To be empty of a sense of Self and sense of self love and acceptance can be so painful. Not to have been loved for who were really were means we assume a False Self, we learn to.orient around others needs in the vain hope that they will see us, we learn to shut down parts or ourselves that have been unacceptable, due to shame and lack of validation we turn against ourselves with a voracious inner critic, or alternatively on the more negative end of the narcissistic spectrum we turn a hostile outer critic upon others. We may also become vulnerable to flattery and love bombing which is used by someone similarly empty who may only want us as a projection screen or to meet their needs just as our parents did not meet ours or ignored them, even shaming us for having them..
I have just been listening to this powerful talk by Lisa Romaro, a recovering codependent and expert in NPD…
Our own unhealthy narcissistic wounding makes us vulnerable but some of us give as others take. If we were never given to, truly recognized or allowed to express in childhood we become more vulnerable. It is a very tough situation and until we move out of the denial surrounding the FACT WE WERE NEVER LOVED FOR OUR TRUE SELVES, we cannot move forward to self empowerment or break the powerful hold of trauma bonding, which as Caroline Swanson pointed out in the video I shared yesterday is not only a mental and emotional issue but profoundly physiological as well as neurological too.
There is a deep grief I am feeling today about the waste of my energy in my family, there is a profound wound I am feeling today and this accords with something I recently read on another astrology site about the planet of wounding and healing turning retrograde in the Neptune rule sign of Pisces this week.. Meeting with a friend yesterday who validated my goodness and also made me see how unhealthy has been this tie with my sister as well as the amount of repressed anger I am carrying really helped.. It was painful to be that vulnerable but she allowed it and as Lisa points out in this video the wound the Narc carries lies in this incapacity to be vulnerable and take down the mask. As I see it both my sister and brother suffer from this.. both of them seem to have blocked me now.. I need to get some legal aid advice as to what I can do, all my savings I lent to someone who love bombed me, even if he is genuine it is very wrong what he did but then I AM THE ONE WHO KEPT COLLAPSING MY BOUNDARIES.. Its just I feel such rage that someone could keep asking and taking and even now be ASKING FOR EVEN MORE.. I am again not answering texts.. if he does not pay this back the money is gone I have to surrender.. i am not put here to rescue anyone and it NOT FAIR HIM ASKING ME TO AND KEEPING MY MONEY TIED UP..
That said this, at bottom, is not about money but about those other Venusian issues, self love, self worth and self value as well as self respect, without these, when we suffer from what Ross Rosenberg has labelled a Self Love Deficit Disorder. We are on the other unhealthy end of the narcissism spectrum : we have no positive protections in place at all, our Inner Child grieves silently alone, longing for us to hear his or her cries and respond instead of passing off that responsibility to someone else, just as the narcissist does..
It is up to the Adult Self to show up for the more vulnerable empty or wounded part and offer it love and help it to get our needs met in healthy ways. However, for this to happen so much of our faulty conditioning and inner voices have to be turned around.. So painful as it feels for even more of my illusions to fall today, this is a necessary pain, it is a pruning pain, it is a growing pain.. I firmly and resolutely believe this.
Listening to Lisa’s video has explained how and why my sister and mother never would apologize for the cruelty that led to my head injury in 2005. That I came back even after that and subjected myself to even more is just so sad to me now. It seems to me I wasted 16 more years in the wilderness but then maybe this is just the path I had to tread to now be able to at least start to move in the direction of a more complete psychological separation as more idealised or unreal denials begin to fall away. (Chiron Pisces/Neptune influence).
Related :
Emerging From The Dark Night 