Cobra: Now THAT was an interesting post and a completely different side of you than I had understood before. Good to see you finally open up that Pandora's box. Now it can start to come out. I'll ask more questions later.....
Well, here come the questions. Let me preface this by saying that I do NOT want this post to sound like an attack, but it is hard not to have it come across that way. I am starting to see some of my old self in you Fearless, so I am posting this long idea. Mojo is starting to see it… the cracks….something seems odd….the puzzle doesn’t fit so tightly….
You mention shame a lot but there are times I don't think you have a full understanding of what shame is and how it develops.
I think I have a VERY good grasp on shame, what it is, where it comes from, how it manifests, and how insidious it can be. Let’s move on….
Also look at the facts, Fran's family and mine were tough on us and we don't have shame issues while our husbands families were protective and positive and they seem to be the ones with shame issues.
Everyone has shame issues, even yours. Some are bigger than others. Earlier in this thread you discussed your family. Let’s see if that can help….
Our families were difficult, demanding and tough on us. We were always expected to do our best and there were times where our families have let us know that we have let them down with our mistakes. YET we all feel like our families are always there for us and we do feel loved for who we are. Their demands on us make us feel like we are CAPABLE and not that we are incapable.
Ok, that sounds like a good support system, maybe a little tough, some emphasis on discipline I assume, but supportive. Yet I can’t make sense of it in light of this:
SO why did my XH think I was so needy, unvalidated and unsupported, fused, etc.? Well first the obvious is that he projected his issues onto me. The other was that while I have full support from my family we are also a volatile family in many ways. There wasn't a lot of positive validation for our actions and was there was negative validation when we did something wrong.
How can a family be supportive and support you in a way to make you feel capable by providing negative validation and not much positive validation?
My parents and grandparents from an early age critiqued and disagreed with is routinely. It was very common for us to hear that we had done something wrong. My grandmother (and RN and eventual teacher) would correct our thank you notes to her and critique our penmanship. My grandmother and grandfather complained of the way my mom kept house and of how dirty my brothers and I would sometimes be at the fair (when we were young!).
Is this your idea of how your grandparent were “tough” on your mother, making her into a better person? To me, your grandmother sounds abusive, disrespectful and totally lacking in boundaries. That will toughen you up however.
I was a straight A student and National Merit scholar and NEVER received any reward or special kudos from my parents. (I was just doing what I should be doing in their minds.)
What about your mind? Why were you the perfect child?
I told raven of a story in high school where my mom was furious at me. I had gone to a teacher to get a grade I felt was unfair changed. My mom did not support me doing this and was furious when I did and the teacher changed the grade. She thought I was wrong in my actions.
Why was your mother furious about this? Did your mother think you should not challenge authority, as she did not challenge her mother, and that if you did, maybe you were challenging the power structure, and that might be scary for your mom? Her anger sounds VERY enmeshed, no?
In High School she would call me a b!tch at times.
Was this to toughen you up too, or could it be that your mother was a little too fused and a little over the edge?
All of this to say that NOT having constant validation for my actions was NOT an insignificant thing. By not getting validation for most of my actions AND then by feeling acceptance for myself as a person is what has given me an advantage.
Guess what? This is EXACTLY the same type of rationalization I used to use. I was also the model child, top student, did everything right, followed the rules, never rebelled. It was critical to my vision of myself that I maintain a fantasy image of my family. ALL (well most) children raised in a narcissistic setting will do this. They “forget” about the nastiness, about the yelling, the shaming, the abuse.
Those things are rationalized away as necessary discipline issues because the child did something wrong. The story is that the parents truly love the kids and show it by trying to toughen them up, sacrificing themselves and their show of love to teach the kids the reality of life. Yelling, name calling ,etc. are really ways of showing love, that the parents really do care and that their enmeshment and fusion is actually a sign of that love – NOT!
Our family was a bit more emotional also so mushiness isn't a problem for me as long as it isn't coddling.
Yep, showing vulnerability….that’s a sign of weakness, no mushy stuff here. Show the full range of emotion, but let the other family members know that you do so out of love and compassion, or so the story goes.
Oddly enough my XH's shame developed in a family where he wasn't told anything negative about himself. So how did shame develop? Because he felt that the only way he was worthy of love was to never to something wrong, to never get critiqued, to not make mistakes, etc.
