Cluster B Child Care on a good day

[How to communicate after a contentious divorce...]

Cluster B, Separation, Frozen Emotional Development, and Child Care on a good day.


My experience is with an undiagnosed NPD ex.   Her current using a "perfect mom" narrative.   This means she creates her own little world in which she is the perfect mom and uses that to feel good about herself, prop her ego up, and keep her emotions positive.

Although I can not be 100% sure of anything post separation, I believe she has been able to keep herself in a positive space at least while taking care of our daughter.

This means she functions pretty much as a BPD on a good day all the time with our daughter.

That puts me in a unique perspective of being able to collect observations about the effect of Frozen Emotional Development or Separation on childcare during good periods.

At first you might think that there is no effect.  What makes a good day good is that the Cluster B functions as a normal person.   That is not the case.

My ex had significant childhood abuse at a very early age.   Sexual, mental, and emotional, along with neglect and some physical abuse.

My understanding is that children must bond with their parents.   Historically if they didn't, they got eaten.   This means they need to be able to bond with even a bad parent.   So their brain shuts off the fight/flight aversion mechanism in order to facilitate bonding.   This results in their brain being hardwired so that if the attachment bonding mechanism is active the fight/flight aversion mechanism is suppressed.   And, if the fight/flight aversion mechanism is active the attachment bonding mechanism is active.

Bottom line they see things as black and white.    All good or all bad.   Separation.

This can also be described as emotional development being permanently frozen at the toddler stage.    Extreme 100% on 100% off emotions.    The inability to experience more than one emotion at once.   No mixed feelings, no nuance, no gray.

Once this kind of damage happens it effects every memory, idea, or piece of mental content relating to people and human interaction.   Because the very way they experience people is distorted, all memories, ideas, and concepts are distorted.   This is a very hard thing to wrap your mind around.

In philosophy there is a question along the lines of can you know what it's like to be a bat?   Remember, bats "see" by bouncing sound off of things.   That is very qualitatively different than how we experience the world.   Can we imagine what it's like to be a bat, sort of.    If you were blindfolded, you could probably use sound to know if you were in something like a gymnasium or auditorium as opposed to a bedroom or living room.

It is a similar project to wrap your mind around what it would be like to have Separation or Frozen Emotional Development.

Supposing that nothing is triggering any extreme Cluster B behavior and that the person somehow stays in a "good place".     Let's pick something that requires dealing with another person.    If you couldn't form a single idea with Separation turned off, how would you ever even face to face buy or sell something from an individual?   

Buying or selling something from an individual requires an appropriate balance of trust and skepticism.   Two opposing things.   A lot of it would be based on your intuition and gut reaction for a normal person.   And you're going to do that without the ability to get mixed feelings about someone?   Negotiating itself requires mixed feelings. Showing interest but being willing to walk away.  The only way to even do business with other people would be to suppress or disregard all emotions and operate by memorized rules.

The effect of early childhood emotional damage absolutely can be seen on good days.    It might look like Asperger's or a need to learn social skills as opposed to having them come naturally.

[iron pigeon]

Cluster B, Separation, Frozen Emotional Development, and Child Care on a good day.


My experience is with an undiagnosed NPD ex.   Her current using a "perfect mom" narrative.   This means she creates her own little world in which she is the perfect mom and uses that to feel good about herself, prop her ego up, and keep her emotions positive.

Although I can not be 100% sure of anything post separation, I believe she has been able to keep herself in a positive space at least while taking care of our daughter.

This means she functions pretty much as a BPD on a good day all the time with our daughter.

That puts me in a unique perspective of being able to collect observations about the effect of Frozen Emotional Development or Separation on childcare during good periods.

At first you might think that there is no effect.  What makes a good day good is that the Cluster B functions as a normal person.   That is not the case.

My ex had significant childhood abuse at a very early age.   Sexual, mental, and emotional, along with neglect and some physical abuse.

My understanding is that children must bond with their parents.   Historically if they didn't, they got eaten.   This means they need to be able to bond with even a bad parent.   So their brain shuts off the fight/flight aversion mechanism in order to facilitate bonding.   This results in their brain being hardwired so that if the attachment bonding mechanism is active the fight/flight aversion mechanism is suppressed.   And, if the fight/flight aversion mechanism is active the attachment bonding mechanism is active.

