Time to be careful

I think that I have to be careful – WWW and her FM’s have been quiet – I’ve been thinking that maybe they know that this time they’ve gone too far.  See the problem here?  I’ve started to believe that they’re like normal people – that they know when they’ve been wrong and may even feel guilty that they’ve behaved terribly.  This is now nonN’s get sucked back in – this is how I’VE been sucked back in over and over.   NOT THIS TIME!!!  I have to keep reading what other people say about dealing with narcissists and I have to keep writing so that I learn how to stay out of their mess.  I’ve never been able to trust them and I certainly can’t trust them now since not only has their behavior not changed – it’s actually escalated.  I’m glad that I live where I do and that I’m pretty inaccessible to them – and getting more inaccessible – hurrah!!!   

Joy cometh...

I can’t believe that it’s been 2 months since my mother died and the Three Weird Sisters made life so unbearable for the Ousted.  The healing is slow, but the freedom of being able to move through life without that craziness is helping the process along.  It’s amazing how many of us there are out there – I’m beginning to think that narcissism is a much more prevalent problem than most mental health practitioners believe, probably because they rarely show up in counseling and when they do, they’re such victims that the counselors don’t see it – they work on self-image and assertiveness!   No more assertiveness training for narcissists!!  Please, people!!!  They don’t need any help standing up for themselves – or believing that they’re the center of the universe!

After a lot of crying, crying, and more crying, I’m feeling ready to move on to the next phase of this, whatever that phase is.  Crying felt good for the first time in my life – it felt productive and healing and cleansing and I let myself do it, something I’ve resisted most of my life.  (If one is born to serve, tears are a dreadful inconvenience to those around them.  What?  I have to wait until you finish blubbering??)  I’m sure crying will be a part of the next phase, but hopefully not SO BIG a part of it.   I feel hopeful for the first time in a long time – hopeful that the rest of my life will be free of narcissistic drama, hopeful that my loving siblings and I will continue to get together in safe, stress-free gatherings where we will talk about our lives and our children and our grandchildren, where laughter will be open and easy and not at someone else’s expense.  Oh, my, life without narcissism will be a joy!  (OK, I’m not Pollyana and I know there will be stress and conflict, but without the narcissism angle, it still looks like heaven!) 

The Empress has no clothes!!

I think the most common question asked by ACoN’s is “Why didn’t I see this sooner?”  I’ve read a couple of good answers on blogs and websites:  1)  We were conditioned to react this way to narcissists, 2) As a child, you so wish for a good family that you begin to chronically overlook horrific behavior and 3) You saw what happened when a narcissist was confronted with his/her behavior.

Conditioning:  We were, indeed, conditioned to give the narcissist supply.  Our MNF demanded it, and once the Golden Child (In my case, the WWW) was identified and the process of grooming her had begun, she was petted, pampered, and protected.  In my FOO, the Golden Child looked a lot like my mother had as a young child.  My eldest sister, now the Main Winkie (protector of WWW and her FM’s) was the chosen protector.  This meant that the two sisters between MW and WWW were pretty much ignored.  In fact, we were often dressed alike although there were 2 years between us.  The Golden Child was also the youngest girl for quite a number of years, giving her even more elevated princess status.  She actually received gifts that she wanted for Christmas and birthdays and was not criticized and abused like the rest of us were.  While we cleaned our FOO’s house to absolutely ridiculous standards of cleanliness, the Golden Child was sent to help our grandmother.  The only time I remember our grandfather hugging one of us, it was, of course, the Golden Child.  We were trained early to let her do what she wanted or we’d get into trouble.

Wish for a good family:  When one child is selected as the Golden Child, the stage is set for the non-Golden Children to believe that they are not good enough, that they’ve done something wrong, that they aren’t loved because of faults within themselves – obviously, the parents love the GC, so it can’t be the parents’ fault!  This made the rest of us work even harder for attention and love.  We learned that currying favor with the GC was a way to win our parents’ approval, so whatever she wanted, we supplied and if she reacted to anything with fury, it was always our fault.  We learned early to tiptoe around her, so it’s little wonder that her adult behavior is as horrific as it is. 

