The new year brings with it new challenges, new chapters and new beginnings. But before we look ahead I think it’s important to look back, to make sure that we’ve taken care of all of our childhood baggage. This is important, because if you refuse to do this work, these unresolved issues will continue to manifest in your life, and you will have a never ending battle, trying to manage symptoms, rather than eliminating the problem at its source.
Many people eat, drink, or do drugs to counteract the painful feelings from childhood neglect, or abuse, these are clearly inappropriate coping mechanisms – bandages, that only mask the problem. When you’ve been brought up to feel not good enough, you really do feel a void. You feel incomplete and you believe that if you could only figure out what it is that’s missing and become perfect, then everything would be ok.
The truth is nothing is missing – the problem isn’t with what you are not, or what you’re lacking, it’s with your mind set, and what you were taught to believe – that’s where something is missing and what’s missing is the truth.
If you think that this isn’t relevant, ask yourself, ‘What kind of people put up with being abused by their partners?’ The answer is, typically those who have self-worth issues. How does one get self-worth issues? – Childhood abuse or neglect. If you want to develop self-worth, then you have to do the work. Intellectually understanding something is sometimes not enough to convince your emotional self to change the way you think.
Self-Definition
I read a great book over the holidays called Toxic Parents, by Dr. Susan Forward. If this is something you are struggling with I recommend Forward’s book. It is one of the better ones on this topic. She talks about getting to a place of self-definition, which she defines as, feeling free to have your own thoughts, beliefs and opinions, completely independently from anyone else’s.
So often, when we come from abusive homes, we fail to see the abuse for what it was. To a child, our parents are Godlike – they provide and they protect us and when they fail to do either one, then children have an uncanny way of making that all their fault (Daddy beat me, because I’ m bad, or mommy humiliated me, because I’m worthless). Denial runs rampant in toxic households and the status quo is retained, when everyone agrees to live by their parents version of reality.
When you start to develop self-definition, you begin to realize that your childhood wasn’t normal, that all children have a right to not just food and shelter, but to be emotionally nourished, respected and treated in a manner that fosters growth, independence and self-esteem. Parents don’t have the right to physically harm, belittle, shame or disrespect their children.
When parents plant the seeds of love, respect, trust, and independence, children grow up to be adults, who can focus on their passions and ideals unencumbered by self-doubt, but when parents plant the seeds of incompetency, fear, obligation and shame, you spend much of your adult life battling these demons, instead of focusing on pursuits that make life worthwhile.
Toxic parents don’t give their children the tools they need to be their best and trying to figure this stuff out, as an adult, is very difficult.
The Three P’s
One aspect Forward talks about is, Perfectionism, Procrastination and Paralysis. When you’ve been taught that you can’t do anything right and you’re not good enough, you get caught in the perfectionism trap, where you believe that anything you do must be perfect. Since that’s impossible, you put it off and put if off and then it becomes so daunting and overwhelming, you feel like you can’t move. This strikes a chord with me, because I always believed that I had to be perfect and what always ended up happening was, nothing would ever get done, because I was so afraid of being judged as lacking, or I’d put if off till later, when I was perfect. I spent a lot of my life on the sidelines, waiting for perfect to show up. It never did.
Responding vs Reacting
Forward tell us that one of the ways you know you’ve reached Self-Definition is when you’ve learned to respond rather than react.
When you are reactive, you are dependent on the approval of others. You feel good about yourself, only when no one disagrees, criticizes or disapproves of you. This is an easy behavior to spot in yourself , when I was reactive I would need to have back-up whenever there was conflict. I’d have to discuss the situation with others and have them on my side. I didn’t trust myself enough to have faith in my own convictions, only when others agreed with me did I feel secure.
When you are being responsive you are thinking, as well as feeling. You are aware of your feelings, but you don’t let them drive you to act impulsively. It allows you to maintain a sense of self-worth, despite whatever anyone else thinks or feels. I remember an event two years ago at work when a co-worker was very upset with me, for something I felt was insignificant. But their outrage was so extensive, that I doubted myself, I felt lower than the lowest. I wanted to cry and I only felt better when people were on my side. Now a couple years later I, not too recently, had a run in with the same co-worker. This time their behavior rolled right off my back and I didn’t concern myself with it. I don’t attach my emotions to other people’s behavior and I trust myself now, so no one is able to knock me off balance, or out of my place of well-being. Many try, but they don’t succeed anymore.