Bottom line they see things as black and white.    All good or all bad.   Separation.

This can also be described as emotional development being permanently frozen at the toddler stage.    Extreme 100% on 100% off emotions.    The inability to experience more than one emotion at once.   No mixed feelings, no nuance, no gray.

Once this kind of damage happens it effects every memory, idea, or piece of mental content relating to people and human interaction.   Because the very way they experience people is distorted, all memories, ideas, and concepts are distorted.   This is a very hard thing to wrap your mind around.

In philosophy there is a question along the lines of can you know what it's like to be a bat?   Remember, bats "see" by bouncing sound off of things.   That is very qualitatively different than how we experience the world.   Can we imagine what it's like to be a bat, sort of.    If you were blindfolded, you could probably use sound to know if you were in something like a gymnasium or auditorium as opposed to a bedroom or living room.

It is a similar project to wrap your mind around what it would be like to have Separation or Frozen Emotional Development.

Supposing that nothing is triggering any extreme Cluster B behavior and that the person somehow stays in a "good place".     Let's pick something that requires dealing with another person.    If you couldn't form a single idea with Separation turned off, how would you ever even face to face buy or sell something from an individual?   

Buying or selling something from an individual requires an appropriate balance of trust and skepticism.   Two opposing things.   A lot of it would be based on your intuition and gut reaction for a normal person.   And you're going to do that without the ability to get mixed feelings about someone?   Negotiating itself requires mixed feelings. Showing interest but being willing to walk away.  The only way to even do business with other people would be to suppress or disregard all emotions and operate by memorized rules.

The effect of early childhood emotional damage absolutely can be seen on good days.    It might look like Asperger's or a need to learn social skills as opposed to having them come naturally.

[iron pigeon]

I've been fairly systematic in in the setup here.   Unfortunately, I don't have a comprehensive, systematic answer for the effect of early childhood emotional damage on child care.   But I can share what effects I've observed.

It is hard for me to identify anything prior to separation.   For one thing, I had a Narcissistic rage directed at me.   I was taking care of our daughter most of the time (a violation of the perfect mom narrative and cause of the rage).    As a result any behavior by the daughter could be a reaction to me or the mom and it would be hard to differentiate.

The post separation window is where differences became apparent.   This window at present is approximately from age 1.5 to late 2, almost 3.    So almost 1.5 years and almost half our daughters life.

Early on I had half the daytime awake time and a couple overnights each week.

The first sign of something odd came in email status reports from my ex that were given at handoffs.

Remember this is all describing "good days".

In the middle of what she was the first to characterize as a "high conflict" divorce, she began reporting that our daughter was completely freaking out and totally losing it at times.

In each case the story would begin with something that might be slightly upsetting to our daughter happening.   Something spilled on her or she spit up.   Something like that happened.   The next thing in the email would be a dramatic description of my ex swooping in.   Followed by our daughter totally losing it and completely freaking out.

Now, in spite of the nature of everything here, our daughter is the most good natured, easy going, well adjusted toddler you can imagine.   Totally even keel.  The child developmental counselor read these emails, gave me a confused look, and asked have you ever even seen her freak out?  Without allowing time for me to answer the counselor said I can't even imagine her freaking out or totally losing it.

Later I was taking a parenting class.   The class was based around the idea that kids want attention.   If they can't get positive attention they will go for negative attention, but the worst is no attention.   The conclusion being the best parenting strategy is positive attention for good behavior because even giving negative attention to bad behavior is surprisingly actually a reward.

They played a very specific video of a mom going "blank face" to an infant.   To show how upsetting no attention is.  

I immediately had a flashback to my ex reacting to a situation in which our daughter got upset.  

As soon as the video was done, my hand was up.   What would happen if someone did that when the child got upset?

Instructor's answer: The child would totally freak out.

Before separation, my ex actually explained this behavior to me.   She said if our daughter gets upset and she sees you get upset, it will be even more upsetting.   So, if she gets upset, the best thing to do is not react to it.  (blank reaction)

This is Separation based, Emotionally developmental frozen advice for NOT showing empathy to an upset child.   Re-read the paragraph before this and this one.

Throughout the divorce I was taking our daughter to a number of activities where other moms are present.    

