BPDFamily.com

What coping strategies, tools, affirmations, mantras, etc. do you remind yourself before spending time with pwBPD/NPD to protect yourself and be strong?

What helps me is to focus on myself, my own behavior and responses. I cannot control my BPD family-members, but I can exert control over my own behavior. Setting and enforcing/defending boundaries is crucial and (re-)reading the material about boundaries can be helpful then.

Also going over the various communication techniques can be helpful such as:
- S.E.T. (to express yourself) (https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=143695.0)
- D.E.A.R.M.A.N. (to assert yourself) (https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=160566.0)
- B.I.F.F. (to assert yourself when dealing with particularly hostile communications. (https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=133835.0)

And to help you focus your mind on the present and stay more calm, practicing mindfulness/meditation can also be very helpful.

Hi peacefromwitl,
If there's anyway to prevent it, I just don't go there... remain LC... Is that possible for you to do?

Hello!
I started by keeping things very simple. It's pretty obvious we can get worked up when dealing with someone with BPD, so I try to just remember that I'm not there to convince them of anything. I'm just bringing to it my thoughts, feelings and beliefs. Don't try to convince and make excuses. Protect yourself by honoring yourself in the exchange. If you feel like it's going to take a bad turn, make a decision of what you'll say and keep it short for now.
I say it's better to work on one small thing you can do than overwhelm yourself by trying too hard. Just keep one thing in mind. 
Hope that helps

Thank you for your clear and very helpful reply, Kwarmina. This truly is key. I keep forgetting that the only thing I have control over is myself, my behavior, my thoughts, my responses. I keep getting stuck in the continuous loop of fear, in which I get stuck thinking about their behavior. That does me no good and makes me sick. I plan on rereading the boundary material again. Often times I read it when I'm already anxious about my family, and then I can't process what I read. I will plan to do a guided meditation to calm that loop down, and then read the material on boundaries.


Thank you for these links! I'm going to read them repeatedly until they sink in. And I'll print them out and pack them with me.


I've done a little mindfulness/meditation on my own, and it does make a tremendous difference. My T isn't into mindfulness/meditation--I wish he was. I'm not very disciplined with stuff like that, and so I do wish I had some sort of structured mindfulness/meditation program to follow. I've taken workshops and they're great when at the workshop, but I don't practice or apply what I was taught. I'm going to ask my T again if he would be willing just temporarily to have me see someone else that focuses on m/m. There's someone in his practice that does, but he didn't think he was good idea for me to do that. He's helping me a lot, but I am certain I'd be in a much better place right now if I could find someone to help me do a structured m/m program, and help it be a daily thing in my life. I've seen it work for me.

Do you have any simple/beginner's mindfulness/meditation links you could share? Thank you.

Yes, it's possible... .I could use traveling as an excuse. I'm just having trouble figuring out in my head/heart what the right thing to do is. I blame it on myself and my own lack in therapy for not being in a better place to handle it. If I don't go, I'll feel bad for hurting their feelings because they'll take it personally. So I just want to prepare myself if I do go.

You're welcome :)


Well now that you mention it, here is a video heartandwhole has placed on our site:
VIDEO | Meditation for Beginners - Dan Harris and Sharon Salzberg (https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=303987.0)

I have no idea if this helpful or not, but may I share a little of my own experiences of the last 6 months?

I made a commitment in the new year that it was time to put myself first! That I had a responsibility first and foremost to myself to fix the legacy issues (the anxiety, panic, difficulty in relating to partners, etc) arising from an abusive childhood which has continued into adulthood. No more excuses!

This has involved some big stuff:

• Not being driven by guilt or dislocated sense of duty to a parent who in truth is an abuser
  Accepting the extent of the impact on me personally
  Rationalising the "ethical" debate (religious /spiritual for some) of the inevitable need to go low or non contact (or at least emotionally detached from that person)

My personal thoughts on the above:

We can't be driven by guilt and heal ourselves - that guilt is a by product of negative conditioning ("grooming" by the abuser. Our logical self must overcome such emotions and rationalise a healthier set of behavioural responses. Ignore the guilt. Period. It's a trap and the main instrument of power the abuser uses to keep us under their power and prevent us from healing.

