confusion

ACoAs & CONFUSION – as Kids (Part 2b)

dmtorbi 12-step, ACoAs, al-anon, Alcoholics Anonymous, alcoholism, mental health, Psychotherapy, recovery, self growth, self-help , , , ,

confused IDWHO AM I?
what am I supposed to be?

PREVIOUS: ACoAs & Confusion (#2a)

SITE: Identity vs Role Confusion – Stage 5

QUOTE: “May the forces of evil be confused on the way to your house” ~ George Carlin

📕🖌️Childhood CONFUSION (cont.) : PARENTAL sources
1. THEIR Narcissism

• Mother to child: “Put a sweater on, I’m cold”. HUH???
• Bragging about us to others, to make themselves look good – but never complementing us directly – while constantly tearing us down to our face.
We may or may not find out what they’ve been saying behind our back, but it doesn’t help. Are they proud of me or not?? What do others really think?  (3 Types of narc parents ➡️)

• EITHER: We’re absolutely convinced one or both parents are withholding – of love, attention, information, protection, affection….. when in fact they don’t have it to give because of their own damage. The smart, intuitive part of us DOES know it- but is too painful to acknowledge, so we blame ourselves!

OR – one parent is the pillar of the community, giving to others of their time, attention, knowledge, camaraderie…. BUT at home is withholding & distant, or blatantly abusive to wife &/or kids. No one will believe you if you tell – you would be a liar or the crazy one!

OR – he or she gives our toys, clothes, gifts…. to others, without any warning or discussion (stealing from us) to be the big-shot, to make themselves feel better & seem important, be admired. They’re feeding off of others because they’re empty inside.
Confusion: My parent is a ‘good’ & beloved person, so why not to me??

2. Hypocrisy – more likely to occur in externally functioning (dysfunctional) families – but not exclusively. Kids know when adults are being dishonest, but this will cause too much cognitive dissonance, so they end up believing the lies, & then have to work very hard to validate & justify their parents’ actions & statements, just to not feel crazy.
We’re all familiar with the preacher / public servant / spiritual teacher type who publicly advocates purity, sobriety, family values…. but privately does the opposite – until they get caught! (More...)2-faced

• A favorite manipulation of many parents is “Do as I say, not as I do”. This is very confusing, since kids automatically & relentlessly copy what the adults do, as much as absorb what they’re told.

Ironically, those of us who said “I’ll never BE like them” end up either following the same patterns directly (maybe in a disguised form), OR marrying / working for someone just like them. Among many other reasons ACoAs copy them, it’s our loyalty to family, and an attempt to eliminate confusion

3. Mental & Emotional illness (especially harmful when it’s the mother).
From the very beginning of life these children are trapped with real crazinesmental illnesss – someone who never makes any sense, or is only intermittently lucid – so their first relationship is with someone who twists, manipulates, gaslights —> ”false information presented to make a victim doubt their memory, perception & sanity”

• The parent may be psychotic, or ‘just’ severely depressed, drunk / drugged, suicidal…. ending up in the hospital, probably several times, with very little or no explanation given (needed info), with the child not allowed to visit, not knowing if the parent will ever be back….

OR being forced to take care of the debilitated parent at home, along with siblings – for many, many years, subjected all the while to mental confusion & cruelty.
It’s one more way we become deeply ashamed of ourselves (being part of that weird or shameful family). We learn never to rely on or trust others, or on our own intuition & experience.
Am I a child or am I the parent? Am I evil? Am I crazy too???

Early Confusion: Having several caretakers – being sent to live with relatives, having too many sitters, shunted to many foster homes, adopted – but not told, several step-fathers…. Who are my real parents? does anyone truly love me? where do I belong?

NEXT: Confusion  #2b

ACoAs & CONFUSION (Part 1)

dmtorbi 12-step, ACoAs, al-anon, Alcoholics Anonymous, alcoholism, mental health, Psychotherapy, recovery, self growth, self-help , , , , , , ,

state of CONFUSED

IT FEELS LIKE I’M CRAZY
I just can’t get it right!

PREVIOUS: Gifted Children #4

SITE: Sometimes Confusion Is A Good Thing

📙🖌️ OVERVIEW
DEF of Confusion (Cf) – Mentally disoriented. The inability to make decisions clearly & quickly
– Cf occurs when another person’s Boundaries are vague, not easily understood, or in conflict with themselves

NOTE: These posts refer to Cf which is NOT caused by long-term severe mental illness or physical changes in the brain due to accident, aging, chemicals/ medication, drug use or illness.

