I found the over analysing thing all my life was a protection thing , working out the truth in the pd behaviour and always beating myself up giving myself a hard time because the pd did. It was always because they thought nothing was wrong with them and blamed us for stuff , we where working overtime when we didn't need to.
And another member responded:
Yeah ... .we took on problems and burdens that didn't belong to us... .That's what kids do ... .they 'carry' their PD parent's trauma/burdens/wounds and become traumatized and burdened themselves. And yes, I guess many of our parents willingly give them over to us (I think both consciously and unconsciously).
I think it was in
Stop Caretaking the Borderline or Narcissist that I read that people with these disorders have strong emotions, don't know where they come from, and blame someone else. I would also like to add that I do not think my mother has a personality disorder, but I believe she has complex PTSD, and if there was anything that caused her to dump her trauma onto me it was that. She was afraid of me doing things that she would have been punished for doing, and I would say it was unconscious.
If you would like to understand these dynamics better, I can recommend
The Narcissistic Family by Stephanie Donaldson-Pressman and Robert Pressman. It is written for therapists, but very readable, almost no jargon that they assume the reader understands. There are a number of things I like about this book. For one, it does not focus on the traits of the disorder, so you don't need to sit around and puzzle "does he/she have it, am I exaggerating" etc., in fact your family members do not have to have NPD or BPD for there to be a narcissistic
dynamic, that is, a pattern of relating. Also, it explains the difference between overt and covert narcissism - families with overt narcissism fit the more classic abuse/neglect scenario, it's obvious and out in the open. My FOO was covertly narcissistic, and I would never have come up with this on my own if the book had not described this dynamic.
I also found this article about the "loss of subjectivity" insightful,
www.danielshawlcsw.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Enter_Ghosts.pdf It is more academic in writing style. Subjectivity, as I understand it, is the feeling that one has, and has the right to have, one's own thoughts, feelings, opinions, desires. Essentially, that one has a "self". The pwNPD's stance is "There is only one self in this relationship, and that's me." For example, when my mother was a teenager, her father would have slapped her if she said "no" or disagreed with him about
anything. (Part of that is the "traditional" role of woman as subservient and docile, but for other reasons I believe my maternal grandfather would have been diagnosed with NPD had he ever seen a therapist while he was alive).
If you would like to know more about the childhood origins of the narcissistic and codependent patterns,
The Bonds of Love by Jessica Benjamin explains it well. There may be other books that explain it too (I only read what randomly strikes my interest, I haven't studied this stuff) but that's one I know of.
So, all of this said... .for those of us who do tend to overanalyze and overthink, the understanding piece IS very important in my view, but thinking has to be balanced out with feeling and doing. I recently did a "5 Rhythms" class (look it up, available in many major cities) which is more like a movement meditation than dance. So many of my emotional and interpersonal "gifts and challenges", shall we say, were right there in my movement, and the amazing thing is sometimes you can find a "solution" to a problem that has been bothering you that you never would have found just by thinking or talking about it. It is fascinating, actually. Mind you, I've been working on this stuff for a while, but that doesn't mean a person could not have good insights during their first or first few 5 Rhythms or other movement classes. I had the insight during this class that "... .My body knows how to do this", "this" being the emotional and interpersonal processing and growth. I am guessing you can see why that would be a valuable insight for an overthinker who is always trying to "figure everything out"!