What happens when a narcissist is confronted:  This one is easy – they win!!  Narcissists have no ability to reflect accurately on their own behavior; they automatically think that they’re right about everything and any fault lies elsewhere.  Confronting them is an exercise in futility – and will set into motion narcissistic chaos.  Not only are you wrong, but you are obviously demented, a liar (very big in our FOO), and merely bent on hurting the narcissist’s ever-so-tender psyche.  Telephone lines will buzz with gossip, slander, and just plain old lies in an attempt to destroy your reputation and the protector and flying monkey will come out in force – that way, any other confrontations of the narcissist will hopefully be avoided.

It’s actually pretty amazing that narcissists are EVER confronted or called to account for their behavior, especially women narcissists, who tend toward the histrionic and provide all kinds of drama if anyone suggests that their behavior is anything short of exemplary, even noble.  And their favorite line of defense is to accuse the other person of what they themselves have done – ta-da!!!  This reversal is often so absurd as to be in the realm of comedy, but don’t you dare point that out to the narcissist – or to their protectors or minions.  The empress is really quite naked!!! 

Predicting High Drama

Yesterday, I decided that just walking away was probably not enough.  I feel the need to make a declaration, to send a letter to each of the Threee Weird Sisters saying that I no longer want any contact and why.  There is so little honesty in my NFOO because of the fear.  So I wrote it, re-wrote it, and re-wrote it again.  I decided to call those of my siblings who will be in the line of fire but  I could only reach one of them.  We had a long talk.  We've all lived so long in the shadow of narcissism, tiptoeing around first our parents and now our siblings that the very idea of acting in a normal, natural way is foreign to us.  We're master strategizers - if I do this, what might happen?  Who's going to get hurt in the process?  Who's going to get the first call and how will the event be twisted and convoluted to make WWW look like the victim or the hero?  No wonder we're so emotionally exhausted!  Narcissists really do suck the life out of you.  I sent an email to my daughter, who lives near MW - I don't want to hurt her relationship with her cousin and his family - and this is certainly a possibility, since MW's job is to protect WWW and her FM's.   Sigh...  This is why I have to go NC - I really do want this nonsense out of my life.

Parenting with Fear and Trepidation

When my daughter was born, I was amazed at the fierceness with which I loved her immediately – I remember thinking that I wasn’t a pacifist after all, that if someone tried to hurt her, I would kill them.  It was so strong, so ferocious, so intense.  I’d spend hours just looking at her, astounded that I was now responsible for this beautiful, defenseless baby who was my daughter.  And I knew that I’d have to think through every single decision that I made about how to parent her – I wouldn’t be able to fall back on just doing what my Nparents had done.  It was terrifying!  It took almost a year for me to realize that the bond I had with my daughter was so strong that I would never do anything to purposefully hurt her, that I loved her so much that I’d never make her life about serving me or any siblings she might have, that I’d help her figure out life and encourage her to be herself and to do whatever work she felt called to do – in other words, I wouldn’t raise her like I had been raised.  One day, while I was looking at her while she slept (which she rarely did as a baby!), I just started crying and wondered how it was that NM had never felt this about me, how a child could be born from your body and you don’t just gasp with surprise at the love you feel for them instantly!  And I realized that I also had to be careful not to be jealous of my daughter because she had a mother who loved her fiercely, something I could only dream of.

When my son was born, the same thing happened - that intense, almost wild rush of love for this beautiful little boy who was my son, a child I’d protect with my own life.  I’d really wondered if this only happened with the first child, that maybe the wonder wouldn’t be as amazing with the second child– but it was!  He was slightly jaundiced and since he’d been born at home, our wonderful doctor advised us to put him in his cradle by a window with just his diaper on and the sun would do the work of correcting the problem – so that’s what we did and I’d just watch lie in bed and watch him breathing in the sunlight, so little, so cute, so mine.  Again I wondered how NM had missed this and I felt kind of bad for her – having a baby was this truly amazing and breathtaking experience and she seemed to have missed it all those times!! 

