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More Validation

From this recent article on family estrangement. All the things I experienced, and all the conditions I put on any kind of reconciliation — all in one neat, brief little package.

“To heal or to prevent broken ties requires similar types of effort. Given what we know about why adult children walk away—namely: lack of acknowledgment about a past hurt or trauma, lack of acceptance, and toxic behaviors like judgment and control—we can try to reverse-engineer these behaviors by doing the opposite:   Acknowledge and apologize for past hurts and traumas. Even if you were not the person that directly inflicted the trauma, sometimes your denial of someone else’s wrongdoing is just as painful. Or it’s possible that you don’t think you’ve inflicted trauma, but your loved one sees it that way… denial of what the other person feels deeply to be true is a sure way to build the estrangement wall higher. A simple acknowledgment of their experience, without being defensive, can bring the most powerful catharsis.   Accept the person just as they are. Nobody is perfect, and most of us are far from it. There are also lots of reasonable disagreements between reasonable people about the right and wrong ways to live. So, between all this ambiguity and human frailty,

Ask yourself: What do I want more—for this person to conform to my standards, or for this person to be in my life?

[Guess I have the answer to THAT one.]

Make your best efforts to demonstrate that you’re willing to listen and learn, even if you can’t completely change your worldview overnight.   Change behaviors that your loved one finds toxic. … be open and non-defensive if your loved one tells you that your behavior hurt them… show that you’re open to change, because opportunities for reconciliation don’t last forever.

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No Tears Tonight


There’ll be no tears tonight
Slowly the shadows fall away in time
Now I know no future dreams
The things I have today are fine
And as I stumble through
I find that I can choose
And lose the things I’m not afraid to lose

Hold your hour
Live today and let the past go free they said
Try again and I will do the best I can today instead
And as I stumble through
I find that I can choose
And lose the things I’m not afraid to lose

We move in circles as we go
With nothing to guide us but our souls
And we keep on looking for something that we must have
Lost two thousand years ago

There’ll be no tears tonight
Slowly the shadows fall away in time
Now I know that we who fell from grace
Will find a way to shine
And as I stumble through
I find that I can choose
And lose the things I’m not afraid to lose

We move in circles as we go
With nothing to guide us but our souls
And we keep on looking for something that we must have
Lost two thousand years ago

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Miscellaneous Messages from the Universe

“Scapegoating in a dysfunctional family system is a type of (unconscious) blame-shifting in which the family displaces their own psychological difficulties and complexes onto a specific family member. This process of projection, shaming, and blaming serves to divert attention away from the rest of the family’s mental and emotional problems via casting the scapegoated family member into the role of ‘identified patient’ (Bateson, 1972)... Because the scapegoating ‘story’ often follows the child into adulthood and may continue even after a parent’s death (e.g., via a dominant sibling or extended family member) there may seem to be no way out other than to limit or end contact with one’s entire family-of-origin.“

“Those who are victimized multiple times are also frequently targeted due to their assets, not just their vulnerabilities.

“Predatory people are on the lookout for empathic, resilient people – those who can bounce back from abusive incidents so they can continue the abuse cycle – as well as people with resources to exploit. Narcissists especially search for “shiny” targets – those who are attractive, successful and look good on their arm, because it boosts their image. If you are such a type, it is common for them to prey on you. As Dr. George Simon notes, victims of predators “tend to be conscientious and accommodating types. So, their good nature is ripe for exploitation. Moreover, manipulators play on your sensibilities, and often, your conscience.”

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Familiar Ground

The impeachment hearings continue the theme of politics reminding me of my FOO situation.

Calling out what is clearly bad behavior on the part of a Member of the Club results in yelling, lies, spin, misdirection — anything to defend the indefensible.  To shift blame from the person who did the bad behavior to the person who called it out, because that’s much easier and more comfortable than confronting the real problem.

