Wait! You're Taking THAT out on ME??

I get into loops in not-rare occasions; loops of thinking about events and what I could have, should have said at the time... had I understood what was actually happening.

There are so many events I remember as being confusing and weird and incomprehensible; so many times shit would go sideways and I would have no clue why and would be standing there like I'd been hit by lightning of a sort. In retrospect, knowing what I know now...

The first I remember was when my sister was 20. She was dating a guy who was quite a lad - slick, self-absorbed, and someone I suspect was treating her more like an accessory than a person, and who I think was likely cheating (I don't know this, but I knew that guy on and off for about 20 years). I was at her house one night and she began insulting me and calling me down. It still hurts thinking about it. Shortly after that, this guy was gone.

Another of these instances occurred at her house after she was married and a mother of two. She and I had had some disagreement about something - I don't remember what, but these incidences were common and had been since we were little kids. I detest arguments and I detest more feeling like I've done something for which I should apologise, so that's what I set out to do. I went to her house, sat at her kitchen table, and told her I was feeling badly about our argument and that I was sorry we'd argued.

One always hopes the response to an apology will be something like, "Thanks, I appreciate that." But no... her response was to fly totally off the handle stand bent towards me, pointing her finger in my face and screaming at me for 15 minutes... I left in tears, devastated.

Another time, I was at her house for our parent's 70th birthday. She was agitated and annoyed, and a day after this shindig emailed me some caustic edict about how I had disrespected her daughter, and terminating with "Manners. Get some."

At yet another point, she was dating some guy from the US. She was angry and agitated for several months - her anger and agitation was directed at me, of course... After an alarming visit to his home, which was "off grid," down a long driveway, hidden by a huge berm and with "private property" signs lining the way - she said it was weird - she broke up with him not so much because THAT was weird but because she discovered he had broken into her on line accounts and had been deleting her male clients and male friends. Although she had been very abusive towards me during this relationship - which I knew very little about - after she dumped him, she called us - my spouse and I - to help her protect her information and block that guy... Note pattern beginning to emerge. 

Then there was the French guy who she was dating when she hosted our parent's 70th. He also lived away and obviously wasn't going to be able to commit easily given the distance. Also included in her email about her daughter was some rant about how it was rude to speak French in a room full of non-French speakers... I dunno... is a sideline conversation unrelated to and unheard by anyone else in the room rude?

And then there was a cocaine addict... She called me up and asked to go for walk... she wanted my blessing, I think, to date this guy, who she acknowledged has a huge problem but who she thought she could "support." I did NOT give "permission." I told her she was crazy, that cocaine addiction is the WORST, that those people often spend all their own money and that of anyone they're with... I don't know what happened, but given this was one of the few times I didn't end up being the brunt of her wrath, she might have taken my advice.

Then there was the six-year-long relationship characterised by pathological jealousy, stalking, anger, verbal abuse... As a note, she is extremely private - fine - but secretive - not fine, so nobody knew what was going on in that relationship. Throughout this relationship, she was secretive, intense, often angry, closed off.

About four years into the six years she dated that guy, I agreed to attend counseling with her. Prior to the day of our counselling session, it seems they had been arguing for days. I found out that day they'd been in counselling for a while. When I arrived to the appointment, I found her sobbing outside the counsellor's office. She was on the phone with him. She was so agitated that day and the counselling session became an opportunity for her to express her anger. Within 30 minutes of us beginning the "counselling" session, she was already accusing me of all sorts. This escalated into her yet again yelling at me with her finger pointed at my face. The counsellor said nothing, which I still find bizarre. My sister left shortly before the end of this session. I left in a suicidal fog and walked the 45 minutes from the office to my home.

Also during that relationship, another time she lit into me: she had invited my spouse and I for dinner, but called literally as we were walking out the door with food in our hands to tell us to delay our arrival for two hours. I found out later she and this stalker had been arguing for hours and she hadn't been able to prepare food... but who did she tear into? Me. Why? because I was inflexible not being able to wait around for two hours for dinner with zero notice.

Then there was a guy who I had dated about 25 years ago. Lovely guy; kind, diligent, funny, but dumb and slightly dishonest. She knew him of course, but imagine my surprise one year when upon arriving at my step-mother's home for christmas dinner, and he opened the door.... They dated for maybe six months, but then she dumped him for the abusive stalker. In 2016, they decided to give it another go. She is intense, a personal trainer, long-distance runner, ironman competitor... he is NOT; definitely comfort, not speed. They date for a year, but without warning - literally - she turned up at his house, dumped him again. He was devastated and called me - something he hadn't done for many years - trying to understand what had happened. Two weeks after that, SHE is calling me, after been entirely out of contact for several years, asking me to call him and go pick up her running shirt, which she says he has. He is not amused .... 