Whilst that guilt rules supreme we continue to flounder in our healing. The impacts of the abuse in my life have been just far too extensive to continue to accept that way of living. Accepting the extent of those impacts has been a driver for change in my personal case.

In some cases guilt may be exacerbated by an ethical (spiritual / religious ) value set: overthinking such may be a mistake - spiritual tools are not intended to rationalise handling the practical realities of dealing with a abusive/ mentally abnormal person - that's what medical science / behavioural science / psychotherapy, etc, is for! If the aircraft engine is broken you don't call a christian priest or a buddhist rinpoche to fix the problem, you call a licensed aircraft maintenance engineer! If the value set is hindering healing, either the value set is redundant (too old fashioned for the modern world) or it's being misapplied / misinterpreted / or used as an ego prop rather than a road map for true spiritual guide to personal spiritual growth.  

I have no doubt I have "hurt" my mother by going NC. The point is that I actually don't choose to care about that any more! My own welfare is more important. My partner and friends and more important. I choose to share my wealth and time and charitable acts with those who actually deserve it and who reciprocate! My mother doesn't deserve my time, energy, cash, love or respect. Having made that choice, the guilt becomes irrelevant and eventually subsides.

Does the fact she is mentally "ill" absolve her? Not in my opinion - she knew what she was doing and could control her responses.The illness is not of a nature that would provide a legal excuse to avoid accountability.

So six months on... .the anxiety / panic had subsided significantly (I just braved a round the world trip taking the queue at airports, etc., in my stride), I have found the confidence to take on a new relationship with a sense of hope that whatever ghosts from the past may come to challenge its happy progress, that they can be recognised, challenged and banished promptly. I am entirely comfortable with the decision to go NC: I feel no guilt having proved to myself that the decision has supported substantial healing in a short space of time.

Ethical / spiritual support is there, but in its place, in my own case expressed a guiding force though the concepts of self awareness, acceptance of the ephemeral nature of our thoughts, non attachment to things / people / emotions... .

Looking back, I can see the importance of setting an absolute goal. A commitment to change. Decisions can then be measured against that goal. Is the goal personal growth / healing (rather than minimisation of personal guilt, or minimisation of apparent or presumed hurt to certain people, etc) I think we need a goal (or goals) to facilitate change!

Where I am now - I wouldn't even consider meeting my mother socially whatever her feelings on the matter. I also accept I will never forgive her in the simple sense (because she will never accept her wrongdoings) - forgiveness is simply whatever I need to rationalise for my own healing.

As ever, these are highly personal experiences and observations and ideas and may or may not be relevant to others and their view of the world or their journey to heal.

 

sorry report

I agree with what everyone else has posted. Something that worked for me (that my therapist suggested in addition to the things above) when I had to around my UxBPDh was to imagine that I was surrounded by an invisible shield. Nothing he said could get to me or affect me. It actually worked for me and helped me to not emotionally react. I heard what he said but I wouldn't let it affect me.

Bring a friend?

I have a family member w/ BPD traits who treats me a lot better when my husband visits with me, so I try not to visit alone if at all possible.

Also, this family member likes being in control and has an extremely difficult time with transitions like hello and goodbye, so whatever I can do to clarify our plans ahead of time by providing detailed info about our itinerary, who else we plan to see while we're in town, for how many hours, and making sure person with BPD feels included in all plans, etc. seems to help with some of that anxiety.  This level of management would feel burdensome if we lived in the same home and I had to do it all the time but since it's only once in awhile and it helps keep the peace, I do it. 

(Does this sound co-dependent?)

Thank you for that link, Kwarmina!

Hi pbnjsandwich!
You make good points. I cringe at the memories of my uBPD/NPD mother having raging fights with my uBPD/NPD grandmother, each one trying to convince the other one of their side to the story.   I'm at the point now that I know whatever comes out of their mouths is just insanity, so I just let them talk and not care what they think or do. I like your suggestion to "just keep one thing in mind". Thank you, this does help! 

Thank you for sharing your experience, Banseji!  


I commend you on allowing yourself to make that commitment! Good for you!  |iiii


T mentioned this. It's hard not to be driven by guilt or sense of duty sometimes, especially when you know it'll make them feel good and that in their warped minds, they think they did nothing wrong.


I'm not sure I understand this one. Can you clarify?