Nothing makes that more clear than the R’s rabid desire to out the whistleblower.  In their minds, THAT is where the problem occurred. No one’s sorry for anything wrong that was done.  They’re just mad that it got caught, that someone had the NERVE to pass negative judgement on the Charismatic Leader.

And, it’s clear that the conservatives won’t listen to any kind of reason or logic.  They won’t be swayed by facts or evidence.  They will persist in believing that “their guy” is being persecuted, rather than simply being held to account. They will yell and wave their stupid signs and perform all kinds of hysterical theatrics, rather than admit one simple thing:  THEY WERE WRONG.

All that is pretty damned familiar.

And whatever is driving the GOP to this extreme, toxic behavior clearly runs deep.  I assume it’s kompromat of some kind, but is it money laundering? human trafficking?  compromising sex?  Who knows?

In the case of my FOO, I think it’s a refusal to face the reality that the excuses and rationales they were taught for 30 years, and have clung to for 20 more, aren’t actually true.

“If only SHE hadn’t been born, none of this would have happened.”

That phrase, or something close to it, sums up how I think my sister in particular feels about me, and to a lesser extent the other two members of The Triumvirate.  “If only you hadn’t been born!”

It is where the thinking stops, and the anger takes over.

That phrase allows you to be mad as shit at the reality you are living, but it makes a serious error.  It allows you to throw all your (justified) anger and emotions and psychological garbage about what is going on, onto an easy target (not justified).  It’s a way to cope, but not a fair or healthy one.

But when all you know is how to blame — and the idea of blaming Mom, or god, or Dad (on whom they were suddenly entirely dependent, after having scapegoated him for so long) is too terrifying to contemplate — well, you gotta put it SOMEWHERE.  And a baby is a pretty safe place to put it, from your own selfish viewpoint.  No repercussions to yourself.

There might be some for the baby.

Unfortunately, the damage that is done by blame-shifting doesn’t come back to the blamer.  The blamer will just shift THAT blame, too.

And now you don’t have to think about how Mom was mentally ill.

(Actually I don’t understand the resistance to this idea AT ALL.  Mom being mentally ill explains a shit-ton of stuff that otherwise you have to jump through a lot of hoops to explain. To me, the idea is a relief, that finally everything makes sense.  It’s truly never made any sense to me to deny it.)

The reality is different.  Even if I had not been born, “it” still would have happened, in some form or fashion. Perhaps there would not have been a Divorce.  But damage would still have been done, just like Trump would have been impeached sooner or later — because our mother was not a healthy person, and toxic people keep on doing toxic things.

I spent the first few years of my life watching my parents yell at each other. It’s one of my earliest memories of them together.  Would it have been preferable to them if Dad and Mom had stayed together, angry and unhappy, forcing my two youngest brothers to grow up in that environment?

Because that’s some of the damage that happened, until The Divorce.

Of course, by that time, the Triumvirate were all escaping out of the house to go to college, so what happened at home wasn’t of too much concern to them.  And that’s fair enough.  What college freshman should be involved in their parents’ marital problems?

But there were still a couple of little kids left in that toxic environment.

So was it better in their eyes for there not to be a Divorce — as long as they didn’t have to live in the mess themselves? Because Catholicism, presumably.  And this is the major reason I gave up on Catholicism:  because it always puts ideology ahead of actual people.  I have only ever met exactly one Catholic priest in my life who put people ahead of ideology, and I’ve met an awful lot more who didn’t.

The Church brainwashed our mother to do the same thing:  if she hadn’t been Catholic, she would probably have had the medically recommended hysterectomy after her fourth child, and presumably my sister would have her wish:  a family that doesn’t include me.

Well, she more-or-less has that now, and I hope she is happy about it, and also that she chokes on it.

Mom chose ideology over what was better for her and her family.  And it eventually helped to destroy that family. My sister has chosen to cling to her grudge against my existence — rather than as an adult, re-examine the situation, work through the unresolved trauma and pain, and recognize the lies for what they were:  a way to scapegoat me, and protect Mom, and later Susan, from having to take responsibility for their own actions.

