Thank you for sharing your experience, Banseji!
“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... .