In any case where I got parenting advice from my ex while in the course of a "high conflict" divorce as first characterized by her, I felt a need to take it seriously.    So, I would bounce any advice she had off the other moms and get their reaction to it.

I can't count the number of times where I heard, where did she get that?   Of the internet?   Often times the next thing said would be every child is different, if you know your child, it will be obvious, or simply that's not how it worked for us.  I'd quote a rule from the ex, every time the real in person face to face other moms reaction was some kind of gut intuitive kids don't follow rules answer.    Feel like the buying/selling to an individual person thing?

The child development counselor was already beginning to question the mom's ability to "relate" to the child.   Which is an intuitive emotional connection.    At the same time I was coming to question my ex's ability to make any parenting decision by gut, intuitively as opposed to by the book.

Remember.   This is all good days.   No playing victim, no shifting blame, no guilt.   You can't do that with a 2 year old anyway.    Any of that was directed at me.   Everything is all positive happy but still just can't connect.

The next thing that cropped up was a more ambient thing.   I am not sure if I can connect it directly to separation and frozen emotions.   But it probably either connects to the comfort level of the overall environment or the comfort level at the time of occurrence.   Even if it doesn't connect to anything else it's very similar to other obvious differences still happening today.

Before separation, I tried to sign up for as much night duty child care as I could without putting myself in no-win situations.   Which is not possible with NPD rage directed at you, but you can still try to optimize it.    There was one section of each night I had to cover for practical reasons.

After separation I only had our daughter a couple nights a week.

Things many, many months before I learned there were problems at night.

Any time that in a "high conflict" divorce you hear the other side say stuff that seems to damage their own case, it's puzzling.

She was working and had our daughter some weeknights.    In court filed documents, she was reporting disrupted sleep.   Our daughter would wake up and demand attention or demand feeding.    This disrupt both of their sleep.     It made it hard for her to work in the morning.

I was beside myself.   Every night I had had her, she had slept peacefully through the night, waking up only a couple of times briefly for water.    When she woke up, she would ask for milk and I would tell her no, that's all done, we're doing water now.    Seconds later she'd be back asleep.

While I had no problems what so ever, my ex was literally in the middle of what she herself first characterized as a high conflict divorce, and she was seemingly documenting that she could not have our daughter on weeknights.  ?

My ex had allergies.   At some early point she concluded that our daughter was allergic to milk.    I remember some specifics about this but not others.

The first thing was a particular cracker.   Our daughter ate a lot of them.   Then her poop got messy.   The ex read the label and concluded milk was the cause.

After that, when it came time to go off breast milk we first tried lactose free, non fat, and every other kind of strange modified thing you can get at an organic store.   Either I don't remember it or my ex just wound up being the one who changed those diapers.   But she claimed those were all no good too.

Fast forward about a year.    Now we're well into the divorce and have a court appointed investigator.   The ex has been reporting "liquid poop" on a regular basis after I have the child.   All the time with some hint that she's getting something with cow milk while with me.   With other eyes on the case, I finally ask, what do you mean by "liquid".   It turns out, she claims she means totally liquid.   This time no hint, she directly says she thinks our daughter is getting some small exposure to cow milk while with me.   Probably something I don't even realize has a tiny fraction of an amount.

A trace amount?   Liquid?

At this point, I'm thinking could an allergy even do that?    Next day I walk in to a grocery store and get 2% milk and the same cheese both the ex and I always ate.   I feed small and then increasing amounts to our daughter.    No effect, no problem.

A really interesting part of this story is my call to the court appointed investigator.   She said that I did exactly what any parent intuitively would have done as a normal thing.   Try the most obvious normal thing.    She actually said, I'm not sure your ex is capable of that.

From a number of comments, it is clear to me now that our court appointed investigator understood at an intuitive gut level what I had only a fleeting idea of at the time.

Any time our daughter was sick, experiences diverged more dramatically.   My ex would report our daughter as screaming and crying all weekend clinging to her, unwilling to leave her lap.

I had pictures of our daughter playing independently outside before and after the weekend.    On a particular occasion, the one time our daughter showed any distress was because a particular set of objects was out of place.   It was memorable because of the trial and error I had to go through to figure it out what was upsetting her.   She didn't want the objects in question or anything else from that area.   She wanted them to be moved to where they should be.

After the divorce I had our daughter more of the time.