I wonder if she ever wonders how it feels to have someone begrudge the fact that you even exist.

How it feels to be deliberately not included in your own family.

What does all that have to do with the impeachment? Not a lot, necessarily, other than the shape of the current situation.

Oh, and that the continued and unwavering support for Trump & the GOP that we see in the polls tells me that about 1/3 of our population has some degree of mental health issues or unresolved trauma.

Anyone who can look at the mess that is Trump & the GOP and think, “That’s fine, that’s normal” and cheer them on — rather than recoiling at the unhealthy performances being put on in order to protect a man who is clearly a narcissist — has some issues of their own.

But mainly, it’s the sight of hysterical, toxic behavior to cover up and excuse previous toxic behavior.  And no hope of anyone ever changing.

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Well No Wonder

From “Unfuck Your Brain” by Faith G. Harper

“Human beings are hardwired for relationships.  We need the stability of relationships in order to be well… We live communally not because we are overcrowded but because we have to do it to survive. So with that comes the need for emotional safety. We need to feel secure and supported in our relationships with other people.  We need to have a good idea of what to expect. We need to feel loved… This is about our fundamental human need to feel supported by others in the world.

“We need to know that we are safe with the people we love, that they love us back, and that they are not going to hurt us, at least not intentionally.

“The anger that kicks us in the ass for the longest is when that contract gets broken.”

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Parallels

Dear Polly,

I have a very severe allergy to mushrooms. I carry an EpiPen, and I have been hospitalized multiple times because of exposure to this food. One time, I began convulsing in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. My husband politely explained this to his parents when we started dating, and I was invited to family meals.

Since then, most meals we have shared at my in-laws’ house have had very limited options for me. Somehow, they manage to find a way to add mushrooms to almost everything. One time, they made a point to make a special plate of mushrooms and pass it around. My mother-in-law said, very rudely, “I would’ve liked to add mushrooms directly to the salad, but SOMEBODY has problems with it!” They even added mushroom powder to the mashed potatoes at one holiday dinner. My mother-in-law claimed it was a new recipe she’d found…

[So, she’s asked them to do something, because it’s a problem for her, and they’ve refused to do anything about it, and it’s clearly all her fault. Check.]

This has caused a huge wedge between my husband’s family and us. We no longer spend holidays with them and rarely speak. They don’t get to see their grandkids, even though they live very close by. His sister stopped talking to us. He has a brother who still reaches out and is kind to us, but he acts as though his parents are just set in their ways and we should forgive them and move on.

My husband supports me 100 percent, and he is very angry and hurt by their actions. But at times I feel terrible that I am the cause of this rift, and I just want a happy family.

HELP!

Disrespected Daughter-in-Law

Dear DDIL,

You’re not the cause of this rift. The cause of this rift is TRULY TERRIBLE HUMAN BEINGS.

Every now and then, a group of people assumes the traits and behaviors of sociopaths. Maybe one person in the group completely and permanently lost their doughnuts several decades prior, and slowly, each member of the group learns that playing along with this singular menace is the only way to survive. Eventually, the members of the group are so utterly confused and gaslit by each other that they enforce the will of the group and nod along with bizarre opinions …

Because these people are confused and weak and angry — and because they’re rendered increasingly more confused, weak, and angry by their exposure to each other — they tend to have less and less contact with those outside the group. And when they do encounter someone who’s not in the fold, they recoil and attack. Anyone who questions the group is attacked with words and actions. Anyone who questions the group is bad, and the group is good.

This rift has nothing to do with you. You could be the purest, most perfect, most lovable human alive, and these resoundingly toxic humans would find a reason to take issue with you. They are unwell, full stop.

But have these humans ever indicated that they’re open to new information …? Have you seen any signs that they’re heartbroken over this turn of events and they want to find a way to mend fences? If not, it’s hard to see why they’d suddenly wake up and look for understanding now.

