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Family of Origin
When parents still abuse their adult children:
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<blockquote data-quote="Scent of Cedar *" data-source="post: 675534" data-attributes="member: 17461"><p>I believe this too, about myself. As though, looking back, there was not enough of me here to create sincerity of relationship, even with my D H. Not in the cascading way I care for him, now. I wonder whether the deepening we all experience as we mature <em>is </em>maturation, or whether I have lived my life sort of functioning on two cylinders instead of six (or however many there are supposed to be), because of the way I was brought up.</p><p></p><p>Upon reflection, I am certain this is so. That part of what feels so different about me now is maturation, but that the larger piece here is the result of the work we have done here in FOO Chronicles. As I lose touch with the intensity of anger over every little thing having anything to do with family of origin, it seems I am able to trace the patterns in the kaleidoscope. </p><p></p><p>This ability to keep my sense of self in exploring those chaotic rememberings has everything to do with that feeling of there being more of me here.</p><p></p><p>As it has been with everything we have learned about ourselves as we have come through this, once we identify what we need, or where we need to mature, or how we were hurt, we can provide those things for ourselves (if our hearts are in it) and heal. This morning, I am thinking that the essence of the harm done to us, when we were hurt in the power-over patterns of relationship in our families of origin, had to do with the capacity for self-determination. Like anyone, we too interpret ourselves through our relationships to our families; we come out of those systems believing that what they've taught us about what matters in a life is true. But for that power-over dynamic (which I still think is the core of the hurt to us) to work, the families had to be structured in such a way that internal locus of control, which is how we come into the world to begin with, was utterly destroyed so that the power-over dynamic could function and the primary abuser could feed.</p><p></p><p>External locus of control.</p><p></p><p>I should look this up, you guys, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, here.</p><p></p><p>Our families are so busy being devious that there is no energy left for us to proceed into the world believing in ourselves <em>and if we should do so, the primary abuser will do all she can to destroy our blossoming self assurance to maintain the power-over position that enables her to feed her grandiosity</em>.</p><p></p><p>Anyway.</p><p></p><p>For us, these ways we have been raised will have affected the self talk involved in our abilities to concentrate. </p><p></p><p>That is where the difference is, between ourselves and those raised in healthy families. </p><p></p><p>We cannot (or at least, I could not) concentrate without feeling I was overstepping myself. Even now, when I think of it, I can hear and see my mother, and the words: "Just don't think." "Don't you dare." "Who do you think you are." I think those words <em>and the emotions attending them, which we will have picked up on more clearly than the words themselves</em> are at the heart of the meaning of the negative tapes we hear most clearly around issues of appearance. Appearance is only what we see. It is the tip of a humongous iceberg. In understanding how we have been taght to assess ourselves, we can travel the abuser's path to heal ourselves, not only around issues of appearance, but in how we think about and value everything. To understand the repetitious toxicity circling through those negative tapes regarding appearance was shocking enough, but to understand that same toxicity is functioning in ways we cannot see it ~ in how we read a book, take a test, assess whether we will like or be liked, in how we are jealous and in whether we hate or how we determine to let those things go and how we feel about ourselves once we do ~ even how we look at the weather or the moon ~ all of these simple, basic aspects of self will have been colored and poisoned ~ will have been subverted to the abuser's power-over dynamic.</p><p></p><p>Those tapes are playing in every aspect of every relationship we have <em>even with ourselves</em>.</p><p></p><p>But...once we see that, we can so easily declare the abuser's power-over dynamic ~ that "win" I am always posting about ~ for the illegitimate thing it is.</p><p></p><p>And then, we are free.</p><p></p><p>Which means it has always been the beliefs imposed upon us in our defenseless childhoods that kept us imprisoned, there in that prison constructed of hatred and lies. As it was, wisely or not, always our choice to function on two cylinders while everyone else was accessing six or eight or however many they could imagine, so we can decide now to fire up as many cylinders as we like, too. Think of the limiting phrases your abusers will have spoken over you: "Just don't think, Cedar. Don't you dare." And whatever the other one was. </p><p></p><p>And my intention around those phrases is no longer sadness, but anger at the stupidity of any person, parent or teacher or pastor or anyone, who would speak such words to a child.</p><p></p><p>That is the criminal act involved, here.</p><p></p><p>They absolutely knew what they were doing, and they knew why.</p><p></p><p>And they did it anyway.</p><p></p><p>All the other stuff ~ whatever physical or emotional abuses there were, served that end.</p><p></p><p>That is why we never got the win.</p><p></p><p>To us, such things are reprehensible.