Speed forward to yet another incident in February 2018. She was angry about issues I was not party to and couldn't do anything about. I understand things had become dire for her, financially, as she had taken on my mother's financial affairs in addition to her own. I don't know this for certain, but the details add up to her having got to a point of possibly losing both her home and the one she had purchased for my mother. When she was finally able to sell her house and rent out my mothers, and get our mother settled into new lodgings, she called me up and spent 45 minutes telling me how resentful she is (I would be too were I in her shoes - but she bought those "shoes" all by herself...) and chastising me for all the stuff I should have been doing over the last seven years - ignoring the fact the past is unchangeable and the issues were of her own making.

Looking back over these known incidents, I think I have identified what was going on; she has been in many unpleasant, sometimes abusive, and twice, dangerous relationships. In every instance, she has been absolutely silent about what is going on in these relationships but has taken her anger and frustration out on me.  It strikes me now, from the distance of non-contact, she has used me as her target throughout her life. To be fair, she learned this from our parent, who has scapegoated me since I was a tiny child (read the previous and next posts for background).

She has lately contacted me suggesting she owes me some apology, but she has no clue how deep is the pain I live with on the daily. No clue. She doesn't comprehend how much she's contributed to it by siding with our abusive parent, and by engaging in it herself.

I don't doubt there will be another few times where she'll get herself in to a bind and call me to sort her shit out - except now the answer is NO (unless she is in physical danger, which I can't rule out because she is unfortunately stupid about men).

I feel all the time but I don't know what I'm feeling...

One of the most difficult things about being the child of a narcissist (or someone with borderline personality disorder - BPD) is untangling emotions, understanding what one is feeling, why, if the emotion is attached to something, someone, some event, or if one is generalizing.

As I sit here this morning, I have an intense feeling of upset, slight anger, foreboding, fear, frustration. About what? I haven't untied all that yet.

In the list:

I've had a client contact me about a project I've tried three times to complete for them. They must contact their client to make sure the site is prepared, and they haven't. Frustrating but I can't fix it for them - they drop the ball but I take the hit.

I have a friend needing help moving stuff, which I'm happy to do, but I'm a third party to the machinations, so sitting about waiting on that stuff to be coordinated.

I'm travelling with a group next month, but not positive of accommodations, and unhappy about a potential addition of $500 US to my costs resulting from my having done a good deed...


I'm pissed off we've had dead air from an organization we've been trying to contact since May this year. This angers me so much because their behaviour is ridiculously unprofessional, and we're left wondering what we've done.

I'm bored; work is too quiet thanks to a continuing sluggish economy.

I'm annoyed with myself for procrastinating over several need-to-be-completed items that will take only a few hours to finish.

I'm so very angry at my sibling over their handling of a change to our parent's living situation and that sibling's demands for money but a refusal to say WHY.

I'm also furious at this sibling's deep unwillingness to be clear about what is going on, particularly, as I understand it, they were on the verge of losing their home, and the home our parent was living in. This sibling chose to be angry and confrontational despite our many offers of help.

And I'm furious at another sibling for having taken nearly half a million from our parent and lost it all. Every damned penny of it, and $45K from an investor, and $80K from another person's parent too... this is a whole other story, none of which I was part of, except where I suggested, strongly, to my narcissitic parent they should make sure their investment is secured - which they didn't, so yeah, near poverty. 

I'm struggling to figure out which feelings go where and if they're even worth entertaining. And I'm sick to my stomach and I don't know why, and I know I'm pretty close to burying my head in the sand that is Reddit, or in my addictive craft habit. I have lately come to understand how I use these as "treatment" of a sort.

Growing up as the child of a narcissist is a distinctly unbalancing experience. There's no variance in how the narcissist approaches whatever it is they're angry about - and they're always angry about something.

It is never their fault and they always react on maximum volume, no matter how infinitesimal whatever the issue might be. There is no emotion one can feel and/or express the narcissist won't somehow attack, minimize, misrepresent.