Even so, I would get a doctor’s letter. I would send the letter. But I might also solicit a letter from a therapist, explaining that no matter what mitigating circumstances they might ascribe to their behavior, they’ve done a lot of damage to their relationship with their son and with you, and a large effort, either individually or as a group, will be necessary to fix that damage.

I guess that, personally, I’d want to be crystal clear with them before I disappeared for good. But honestly, that’s one of my flaws. Even when the writing’s on the wall, I want to explain everything. I want to believe that people can change… and all of the confusion and bewilderment that stands in the way of those connections needs to be cleared away or at least tolerated, even when that takes a lot of hard work and a lot of forgiveness and a lot of deep breathing on everyone’s parts.

Your situation challenges this view. Your situation points to the fact that some people are at once so ignorant and so disordered that they cannot understand or navigate reality without hurting other people in the process.

Sometimes people are just unwell. There’s nothing you can do but pity them and keep your distance. It’s pretty awful when you’re related to them. But these motherfuckers are unrepentant. They’re angry, and they want to punish SOMEONE. God only knows what brought them to this, but your only recourse is to stay the fuck away.

And honestly, I’m sure that once you two are officially given up for dead, they’ll find another easy scapegoat and that member of the family will defect, too. That seems inevitable. That’s just what happens in the Upside Down.

It’s very sad. Mourn it. Go see a therapist and encourage your husband to see one, too. This is a hard thing to accept. It’s going to take time.

But don’t ever be tempted to believe that you’re doing something wrong here. This is not on you. This is their abject madness, and it’s up to them to grapple with it. It has nothing to do with you. Let go of this and move forward.

We don’t all get the families we want… If they were abusive or violent, it would be simpler. They’re the worst because they still get to think that this [family rift] is just your little hang-up. They’re the worst because they think it’s completely normal to rage at you for [calling out their bad behavior] … They’re the worst because they get to walk around acting like they’re regular, good-hearted people most of the time…

…put them behind you and don’t look back.

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Journaling

Some more evidence that this blog was the right thing to do.

“It is very difficult to complain about a situation morning after morning, month after month, without being moved to constructive action.”

Labeling emotions and acknowledging traumatic events — both natural outcomes of journaling — have a known positive effect on people, Dr. Pennebaker said, and are often incorporated into traditional talk therapy.

At the same time, writing is fundamentally an organizational system. Keeping a journal, according to Dr. Pennebaker, helps to organize an event in our mind, and make sense of trauma. When we do that, our working memory improves, since our brains are freed from the enormously taxing job of processing that experience, and we sleep better.

This in turn improves our immune system and our moods; we go to work feeling refreshed, perform better and socialize more. “There’s no single magic moment,” Dr. Pennebaker said. “But we know it works.”

On the other hand, Dr. Pennebaker’s research has found that journaling about traumatic or disturbing experiences specifically has the most measurable impact on our overall well-being.

In his landmark 1988 study, outlined in his book “Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotion,” students were randomly assigned to write about either traumatic experiences or superficial topics for four days in a row. Six weeks after the writing sessions, those that had delved into traumatic experiences reported more positive moods and fewer illnesses than those writing about everyday experiences.

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Rule of Law vs Charismatic Leader

Politics continues to reveal to me interesting things about people in general, but especially about my FOO.

For about the past decade, I’ve been truly mystified by the number of people who really, really WANT to run their lives and make decisions according to something other than facts and data.

Religion, astrology, tarot cards and palm reading, Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop thing. Mysticism. The Power of the Ancients. The Secret.

It’s all the same snake oil, and it’s all bullshit, but it keeps selling.

This post by Teri Kanefield discusses the difference between those who want Rule of Law (a rational system) in our country, and those who want a Charismatic Leader, and boy does it shed some light on that whole conundrum.

One way to understand U.S. politics is a clash between two kinds of authority:

  • Rule of Law
  • Charismatic Leader

The American right wing wants a charismatic leader…  Most of us want Rule of Law (rational-law model).  The “Rule of Law” and “Charismatic Leader” models are mutually exclusive.  To exist, each must destroy the other.