My NM wasn’t the grandmotherly type – she didn’t come to help with babies (to be fair, she had young children at home most of the time)  - but my mother-in-law was.  Sometimes she drove me crazy – she was depressed all her life and she had a hard time relating to my husband, but when you needed her, she was there.  She came to help with my daughter and I could see her fall in love with her instantly.  She came again when my son was born and she fell in love with him, too – it was so wonderful to watch – and she came yet again when my husband was out of town and my daughter and I were laid low with a nasty virus and my son was just a few months old.  My kids always loved spending time with these grandparents, who wanted to spoil them with toys and presents until we limited that – what my kids really wanted and needed was to spend time with grandparents who loved them.   I hope I’m that kind of grandmother someday!

Now for some good news!

Narcissism is kind of like a scab that you keep picking at until it bleeds – it’s time to take a break to focus on the good in life!!!  As you may have guessed if you’ve read the blog from its beginning a few days ago, my FOO is huge!  So I have 3 narcissists, 2 Winkies, and 3 Loving Siblings – with that math, I still have more loving siblings than most people I know!!!  

LS1 (by birth order) has been wonderfully supportive of my efforts to free myself from the dastardly narcissists in my FOO – she’s in the process of doing the same.  We talk, we cry, we regroup, we think it through again, we tell stories, we cry – and around it goes!  We went to our NM’s deathbed and it became very evident that we were indeed dealing with what we thought we had been dealing with – there were narcissists everywhere! When we went back to her home, we walked on the beach, we talked, we cried, we mulled, we laughed, we shopped, we read – and mostly we supported each other in the pain of realizing that this couldn’t go on, that we had to end it.  LS1 is a nurturing, caring, generous, creative, and honest person who had the bad luck of being singled out as the main scapegoat in a large and ridiculously dysfunctional FOO.  The family myth is that she is a drug addict (Who’s projecting here?) who chose to not be a part of the “family” (hereafter known as the Division).  What nonsense!!!  She’s no more a drug addict than I am – but it makes a good story if your adult child chooses to move to CA, a state that my family associates with a great-grandmother who left her husband and ran off with a jewelry salesman – that entire state is now tainted and one who goes there must necessarily be of bad moral character!!  My NM apparently kept this story going until she died – and that information came from my NM’s sister.  LS1 was the first one ousted from the Division – she was an easy target, being in CA and all.  I won’t go into the whole story here, but it involved people yelling and running down the street, a decrepit guitar, a letter on legal letterhead (WWW is married to a lawyer) threatening a law suit, and the stipulation that LS1 was not welcome at any family gatherings until the guitar was returned – which it was.  The story that I was told about the “incident” had none of those components – I got it direct from the mouth of WWW, so this is not a great surprise.  Unfortunately, I was then under the spell of the WWW and I believed her – oh, how sad that makes me!!!  But LS1 forgave me that and we became friends again.  She has kept her chosen family far away from the Division and has a wonderful, creative, intelligent and generally remarkable child, now a teenager with all sorts of gifts who is on his way to healthy independence.

LS2 (by birth order) went No Contact before it was cool!!!  Early on, he realized that Nparents were toxic to his chosen family, especially his children.  He limited time with Nparents more and more as the years went by and his children have grown up to be independent, strong, fun, creative adults who have started healthy, loving families of their own.  I have to admit that I tried to get LS2 to have more contact with MNF and NM and he was gracious and went with me to visit MNF before he died and he also honored W2’s request that he visit NM before she died.  He is an honorable man who is married to a completely remarkable woman. I wish I had followed his lead earlier and shut out the craziness.  LS2 was ousted from the Division by WWW and her FM’s with the help of MW at the time of MNF’s death.  (That is a mouthful of acronyms – sorry!!)  Apparently, when they were cleaning out MNF’s house after his death, LS2 got tired of being ordered around by WWW and her FM’s and said so.  Well this, as you know, is anathema to narcissists and WWW got on the phone to round up a bigger posse than she already had – she actually called LS1 and me, people she had already ousted, and tried to convince us that LS2 had been violently angry and she was terrified of him!!!  Imagine a witch being afraid of a mere mortal!!  Well, that didn’t work, but apparently she got the FM’s and MW onboard and that was all she really needed.  At NM’s deathbed, LS2 acted with dignity and restraint and made sure that his family was safe in the midst of chaos.  NM spoke to him long after she was supposed to have been beyond speaking, so WWW and her FM’s will try to make him pay for that – it’s only a matter of time, but LS2 has proved that he is able to deflect the incantations effectively!  (Update 6/16/2014- LS2's lovely wife died this year, and all kinds of Ntraits showed up in this sibling- his wife had told me that LS2 is a narcissist, but I was loathe to believe it. )
 