They can spend hours or days haranguing, but when the harangued person finally crumbles into tears, or resorts to rage, the narcissist doubles down. There's no emotion one can feel or express that the narcissist will accept as valid; emotion is always an attack on the narcissist no matter what has precipitated that emotion.

When one is subjected to this from an early age, to be blunt, it fucks you up.

The net effect, particularly when all this starts when one is a tiny kid (2 years old in my case) is, as an adult, the victim often - almost always - misinterprets what people are saying, or what they mean by what they're saying. I am, as a rule, confused and uncomfortable about where my emotions are coming from and I have a difficult time understanding other people's emotions. I am aware I read in other people's feelings, but am terrified to ask if they're actually feeling the way I think.

I usually default to believing they're angry, or they detest me - this being a result of my parent's regular assertion when I was young that they had "people" watching me all day, every day, whether I was at school or with friends (I had so few friends; my trust was shattered at such a young age, and I never knew who these "people" were).

I always feel as if I've done something terrible - a persistent, ungrounded foreboding. Someone saying, "Hey can I talk to you for a second," releases and INTENSE fear response in me. Always. You will understand in employment situations, where people must collaborate many times a day, the "Can I talk to you?" thing made my work environments unbearable and terrifying. For the record, I work for myself now and have mostly done so for about 25 years.

I struggle to let things roll off me and to understand when something needs a response, or when there is no point in even thinking about it, let alone responding to it. I am never confident in whether I have appropriately dealt with a problem, or responded correctly to a question, or an issue. I feel most of the time I've made things far worse, by addressing them at all.

This weirdness has not been helped by the couple occasions when I've been blamed for something completely out of my control; once a pipe burst in a room I was in, and the woman of the house - my former spouse's mother - came steaming down the stairs yelling "what did you do?" at me. I was sitting there, stunned that water was suddenly pouring out of a wall behind all the shit she had stacked up there, having had no clue there were pipes there.

I have three adult children and I am fascinated (and envious in a sense) by how expertly they deal with the day-to-day issues they have, and how well they solve work-related stuff, and by their excellent friendships - with each other and with actual friends.  I'm also amazed I managed to raise three kids who can do that. I'm very glad my distinct issues seem not to have transferred to them. They're great collaborators and skilled at conflict management and resolution.

I feel unbalanced most of the time where it concerns my emotions: I'm either flat, meaning I feel nothing, or experience far less emotion than someone else might in the same situation, or I'm often full-on torn apart by a comment or event someone else might barely register.

I feel I am always letting people down, never doing the best I can do, cutting corners, being shitty. This is my narcissistic parent speaking, and I know it, but this horror began when I was very young.
Although I know it isn't logical, it is deeply internalized. I've heard it said children raised in such environments are permanently-affected, as the trauma causes changes to their DNA. I haven't read too much on the subject, but colloquially, I'd claim it true.

Where it concerns my siblings, my emotions are particularly hard to manage; I shift between concern for them - they were victimized as much as I was, in different ways - and anger towards them for not taking off the blinders they find so comfortable.

I am very concerned for my one sibling, as they are enmeshed in a not-at-all-positive way with our joint torturer/parent. I have deep concerns as to how this sib will react to this parent's death (this parent being 90 years old presently), and how they will adjust to the absence of this still-narcissistic, parent who has, I understand, added stalking-type behaviours to their contact with this sibling.

At the same time, I am beyond furious at this sibling - for how they have scapegoated me, in concert with our parent, for more than 45 years, how they fail utterly to see how, more and more, they are exhibiting the same characteristics of this parent (and of this parent's own also-narcissistic/BPD parent), for how they protect our abusive parent, how they prey on me for help, but reject any help offered - except when they are in dire straights - and ignore me entirely when whatever crisis they may be having has been solved. Since early this year, my overriding emotion is a desire to literally tie this sibling to a chair and punch them until they feel the deep pain I've felt my entire life.

The other sibling ... I also feel so much fury and anger towards them. I cannot comprehend how they can sleep at all, let alone live day-to-day knowing they are the one-and-only reason none of us will have an inheritance, and why the other sibling has been footing the bills - all of them - for this horrifying parent we share. This sibling has exhibited a bizarre vacillation between having near-murderous feelings toward this parent and attempting to have a relationship with them. For the record, their joint relationship has been spectacularly and catastrophically unstable for most of this sibling's 47 years.

Well-meaning people will often say, "Just let it go," but they truly do not comprehend how children of narcissists experience emotion, and how confused and often fearful those children (who may be adults in their late 50s) are. If we're struggling to wade through a lifetime of it, imagine how little a probably-caring but uneducated person might understand.