Enter the gone with the wind, black and white movie goodbye where saying goodbye to you right now is the most distressing thing I have ever done.   After the divorce, there was a brief period where my ex seemed to think each time to hand our daughter off to me was best handled exactly this way.

At the handoff to me, she would pick our daughter up.   I love you I love you.   At any slight sign of distress she would give our daughter more and more intense attention.   Building, building, building.   At whatever the peek of the crescendo of tear jerking toddler mother never to see each other again imagined music she would try to hand our daughter to me.

Create a peak of pain of separation and try to hand her to me then?

Result?  Total obvious fail.   Act like this parting is the most painful thing I've ever done in my life.    Result?   Don't want to part.  :)uh?

My reaction.   Go ahead and finish.   When you are done, put our daughter down and I will take over.  

This reaction worked but not well.    This went on only briefly.   Very quickly, I sent an email along the lines of - I don't think it's appropriate to encourage clinginess at handoffs.    

After that there has been candy or video games at every single handoff without fail.   Mostly candy but occasionally video games.

Pacifiers is  an interesting difference.   Early on in the divorce our daughter started showing up at handoffs with a pacifier.   I was like huh?   The ex said she pretty much had one all the time.   Well, not for me.

On separation our daughter only needed a pacifier for sleep.

After the most difficult part of the divorce my daughter did want a pacifier when we were at home when I was not paying direct full on attention to her.

At some point after 2 our daughter indicated to me she was done with pacifiers.   I took the one she had away.    She fussed a bit for a couple hours, asked for it a couple days, and was done.    

The ex still does pacifiers.    I can't get a feel for how much of the time.   But there is probably one at half the handoffs.   Yet she even told me once that she told our daughter they were going out to see daddy and our daughter's response was to take her pacifier out and hand it to her.

Our daughter has never asked me about a pacifier since 2 days after I took them away.   Honestly, they were such a great tool for calming her, I assumed I'd still have to use them occasionally.   It simply hasn't happened.   It just never comes up.  But when I tell her she's going to mommy, she often tells me about the pacifiers mommy has.

Over all.  From the beginning to the very end, a particular difference stands out.   I'm reporting it last but I did observe it early on.

Independence.    

Since separation, I think just about every moment our daughter is with her mom, their attention is on each other.   Total engagement or as close to that as practically possible.

On separation, I took my daughter outside and let her play.    I let her be as independent as she wanted.   Any time I wanted to show her something about the outdoors, I engaged her.   Any time she wanted to engage me I reciprocated.   She did her own stuff.   I showed her stuff.  She came to me and we played together.  

It feels that my daughter and I bounce off of each other while my ex and my daughter engulf each other.

Although this section about independence is short and possibly less tangible, it may actually be the biggest across the board thing.    They almost merge or live through each other.   I'm trying to help my daughter becoming herself.

It's probably has hard to describe as other Cluster B effects if you haven't experienced them.   The main takeaway here is that there are effects like this even if the Cluster B stays in a good space.    I'm not sure if there will ever be a comprehensive systematic conclusion about the effect of Cluster B on child care during good periods.    Hopefully I have at least shared some experiences that others can identify with to conclude that there are effects on the children even when they are not the target of the negative side.

[bravhart1]

From the time I entered the picture when SD was 3 she was "engulfed" by mom, the long tragic handoffs, where I swear sometime she would not only kiss that kids a thousand times, but then actually get so engrossed she would lick her too.

SD has only slept, and showered at moms if they were doing it together, she was not allowed to sleep in her own room or bed, she was not allowed to close any door at moms. Not to change, not to go potty, not for any reason. Not even at seven.

A few weeks ago the teacher called to say that mom had sent SD7 to school with a pacifier

We didn't know that was even a thing, and it is certainly not appropriate at seven. SD7 reports that she got them at moms, but wasn't supposed to tell anyone, but snuck one out to take to school.

There wasn't a single thing SD was allowed to think about or feel without it syncing up with moms feelings or opinion. No matter how off base or misguided.

It was very destructive for her and she has been in therapy for over half her life, at seven. :'(

She is getting a well deserved break at the moment, but I really hope that SD never has to return to life like that.

I wish there were more public service announcements out there about not having a child with these people, they are so destructive sometimes for these kids, it's just agony to watch what she has gone through.