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>That is what I think about Copa, when I wonder how it is I feel so differently now, after the work we have done, here. I am able now to understand the family dynamic in a way that is so different than what I am used to. I think the difference could be that I am no longer enmeshed. When we are enmeshed then, I would say it feels like being caught in a net with too many fish, and no once can breathe, and no one is going to escape the pressure.</p><p></p><p>To not be enmeshed is very quiet. </p><p></p><p>I have been so painfully sad, or so angry (as you guys know ~ thank you for sticking with me), or have come through times of feeling despicable or superior or ~ on and on in that vein, really. The thing is: Those feelings are all feelings we have in relation to someone else.</p><p></p><p>And that is enmeshment.</p><p></p><p>Or, that is external locus of control.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>We need a role model I think, someone who loves us (or maybe, someone who hates us, like a Marine Sargeant is able to change and motivate his recruits), to recover from this way that we think, I think. I had D H mom to teach me how to love my children, how to hold them; how to believe for all of us when the dark times came; for how to be loyal to a spouse, and how to interact with so many brothers and sisters and their triumphs and losses and how to not turn away from that <em>or use it to somehow elevate myself</em>.</p><p></p><p>That is the difference, and again, for me, it comes back, as it always does, to recovering internal locus of control.</p><p></p><p>It was never about discipline, for us I don't think. It was about expectation, and about how to believe in ourselves not with a flare of trumpets, but in everyday ways, such as committing to being kinder to ourselves. That is where we fell under the spell of those negative tapes that we could not hear consciously. We were not aware of their shocking negativity, or of the effect the tapes had on our capacities to give ourselves permission to concentrate. </p><p></p><p>We are back, in a way, to the thread on work, and on reclaiming Germany. Part of Germany has to do with permission for the expectation of personal excellence in a quest in which the guidelines are not clear and the answers are unknown and so, the only thing firing the quest is pure intention; is our own curiosity. Do you see the strength that would create? That is what was broken, in us. That ability to believe in ourselves in that certain way. For someone whose ability to be present, whose capacity to lose himself or herself in her work, it is not the end result ~ it is never what anyone else might think about anything to do with us, but what matters, to someone who has his or her work and Germany working together, is how the issue is completed; is fascination with the work at hand, whatever that work is.</p><p></p><p>And with our clarity in our work and with the reclamation of the legitimacy of our Germany, failure ~ in the frightening, global annihilation way we have been taught to know failure ~ <em>that is not even the remotest possibility.</em></p><p></p><p><em>Those feelings we were taught are not real; those globally annihilating senses of illegitimacy were always wrong and are artifacts of abuse we struggle with even now.</em></p><p></p><p>Out they will go, as we define them and come through this layer, too.</p><p></p><p>Cedar</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Scent of Cedar *, post: 675534, member: 17461"] I believe this too, about myself. As though, looking back, there was not enough of me here to create sincerity of relationship, even with my D H. Not in the cascading way I care for him, now. I wonder whether the deepening we all experience as we mature [I]is [/I]maturation, or whether I have lived my life sort of functioning on two cylinders instead of six (or however many there are supposed to be), because of the way I was brought up. Upon reflection, I am certain this is so. That part of what feels so different about me now is maturation, but that the larger piece here is the result of the work we have done here in FOO Chronicles. As I lose touch with the intensity of anger over every little thing having anything to do with family of origin, it seems I am able to trace the patterns in the kaleidoscope. This ability to keep my sense of self in exploring those chaotic rememberings has everything to do with that feeling of there being more of me here. As it has been with everything we have learned about ourselves as we have come through this, once we identify what we need, or where we need to mature, or how we were hurt, we can provide those things for ourselves (if our hearts are in it) and heal. This morning, I am thinking that the essence of the harm done to us, when we were hurt in the power-over patterns of relationship in our families of origin, had to do with the capacity for self-determination. Like anyone, we too interpret ourselves through our relationships to our families; we come out of those systems believing that what they've taught us about what matters in a life is true. But for that power-over dynamic (which I still think is the core of the hurt to us) to work, the families had to be structured in such a way that internal locus of control, which is how we come into the world to begin with, was utterly destroyed so that the power-over dynamic could function and the primary abuser could feed. External locus of control. I should look this up, you guys, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, here. Our families are so busy being devious that there is no energy left for us to proceed into the world believing in ourselves [I]and if we should do so, the primary abuser will do all she can to destroy our blossoming self assurance to maintain the power-over position that enables her to feed her grandiosity[/I]. Anyway. For us, these ways we have been raised will have affected the self talk involved in our abilities to concentrate. That is where the difference is, between ourselves