negative introject

OUTGROWING Co-Dep Niceness (Part 6b)

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TO BE or NOT TO BE
willing to forgive myself –
that is the question!

PREVIOUS“: Outgrowing P-P #4a

SITEs: 12 Ways to Accept Yourself
• “I Forgive Myself for……“from ‘Journey of Be’, scroll to 9/2015


RECOVERY from “Too Nice Syndrome” (cont.)

TOOL 6a. Healing our CHILDHOOD T.E.A. (cont.)
As we outgrow P-P we can clean out the underlying issue that permeates every part of our life: our Self-Hate, which is blaming ourselves for not getting our needs met. It’s anger/rage at our family turned in on ourselves

Reminder : Healthy, compassionate families, teachers & other leaders guide children with clarity, kindness, patience & humor. They set good examples, teach boundaries & realistic limits, explain the way people & things work, & help each child develop their Natural Self. (Healthy Parenting

That was not our experience. All our childhood emotions, words & actions which were called “too sensitive, disobedient, difficult, selfish, lazy, stupid …..” do not need to be forgiven. Instead, we can look back with sorrow & compassion for what we endured!

SO: The more S-H we clear out, the more we drop P-P, automatically. Rather than struggling with the idea of having to forgive our youthful acting-out & normal child-reactions, we can benefit the most from ACCEPTANCE. 

+ + Accept reality: We can let go of the – usually unconscious – twisted belief we may still have, that we’re hopelessly bone-deep failures because we originally:
• failed to be the kind of child who was good enough to have elicited love & approval from our parents
• failed to soothe & heal our parents’ many wounds
• failed to stop them from hurting us, each other & our siblings

++ Accept our child’s narcissism as normal, which made us think we had the power to do any of those things. Not! We can understand why we had those misguided ideas, & correct our thinking now (the CDs), to stop blaming & attacking ourselves for what we believe are inadequacies & deficiencies

++ Accept that the mirroring we got as kids came from cracked mirrors – forcing us to see ourselves thru controlling, cruel, drunk, insensitive, neglectful, raging eyes! What we came to think of as our Self was mainly their sickness projected on to us – which became our Negative Introject. This psychological process – helpful or harmful – happens to every child & is not ‘forgiveness material’.  (Parental Mirroring provides child….)

++ Accept that following the Toxic Rules does not & never did keep us safe!  No matter how ‘good’, helpful & self-denying we were as kids, we still got the full brunt of our family’s damage!
“I have to obey them” is a lie we tell ourselves so we don’t have to be our True Self & take care of our own needs

++ Accept that as physical adults (not grown-up) we do not neeeed them to be our parents. That’s our job now. We do need a lot of help to heal, but trying to appease & please the original abusers is self-destructive

++ Accept that no matter how much we wish it we can’t go back & change anything. AND we’ll never have the parents / family we always wanted

++ Accept & stop judging ourselves absolutely, totally –  for:
— not being perfect // not knowing everything // making mistakes
— being so scared inside // being controlling // nit-picking
— having depression & the need for medication
— procrastinating or never finishing anything…  basically opposite of everything on the RIGHTS list

++ Accept that at first we’re going to feel guilt churning in our gut whenever we disobey a Toxic Family Rule, but we will slowly outgrow it.  This is ‘good guilt’ – which is for the short-term – because it signals doing something healthy for ourselves which goes against all our original crazy training

The Tibetans have no word for ‘guilty.’ The closest is “Intelligent regret that decides to do things differently.”

++ Accept ourselves as valuable Children of God / HP / the Universe, which helps to stop the cruel inner rant (the WIC or PP) – a choice we can implement every day.
The benefits of self-acceptance are worth the great struggle of having to let go – of releasing the rage at ourselves & our abusers.

NEXT: Self-forgiveness as ADULTS

ACoAs MANIPULATING Self & Others (Part 2a)

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heart-conned

PREVIOUS: Manipulation & Needs (Part 1)

SITE:   8 Negative Thoughts That Manipulate Your Mind

REMINDER: See ACRONYM page for abbrev.