  • Rule of Law requires facts.
  • Charismatic leader requires myth.

AND

  • The way to undermine the Charismatic Leader is to prove the myth false.
  • The way to kill Rule of Law is to undermine factuality.

The Charismatic Leader needs to undermine facts and law…
(note:  This is the same as the form of abuse known as “gaslighting”.)

If the myth that props him up is shattered, the leader loses support.
(It’s okay if he lies. It’s not okay if the myth is shattered.)

Clearly this was my big sin, as seen by my FOO:  destroying the myth.

Prof. Timothy Snyder explains that in the past, the ones who didn’t want to live under Rule of Law went west to the frontier, where there they could do as they pleased and create myth. In Europe, during the period of empire, they went to the colonies.  Snyder says that our current crisis —liberal democracy in trouble worldwide— resulted from the fact that we ran out of places for them to go.

In my FOO, the timing was such that when the Rule of Law (Dad) showed back up to live at home full-time, the Triumvirate was on the way out the door to go to college anyway.  Thus they were able to preserve their myth of our mother as a rational, loving parent, and our father as the source of all the problems.

One idea underlying liberal democracy is the “social contract,” which forms rule of law. The way to save the Constitution is for an overwhelming majority of people to reaffirm the social contract.

In my case, the obvious social contract that was broken is the one that says a family is a family, no matter what; that these are the people you can always count on.

But another one was also broken, the social contract between a mother and her children:  the cultural idea that a mother is engaged and loving, and sacrifices willingly for her family.

The seduction of believing in myths is that they are glamorous and shiny.

The problem with believing in myths is that sooner or later, they run up against the Real World.

One example of how belief in a “harmless” myth affected my mother, and our family, is that she sincerely believed what she was told in her teens by a fortune teller at some fair:  that she would give up a glamorous “stage career” that she could have had. In my mother’s head, this was a career as a concert pianist.  Instead she became a non-glamorous wife and mother.

(I never heard my mother play one single note on a piano, ever. I have no idea if she was really that good, but I have my doubts.)

I heard this story dozens of times through my childhood.  And plenty of mothers probably have similar stories about “what might have been”.  But with my mother, she never followed it up with anything like, “But I have you, and that’s better than anything else I could have had!” and a hug.

No, my mother’s repeated telling of this story was an expression of how dissatisfied she was with her life choices.

If that’s the choice my mother wished she had made, she had no one but herself to blame for it – or possibly she could have blamed a competing myth, the Catholic Church.

But a career as a concert pianist takes a lot of fucking work and practice and grit, and a certain amount of luck.  It isn’t glamorous except for maybe the 2 hours you’re on the stage. I imagine there are plenty of people who did try to make it as a pianist and failed. It’s not quite the same as the failure of not even trying, but it’s still a failure of the myth.

So what happens when the myth fails to deliver?

The believers look around for someone else to blame.

My mother chose to act the martyr and victim, and shift the blame instead, usually to my dad.

Just one small example of how belief in a harmless, entertaining myth can fuck up a decent reality.

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The Cult of Mom

Pavlovitz is writing about political brainwashing, but this resonates with me as also describing what happened in my family of origin.

I’ll include the idea of projection, which is yet another form of blame-shifting and one that is “commonly found in personalities functioning at a primitive level as in narcissistic personality disorder .”

Over the years, our mother often accused our father of “brainwashing” us younger kids, to “get us on his side”, so as to win The Divorce settlement.  It was a convenient explanation for how she could have lost custody of “her” children, without having to take any responsibility for that outcome whatsoever.

All Dad’s fault! She’s the victim!

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File Under “Obvious”

“Depression during pregnancy and in the year after childbirth is surprisingly common. It’s estimated that 1 in 7 pregnant women will suffer depression while pregnant or following childbirth.

