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ACoAs abandoning others #4a

7. UNDER-VALUING (cont.)
b. As a ‘life-style’(cont.)

c. Finding Fault (F.F.) in relationships – always looking for their flaws, no matter how unimportant, which will be a deal breaker for us – & we always find some! This is especially true if someone gets too close, whether the relationship is short or long-term. We may like a person at first, but there’s no leeway for them to be human – imperfect or occasionally disappointing.

✶ This is a common ACoA ‘back-door’ defense in relationships – always having one foot in & one OUT, ready to bolt. We assume all will end in abandonment anyway, so don’t get too invested! It feels safer than admitting we need anything (company, fun, live, respect, validation, being seen….), or to admit we’re needy & vulnerable under all our bluster.

Original CAUSE
Growing up in an emotionally & physically dangerous environments (at home & outside) left us with an inability to trust anyone – even people who are kind or neutral. We’re terrified of being trapped, controlled, abused, abandoned – the way we truly were as kids. This is not our imagination or just our interpretation!

We found all those early experiences so unbearable, THAT:
• some of us created a fantasy world & retreated into it, turning everyone & everything into a fairy story, to make them safe (idealized)
OR we decide as kids that to be permanently skeptical, that no one is safe (under-valued),
BUT
✑ anyone who’s kind, fair or appropriate is simply not in our line of sight
✑ or we think they’re faking it, & want something
✑ and once they really get to know us they’ll stop being so nice.

RESULTS
• No Love: Undervaluing everyone & everything (“Life sucks!”) may seem like a protection against more hurt & punishment, according to the WIC.
But it actually prevents us from taking in any available attention, kindness & love we’re so desperate for. This insures that we don’t heal from our wounds, keeping us forever needy.

• Poor Relationships: Fear of Intimacy is a core issue for ACoAs, which comes from the deadly combination of :
— fear of being engulfed (weak boundaries) &
— fear of abandonment (self-hate).
Our default position is that we’re unworthy of being loved or valued, while everyone else is allowed (like a preferred sibling).

• In childhood, the people who were our mainstay for survival & who tied us symbiotically to them because of their FoA, were dangerous or cold or gone. That was too painful to bear, but it’s the only form of intimacy our WIC knows, & we assume it’s all we can hope for.

Most ACoAs then project our parents’ toxic way of treating us onto others. Therefore everyone else in the world is also untrustworthy & cruel – so we’d rather do without, thank you very much! At its most severe, some ACoAs suffer from Adult Attachment Disorder 

DAMAGE: There are good, kind people somewhere in the world, but may be blind to them. They may in fact be right behind us but we’re not using our rear-view mirror. Or if we do stumble across one, we push them away because we’re sure they’d never want to be with us  anyway!
Most of us gravitate to those who will prove our negative beliefs (Toxic Rules), as a way to rationalize our rage & rebellion.
Once in a while an ACoA will actually marry a kind, loving person – good for us! – without really understanding what they see in us.

HEALTH – We need to be able to:
• choose people whose plusses outweigh their damage
• evaluate others realistically – to acknowledge their plusses & minuses
• stop projecting our parent’s flaws on to everyone & everything
• tolerate healthy people’s imperfections
• OWN our own damage, so when someone pushes our buttons – we can take responsibility for our reactions & not make our hurt someone else’s fault!

LOVE HEALS. Not just the exciting, sexually charged love of a mate, but everyday kindnesses, whether from a pet, the store clerk, a passing stranger, a good friend or the daily protection of our H.P.

NEXT: Abandonment #4a

PREVIOUS : ACoAs Abandoning others #3a

QUOTE: “Disrespect also can take the form of idealizing you as a perfect woman or goddess, because he’s only seeing his fantasy, & when you fail to live up to that image he may turn nasty. It’s a failure to respect you as a real human being.” Why Does He Do That?, Lundy Bancroft

6. IDEALIZING (cont.)
EFFECT –  In fantasy relationships we (both men & women):
• desperately need others to live up to our ideal. What we’re really doing is using them !
• we’re saying that THIS person is ‘perfect’ (unlike our family), is going to fill our unmet childhood needs, will never disappoint us, will love us unconditionally & never leave!

• we’re completely negating who they are, what they need or want, by laying on them a preconceived role created by our Wounded Inner Child, thus abandoning them.
What a terrible, impossible burden to put on someone. Maybe you’ve been the object of such an idealization – how did it feel? How did it end?

IDEALIZING re-enforces our self-hate, because:
a. we can never do the impossible, such as —
* fix someone else (so they can be there for us)
* resolve our family issues thru another person
* manipulate someone into genuinely loving us

b. AND because:
* we know at some level that we’re hurting others
* we get rejected, attacked, misunderstood
* it never deals with the source of our pain & loneliness, so we can’t grow, recover or gain peace of mind
✶ we never have the joy of interacting with others as equals – adult to adult (have a healthy peer relationship with a variety of people)

FANTASY may feel good, but actually it keeps us suspended in a false universe which always backfires!

HEALTHY
✶ Every time you interact with someone, evaluate what you’ve learned about them – in reality. What did they tell you about themselves?
✶ Take it slow with any new relationship. WAIT to form a definitive opinion about someone. It takes time to get to know people. GO SLOW!
✶ Use any suitable Recovery process – work at healing your original abandonment pain & greatly reduce self-hate
✶ Write all your observations about them, plusses & minuses. This is NOT about taking someone’s inventory – which is a form of being judgmental. This is a way to prevent idealizing others, by being realistic about them & honest with ourselves.