 


ACoAs MANIPULATING OURSELVES
While we think of ourselves as victims – which we were as children BUT are no longer – we are now victimized internally by our Negative Introject as well as our damaged Adapted Child, who desperately clings to the old ways. Fed by the PP & constantly reinforced by the WIC, Self-Hate carries a powerful energy – to prevent us from being able to S & I, in order to have a better, more satisfying life.kid-whipped

Even in Recovery, some of find it very hard to shift out of paranoia, self-destructiveness, hopelessness & procrastination. These & many other ‘character defects’ are expressions of our WIC, who is looking for parents to take care of her/him,
& is adamantly opposed to having our own positive UNIT be that caretaker! (inner parent & adult). In truth, the WIC only wants the original parents – to love us unconditionally.

A kids, because we were continually around addicts, abusers – Wounded Children themselves – in our most vulnerable years, we had no choice but to absorb their distorted view of us, themselves & the world. Most of what they passed on to us are manipulations – anything to not look at themselves or take responsibility for their words & actions. Sadly, we are doing exactly the same thing – which many of deny & are insulted at the very suggestion.

WIC-PP alliance
Program & others Personal Growth modalities tell that all Recovery & emotional maturity is “an inside job”, yet many of us keep focusing outside of ourselves. So, while we only think of Manipulation as something done to others, for us as ACoAs, the most intense manipulation is internal, coming from the PP who controls the WIC.

The WIC who in turn constantly tries to convince our rational self of what the PP is saying. The PP is especially loud when we try to take the power away from it – to take care of ourselves, by loving our Inner Child (wounded & healthy parts) in all the ways our original family never could.

PP’s Manipulation (Negative Introject)
Everything the WIC believes originally came from the people we grew up with. Now the PP is in our head, continuing the barrage of lies. To keep us attached to the toxic family system, it uses every dirty trick in the book to paralyze us.  It’s made up of the ‘us/we’, a composite of the adults who programmed our thinking & outlook on life.
It says to the WIC:
• you’re crazy, over-reacting, too sensitive
• you don’t know what you’re talking about
• you can’t do it without us, you’re too weakStep on the WIC

• WE NEED you, only WE count, we’re suffering
• you don’t really feel that way
• you’ll be sorry when we’re gone
• you’re ungrateful – look at everything we’ve done for you
• it was never that bad, you’re just being a dram queen/king
• you owe us, we did the best we could

PROBLEM: Physically an Adult, but still emotionally immature:
1. We believe these manipulative lies, so we consistently, persistently don’t counter the lies the WIS & PP are selling, perpetuating our S-H

2. In reality we do have intuition, we’ve accumulated a great deal of knowledge & experiences, had moments of clarity, have very real choices & opportunities…. which the WIC ignores, forgets or completely negates

3. There have been a few people who have helped us along the way, we have had a few pleasurable moments, there have been a few opportunities to heal & grow, but we undervalue or deny them completely! And for some us – there have been more than a few. Yet we let the underlying Toxic Messages keep winning out.

NEXT: Manipulating OURSELVES (Part 2b)

ACoAs: RESPONSIBILITY (Part 3a)

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World-on-ShouldersOWNING MY T.E.A.s:
even if my buttons get pushed,
I’m responsible for my reactions

PREVIOUS
: Being responsible #3

See ACRONYM page for abbrev.

 

AS ADULTS – GROWTH

As a guide to personal growth, the 12 Steps of AA are all about taking personal responsibility. They include:
Step 4: Made a searching & fearless moral inventory of ourselves
Step 5: Admitted to God, to ourselves & to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs
Step 9: Made direct amends to such people (we had harmed) whenever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others
Step 10: Continued to take personal inventory, & when we were wrong, promptly admitted it

NOTE: However, it’s very common for addicts & co-dependents to not understand or to misuse the 12 Steps, especially in early Recovery.