Important distinction – confusion is always a cognitive (mental) NOT an emotional issue. It’s about whether or not we can think clearly, based on what’s going on in our head or how someone else is presenting information.

For ACoAs – overcoming life-long confusion is mainly about coming out of denial about our traumatic past. It includes identifying & correcting cognitive distortions (CDs) and toxic family beliefs, which lead to procrastination, self-doubt, perfectionism & self-hate!

To do that we need to know enough about ourselves AND how the world really functions – to not blindly follow what our unhealthy family taught us, or what the WIC has come to believe because of it.SCARF model

The opposite of confusion is Certainty, which is not the same as being rigid, dogmatic or opinionated.
Based on NLP, David Rock explains that there are 5 major goals of the human brain geared towards ‘maintaining’, ie. increasing positives & reducing negatives (the SCARF model): Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness & Fairness.  (MORE….)

• Executive Coach Ed Batista commented that certainty is a result of the brain’s effort to conserve energy, which comes from the limited capacity of the prefrontal cortex, the seat of executive function….

Human beings resist putting great mental effort into decision-making & impulse control because the body is preserving resources for a possible emergency in the next moment, & the same dynamic contributes to resisting uncertainty.” (CHART & info….)

Some causes of Mental / Psychological confusion
• Complex lifestyles – too much to do & not enough time, constant stress
confusion/stress• Denial – not wanting to admit & accept the way things really are (re. people, places, things), & so create a variety of defenses to mask the truth
• Dysfunctional interactions with others
• deliberately Distorted info – from media, politicians, advertising, cults, corporations …..
• Ignorance – trying to figure out something without enough or the correct info
• Grandiosity – trying to DO something without actually knowing how

• Major changes (Recovery process, new work, moving, divorce…..) without research, mentoring or other info, therefore being unprepared
• Misunderstanding & differences between countries, boss & workers, men & women, people speaking different languages….

• Overwhelming amounts of info from too many different sources (especially for Introverts)
• Transitions : those in-between times, from one inner state or outer situation to another, because we don’t know what to expect

Again, here we’re mainly concerned with the kind of confusion which comes from distorted ways people communicate with themselves or others, with words & body language, either unconsciously or deliberately.

When someone says “I feel confused”, they’re combining emotions & thoughts without expressing either one!
🔺What DO you feel – angry, happy…. ?  It sounds like they’re speaking about an emotion (I feel), but this ‘feel’ only refers to thinking . (See also “Feelings aren’t facts”).

🔑 What are you confused ABOUT?  The phrase actually means they doesn’t know what to think about something (the jumble in my head, conflicting opposite needs or desires…. ) – often because of CDs, obsessions & Toxic Rules

• Someone can also be (mentally) confused when we have several or opposite emotions re. the same situation at the same time – happy/sad, lonely/excited…
🟢 Instead of either/or, think in terms of layers, coming from different levels of desire, experience, need or maturity…..

No one taught us (info = mental) that having ➕ / ➖ emotions together is not unusual, & will come from the same or different ego states.
EXP: Parent – loving someone while being angry with them
Adult – relieved someone’s gone away / Inner Child: (yet) missing them…..

🧩 Without knowing this, it may seem like a dilemma. However, feeling many differing emotions at once doesn’t need to be confusing, which only comes from negative beliefs, or having a limited awareness of human complexity.

NEXT: ACoAs & Confusion #2

ACoAs – Fear of Commitment (Part 4)

dmtorbi 12-step, ACoAs, al-anon, Alcoholics Anonymous, alcoholism, mental health, Psychotherapy, recovery, self growth, self-help , , , , , ,

foc WHENEVER I MESS UP
my whole world collapses

PREVIOUS: FoC – Part 3


QUOTE: “Commitment unlocks the doors of imagination, allows vision & gives us the ‘right stuff’ to turn our dreams into reality.” ∼ James Womack, founder of Lean Enterprise Inst.


2. RE-ENACTING (cont)
c. Fear of being trapped / d. F. of responsibility / e. F. of losing control

f. F of being vulnerable – To the WIC, C. to anything is leaving
oneself open to all kinds of danger. As long as the WIC is in charge of relationships (of any kind), it believes that letting someone in to see the ‘real us’ – leaves us open to being left alone again.

VulnetableOf course the tragedy is that without enough Recovery, it is exactly that ego-state which chooses our relationships – always unsuitable, unfulfilling or outright dangerous – which inevitably does add to our suffering!

