I let someone have it today

[springydaffs]

Unfortunately I can be extremely sharp, to the point they could probably wish they'd never been born. I wouldn't like to be on the end of me when I say my piece

I'm not sure what the issue is with the so-say drip-feeding and it may be too much to go into but I'd say it was because I felt someone was a gargantuan taker and ran me bone dry before I had the chance to blink. My patience was up to here, stretched to the max ... and I blew

I didn't shout but oh my goodness I cut straight to the quick with 'you' comments re you are one of the most self-absorbed people I have ever met etc. (quite a few etcs ) I really woul't have wanted to say this to her (or anyone) and really wish I hadn't. it is absolutely true but what good is saying something like that? Since when was I the judge and jury.

Anyway, I feel very low about it. In my younger days someone literally went white and slid down the sofa after one of my exocet missiles. I know that sounds funny but I am not proud of my ability to destroy and wish I had more self-control. Or whatever.

Any tips/empathy/whatever? is this hot-headed/fiery or is it toxic? I really wish I didn't do this. Is it anger management I need? I don't shout but I'm deadly. I don't 'blow' often but when I do, God help anyone in my sights.

I do see what you are saying, but surely you have learnt hyper-vigilance to the behaviour of people who aren't necessarily like most folk? And you might be viewing the motives and mannerisms of everybody through a certain lens which isn't really accurate or fair when applied to your averagely well-meaning but slightly flawed human being? The kind of defensive aggression you are describing might well be utterly disproportionate to the situation, and not at all justifiable.

I did address that BOOOf but edited it out. and tired now, but good point.

I think Hard cheese's 2010 post is very perceptive about the origins of a lot of this stuff. That would be a good starting point.

Ok- night night for now.

Rollon, who is the 'she' you are referring to? Is that me? But I'm here, in the room as it were. Were you addressing the masses? Do you need some backing?

well you obviously , why would that imply I need backing.

I spent a long time telling myself just that, Bof. The world ain't as bad as all that; why are you always seeing problems when everybody's fine? It's just like newcomers to this board complaining that we all make relationship problems look terminal when they (newcomers) see a simple communication hiccup.

(I'm aware that's why I gravitate to this board! I'm working out my own ishoos while addressing other people's.)

As on MN Relationships, so in life. I pick up on the wife's odd little turn of the shoulder when her H or DC make an ordinary-sounding remark, and I see the whole story behind it. I'm not saying I'm some kind of clairvoyant, it's pure hypervigilance as Springy says. Similarly to Springy and Cheese, I imagine, too, I will hear the difference between you saying - healthily - "I finished all my work!" and somebody else saying the same thing with a pathological need for admiration and/or bitterness. It's in the minuscule inflections of voice and demeanour, which everyone in my family has lived by.

Partners of abusers often remark how "clever" they are. It's not cleverness. It's this ability to read - and thus predict - other people. For them/us, a survival skill.

The bummer about all this, of course, is that I do not have the same ability with sane, normal people. I only 'understand' dysfunction. That's why the therapy is such a long, tiring slog :( I am trying to learn a whole new human language.

Springy- I tried to PM you, but MN is running slow, and the little box isn't coming up.

Did you ever see a poster called AlloAllo have a really vicious go at me? It got deleted fairly quickly, so I guess you probably didn't. I've got it saved in an email somewhere so I can always send you it to show you how vile it was. The thing is, the content of the post was roughly accurate, and so personal that they obviously knew me in RL. I will admit that I was hugely upset initially, but the thing is it really was so ridiculously partial and through a lens of such anger and God knows what else, that it was actually really off the mark. When I'd got myself together, I realised that it didn't tell anything like the full story of me, and was much more about whoever it was that wrote it, and whatever pain they were in. Do you see what I mean?

I missed your last post while I was writing mine, Garlic. Thank you for explaining. It does sound exhausting.

Cheers :) It bloody is! I'll have a drink, go to bed, and leave the towel where it is ...

This may well be completely random, but while I'm thinking about this difficult topic ... Did anyone see Doctor Who "The Girl Who Waited"?