🟩 Comment on Step 4 (re. ourselves)
ACoAs find it very difficult, sometimes even for years in Recovery, to sit quietly & write this out. We:
• don’t know what character defect are – they’re so much a part of the fabric of our life, & which ones we’re actually guilty of. “Does a fish know it’s wet?”
• we have so much S-H & shame that it’s too painful to admit anything, even though we think we’re guilty even when we’re not
*️⃣ we don’t realize that an inventory includes personal gifts, skills, talents….

🟩 Comments on Step 5 (re. hiding from everyone)
• Because of the WIC’s shame, it’s painful to share our defects with others. We’re so used to being chastised or made fun of, that doing this Step feels emotionally dangerous
• So many of us have a distorted view of ‘God as we understand Him/Her’, because as John rejct helpBradshaw reminds us:
“Before the age of 7 we deify our parents. After that we parentalize our deity.”

⛔ So if we make our Higher Power in the image of our abusive, neglectful parents, we can not avail ourselves of spiritual Source as safe help & comfort

• If we look up at the sky & only see our dangerous, neglectful mother’s or father’s face, it obscures the Loving Being who is waiting to connect with us & heal our fear & sorrow

Our WIC needs to be given a corrected view of HP. This comes first by developing the Loving Parent toward ourselves that we never had – our responsibility to learn with appropriate guidance – & then we can have a more accurate vision of who the HP really is

🟩 Comment on Step 9 (re. TMI: Over-disclosing)
Making amends is a very important part of relieving guilt & shame – when done in the right way, in the right environment – “You’re only as sick as your secrets”.
HOWEVER, ACoAs with weak boundaries & driven by the WIC’s anxiety, will either not ‘admit’ anything, or admit willy-nilly.

😳 A vital & much neglected part is at the end of this Step: ‘’…except when to do so…”  Sometimes telling an aggrieved person what we’ve done or said is not a responsible action, & will only do everyone harm.

EXP: A wounded ACoA loves his wife & kids, & doesn’t want to lose them, but is nevertheless unfaithful (incest-survivor).  He’s filled with guilt, & tries to stop, but doesn’t. He wants to tell his wife, but knows if he does, she’ll leave.
a. Unhealthy reasons to tell her would be:
• temporarily relieve anxiety about ‘being bad’, so he doesn’t have to deal with his emotional painscreen-shot-2015-08-14-at-7-58-16-am
• have a fantasy hope that she’ll forgive & let him stay (so he can then ‘get away with it’ AND be absolved)

• the need to be punished, no matter the consequences to everyone (he doesn’t really deserve to be part of a loving family)
• a wish for his wife to be his watch-dog (use her as the controlling mother) – because he doesn’t really want to stop acting out, but may do so to be the ‘good boy’, or maybe keep acting out as a form of rebellion

b. Healthy (obvious): Stop all forms of cheating & work on his damage

NEXT: Fear of responsibility (Part 5)

ACoAs: RESPONSIBILITY (Part 2a)

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not trapped
I ALWAYS MAKE SURE
there’s a way to protect myself

PREVIOUS:
Fear of Responsibility (#1)

POST: Toxic Family Rules

See ACRONYM page for abbrev.

AS ADULTS
With all the frustration & lack of ‘success’ as children to fix our family, we unconsciously assume that if we failed at that, we’ll inevitably fail at everything else – so why bother.
Since they didn’t take responsibility for their emotions & actions, we didn’t learn how to either, & we don’t know there is a clear line between what’s our job in life & what isn’t.

