Shame is just an amazing phenomenon. A conversation with LS1 tonight brought up the issue of shame in the NFOO. When I was in high school, I drove to the town bus stop to pick up LS1, who was coming home from college. Having stayed up the night before to study for exams, and having foolishly taken NoDoze to stay awake, I drove directly into a telephone pole. I got home and expected that Nfather would explode with rage, but he didn't - he actually said that mistakes happen. This was so very out of character for my rage-aholic Nfather that I spent the night waiting for the %#% to hit the fan, but it didn't. A couple of months later, as I was driving the car out of the garage, the overhead door came down on top of the car. Both the door and the car suffered minor damage. Nfather acted as if the world was going to come to an end because of this accident, going into full rage mode. It made no sense to me and I remember mulling this over for a long time. If I'd known then what I know now it would have made perfect sense. The first accident had nothing to do with him - I had been sleep-deprived and drove unsafely. Thankfully, no one was hurt because of my adolescent stupidity. The second "accident" could, however, have been laid at Nfather's feet. We'd all told him a number of times that the door hadn't been working correctly and that it needed fixing. Therefore, he reacted with rage out of shame - shame that he hadn't taken care of something that he should have fixed. That shame had to be dumped on me, since that's what N's do - deflect, deflect, deflect. And he deflected stupendously!
For those of us who were trained to be supply, to be servers, this was sooooo confusing. I was conditioned to believe that I had to fix whatever was wrong in the NFOO, but shame-dumping rages can't be fixed by anyone except the N (and then only with years of intensive counseling by someone who truly understands narcissism). The rages that appeared to come out of nowhere were no one's fault except the N's - there really is nothing in the world that could possibly justify raging at one's family the way Nfather did - it was absolutely terrifying to young children and adolescents. It's no wonder we all walked on eggshells and were willing to take the blame for so much that had nothing to do with us - it's somehow better to do that than to believe that behavior has no obvious cause, that strong feelings can erupt into erratic behavior at any moment, that the world is a dangerously arbitrary place.
I have no memory of Nmother being involved in either of these situations, although she rarely left the house. I think I need to write this after every memory that I share because I have to get in my very bones that she never stepped in to help me or most of my other sibs.
I hope it is ok to comment on a topic 6 months old. Thank you for the ah-ha moment. My MNMum and MNsister do this, but they will also do it when the other person is in the wrong as well, they just can't resist a good shaming opportunity.
ReplyDeleteMy PAdad does it as well, only instead of raging, there are non-apologies (the use of passive voice, This should not have happened, stating the obvious in lieu of taking responsibility etc) and endless excuses and reality bending justifications only to have the same thing happen again and again with the same routine. It is as if he is a robot running an "I am blameless" program; no matter what the input, that is always the output and nothing can ever be corrected. If he says a conditional sorry and agrees to correct something, this will either be forgotten or be used to sabotage something else.
PAs also attempt to displace blame and anger onto someone else and it is infuriating to be subjected to the long winded crapaola "explanation" offered. He is very aggressive in the way he insists on "explaning" himself, even when you have made it clear that he has wasted enough of your time already and he is only adding to the suffering - it is all about him and how blameless he is and not about lifting the burden from other people and truely fixing his mess.
For a short time, he would switch from PA to abusively aggressive "how dare you!"when it was thought he did something that he didn't actually do this time, but had done in the past over and over and had been denying and refusing to talk about while actually sitting down and talking about it. It was how I could tell what he had actually done and hadn't, but he stopped doing this.
I only discovered this about Dad after Mum divorced him and for the first time, he paid attention to me. Like your Mum, when he was at home, he did nothing. I think that he hid behind Mum's craziness and enjoyed the show. To this day, I have people feeling sorry for him.
Not only can these rages not be fixed by anyone, but because of the blaming and deflection, the same mistake will be made over and over again - they do not learn and this is why even with years of counselling they do not change.
Red Dress
Thanks for your comment - yes, I think there's a lot of similarity between a P/A and a covert narcissist - they're both emotionally distant, nothing is ever their fault, and they take a certain pleasure in withholding love. It's distressing - I tried so hard not to marry someone like my Nfather that I married someone just like Nmother! When Nmother left Nfather in her 80''s, my oldest sister, bless her heart, tried to teach Nmother to say "I love you" to her children - first of all, it was disturbing to hear this from someone who had never ever said it before. It verged on creepy - esp. since it was obviously just words without substance. Somehow, it was worse than her not saying it ever was... I don't know when the Nimprint on one's soul is made, but once there, I think it's veeeeeeeeeery rare for anyone to recover and become a full human being. So sad...
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