The BBC says:
Tom MacRae's brilliantly creative story introduced us to a world that was by turns beautiful and terrifying. The Doctor once again saw the perils that people endure in order to travel with him and we met a version of Amy who had grown old alone.

For me, this drama was resonant of life as the 'misfit' amongst a platoon of sociopaths, battling fiercely and always out of step. I really felt for Amy's loneliness, strength and pride. As the summary says, she was completely on her own. It was the most-viewed episode to date, so clearly reverberated with a lot of other people.

They made the Doctor even more narcissistic than usual in this one! Vain and manipulative. In its companion episode, "The God Complex", there was a lesson about blind faith leading to individual destruction - that, too, will be familiar to victims of narcissists.

I don't even know whether to post this, it's so batty! Allow me the self-indulgence, please.

Garlic that is interesting. Will ask dd, in the morn, for she is a Dr Who geek.

I was following this thread while working today and relate so well to the Volcanic eruption idea. I hate myself for my angry outbursts that hurt people I care about and are so hard to control. Two years of therapy is helping and so is MN. It is so useful to share the insights of such intelligent and thoughtful fellow travellers as you lot ( springydaffs garlicbreath and LeBOF in particular)

HardCheese was very much on the money with her post at 1919
girls and women expressing anger, or indeed any negative emotion, was not allowed in my family

That is so accurate for me, and my lovely self effacing mum who puts herself last and never gets angry but retires with a migraine and a pained expression when it all gets too much for her. I have always felt such a failure when I am unable to be as patient and kind as she is and blow a fuse and shriek with hurt and anger. But to be gently assertive at an early stage instead of a put upon martyr would be so much healthier.

I am so pleased with my DC when they say NO to an unreasonable suggestion and put healthy boundaries in place. It gives me hope that I have not repeated the same mistakes of parenting. My DM treats me as an extension of herself and by implication puts me last in her reckoning because she knows I will understand. This is not because she doesn't care about me as it might appear!

I am learning to remove myself from situations that hurt me before I erupt. And to love myself despite my failures and to expect less perfection and be as kind to myself as I am to others.

Can I start again please? I've made a mess of this life?

Little you don't have to tolerate other people's bad behaviour, maybe you just need to work on it a bit. Probably better than taking the cr** lying down tho.

I am the same with my dd....it makes me all warm and fuzzy...

Ah, i see you are working on it. Don't be so hard on yourself.

Wish it had been me, you would have had it right back !

Arrogant !

I wouldn't have gone white and slid down the fucking sofa.

and that would have helped how exactly recall ?

It might have made her think twice before gobbing off at someone else in the future.

That's so helpful recall. And so intelligently put.

springy can you come up with one or two of your exocets to see this stirrer off the thread?

Boooof - I can remember two clear episodes where this happened to me re someone projected their stuff very forcefully (viciously) onto me. The first was relatively minor (though no less alarming and hurtful): I told a friend (she of horribly fucked-up childhood) about someone in uni halls who had been coming on to me very obviously, who it turned out was a viscount. As I said the word 'viscount' I suddenly had an attack of class shame and cringed inwardly that I may have pronounced it incorrectly (I didn't sound the 's' though!!). My friend registered the inward flinch and put 2 and 2 together and got 5, viciously rounding on me for boasting and being a snob. Those of you with overdeveloped antennae may understand when I say that I registered her registering my flinch and getting the wrong end of the stick. She was also australian and loathed our class system. So she picked up a clear signal but misinterpretted it (through her lens?) and acted on it.

The other, much more serious. The author being my toxic other half, my twin. I got a letter from her, one page, 10pt, with tiny margins, in which she viciously attacked me, leaving me for quite dead - it was a murderous attack. I wish I had kept it but it made me ill (my turn to go white and slide down the kitchen cabinets) for months so i threw it away. It would be a good (if you like!) thing to study in the cold light of day, a perfect example of antennae drawing the wrong conclusion/s, of firing all personal guns: the definition of 'attack'. She had distorted my motives entirely, pouring out her venom unchecked.