This fear leads to over-protecting ourselves, which can create a Double Bind – we’re damned if we pick someone to stay with (symbiosis), we’re damned if we keep everyone away (false boundaries).

g. F of the Truth. To the WIC, C. to our growth & Recovery means admitting we failed – somehow!  Also, it thinks we’ll have to feel all that pain – & then we’ll go crazy or die!
ACoAs are intensely resistant to admitting how traumatic our childhood really was, & how severely damaged we are as a result.
We love our family & don’t want to face how abusive & emotionally unavailable they were. Review DMs re. ACoAs. “Denial is not a river in Egypt!” (de Nile) says the pun. Denial prevents us from healing our wounds, which then keeps us from finding & keeping nourishing relationships.

One way this is expressed is seen in the chart.
When we continually act out either STAYER or LEAVER ‘position’, as a form of false protection, we know that our WIC is in charge. “Leaving” isn’t just about walking away.
stay/leaveIt’s any form of being withholding, distant, ‘cool’, emotionally detached. Both groups are equally terrified of commitment, but it’s more visible in Leavers. C = Conscious // Un = Unconscious // FoA = fear of Abandonment //  FoC = fear of Commitment

h. F. of making mistakes. To the WIC, C. is not possible because we’ll never be able to ‘do it’ perfectly. 
☁︎ Punished / rejected continually, for things we :
— were never taught /  took too long to ‘get’
— simply too young to know / couldn’t possibly have known at any age
— were deliberately left out of /  had difficulty learning …..

So now we can’t take the chance of not knowing everything & being seen as ‘frauds’. If commitment means intimacy, then letting someone inside our defenses means exposing how imperfect we are, & then they’ll punish or leave us!

☁︎ Greed: Being deprives of so much growing up, the WIC now wants everything at once, & can’t tolerate being told NO about anything. So, when there’s a decision to be made among 2 or more options, we want to do them all, afraid to choose one & have to let go of the other(s), afraid of picking the wrong one & being disappointed – again

☁︎ Confusion: It’s not knowing our True Self at all or well enough to choose among options or possibilities – whether picking the right kind of mate, the right kind of career, the ‘right’ spiritual path, even down to the right kind of food, clothing & entertainment. It’s not being allowed to admit what we want or need. So many opportunities for making mistakes!mistakes

☁︎ Failures: Not having a Loving Parent & access to our True Self, we’ve already made many unhappy life choices – of friends, lovers, jobs, homes, hair cuts…. so we’re convinced we’re doomed to never do any better.
We keep forgetting (or don’t know) that our ‘picker’ has been a combination of the WIC & the PigP.
However, when those 2 ego states no longer run our life, we can choose better, & so can commit to safe, suitable PPTs.

NEXT: FoC – Part 5

ACoAs: OVER-Trusting (Part 3)

dmtorbi 12-step, ACoAs, al-anon, Alcoholics Anonymous, alcoholism, coaching, mental health, Problem-Solving, Psychotherapy, recovery, self growth, self-help , , , , , ,

promise the moon WHAT’S WRONG WITH PRETENDING
everything’s just fine?

PREVIOUS: Over-trusting (Part 1)

See ACRONYM page for abbrev.

POST: “People should treat me better, BUT I won’t let them”
🔷 We trust TOO EASILY when we…. (Part 2)

🔷 WHY DO WE OVER-TRUST?  (cont)
a. FoA (fear of abandonment)
b. Self-hate

c. Co-dependence — a form of “Delayed Stress Syndrome” or PTSD
• we use people as substitute parents instead of being our own, so we can’t afford to notice flaws or limitations in them, no matter how glaring
• we don’t have the right to object to other people’s b.s., so naturally we would never think of calling them on it

• we depend copdepon the opinions & values of others too much, convinced they know things we don’t, so EVEN when we have knowledge or intuition about a person or situation – we ignore it, especially if someone else disagrees
• we don’t want to, god-forbid, hurt anyone’s feeling by ‘suspecting’ them of being less than trustworthy – as they blatantly or subtly do us in!