This one has a been a big issue for me. You know, like the commandment "Honor thy mother and father... ." Thank god I have a T who would say "yeah but not at your expense!"


I really appreciate your explaining this. T did not explain this. He just said guilt is not a good motive to see them. I wish he explained that they're likely using guilt to get their way and manipulate me. My uBPD waify sibling is especially gifted at using guilt to manipulate people. I'm going to have to repeat the mantra "guilt is a trap. Guilt is a trap."


I can definitely see that I take steps back in my healing anytime guilt is thrown in my face like boiling water. No one's ever suggested that I accept the extent of their impacts on myself. Sometimes I wish I had seen a T who specialized in child abuse. I had one very sick T who pushed "having compassion for my mother" on me when I was nowhere even close to that stage. That T I should have stopped seeing as soon as I saw the red flags in her, but I figured she was the practitioner, I was just the client. red-flag She did a lot of harm to my healing.


I am FINALLY figuring this out. Religion/spiritual stuff doesn't teach that we need to "be nice" and let sick people continue to abuse us, steamroll us, f*ck with our heads, make us crawl and grovel, etc. And if they do, I want no part of that. My uBPD waif sibling used religion to control and manipulate her own children. It's very sick. My mother used religion/spiritual stuff to make me behave exactly the way she wanted me to behave. The phrase "be good", or "be respectful" and phrases like that which fueled rages, were used so many times that I saw it was my mother's parenting mantra to us kids. If fearing her wasn't enough, she made us fear God.    red-flag I have a completely different religious/spiritual viewpoint now as an adult, which also was a huge part of the foundation that helped me to heal all of this damage. That, and a T who was gentle and loving in his way professional way and validated what I went through. From that foundation, I was able to grow past some of the damage.



I went VLC with my family, which in turn made them act out in anger because they were angry I did that and it was sort of like a "how dare you?"  

Again I kinda wish I had a T at the time who reminded me until it sunk in, that I didn't go VLC to hurt them but to save my own sanity, and to focus on my own welfare over how they were reacting to my going VLC. But I didn't. Or maybe I just needed someone who stated it much more strongly, clearly, directly, in my face, until it sunk in. Because I have a lot of trouble hearing something just lightly and just one time for it to sink in, because the brainwashing my family does is way too much bigger than that.  

How did you get to a point where you choose to not care and focus on your own welfare? Didn't you still believe the lies in your head from them that you weren't worthwhile enough to focus on yourself? That you didn't deserve to? That you should be kissing the ground they walk on for all they did for you, and for all you put them through, and for what wonderful human beings they are?


Please tell me how you got to this place.


YES this is so well said! And why one of my former T's caused so much great harm when she tried to make me have compassion for my mother! (someone told me that it was likely this T had BPD/NPD herself.) My mother knew EXACTLY what she was doing. That's why her rages were when no one else was around--when it was just her and me at home, or her and me in the car, or her and me in the store (she wasn't afraid of strangers because she'd just blame it on her child. Back then, no one was calling the police or DYFS unless a child had black and blue marks). My mother LIKED to get out of control around me and would often have a sick, evil grin when she saw how terrified she made me.    


Wow! Good for you for being able to travel around the world! This after only 6 months of therapy? Wow that is fantastic!  |iiii


I am an awe of that! How did you get to there? I'm still caught in the guilt of "just see them and be nice, they need love", "they did the best they could with what they had", "they know what not they don't know", "they're your parents", and all that... . 

[quote]Ethical / spiritual support is there, but in its place, in my own case expressed a guiding force though the concepts of self awareness, acceptance of the ephemeral nature of our thoughts, non attachment to things / people / emotions... .[/quote]

I am very curious to understand this more. Can you explain what ethical/spiritual support you have? Because it is my spiritual program that is saying I should see my parents and just be nice, give them love, make them feel good, be of service to them, etc. etc. and that is what is messing with my brain. How did you develop a guiding force through self awareness and the other concepts you mentioned? I so want to understand and experience this. I want to take the road of whatever your road was so I can have a similar journey that you did. Mine's not working for me.


I guess my goal would be to figure out how to live my life without all the voices from the past continuing to keep me down so these sick people can continue to feel uplifted.