That's what therapy is for imo - or one of the reasons. re you examine your responses to what people do and say, you learn to give them a wide berth, to not draw conclusions too quickly (to normalise the world?) - and, more importantly, to not dump your shit onto someone else, particularly someone who has done/said something that frightens you, usually because you don't understand it and it triggers your stuff.

Back to the narcissist in my hearth: she actually is a narcissist - or at least narcissistic. I wasn't drawing the wrong conclusions but panicking that a bona fide (sp again) narcissist was deep in my life, my home. I understood her perfectly - it was my fear and panic that kicked out. All unjustified though. It should never have happened and I am devastated that it did. I know the harm it does and I am appalled that I did it.

I have made my amends btw, which have been received with surprising grace. Someone else took her to task about a month ago (in a very similar vein by the sound of it) and she batted it away without blinking. As far as she was concerned, the woman was mad. So there you have it, she probably thinks I am mad. That's fine by me - she's not far wrong

LeBOOOf that must have been awful did you ever find out which RL person it was?

A very big chunk of my therapy was about learning to observe these processes - the registering of subliminal clues, the emotional reaction and the words & deeds that follow.

Again, I'm rambling a bit but I've been thinking this is the primary difference between me and my family members. My sociopaths (I can't speak for all!) are unaware of doing it, as I partially was before my friends told me. They hold 'paranormal' beliefs - one's a wiccan who thinks she is psychic; one a christian who believes she is guided by god/spirit; one sees himself as super-powerful. He also thinks I am The entire hypervigilant process happens on an unconscious level, leading to results that look positively freakish to everyone else.

Eric Berne (Transactional Analysis) says that - even in healthy people - the three 'selves' (Child; Adult; Parent) can act independently of one another under stress. You might not remember what you did or said in an emergency or a big row, because one part of your mind was operating all by itself. In poorly-integrated personalities, this happens as a matter of course. Your Narc may genuinely not remember that she raged at all. My superhuman relative doesn't know how he persuades people to make poor decisions. The wiccan has a dysfunctional family but, despite training in the field, doesn't see the dysfunction. It's a bit hard to explain that I did this to an extent: it was, after all, normal for me; but I suffered from the splitting, whereas the others are still completely unaware of it.

I used to drop unconscious grenades about myself as well as other people. Obviously, that gave a lot of power away to abusers. In therapy I learned to hear what I was actually saying. Then I was able to trace it backwards to see the thought processes that led to the words. I still do it sometimes, but at least I hear myself now! I'm learning ...

It would have sufficed, I think, to say that I'm the only member of my family with a mental illness. All the splitting, tension and apparent randomness led, eventually, to my breaking down. The others, by contrast, don't feel these tensions and are far more secure in their identities than I am. In my post, I was trying to work through why 'sociopaths' (inaccurate blanket term) seem simultaneously conscious and unaware of what they're doing. I haven't done it all that well, but still

you take yourself too seriously. do you really believe you have that much power over other people?

you've said it yourself:

"Since when was I the judge and jury."

just my 2 Pence

I'm going to rise to that one, grrd. Springy posted because she feels her explosive tendency is a problem. If you've ever encountered a narcissistic rage, that should give you an idea of what's possible. Add in the fact that Springy, not being a Narcissist but having absorbed the behaviours, will not only be 'raging' but also getting her appraisal right instead of projecting - and you could be looking at quite a traumatic character assassination

Anybody who wants to change behaviours, that were ingrained in them from birth, HAS to take themselves seriously. That'll be the main purpose of therapy.

I still don't think the appraisal will be 'right'. It might make some salient points, but you can't ever know somebody's character from a few body language tics and some partial factual information. It's just daft to presume otherwise. I appreciate that you are unlikely to agree with me, garlic, but I truly don't believe that living in an abusive family gifts you with superpowers that are relevant to the rest of the population.

Nobody's claimed superpowers (apart from my family members) [hgrin]
The hypervigilance does mean we notice more, especially with people we know.
But it's not relevant to the rest of the population, except when they're behaving dysfunctionally.
Which is the problem imo!