I find a lot of times unhealthy people love to stir up trouble and drama and unhealthy people react emotionally to it. As I’ve grown and become healthier, I no longer feed it any energy. I’m above that kind of nonsense now and when I spot it in others I recognize that that person is unhealthy and I don’t engage. Forward calls this being non-defensive and she’s right. When people try to suck you in and you know you haven’t done anything worth all the attention they are bringing, there is nothing to be defensive about. When you react you are being defensive. When you don’t react you remain balanced and retain your personal power.
Forward believes that when you’ve gotten to the place of self-definition comfortably, then you need to prepare to confront your abusers. This is something that a lot of abused children are terrified of doing. The purpose of this, is to put the responsibility precisely where it belongs – with your parents and to understand that you were just a child and didn’t deserve what happened to you. A question she often asks her patients is, “Would you treat your own child like that?” And not surprisingly, most if not all of them said, “No” – they would not. This isn’t about blame, but it is about accountability and responsibility and making your abusers aware of how hurtful and inappropriate their behavior was. It also opens the door for a potentially healthy dialogue, as well as an opportunity for you, to take control of your personal power and set boundaries.
This confrontation isn’t about the abuser and getting them to admit what they’ve done and getting an apology, because chances are, that won’t happen. It is all about you and your healing, she cautions that you shouldn’t be surprised if your abusers deny there was ever any abuse. They might blame you,( you were such a difficult child). They might say, ‘we did the best that we could’ – which doesn’t even remotely make it ok. You may not get the reaction that you want, but what you have done, is made the separation, you’ve come back to reality and you’ve made a decision that the abuse stops here. Remember what you don’t pass back, you pass on.
To be free of your past, means that you aren’t going to let the wake steer your boat anymore. Your past will no longer affect your future. Once you’ve reconciled your past, you can begin to be present and fully participate in the now, without being encumbered by your demons. When you have healed, you no longer feel broken, or that something is missing and you stop replaying old scripts and patterns in your adult relationships.
This is the beginning of a new year and it’s time to shed your old skin and embrace the truth about our past, so we can grow and have a future that’s worth celebrating.
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Savannah, I found your blog at the beginning of this year and I am SO very thankful for you and the knowledge you share with us every week. Great article! I felt like you were talking about me! The things you experienced with your Mom as a child are EXACTLY what I experienced with my Dad. I’m still trying to figure out if he was a narcissist. Could very well be the case, but he has been deceased since 1997. We never really made peace before he died. (My mother died when I was a year old). We were really more like brother and sister and my feelings of unworthiness and low self esteem have of course carried over into most of my romantic relationships as an adult. It apparently stopped when I met my husband on the 1 year anniversary of my Dad’s death because he definitely is not a narc, and is a wonderful man. I hate to say that I felt relieved when my Dad died – like he could never criticize or embarrass me ever again. I felt free, for once, but during a very difficult time in my marriage (5 years ago) while separated, I met, had a brief affair with, and fell hard for a narc which I very much regret. Although my husband and I have long since reconciled, the narc has been the most difficult relationship I’ve ever had to recover from. I am much better since reading your blog regularly and faithfully but it has taken me 5 years! My question to you is, how do I reconcile my issues with my deceased Dad so I can move forward once and for all?
Thanks for your blogs, it does help, everyone has similar pain: yest
Great article, with inspiring and life-affirming views for starting a New Year!
I was raised by my grandparents. My mother was sick and needed help raising me. My dad was not around often. He would get me for birthdays and Christmas. I feel that I pick men who are neglectful. I yearn for their undivided attention. I have to stop the cycle.
A wonderful way to start the New Year — by facing reality. I had done some extended therapy on childhood issues when I got in recovery for other issues, but it was not until last year when I was drawn into a deep and damaging relationship with a textbook narcissist that I was forced to go back to my childhood issues at a deeper level. I had to confront some very deep, primordial fear. This came from experiences of being abandoned and neglected by too-young, too-inexperienced parents who had a challenging toddler and an infant (me) within 18 months of each other, both just past the age of 20.
What I discovered is that my early experiences “primed” me for abuse by someone with NPD, for two reasons: (1) the early “too good to be true” stage with my NPD woman felt so amazingly good because I have always been HUNGRY for that perfect, idealized, unconditional love that I should have had in infancy but did not; and (2) the gradual abandonment and neglect in the “devaluation” stage with the NPD felt familiar, and fit the early pattern of my life. As one expert put it,
“[E]arly child-mother attachment continues to influence the child’s conception and estimation of the self across many years. . . . [Studies] suggest that if infants are valued and given comfort when required, they come to feel valuable; conversely, if they are neglected or rejected, they come to feel worthless and of little value.”