and those raised in healthy families. We cannot (or at least, I could not) concentrate without feeling I was overstepping myself. Even now, when I think of it, I can hear and see my mother, and the words: "Just don't think." "Don't you dare." "Who do you think you are." I think those words [I]and the emotions attending them, which we will have picked up on more clearly than the words themselves[/I] are at the heart of the meaning of the negative tapes we hear most clearly around issues of appearance. Appearance is only what we see. It is the tip of a humongous iceberg. In understanding how we have been taght to assess ourselves, we can travel the abuser's path to heal ourselves, not only around issues of appearance, but in how we think about and value everything. To understand the repetitious toxicity circling through those negative tapes regarding appearance was shocking enough, but to understand that same toxicity is functioning in ways we cannot see it ~ in how we read a book, take a test, assess whether we will like or be liked, in how we are jealous and in whether we hate or how we determine to let those things go and how we feel about ourselves once we do ~ even how we look at the weather or the moon ~ all of these simple, basic aspects of self will have been colored and poisoned ~ will have been subverted to the abuser's power-over dynamic. Those tapes are playing in every aspect of every relationship we have [I]even with ourselves[/I]. But...once we see that, we can so easily declare the abuser's power-over dynamic ~ that "win" I am always posting about ~ for the illegitimate thing it is. And then, we are free. Which means it has always been the beliefs imposed upon us in our defenseless childhoods that kept us imprisoned, there in that prison constructed of hatred and lies. As it was, wisely or not, always our choice to function on two cylinders while everyone else was accessing six or eight or however many they could imagine, so we can decide now to fire up as many cylinders as we like, too. Think of the limiting phrases your abusers will have spoken over you: "Just don't think, Cedar. Don't you dare." And whatever the other one was. And my intention around those phrases is no longer sadness, but anger at the stupidity of any person, parent or teacher or pastor or anyone, who would speak such words to a child. That is the criminal act involved, here. They absolutely knew what they were doing, and they knew why. And they did it anyway. All the other stuff ~ whatever physical or emotional abuses there were, served that end. That is why we never got the win. To us, such things are reprehensible. *** That is what I think about Copa, when I wonder how it is I feel so differently now, after the work we have done, here. I am able now to understand the family dynamic in a way that is so different than what I am used to. I think the difference could be that I am no longer enmeshed. When we are enmeshed then, I would say it feels like being caught in a net with too many fish, and no once can breathe, and no one is going to escape the pressure. To not be enmeshed is very quiet. I have been so painfully sad, or so angry (as you guys know ~ thank you for sticking with me), or have come through times of feeling despicable or superior or ~ on and on in that vein, really. The thing is: Those feelings are all feelings we have in relation to someone else. And that is enmeshment. Or, that is external locus of control. *** We need a role model I think, someone who loves us (or maybe, someone who hates us, like a Marine Sargeant is able to change and motivate his recruits), to recover from this way that we think, I think. I had D H mom to teach me how to love my children, how to hold them; how to believe for all of us when the dark times came; for how to be loyal to a spouse, and how to interact with so many brothers and sisters and their triumphs and losses and how to not turn away from that [I]or use it to somehow elevate myself[/I]. That is the difference, and again, for me, it comes back, as it always does, to recovering internal locus of control. It was never about discipline, for us I don't think. It was about expectation, and about how to believe in ourselves not with a flare of trumpets, but in everyday ways, such as committing to being kinder to ourselves. That is where we fell under the spell of those negative tapes that we could not hear consciously. We were not aware of their shocking negativity, or of the effect the tapes had on our capacities to give ourselves permission to concentrate. We are back, in a way, to the thread on work, and on reclaiming Germany. Part of Germany has to do with permission for the expectation of personal excellence in a quest in which the guidelines are not clear and the answers are unknown and so, the only thing firing the quest is pure intention; is our own curiosity. Do you see the strength that would create? That is what was broken, in us. That ability to believe in ourselves in that certain way. For someone whose ability to be present, whose capacity to lose himself or herself in her work, it is not the end result ~ it is never what anyone else might think about anything to do with us, but what matters, to someone who has his or her work and Germany working together, is how the issue is completed; is fascination with the work at hand, whatever that work is. And with our clarity in our work and with the reclamation of the legitimacy of our Germany, failure ~ in the frightening, global annihilation way we have been taught to know failure ~ [I]that is not even the remotest possibility.[/I] [I]Those feelings we were taught are not real; those globally annihilating senses of illegitimacy were always wrong and are artifacts of abuse we struggle with even now.[/I] Out they will go, as we define them and come through this layer, too. Cedar [/QUOTE]
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