Do other family members or friends try to make you feel guilty? What do you mean by "forgiveness is simply whatever I need to rationalise for my own healing". What do you tell people when asked why you are not in any contact with your mother?


You seem to have the key to healing. I am so eager to hear how I can get on that path.

Hi, I_Am_The_Fire!  

I love this tool! I was finally able to understand it and practice it when taught differently in my spiritual program. It helps me greatly! I also remember a T teaching me to be like water on a duck. That sort of thing helps greatly! pwBPD love to push our buttons. But if don't react to anything they say or do, then we stop giving them power. It's an extremely useful tool, isn't it? pwBPD love to get reactions out of us. That's what they live for. It's their drug. They love the drama and then once we react, they're able to point the finger at us and say that we are the crazy ones. I love being able to be around them and not react. But be careful----I've noticed that the family members with BPD/NPD will pull me by being all nice and sweet, to see if I let my guard down, and then they pounce like a tiger and go right for the jugular! They certainly are sneaky little sick devils, aren't they?  

That's an interesting idea. My uBPD/NPD mother often treated me a lot better if I had a friend or boyfriend over. Once there's a witness, they put on their game face so as not to get caught. I have memories of my mother terrifying the hell out of me and the second she had the awareness that someone was watching or listening, she'd get an embarrassed smile on her face and turn all nicey-nice. It was very confusing as a child/teen to experience. Why no one called DYFS on that crazy witch is beyond me. 


Does it sound co-dependent? Hmm I don't think so, because you're taking charge ahead of time instead of just letting them steamroll over what you want to do, say, feel, etc.  Sounds to me like you're setting healthy boundaries.

“It's hard not to be driven by guilt or sense of duty sometimes, especially when you know it'll make them feel good and that in their warped minds, they think they did nothing wrong”

A few further thoughts:

Those of us who tend to the empathy end of the empathy-sociopath scale are naturally going to be more vulnerable to manipulation and slave to our concern about how others feel.

Significantly, if we have developed some sense of perfectionism as a coping mechanism (trying to keep the peace when nothing is good enough), we may have accentuated the need to please others when it is not rationally appropriate to do so.

Trying to do the “right thing” (because of parental indoctrination, our learned perfectionism, our religious disposition) can become a terrible trap and easily manipulated through the modulation of the guilt trip strategies of our abuser(s) even well into adulthood.

We become stuck in a time warp of mental “constructs”, some directly imparted by our abusers (notably parents), others learned to survive abusive situations, and others adopted from our societal environment.

To heal we must break those constructs! But how? More on that in this post, but for now just about the guilt thing…

A key question I kept asking myself – are my actions determined by a need to seek validation from my abusive parent? In most cases, the answer was yes, if I was honest.  Well that is clearly not a healthy situation!  A borderline person is not a good choice of person from whom to seek validation, parent or not!

Guilt and validation are intertwined. In this case the amount of guilt is the emotional indicator of degree of non compliance with the abuser’s demands.

Surely, if I am committed to healing, I have to be confident and strong enough to self validate. Not seek validation from my abuser, or therapist, my priest (if relevant), or best mate…but from me, myself, a grown, educated adult! To do that I must not let myself be driven by guilt!

So, time to grow up (finally). Time to set my own agenda, not one that is infested with the dark curse of a mentally unfit parent and all of the cancerous by products that comes with that.

The notion of guilt and response to it must be self determined – not crafted by my abuser or my inappropriate survival mechanisms learned in response to my abuser. Guilt is OK when it provides an inner guide to “normal” situations and a measure to my own personal set of values.

Remember, your abuser will never admit their wrongdoing or the negative impact on your life, so time to stop hoping they will change, or atone, or be the parent or person you always deserved or dreamed about.

No amount of trying to please them is ever going to remedy the situation because they will never be satisfied – rather seeking to please will simply reaffirm the negative cycle and make you the loser every time!

Final point on this issue – when you respond to your childhood abuser, you tend to go back into the inner child, go back into being the victim: time to step out of your inner child and be the adult you now are! Take control and respond as a conscious and wise adult, not the poor kid you once were groomed to compliance by your abuser, the kid that still lives inside you and comes up in response to abusive situations, exposed to the torment of an abusive parent. That means changing your responses! Not being driven by guilt, their expectations, rather by being smart enough to put yourself first and committing to a goal of healing.
 