Fearless, do you really think this is only your xH? Do you not see yourself in his past? The italicized part… is that not YOU?
So really the bottom line about shame versus guilt is that guilt is feeling you DID something bad and SHAME is feeling you ARE something bad.
You are not stupid. You are very bright and capable of understanding the dynamics of shame. That includes understanding how those dynamics MUST fit into your view of yourself. You know you are capable, successful, intelligent, so there is no way you can be bad and therefore you cannot have shame. You did not come from a shaming family, it was not in your past, and everyone loved and supported you, right? You do your best, follow the rules, work hard, so you don’t do anything wrong either – no guilt. Viola! You are PERFECT. See how the story fits neatly together?
The problem is that its all a story. Your parents were shaming, cold, punitive, verbally abusive and probably very controlling. This is a very toxic environment for a child. Do you remember a post you made a few months back. You gave the impression of an idyllic childhood, working with your dad, learning self confidence, self sufficiency, feeling that you were always accepted and supported by your parents. Remember that post? What you post here is nothing like what I recall from the impression you gave before.
Is there more to the story? Were there incidents that point more clearly to some kind of emotional or verbal abuse?
For me, I knew I was imperfect and that everyone in my family knew that and yet they still loved me. my mom and grandparents could argue and fight and still LOVE each other. We were all imperfect but acceptable people.
And highly enmeshed.
I'm afraid I have painted a much rosier picture of my family than it would have appeared at the time but I think that when you are in a great place as an adult it is easy to look back fondly without giving the edgy details.
Maybe…or maybe you are better served by not digging up those edgy details, they conflict with the “story.”
Another example is that my parents NEVER let us use others as an excuse.
No, they wouldn’t do that. They couldn’t do that. The kids and everyone, except themselves, must accept their responsibility. Its just that the parent doesn’t have to accept the responsibility, as least until the grandparent walks into the room. Then the grandparent gets to throw the responsibility onto everyone else. Learning to live through that sort of continual power struggle will make you tough.
[b]I have no idea if this makes it clearer or muddier but my differentiation did not harm our marriage in the least. If I hadn't been as differentiated as I was, I doubt my XH would have even ASKED me to marry him.
Do you still believe this now? BTW, just why did you H leave you, especially if you gave and gave, if you are so differentiated, which allows your sense of empathy to multiply? What did he seek in the OW that you did not have? What else was he looking for?
And I will repeat as I consistently have, that I KNOW I am supremely lucky in the family that I have.
Really? If you would peel back those rose-colored glasses, can you truly say you were lucky to have endured all that abuse?
I could certainly go into more detail about them also. My dad is a self-validated and differentiated man.
Please do. I don’t have a full picture of your dad yet.
My mom struggled a bit with herself but I think my dad's differentiation was a great thing for her and them. She was very aware of her insecurities but was not someone who projected at all.
Why not? Was she lower down on the pecking order and there had to own her stuff, so that grandma could be the one throwing it out?
So my mom although she was insecure was still confident in her insecurity because my dad could deal with it.
Want to run this one past me again?
Coming back to the discussion about kids and shame:
So shame can weirdly enough be developed by these two seemingly opposite behaviors 1)directly telling your child that they are not worthy, are bad, etc. and being mentally abusive or 2) not letting your child know that they have done something wrong because you are so afraid of damaging their self-esteem. [/i]Because then they can develop a feeling that they have to hide their "true self" because no one will love them if they really KNOW them.[/i]
That last sentence… that isn’t the sort of projection your xH would do, is it?
And again even though I feel I am differentiated, I still can feel hurt by others. I would be a complete liar if I said that Cobra's punch didn't make me flinch. He's a guy who doesn't know me at all but I did have that dual reaction of 1) does he really think I am an emasculating feminist b!tch who drove her XH away from her and 2) did I deserve to receive that kind of response?
Hmmm…. That’s odd because I don’t think of you as a b!tch at all. Why did you get that impression? I do think your H had his affairs for a reason, some having to do with him and some having to do with you. But you being a b!tch is the furthest thing from my mind. You possibly having some denial… well that’s another story…
His response to Mrs. Nop confirmed too.
My response to MrsNop was for a completely different reason.
Someone else's action should not determine your response.
Really think about it.
I read this a few years ago and it is exactly the state of being I STRIVE toward some times more successfully than other times.