The net effect of my inability to appropriately parse and navigate my emotions has been the development - among several issues - of profound body dysmorphia to the point of obsession as a stand-in for dealing with the moving parts.

This dysmorphia coalesced on a specific day when I was 13 years old thanks to an off-hand comment made by a good friend, who I know meant absolutely nothing by it. I was going down the stairs in our school, heading to class - she being on the stair directly behind me - when she made a comment about the structure of my hips and butt. I can remember that moment and I were I in that school, I could walk to the exact place - the exact stair I was on - when she made the comment.

Literally from that moment on, this dysmorphia has been a daily, draining, torturous fixture in my waking life. It is the first thing on my mind when I wake - and I wake three or four times a night - and the last thing on my mind before I fall asleep. It doesn't help my sibling is a fitness professional (driven to some extent as a means for them to cope with their own demons I suppose), who has no shame about shaming me and how I look, whether that be the body scan or an insulting comment.

This dysmorphia is coupled with an ever-growing fear of being in public looking like I do. This is compounded by my having competed in a fitness competition four years ago, and then returning to a normal weight and average strength for a person of my age. Hating how I look also keeps me out of the gym: I'm embarrassed to be "normal" after having become so fit and strong.

In my case, that bucket-list item, the competition, was approached as a means of, "SEE! I'm not gross!" rather than something I pursued purely on my own terms, for my own reasons. I'm now fighting with entrenched dysmorphia made worse by having become very fit and quite thin for that competition, but not having the tools to deal with being a normally-sized person of my age. On the rare occasion I see my sibling, their habit of body-scanning me, and their unshielded look of disgust after that ... it doesn't help, and it makes me want to injure them all the more. Vicious circle for sure.

If you're reading this and wondering why I don't get help, I assure you I have tried. I have used - with some success - one of the on-line counselling services when the issues with my sibling were such I was feeling suicidal. It was very helpful to have a faceless, but experienced psychologist willing to read my long accounts, and make observations and suggestions. To not have to be face-to-face where he could see me, how I look, and to have counselling sessions not diluted by my terror over how I look - it was a good solution.

I have recently sought out mental healthcare services; however, despite physical health care being easy to access and covered under the country's health care plan, mental health services are not covered and are very costly, or if provided on a sliding scale, not dependable.

I need care several times a week for at least a year, but at a cost of about $2000/month, it's impossible to afford. It is not for a lack of desire and willingness to get help; it's a literal inability to afford the care I need. The doctor I saw recently diagnosed me with severe anxiety - filed under "No shit, Sherlock," - and prescribed a specific medication to help. The drug she prescribed has a significant side effect - predictable weight gain. Definitely no bueno. Like 1000 percent no bueno.

I am not in contact with my siblings or my parent - and yes, this is extreme, highly guilt-inducing, and difficult to swallow. I know, however, contact with this parent is poisonous, and contact - currently anyway - with the siblings is likely going to affect me negatively.

I know what it's like to have to talk myself out of walking into traffic or driving into a semi - it is utterly, utterly terrifying to be at that point and to know what might trigger that again, and how bloody close - twice in the last eight years - I came to saying "aw, fuck it," and driving across the line on purpose, despite knowing doing so would end my intense pain but would ruin my own children's and partner's lives.

I cannot stress this enough; when someone is in THAT much despair and so desperate to end their own pain, and they know doing so will have a massive, permanent effect on their loved ones, you MUST understand how unbearable it has become for them.

Neither of these siblings is willing to acknowledge their parts in any of it. They are, at times, like starving dogs with respect to goading me. One of them - maybe both - seems to enjoy pushing me to the point of pure, blinding despair. I don't know what they get out of it but it seems to satisfy something for them. Then again, they learned at the feet of the master, given our parent was ravenous for the high of torturing (in an emotional way) me, teaching them how to scapegoat, and expert at alienating us siblings one from the other. The effects of this parent's efforts are cell-deep and permanent.

A bit of advice for people who like to give advice, particularly to people like me: Just don't.

I guarantee you, if you had a happy or reasonably stable childhood, you cannot possibly understand the chamber of horrors that is a childhood overseen by an angry, unfulfilled narcissistic parent whose sole purpose in life is to create as much pain, despair, fear, sadness as possible as some means of obtaining power, and edifying themselves.