I may also have headed this post…it’s complicated but then I thought when some of our illusions or blind spots are burst open we see things more clearly and don’t always complicate them as much. Things can get pretty darn entangled when past wounds or feeling or injuries eclipse the clarity of the now. We can read things into things but then we can also intuit others and if we were invalidated as kids we can invalidate our own intuitions or hunches as well, instead of just acting on them and taking them as pure information to be acted upon.
Sometimes I wish this society did not educate children out of their true selves as much as it does. I was doing some inner dialogue and holding work with my inner child this morning as she broke down and told me how overwhelmed she gets with big feelings, as a much younger child that older siblings would swoop in on and pull me all around at times, I felt pretty darn inundated and in an older family the gaze of every one was erratic and intermittent as our family was like a military run business enterprise all geared around work and my older brother really.
I see the suffering in my sister who is still alive and in Bradshaw family systems therapy would be the lost child, being the third child. She had to give up her piano in the end, she could not practice if it disturbed my brother and then the Nuns wouldn’t let her play Dean Martin for Dad’s birthday. They told her it was the devils music and so she just refused to ever play for them again. She was a very very talented pianist at that stage. I remember when Mum sold her piano out from under her but I guess if she wasn’t playing it any more it wasn’t needed. My sister is so so sensitive and was so ‘good’ and always trying to be there and do the right thing, I see this all more clearly now.
Anyway what I wanted to write about here is the entire blame/fault dynamic and how simplistic and silly it is. We try to do things for people and they may not be appreciated, the person may react badly then we get hurt. We think the person is a monster for reacting the way they did or we try to give them labels. It’s interesting as I am a member of the Awakened Empath page on Facebook and last night there was a bit of a stoush going on because a guy was claiming that whenever people accused others of narcissism it was always about something in themselves they were attracting or needed to look at.
A lot of time pathological narcissists don’t get a lot of sympathy or empathy, there is no deeper understanding of what led them to be that way and as my therapist always points out everyone is somewhere on the narcissism or borderline spectrum. That said some narcissists are hard core and so heavily defended against vulnerability and feelings they do cause a lot of hurt. I often question my own narcissism as I know I do not always see others clearly or fully understand their motives or feelings and often I in the past (and sometimes still do) make it all about ME when really it isn’t and is a bit more complex or complicated often I have realised they are not being mean or ignoring me they are just getting on with their own lives and not running themselves around ragged caring too much about others and taking on too much.
I love the Course in Miracles as it claims that all attacks are calls for love, we need to be aware of the distressed call for love that lies at the heart of hate, often a whole lot of longing for love and connection that could not be realised in emotionally neglectful or unavailable families. We carry that hunger out into the world and then see ourselves as victims and at one time we may have been, I love Nancy Van Dyken’s book on narcissism : Everyday Narcissism, Yours, Mine, and Ours. It goes into the subject deeply and sees how we get set up to cut off feelings and them blame others for ours and become victims suffering perceptual distortions.
This idea of right view and its counter balance distorted perception is something Thich Nhat Hanh deals with in two of his books I purchased recently. How To Fight and How To Love, its a bit sad to say we might need a book to show how to love but when you are raised like I was its not always easy. I know I carry a lot of frustration from my past and at times it gets put onto others. Those who know me know I am pretty kind hearted most of the time and when I lash out I am either under stress or pissed off about something, I just wish I had been raised in a family where we were encouraged to be emotionally honest rather than hide our feelings to please others. At times this upbringing has made me most mixed up about who I am and what I TRULY feel and need and it must be confusing for others too. I wish I wasn’t such a people pleaser. I am getting much much better but it has taken a lot of work.
I am so blessed in my life right now though. I have an incredible man in my life who is so darn unconditionally loving to me, he understands where I am coming from when I am hurting and always knows how to soothe the wild beast in me, the grumbly lion who often gets thorns stuck in her paws then howls in pain. There is apparently also a very powerful alchemical symbol which shows the lion in flask being heated up over either a Bunsen burner or a field of flames. This is a metaphor for holding and containing desire, frustration, needs, pains, injuries in order to transform them in such a way as to find right action. Its where I feel myself to be right now.
There is a very interesting book written on dealing with borderline personality that came to mind to me this morning too called Stop Walking On Eggshells. In it the authors talk of the tag you’re it game that borderlines often play. Unable to voice their abandonment fears they may lash out when they fear abandonment or old needs to be loved and understood that were thwarted rise up in new relationships. To the person at the receiving end the borderline’s reactions may seem extreme but they speak of earlier traumas, hurts and longings. A really valued follower of mine Rayne posted a great article this week written on BPD which explained how BPD sufferers early trauma makes them like a person who has thousands of paper cuts all over their psychic flesh. The writer asks the reader how it imagine how it might feel for such a person to step into a bath full of lemon juice. You can find the article by following the link below to Rayne’s blog where she shares it.
https://thejourneytowardhealing.wordpress.com/2019/05/27/a-reframe-on-bpd/
We are adults now though. When we start to get a better handle on where our paper cuts are maybe we make sure we don’t get very close to baths full of lemon juice. I am thinking here of the acidic nature of some people which can be an anathema to people with borderline trauma and this includes narcissists who have a very thick skin and are not afraid to use sarcasm and derogatory comments to dismiss the deeper hidden complexity of what a sufferer goes through. Words can and do trigger us, being misunderstood often triggers us too if we are sensitive. We feel agony that others don’t ‘get us’ and it feels harder to try to explain it, and often we don’t get heard or as Nhat Hahn points out we get so wrapped up in our own view we do not always see so very clearly where others are coming from or how they feel or have been affected differently by something.
All in all humans are complex, and yet simple too. We probably all long for love and those of us who didn’t get a lot of it in childhood probably long for it even more and so we suffer a bit more and that is not just in imagination. However we can also learn to give the needed love, compassion and understanding to both ourselves and others when we start to get a better handle on where the hell we are coming from and this isn’t possible if we just try to shame or blame others. It takes a lot of inner work to see where our particular triggers lie, to take unrealistic expectations off others and realise how and where me may be making ourselves or others ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’ when they are just not reacting in the way we wish. Does that make them narcissists or horrible? Its a question I will leave with you. That said we all have our needs in relationship and its okay to go out there and get them met, and this also will be easier for us when we understand who it is we can relate with and exchange with and who we find a bit too difficult but we can at least show tolerance and respect for the other person and their different level of sensitivity.
Emerging From The Dark Night 