“Accepting the extent of the impact on me personally - I'm not sure I understand this one. Can you clarify?”

Depending on our personal situations we are potentially victims of abuse – particularly invidious when the borderline in our lives is a parent. To start healing I had to be able to say to myself – I am a victim of abuse! I had to become comfortable admitting that, telling key friends, allowing myself to be.  This is initially very hard when you have been driven to perfectionism as a survival mechanism

The next step is to accept the lifelong impact of that reality. OK, the anxiety, some panic attacks, avoidance behaviours, failure to manage relationships, feeling on the outer in workplaces, certain addictive behaviours, a tendency towards perfectionism, …etc., etc. Diverse, profound ,extensive impacts. And these things were continuing well into adult life!

And then the realisation that even low level contact brought back the demons and the growing acceptance I wasn’t really me, but the projection of my abuser! I wasn’t actually coping as well as I thought and wasn’t cured, there was still so much to confront and get out!

The only way forward is a commitment to the (or a) healing process! And my abuser has no place in that process because she will never admit to her wrongdoings.


“ You know, like the commandment "Honor thy mother and father... ." Thank god I have a T who would say "yeah but not at your expense!"

To be brutal and to put these things into perspective – my mother did things, which were considered illegal under UK child protection law – she deserves to be in jail in the eyes of the law. This is because the law recognises that an adult commits child abuse when they do things that have negative psychological impacts on a child. It’s child abuse in the eyes of the law! A defense based on diminished mental responsibility would likely fail since a borderline still has volition (capacity to decide their own actions) and sense of right and wrong and thereby doesn’t satisfy the two key measures for exoneration.

Consider also, we live in societies, which do not do enough to confront and remedy the rampant epidemic of abuse in our communities. So many turn a blind eye. Trivialise it. Let the abuser off the hook.

So who is the one that should be feeling guilty, the abuser or the abused? Remember, that a borderline does a great job of playing the martyred victim when you, the abused is the real victim.

Having come to that point of realization, I felt no further need to rationalise definitions of guilt and responsibility any further.

Once articulated in the above terms, the ethical reality is a simple one to resolve, but we fall into the danger of lapsing into victim mode (until we have learned not to do so through our healing process). Look, if somebody in your family lopped of you arm with a chainsaw would you feel obligated to try to nurture their sociopathic feelings or rather hold them accountable?

This website is not the place to debate theological or societal issues, suffice to say (and hopefully it’s OK to say this much without causing anybody any offense) it always seems to me that those who attach to a belief system still need to decide where they draw the boundary between common sense / logic and belief.

I guess that I “believed” my mother must be a good person, for no greater reason than she was my mother and that’s what mothers are supposed to do and therefore I was supposed to behave in a certain way.

Now I have deconstructed my perceptions to the point where I recognise the compelling evidence to the contrary and that I have two choices:

1.   Continue to be a victim by pandering to my abuser
2.   Finally sort myself out!


“No one's ever suggested that I accept the extent of their impacts on myself. “

I have personally found the step process outlined on the right hand side of this thread and associated book to be very useful guide to the likely steps in moving through the healing process.

My own opinion is that self-responsibility is very important part of this process. We must decide to change and this may be in response to an event, a crisis of some sort. In my own case I had to accept joint responsibility for a relationship breakdown – the legacy issues I was carrying as an abuse victim were affecting the relationship far more than I ever realised until after the event. And then my reactions to several abusive phone calls from my mother made me realise I just wasn’t as together as I’d like to believe.

It took a little time to accept the extensive nature of the impacts of an abusive childhood on both my childhood and adulthood. I had to completely revise how I viewed my own past and present.

But this is a vital step in the healing process! Recognising / accepting the impacts and then isolating and neutralising them!


“Sometimes I wish I had seen a T who specialized in child abuse. I had one very sick T who pushed "having compassion for my mother" on me”

In my own personal case, I have worked through these issues to date without a therapist. I did seek one out initially using the guidance of the retired psychiatry professor from our local university.

But I put up certain criteria – the person would have to convince me that they fully understand BPD, emotional incest, geriatric complications of BPD, etc.

In the event there was nobody specialised to fit the bill – perhaps one guy 3 hours plane ride away in a different city!