NOTES
When you notice yourself idealizing someone, you can be sure there will come a time when you’ll want to turn against them & tear them down – if only in thoughts & emotions.

This is the B & W swing from idealism to devaluation (see Parts 4a/b), because something they did or said made your WIC’s fantasy program crash. If you desperately need to hang on to your illusion, you’ll have to dump this person (discard) & find the next one to ‘elevate’. CHART from “Thrive After Abuse“

General HEALTH
Re. US
• Accept that we don’t have to be there for anyone, at all, but especially if or when we can’t
• We can keep working on our own damage, connect with our hidden pain & learn new ways to express it safely & appropriately
• We can learn that feeling our emotions will not kill us, but rather frees us to heal & grow, & the same is true for everyone else who wants to
Re. OTHERS
• Accept that we can’t fix other people’s mental or emotional distress, but we can be available to support them on their journey (see ‘Healthy Helping’)
• We can be more honest & respectful, to ourselves & others, when something is too much for us.
It’s much more appropriate to say: “I really can’t hear about this now/ any more..” / “This is too painful for me to listen to” / ‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you with this’…

• IF we set a gentle but firm boundary, & someone gets very upset with us / acts devastated / becomes enraged —> that’s a clear indication they want to be taken care of, & WE cannot do that!
NO judgement, no abuse, no dishonesty.

➼ THE GOAL is to take care of ourselves, first – other adults second, & ONLY within appropriate limits!  The more we do that, the less harm we do, to self & others.

NEXT: Abandoning others #4a

PREVIOUS: ACoAs Abandoning others #1a

ABANDONMENT STYLES (cont.)

3. IGNORING
This is a pattern of NOT HEARING what someone is telling us about themselves, their needs, their tastes, their point of view, present availability….BY:
• doing the opposite of, or unrelated to, what is asked of us
• twisting what they say against them or using it later to zing them

• responding in a conversation from some inner thought process of our own not related to the current topic 
• pretending to listen, on the outside, while inside our attention is elsewhere – wandering, worried, in a rage …
BY:
• always & only talking about ourselves
• going into a panic state, & just blanking out
• insisting on getting a response to a call or text, when clearly the other person is not available — & then accusing them of ignoring us (feeling ‘abandoned’)
• seeming to be involved in a conversation, even talking, BUT later can’t remember what either of us said

CAUSES:
• copy what was done to us by our family
• desperately try to hang on to our own thoughts & emotions, so can’t hear anyone else’s (weak boundaries)
• overwhelmed by a jumble of painful emotions (anxiety, rage, terror, self-hate…) without being able to sort them, identify the reasons or learn self-soothing
• without a True Self being afraid of getting swallowed up if we let ourselves connect
EFFECTS:
• assume no one’s interested in our input
• believe others will want too much if we really pay attention
• severely limit benefits others may have to offer (friendship, knowledge, respect…)
• stay impoverished, emotionally & practically
• unable to find & express our True Self
HEALTHY:
• diminish self-hate by accepting that the original abuse & neglect was NEVER our fault
• gain healthy boundaries
• process enough old pain to lower anxiety levels

4. COPYING
Human being are biological programmed to imitate each other’s emotional displays – by face & body – using the mirror neuron system. Our brain practices doing actions we only observe in others, as if doing them ourselves. Children copy their parents, long-term spouses copy their mates, people & animals even end up looking alike!

🌀 However, here we’re referring to a misuse of this capacity – the compulsion of some ACoAs to latch on to someone they ‘admire’ & then make their life a carbon copy of their idol (teacher, friend, performer….). This has nothing to do with intelligence, other than that copy-cats are generally smart & resourceful – in all but Personal Identity.
This will happen gradually over time, sneaking up on the unsuspecting admired one.

This may happen more often between women, because of they’re natural tendency to connect on a level footing, whereas testosterone-fueled men focus on being one-up to other men & hate feeling one-down.

BEHAVIOR – ACoAs will copy an ‘idol’ :
• first befriend them, try to be helpful, but actually are just co-dependent
• go into the same profession, or having met at work – form a ‘camaraderie’
• copy any hobby or avocation that suits them (quilting, tennis, a Spiritual Practice….), & then take over groups the idol is involved in, bragging that it was their idea, they’re so much better at it, more devoted….
• often dress & change hair styles to match
• move location to be closer, get the same kind of car, buy a summer home in the same town….

CAUSE: Copiers —
• were so damaged in childhood they weren’t able to form a sense of Self
• now have a weak or fractured ego structure, equally true if the person is floundering in life or successful in their field
• are desperate to have some kind of identity, even if it’s someone else’s.
EFFECT
For the COPIER – The tragedy is that while they many have some things in common with their idol, they simply can not have the same personality (even twins don’t) SO they’re wearing someone else’s, instead of finding out who THEY are!

For the IDOL – once the pattern becomes obvious, & the idol is reasonably healthy, they’ll be creeped-out by someone they thought was their peer. They become aware that their admirer is actually a narcissist bent on being ‘taken care of’ in this indirect way. Eventually they’ll distance themselves & ultimately withdraw completely

NEXT: How ACoAs abandon others (2a)