EXP: Social conformity: As adult, if we need to be part of a group where trust is expected / demanded – by a parent, teacher, boss, gang leader…..- no matter how irrational, unfair, evil, illegal…., we have to go along, otherwise we’d be severely punished, labeled coward &/or ostracized
OR:
• Despair: Being in a hopeless situation we can’t get out of (like a child in an alcoholic home) – then trusting whoever’s in charge is the lesser of 2 evils, as a way to survive

d. Illusions
 Constant disappointment in our family makes us long for everyone else  we can depend on, to make up for it, so we put people on a pedestal:
• If our parent was mentally ill, we idealize anyone who sounds ‘normal’ & functional – even tho they may be selfish or controllingidealize sickness
• If our parent was violent, we idealize anyone who seems calm, even tho they may be emotionally numb & unavailable

• If our parent was verbally cruel, we idealize people who are ‘nice’, even tho they may be a people-pleaser & therefore not totally genuine
• If our parent was absent, we idealize people who ‘want us’, even though they may just be using us to take care of them …..

e. Confusion
• Our family didn’t model appropriate behavior, seeing everything in B & W – drama, extremes, deprivation…. so we evaluate the world using the same lens.
We have trouble distinguishing nuances of good vs bad behavior & don’t consider proportion. Instead of looking for relationships made of 70 – 80% positives with only 20 – 30% negatives (which is reasonable), we settle for the crumbs of only 10 – 30% positives – if that – & ignore a huge pile of crap!

• When people hurt & disappoint us, especially someone we love & / or admire, we sweep it awaytend to push away whatever we feel & think – sweep it under the carpet & say nothing. Instead, we hold in our anger & get depressed.

They may or may not be in the wrong, & we may or may not be overreacting – even when they are off-center. The important point is that we need to process any rage & CDs we may have, then talk to the person about the situation, but only from our Healthy Adult.  If done correctly, we will feel much relief, whether they hear us or not!

• And sometimes we have friends, family members, co-workers & acquaintances who are basically OK, on our side, or at least neutral – BUT who we secretly accuse of being unsafe because:
◇ they’re not 100% perfect in their interactions with us – OR
◇ their positive regard for us is too much to take in, so we dismiss it
◇ they do admire us, at a distance, but are not actually friends, so we don’t trust they can see & appreciate us …..since they’re not ‘taking care’ of us

REMINDER:  As long as we’re being run by the Wounded Inner Child, we find it very hard to separate people who are permanently unsafe from those who are only unsafe some of the time, from those who are genuinely trustworthy.

NEXT: ACoAs – UNDER Trusting (Part 1)

SAFE vs UNSAFE PEOPLE

dmtorbi 12-step, ACoAs, al-anon, Alcoholics Anonymous, alcoholism, coaching, mental health, Problem-Solving, Psychotherapy, recovery, self growth, self-help , , , ,

sharing slaceI WANT TO BE COMFORTABLE
so I have to pay attention to who people are!

PREVIOUS:Healthy RULES & Lesson,- #3

 

HELPFUL INFO

❀ This outline is not earth shattering or even news, but it’s nice to have it all in one place. You may want to add to the list, based on your personal experiences – or maybe some variations.

• It comes from the book “SAFE PEOPLE” by Dr. Henry Cloud & Dr. John Townsend. The orientation of the book is Christian & has references to Biblical truths, which apply to all spiritual persuasions, so please don’t let it keep you from benefiting from the available info in it. “Take what you like & leave the rest”!

• The book also has excellent chapters on many of the same topics covered in this blog, under such heading as: “How we lost our safety”, “Do I have a Safety Deficit?”, “Learning how to be safe” ……

• ACoAs are so used to being around unhealthy people that we may not realize how we’re being damaged by them.
Even when we think something might be wrong – in how someone’s treating us – we don’t trust our gut or our head, so we get confused & think we’re crazy or over-reacting to what are actually toxic environments & relationships.

Once we have the right info, we can make informed choices, by either moving away, or setting boundaries with the unhealthy people we love!
«

«
NEXT :  My RIGHTS –  Qs, #1

Welcome to ALL

dmtorbi 12-step, ACoAs, al-anon, alcoholism, coaching, HEAL & GROW for ACoAs, mental health, Problem-Solving, Psychotherapy, recovery, self growth, self-help , , , , , , , , ,

ACoAs know a lot, but often feel confused.

We have a ”committee of voices” with  conflicting points of view, often making it hard to function.   Who should we listen to:  the Inner Child, the Harsh Parent, the Healthy Adult,  our religion, our intuition ???

Here, in these blogs,  I try to make complex issues easier to think about & understand.Tell me if you agree, disagree, or if I’ve left something out!

CLARITY is a hallmark of mental health.     Keep repeating: “I KNOW WHAT I KNOW” !!