[iron pigeon]

Wow.   

I thought that my worst fear was that one day my ex would paint my daughter black and show her the deep dark hostility that I got to see.

I am still new to this and tend to think as long as my ex manages to keep herself in a happy place with whatever narrative she's got, the slightly odd or off behavior is harmless compared to narcissistic rage.

Your post gives me a lot to think about.  You describe some of what I'm seeing, but after it's been played out over a longer period of time.    It sounds like in the long haul it can be very damaging.

Prior to the well deserved break, what percent time did the mom have?   I have my daughter about 2/3 of the time, so roughly twice as much as the mom.

Is there anything you can tell me about what kind of damage this did?   Or how the therapy is addressing the damage?   And if it's working?   Maybe I can learn something preventative.

[bravhart1]

We went from 40% to 60% to 80% to 90% over the course of three years. We were NEVER the ones who filed to change timeshare. BPDm was always the perpetrator of that, and she always asked for the same thing 100%. She never got it.

SD is trying to be more open minded about T, the T was painted black by mom over a year and a half ago and since SD has been more and more closed off. We are hoping and the court I'd hoping she will open back up with mom out of the picture.

The behaviours we( and T) were seeing in SD were looking like a very advanced BPDp, unable to hold a complex idea of a person, for instance I like my dad, he takes great care of me and is always there for me and reasonable, but he didn't give me candy so he must be all bad, vs my mom screams and yells ( and is prob violent, but SD is hesitant to admit it) and scares me but she's a perfect mom and I love her more than dad.

If SD leaves her coat at school and mom says bravhart has it, even though it was found at school, then bravhart,in a plot to try to steal SD's coat, must have returned it ( to the school) without anyone seeing, because she knew BPDm as getting mad. SD had no problem going along and even repeating and accusing bravhart of this behaviour even though she saw no evidence of it, and in fact saw clear evidence that it was a simple case of SD leaving the coat at school. She was able to make SD have memories of SD and bravhart struggling at the door the morning of school over the coat. There was no reasoning with SD about the ridiculousness of this, even when you can prove that bravhart left for work, before dad took SD to school. Scary.

We are keeping all options open to getting SD in a better place including a psychiatrist and medication if necessary.

[blackbirdsong]

We went from 40% to 60% to 80% to 90% over the course of three years. We were NEVER the ones who filed to change timeshare. BPDm was always the perpetrator of that, and she always asked for the same thing 100%. She never got it.

SD is trying to be more open minded about T, the T was painted black by mom over a year and a half ago and since SD has been more and more closed off. We are hoping and the court I'd hoping she will open back up with mom out of the picture.

The behaviours we( and T) were seeing in SD were looking like a very advanced BPDp, unable to hold a complex idea of a person, for instance I like my dad, he takes great care of me and is always there for me and reasonable, but he didn't give me candy so he must be all bad, vs my mom screams and yells ( and is prob violent, but SD is hesitant to admit it) and scares me but she's a perfect mom and I love her more than dad.

If SD leaves her coat at school and mom says bravhart has it, even though it was found at school, then bravhart,in a plot to try to steal SD's coat, must have returned it ( to the school) without anyone seeing, because she knew BPDm as getting mad. SD had no problem going along and even repeating and accusing bravhart of this behaviour even though she saw no evidence of it, and in fact saw clear evidence that it was a simple case of SD leaving the coat at school. She was able to make SD have memories of SD and bravhart struggling at the door the morning of school over the coat. There was no reasoning with SD about the ridiculousness of this, even when you can prove that bravhart left for work, before dad took SD to school. Scary.

We are keeping all options open to getting SD in a better place including a psychiatrist and medication if necessary.

Hi,

Really hard reading stuff. I see that you are a fighter and you have progress a lot. It is great how you resonate things.

Is your ex in therapy?

[bravhart1]

Yes, thanks to having a BPDp in our lives we are all in therapy. It is hard to look at the bottom line on the bank statement though.

How are things going for you? It's hard to stay strong, and those who have read my history here will attest to my ups and downs, and rails against the unjustness of it all, but for a child what would we not endure to give them a chance at a whole life free from mental illness and stress.

Everyone here preaches self care, me included. Still not great at it, but still think it's invaluable. One of my new year resolutions.