laughter has gotten me through so much! Thank you….I do feel the love here at LF!
One…..I told Jr’s tonight! They already knew. Eldest Jr said…..Mom, I’ve been prepared for this, so I don’t feel kicked like you…..I knew they never really cared about us…I’ve told you for years. Fuck them! (OY!). The kids were not shocked…..in their life….it was just another ‘day’. They told me about Sunday cancelling plans to go ‘along’ with me to go see uncle and they knew we were blown off when I didn’t get the return call from Cousin. They knew we weren’t wanted there and were sad that I still had any sort of support left for them….I continued my denial of the reality. (WHOA!)
It still breaks my heart about the example of ‘family’ my kids have……they say….Mom….we have a good example of family!
Milo: thank you…..your right….it’s not right and not fair and I DO DESERVE BETTER!
Lizzy….I didn’t ‘own’ it to my kids….I said very little and they jumped in……it’s crazy how they are so intuitive….and it’s me still in denial! Thank you darling for your support!
Oxy: collateral damage….BINGO! I could write the letter and take it down to my aunts when they are all at the memorial……and burn down THEIR PROPERTY! 🙂 Unfotunately….we got snow today…..so no fire around here! Thank you for your voice of reason darlen!
Katy: Yes dear…..that’s the backspath! I guess backspath is whatever is covert and furthers our ‘agenda’. Just gotta be careful. It’s doing what they do to you…..back….but making it ‘look better’ and us NOT crazy! It’s a fine line and a balance. YOU GO GIRL!
Thank you….I will try to keep in mind what I ‘preach’ to my friends here at LF!
Darwinsmom; Yes….I believe they DO know what kind of a person I am….and if they don’t, I don’t feel the need to bare my heart further….they will be theones who call recall this ‘after the fact’…..and live with it. I give it back to them!
Thank you!
Constantine: Thank you! Yes….he’d not be okay with this…..he was the pillar….he was the balance….and now my aunt is moving on her own, with my mothers influence. BUT….SHE will have to live with this.
Chic; Thank you girl! Yep….it sucks….but it is what it is right?!
You are all so wonderful……Thank you all for so much wisdom and support and sharing of your own experiences and thoughts with me and our LF community. We can learn so much from each other…..and nowhere on earth can we get this much support at the click of a key at any time….day or night.
I KNOW everything happens for a reason……I KNOW THIS….it’s been proven to me over and over…..I was caught offguard…..and now I have to wait for the reason to be ‘revealed’. It will be…..and I’ll come back and tell ya’ll about what I think.
At this point….I think it was my mothers covert manipulation of a grieving woman….she planted a seed (however covert it was or wasn’t) And she used the bereaved to fertalize it. I also think my mother knew that the one who was going to be elected as the messenger was my cousin (she knew aunt wouldn’t call me)….whom I’m close with……and it was her attempt to ‘split’ me off from cousin and his wife. My mother has always tried to get this part of family to cut me off….and this was a perfect plan. She knew I’d be hurt by this…..then hurt by my Aunt….then hurt by the messenger cousin….and cut them off like I did her and the spath Ex.
NICE JOB MOMMY DEAREST…….it won’t work you BITCH!
Watch how this will backfire on her……it’ll be the backspath and I won’t have to do a thing but take the high road! 🙂
In the meantime…..my brother is going….and staying in Wine Country…..he invited me to come along…..and enjoy the wine country…..I’m sure he’ll make a quick exit saying EB is waiting at the hotel for us and wer’e going wine tasting. Mommy Dearest won’t like that either…..and the rest of the family or friends who werent informed of my disinvite…..will think….Hmmmmmmmmmmm?????? And start asking questions……..
Thank you all again…..you are pillars!
XXOO
EB
HI oxy, I thought I was reading your blog before the end of it, as you wrote to me about that book, and how people experanced, there losses, some came weak and died, others got strong and fought on, and others got angry and bitter, you always write good things for us all. with your pain full experances, you share your strenth. As I can see your loved by us all.
I came on here felling sorry for myself again, after reading about EB s perdicament, (not good at spelling so you will have to work it out) was in hospitals half my life, any how, I stopped the tears for my self, what I would do EB is I myself would still go, and put my head up high, but if its going to inpact on the children, then I would find out were the grave will be, and go down with your children, if you are allowed, super glue a beautiful vase to the area, put your flowers in there, and have a good talk with him. when you leave, no one but you will know that beautiful vase is from you, and all the other people, for years and years will be using your vase, and your uncle will know it. I do belive in the spirt world, and they can see and hear you, He no matter what happens at this funeral will know you cared. god bless. let us know what happens and what you desided todo.