In any case, I was also nervous about developing a co-dependency on a therapist or the therapy becoming a substitute for a directed healing propgram.

I must stress I’m not suggesting people should follow my route in this!

Rather, that if I ever feel the need for such support I would want to define some goals and expectations up front, for example, present the stepped healing plan on this board and ask to work through it systematically.


“I am FINALLY figuring this out. Religion/spiritual stuff doesn't teach that we need to "be nice" and let sick people continue to abuse us, steamroll us, f*ck with our heads, make us crawl and grovel, etc. And if they do, I want no part of that.”

Go girl! Hopefully you can draw on inspiration from the positive and healthy and empowering messages from your spiritual quest
“How did you get to a point where you choose to not care and focus on your own welfare?”


Great question! I think the key was to revoke my lifelong held concept that my mother was a good person, because she was my mother and replace that with the awful truth that she was a child abuser! That was an earth-shattering realisation. I remember going for my daily morning walks along our beachfront with the dog with my head spinning with the enormity of that reality. That was in January of this year.

Look, some people are simply toxic people. Accept it. Get over it. Just unlucky one happened to be my mother. The point being she’s toxic and being my mother doesn’t excuse that or grant her any privileges.

As I said to a friend – if a doctor or teacher was a child abuser or pedophile none of us would have any problem being rightfully disgusted, holding them to account, expecting the law to try and punish them – but, it’s mother, so it’s Ok then? I don’t think so! She should be held to account just as much as the local priest who sexually molested abused my ex’s brother and continued to work for decades at the local school.

You don’t forgive a serious crime that impacts an innocent child for decades of their future life or even to leads to suicide – you hold people accountable!

To approach that point I had read the usual books on BPD and studied this excellent website to satisfy myself beyond personal doubt that my mother is borderline.

However, the missing piece was reading a book about emotional incest and realising that I was a victim of that!

I had to sit down and formulate a timeline of my childhood because my mind had chosen to “forget” so much. I pieced together enough to release the memories to confirm my worst suspicions – yep I was an abuse victim.

Suddenly everything fitted into place!

This was distressing but also highly liberating. When you recognise the truth it sings out at you.

The mind takes some time to deconstruct challenged perceptions and reconstruct a more realistic interpretation – but luckily within weeks I had processed this change, perhaps fortunate that I didn’t have to work for now and could focus solely on myself.

Once I got to that point, well, there’s no turning back. I had to move forwards and inhabit a world in which I accepted that I was an abuse victim, my mother an abuser, and that this had various impacts on my life which were continuing and needed to be fixed with or without her help.

It also cleared the pathway to the healing process.

I was lucky to stay friends with my ex who had also been abused by her stepfather – we could co-support our respective healing.

I tolerated my mother in phone conversations for a couple of months after that, but had to accept that she would always say something abusive in those calls and that was continuing to impact my healing progress.

So I confronted her on the phone about the negative and abusive things she was saying (my ex was a nasty person, I never did anything for my friends, etc) and she denied ever saying those things, so I basically told her what a c…... .she was and we haven’t spoken since.

Some other stuff had happened around Christmas (she moved house to be next door to best friend without really telling me what was going on), which showed me where I stood, but luckily also released me from responsibility for her welfare when ageing (her friend is much younger and on the spot being next door).

I checked the legal requirements for responsibility for parents and there weren’t any in the UK (where she lives) and satisfied myself that I had no lingering sense of responsibility towards her.

I also determined that given her BPD I would not have attempted to assist her in old age in any case rather direct her to relevant care – that would be a job for the professionals!

Several months on and I am completely at ease with these choices – I regard her abusive behaviours and their impacts over decades to be so heinous that I have no time or interest in the woman.

Actually, I never want to see her again in my life and already warned key family friends not to expect me to attend a funeral.

And the good news I’ve never been happier and found love again with the most amazing woman who finds the natural joy in all of life’s everyday moments! It is someone I started dating 9 years ago, but split from realised I wasn’t ready for that…


“Can you explain what ethical/spiritual support you have? Because it is my spiritual program that is saying I should see my parents and just be nice, give them love, make them feel good, be of service to them, etc. etc. and that is what is messing with my brain.”

It is my position is that our ethical /spiritual journeys are highly individual so I a little hesitant to appear to be pushing a certain direction for others.