LS3 (by birth order) has somehow always been a target for WWW and her FM’s – she is the youngest and the family dysfunction hadn’t improved, certainly, over the years, but it’s hard to believe that children can be as horrifically brutal as these children were to their youngest sibling.  And nothing has changed – as middle-aged women, they are still brutal, nasty, vicious, cruel, and generally jealous of this wonderful sibling.  Who knows why?  Having been raised by Nparents (I almost said “wolves”), they were certainly not trained to be loving, giving, kind, and generous, but it does seem like their behavior is beyond the pale.  LS3 is a beautiful, gifted, creative woman who is currently an entrepreneur, successfully building a business and a life of her own.  She was in the midst of moving to our home state to help our NM transition into assisted living when the last stroke hit.  Now, you’d think that this would be a welcome relief to WWW who had been the primary caregiver for NM when she was living in a retirement community and who was going back to work temporarily because her successful lawyer spouse was apparently not bringing in enough money to support her in the style to which she has become accustomed (Ok, I can hear the bitterness in that statement, too…).  But NOOOOOOOOO – WWW and her FM’s actually made even this out to be an awful thing that LS3 was doing – how dare she come in and act like she was in charge?  How dare she write emails and help NM SKYPE to keep in contact with her children and make it look like SHE was the one taking care of NM when everyone knew it was really WWW who had given up her life (back of hand to forehead, please) to help her NM??  How dare she, indeed??? LS3 took a lot of flak and just kept on going – our little Energizer Bunny!!!  She saw what NM needed and was prepared to do what it took even if she was maligned in the process-and maligned she was.  MW chimed in with concern that LS3’s move would affect her job, etc. – a rather obvious move to support WWW without appearing to…  Oh, my – and then the deathbed, where blocking LS3 seemed to be the main game.  At one point, it looked like NM was going to live much longer than anticipated – there had been many predictions of “tonight,” “not much longer,” etc., and LS3 and I realized the NM probably needed a bath.  When I said this to MW, who is a nurse, she offered to go get someone to do this.  I didn’t understand why we needed someone else to bathe our NM when there were so many of us there, so MW asked for some supplies so that we could bathe her ourselves.  Well, you would have thought that we were going to show porno movies in the assisted living room.  WWW and her FM’s, who loved NM so much, ran from the room, acting completely disgusted and horrified – had I known this sooner, we could have bathed her every hour!!  LS3 and I bathed her, rubbed lotion into her poor, dry skin, rinsed her mouth, washed her hair and massaged her head.  She seemed to enjoy it (at this point she had no power of speech) and we enjoyed time with NM without WW and her FM’s hovering over us. (LS3 has gone NC with me - she is apparently upset that I'm in regular contact with LS1, with whom she had a disagreement.  It makes me sad, but I'm no longer letting sadness determine my interactions with the NFOO.)

So there you have it- my loving sibs and their families are a joy to me – and I haven’t yet shared with you the love and joy that I feel for my chosen family!!!  That will have to wait for another day – I’ve used up my writing time today and have to get back to my regular life, which is getting progressively more free and less anxiety-ridden as I live without contact with my woefully narcissist siblings.

Update 6/16/2014 - as you can see from the updates, there isn't quite as much joy as I had then thought - at least, not from this source!  I am no longer in contact with either LS2 or LS3 - I'm not officially NC, but I'm not taking the initiative to contact them.

Who can I trust?