“The consequences of maternal depression can be severe, according to Davidson, who describes a “cascading set of problems” including premature birth, low birth weight and failure to thrive. After childbirth, new mothers who are depressed can be neglectful and inattentive to their newborn, putting the infants at risk for an even greater number of problems.”

As a society, we really, REALLY don’t want to talk about the idea that motherhood isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. The idea that a mother could NOT love her child is flat-out disturbing to a LOT of people.

I know, because as a kid, in order to describe the unusual distance in the relationship between my mother and myself, I used to say that I “didn’t have a mother so much as kind of an aunt.”

Looking back, I can see where this put a lot of people off. It made adults uncomfortable. They didn’t like the sound of it, they didn’t deal well with it — UNTIL I gave them some kind of explanation, or excuse.

The excuse part went like this: “My parents are divorced, and I live with my dad, so my mom isn’t at home all the time.”

This made some kind of sense, so people took it at face value, because the alternative — to ask why on earth would 4 blocks mean that I couldn’t have a close relationship with my own mother — well, that’s one rabbit hole that no adult ever went down, to my recollection.  There weren’t that many divorced people around at that time and place — I was definitely the only kid with divorced parents all through elementary school — so no one had much of an idea what a “normal” divorce looked like.

Later on, a few of my friends probed a little deeper, and to them I would say, “She’s not there to fight about things like what I’m wearing or how much makeup I have on or whatever.” And this made sense to them, at the stage where they were asking the question.  (In fact, it turned into a strategy — when we were going out in high school, we’d get ready at my house so my friends could avoid such confrontations.)

But despite such easy explanations, the idea that a MOTHER’S LOVE could be changed by a short physical distance still doesn’t actually make sense. And she was neglectful of me prior to The Divorce, anyway.

There was something truly wrong there: whether it was my mother’s mental illness, the electroshock therapy, the two month-long absences during my first year – all things beyond anyone’s control – or her maladjusted way of dealing with adversity, which was to cast blame around and scapegoat, along with the clear indications that she just was not interested in being a mother.

I think if the root cause were confined to that first year of my life, if she had wanted to have a loving relationship with me and had worked at it, that we would have been able to have a better relationship.  But she didn’t put in much effort. (And it’s clearly the adult’s responsibility here to do so, not the child’s.)

We never were close, especially physically: we rarely hugged, we never sat side by side on the sofa, “Love you” and a kiss was confined to goodbyes, and as I lived further away and saw her less often, occasionally hellos. No wonder she saw my childhood physical contact with my father as abnormal and perverted, as I sat on his lap, or he rubbed my back.

In later years, it didn’t take much to break whatever bond we had. In my freshman year of college, while on the phone, I must have said something that she didn’t like, and she claimed to take offense “at my tone” and wanted me to apologize. I refused to do so, and we didn’t speak for about a year and a half.

HOLY SHIT. Just think for a minute about just how abnormal that is. Not speaking to your youngest daughter (who is 18 or 19) for a YEAR AND A HALF because you didn’t “like her tone”!

But it got worse. Shortly after college, there was the time she stayed with me in Texas while Joe & Susan were getting married, and my then-boyfriend-now-husband noted that every time I went somewhere with my mom, I came back crying, because of something nasty she had said to me.

The worst of those was when my own mother told me to my face, “I like Susan better than you, because she’s nicer to me.”

I will bet money that any of my siblings who read this will say to themselves, “Well, that’s perfectly understandable.”

No, it’s not. It’s abnormal. It’s considerably fucked up. Mothers who love their children do not say shit like this.

I’ve long wondered whether our mother was unhealthy and maladjusted and mentally ill with all her kids, or just with me. Of course, no one will discuss it, so there’s no hope of finding out for sure.

But I feel like the fact that they have found ways to excuse EVERYTHING awful she ever did, means that they were in training to do so for a very long time. She may not have been depressed or psychotic in the early years of her parenting, but I will bet money she was narcissistic. With Dad often absent during the week, she would not even have had to be all that subtle about it. And I’m so grateful I was saved from growing up enmeshed with that.