In my own case, either through good fortune or some compelling inner quest driven by my personal circumstances, I found several concepts, which have aided my own pathway towards healing. But they are rather esoteric and probably very different from the ones you are debating in you own mind (you can read more in the books “Zen Mind Beginners Mind” by Shunryu Suzuki-Roshi, and “Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism” by Chogyam Trungpa).

Attachment / non attachment – our minds attach to ideas, create constructs, build perceptions: finding inner peace may involve letting go of such attachments, always challenging our perceptions, our assumptions. For example, we have been ingrained in our childhoods by our abusers and need to recognise and let go of the negative stuff! We need to be non attached to stuff and thoughts, which are unhealthy to us or build up our egos.

Self awareness – our thoughts flow and create a sense of conscious narrative that can be very controlling. For example, much of our stress is based on anticipation of an event. Yet these thoughts rarely last! Go for a walk and your mind may be fixated on a current issue, yet sooner or later (usually about 10 to 15 minutes in my case) that troubling mental narrative has moved on – rewind to 15 minuets ago I was all charged up by that thought process. Hmmmm. Let the thoughts be and they drift away. Just breathe!

... .more to come... .

Spiritual materialism – basically when we think we are on a spiritual journey when in reality we are identifying with the idea that we are on the journey (gives us a false sense of self and bolsters the ego) rather than enjoying the fruits of the journey itself. May I suggest there is corollary in the healing journey – we may inadvertently attach to the journey, engage slavishly in the therapy sessions, attach to the fact we are on the journey, rather than just simply just doing it and get on and heal!

Like I said, an esoteric rather than prescriptive approach.

As above, I think it is necessary for each individual to draw boundaries between their belief system and logic / common sense.

For me personally, debating the nature of respect for a parent, how to love a parent, the nature of forgiveness, etc., as a part of a spiritual belief system (when challenged by a borderline and abusive parent) has never been relevant – others are better placed to advise on how they reconcile their beliefs with the risk of continuing abusive and unhealthy relationships and whether or not such beliefs are ever a hindrance to their healing process (not that I’m not saying they are or could be).

“Do other family members or friends try to make you feel guilty?”

No. Perhaps luckily there are no other family members of relevance. My friends are well chosen and all have been supportive.

My mother’s best friend is in denial. I wrote and told her that now mother is living next door to her she needed to know her medical condition, that she was an abuser, what a liar she is and what a backstabbing b…... and that she will need proper age care when the time comes. No response. They’ll be a big fight between us one day I suppose, when mother gets sick or dies, or whatever, unless she sees the light, because no doubt she’ll try accusing me of neglecting mother and will deny the history of the situation.


“What do you mean by "forgiveness is simply whatever I need to rationalise for my own healing".

There is a difference between the concept of forgiveness as an instrument to redeem the abuser (I guess what most people somewhat simplistically would assume), as opposed to an instrument to aid the healing of the abused. The step plan on the right says a few things about resolving the past with your abuser.


“What do you tell people when asked why you are not in any contact with your mother?”

I tell them the truth! My mother abused me as a child, continues to be abusive and I have chosen to focus on my own happiness and healing – she is no longer part of life. And I do that with no shame or guilt. The reality is part of me, so why hide it?

Others are not entitled to judge me. If they do, it doesn’t matter (non attachment). Supportive people will stand by me. If anyone didn’t, they would be standing outside my circle. Close friends are seeing and enjoying the company of a happier person.

Once I would have cared – a by product of being groomed by mother, seeking always to please her, walking on eggshells, being a perfectionist and not wanting to show weakness, etc.

Now…what does it matter?  I’m non attached to that stuff. I want to live my live on my terms not under the cloud of mother’s abuse.

Why on earth would I compromise my own happiness and health because of what my mother or anyone else thinks? It’s nuts!

Why would I compromise my future by attaching to old fashioned belief systems? To be fair, that never worked for me anyway: I rejected all organised religion at a very young age in favour of a humanistic and rationalist approach (that’s not a criticism of others’ beliefs, just my personal point of view and history).

Deconstruct – non attach – be yourself – release yourself. Be happy.

 
As a healthier happier person I can give more to others. Those that deserve or have genuine need or actually share.