(Lilian G. Katz – Distinctions between Self-Esteem and Narcissism: Implications for Practice – October 1993 – ERIC/EECE Publications).
This explains why my internal view of myself (“worthless and of little value”) was so far away from the external reality (doing pretty well in life with lots of things going for me).
I have confronted both my parents to varying degrees at times in my recovery. I got some satisfaction but not as much as I had hoped. Partly this is because they are much older now and very much changed since their early years — in place of the negligent 20 year old alcoholic my Dad now has over 40 years of sobriety in AA and is in many ways a better person. He still has his issues and I can only take him in limited doses, but he is not the monster he once was. The same is roughly true of my mother.
I found that the “empty chair” work in therapy helped me more. Because in that context I could confront my parents as they were in my childhood (i.e., clueless and careless). My parents as they were are the real perpetrators — not the mostly benign 75 year old people I know now.
My parents weren’t toxic, they were actually sweet and loving, but my mom was an abused child (sexually, physically and emotionally) so she had low self-worth and passed it on to us.
She was very critical of herself and then also us. Everyone was always better than her and us – richer, thinner, happier, more talented. She criticized me a lot. I can’t speak for my siblings; we were all 6 years apart so I don’t remember what happened to them much. But I felt criticized for my appearance. I didn’t feel loved. I think when I was a kid my mom was severely depressed and not present and I needed more love than my brother and sister.
This is another post I will be reading on a regular basis to remind me of what I need to do to grow and heal.
StrongerToday this is what I mean when I say we have to learn how to recognizing abuse as abuse – my mother didn’t beat me with sticks or lock me in closets, but she did belittle, criticize, shame and humiliated me constantly. My mother was definitely emotionally unavailable and didn’t nourish me emotionally or support me in any way. That is toxic – when you have a little girl and you behave like you can’t stand her and convince her that she can’t do anything right and that she’ll never be good enough. Sometimes the bruises are on the inside. To say in one sentence that your parents weren’t toxic and then say your mother wasn’t emotionally there for you and criticized and belittled you constitutes abuse.
I will get this book. I have read “The Drama of the Gifted Child,” by Alice Miller as well as recently “Healing the Shame that Binds you,’ by Bradshaw.
I have confronted my mother in a letter that I did not send, but I have not had the courage to bring it up to her face. I don’t want to hurt her. How absolutely unhealthy. I worry about her and she doesn’t worry about me at all. In fact, she still abuses me emotionally. And I cannot bring myself to “hurt” her. I need to get the book.
What about those that are No Contact?
Kimmy if you are in no contact with your parents, there is no reason to break no contact. Dr Forward mentions other outlets like writing letters and not sending them, and sitting facing an empty chair and having the conversation with the imaginary parent. If there does come a time when you are back in contact with your parents you can save the confrontation for that time.
Savannah, did you already mention the forgiveness ceremony on this site? I found that to be extremely helpful in letting go of baggage and resentment toward people whom I can’t confront, or that I know confronting would be a waste of time.
NarcRepellent I did mention it in my blog on Forgiveness https://esteemology.com/forgiveness-letting-go-of-anger-resentment-and-bitterness/
mkjdi, Yes you will change! Once you see the little light in the long tunnel, you will follow it! Yes, it’s scary at times! I am still scared, nine months since the crisis. I am still not where I want to be but I am on my way that’s what counts!
Savannah! I am amazed at your post again. What a gift you have to put it in words what you think. What gift you have to share it with us! Thank you, one more time.
I am so scared I won’t change it hurts. Maybe it is the shedding of the skin, I don’t know but I know my world is rocked and I don’t know if I will get better
This was a tough one for me. When I confronted my toxic mother I got “You’re imagining things.” That hurt a lot not getting any recognition for the things she had done, but you’re right Savannah it did make her look at me in a new light, that I was separate from her and didn’t agree with all her bull.
This is exactly what I needed to hear right now. I am struggling with the dysfunction in my life and my negative self talk. I feel like my world is crumbling around me but this helps me see that it’s crumbling for good reasons. It’s that old skin being shed and it’s scary. It’s all I have known and the future is unknown without it. I can do this. We all can. Thank you for this timely article! Much love.