This quote is from The ONE YOU FEED, 2/22/2010 – the blog address is on my sidebar.

"Narcissists consider their interactions with others as a game; a game they will likely win if you play along. One of the key elements in their communication technique is to keep others on the defensive. They do this by gleaning information from us and storing it for future use. Even the most seemingly benign information can and will be used against you."

So I’ve been aware of the game for a while, but now that I’ve gone NO CONTACT with WWW and her FM’s, I really have to consider the Winkies and their role in the game.  I’m pretty sure that Main Winkie cannot keep information private – she has a LOT invested in these women and sees herself as their protector from the EVIL FORCES of the Ousted siblings – and apparently continues to resist the knowledge that the WWW and her FM’s are the ones who did the ousting.  In her mind, we are self-ousted! She also has really bought into Loving Brother being a force for evil – the WWW and her FM’s really worked that one at the death of MNF – but as a result, WWW got all the good stuff, which seems to be one of the primary goals.  MW often says that her husband considers her naïve – and I think that she wants to appear naïve so as not to look at reality.  Is that possible?  That you keep YOURSELF in the dark on purpose? (Like I did for ages!)  So my plan has been to give MW only happy, happy information – life is GREAT, I’m having FUN and SEEING LOTS OF EXCITING THINGS – that sort of thing.  I’ve always thought of MW as Pollyanna – she wants so badly to ignore what’s going on in the FOO that she tries to re-direct everyone to the GOOD.  But according to the quote above, ALL information can be used against you.  ALL.  So where does that leave me with MW?  How much of my life can I share with her?  How much will have to be given to WWW as narcissistic supply?  Information in my FOO is like gold – we’re commodities traders – the one with the most information wins!  For a while, I thought of WWW as the switchboard operator in the FOO (That’ll give you some idea of my age!!) – she’s the one who collects information.  But the analogy wasn’t quite right because, unlike a telephone operator, she twists and and transforms the information to feed her need for gossip, slander, and deception.  I hate to lose what contact I have with MW – I’d like to think that’s she’s an innocent caught in the clutches of WWW – like the Winkie guards, doing the bidding of the Wicked Witch of the West, but longing to be free of it all.  I’m just not sure that I can think that way about her anymore – knowledge may make you free, but it sure does mess with your life in the meantime.  She knows that I am NC with WWW and her FM’s, but just a few days ago, she told one of the FM’s to email me about prayer cards from our mother’s funeral.  AACK!!!  Apparently, she believes in her little naïve way that NC only means no physical contact – do I bother to have that conversation with her again or do I sever contact with her as well?  AACK!!!!  I hate narcissism!!!

The other Winkie is a brother I love – but I’m not sure that I can trust him not to provide narcissist supply to one of the FM’s.  He tends to believe the gossip of the FM's and although he is getting counseling and is growing by leaps and bounds, his behavior at NM’s deathbed was disconcerting.  He apparently bought into our-mother-may-be-dying-but-she’s-really-only-WWW’s-and-FM’s-mother-so-would-you-please-focus-on-them?  There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the midst of glaring and hostility and W2 saw his job as offering comfort to the N’s instead of dealing with his own grief.  And WWW and her FM’s were very clear that only THEIR grief was valid, that they were suffering so much more than anyone else, and that only THEY should be at NM’s side since she really loved only them.  And W2 bought the whole package – and supersized it!  And having said that, I can’t tell you the pain that even the thought of losing a relationship with this brother brings.  We’ve shared so much of our lives, we talk on the phone a lot, email each other, SKYPE, and I’ve always felt that he had my back – but even given that, I’m still not sure that he’ll able to keep any information from one of the FM’s.  I’m assuming, given what others have written on their blogs, that WWW and her FM’s are going to get worse now that the second parent has died.  I’m also assuming that my going NC is going to up the ante and that the pressure to provide narcissistic supply will increase dramatically (pun intended).  Can he resist?  He’s coming for a visit soon with his  fiancée and we’ll talk then – I feel like I need to see his face when I ask if he can do this.  Please, please, please let the honest answer be “Yes!”