SELF-CARE (Part 2b) : Any activity we do deliberately to provide our mental, emotional & physical health needs. Good self–care is key to reduced anxiety & improved mood

1. UNDER-RESPONSIBLE
a. Re. OTHERS:
Because we were treated badly by our family, we often treat others the same way (“How ACoAs Abandon Others” posts):
• by not considering others’ rights, boundaries & emotions, being so focused on our pain & trying to protect ourselves
• by our narcissism, idealizing, constant criticism, being controlling…..
THIS INCLUDES how we treat both our external children & other adults

ACoAs as ‘LEAVERS’
According to the WIC, we still have no one we can depend on for our needs, AND we’re responsible for everyone & slaveeverything around us. We say we don’t want to have such a great burden, YET we reject being with people or groups who would be supportive, allow us to relax & focus on ourselves

This leaves us completely overwhelmed & exhausted. So on the assumption that we still have to carry the weight of any association (personal or professional), we’re too scared to fully commit.

• To take healthy, ‘adult’ responsibility for our choices & relationships, we would need to become familiar with & embrace our True Self, via S & I, which is the goal of all therapy & Recovery.
However, ACoAs greatest addiction is to our family of origin, making it very hard to let go of our symbiotic attachment to them.

This results in a great resistance to taking center stage in our life, while playing the satellite (or slave) to someone or something else.
The irony is that at the same time – we think everything others do or say is about us, taking everything personally – which is not the ADULT ego state being responsible for ourselves, but rather the narcissistic stance of the WIC

• While we consciously insist we never want to be anything like ‘them’, unconsciously we copy them in many different ways, having absorbed the PP, ie. negative introject. Because the WIC is by nature narcissistic, it can’t distinguish itself from our narcissistic parents. SO:
√ If they didn’t take responsibility for themselves, we won’t either
√ If they never connected with their True Self, we won’t either
√ If they treated us badly, we’ll do the same to ourselves…..

• Even when ACoAs truly want to be connected to Self or others in a meaningful way, our terror of being trapped in the position of caretaker leads to having a back-door mentality – always looking for an out: finding fault, being resentful, feeling inferior or superior, getting bored….

And above all – picking people who are emotionally unavailabldistancee & not suited to our personality, but familiar because of our family structure. Keeping ourselves at emotional arm’s-length in all our interactions is the only way we think we can protect ourselves, since we don’t have actual boundaries

The WIC says: “I can’t afford to commit myself to anything serious – especially if it’s really important to me – because then I’ll be stuck having to handle everything (perfectly) myself. I don’t know how, & I resent being in that position – so I won’t.

Besides, since I always fail at getting my needs :
√ it’ll be too painful to try & fail again (lose out on what I really want)
v I’ll have to re-live all the ways I failed my family when I was a kid, adding to my S-H.

NEXT: Fear of Responsibility (Part 2b)

BOOK: “Trauma & Recovery”

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Trauma book

 

PREVIOUS: “33 Things I’ve Learned” #3


AUTHOR
Judith Lewis Herman is Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Training Director of the Victims of Violence Program at The Cambridge Hospital.

 

See: REVIEW

In “Trauma and Recovery” Judith Herman describes in detail the healing process for people struggling with a combination of problems related to overt abuse, being unwanted, & other devastating experiences in their past. The book gives a three-stage model of recovery from these events, including childhood sexual abuse.

Trauma results include:
Substance addictions
Behavioral addictions (porn, anonymous sex, gambling,…)
Self-harming behaviors (cutting, burning, hair pulling…)
Dissociation (spacing out, blanking out, losing time…)

The following statement refers to how self-hate is formed – by introjecting
the Bad Parent – & why it’s so hard to give up:

quote re abused child S-H

REVIEW posts:
ACoAs & Self-Hate  //  Negative Introject 
// Abuse of children //  Toxic Family RULES //
Ego states –  Summary  // Ego states – PARENT  #4

ACoAs & PROJECTING (not Projection) (#1)

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projecting 

THE SKY IS FALLING! THE SKY IS FALLING!
– or it will any minute now!

PREVIOUS: Book Suggestions

SITEs: “Mistakes of projecting your future” (AlcoholicsFriend.com)
• “Negative Risk (threat) & Positive Risk (opportunity)”
• “You should Visualize Positive & Negative Outcomes More”

DEF: PROJECTING (a CD=cognitive distortion) – Imagining one or more bad / painful / disastrous things will always & inevitably happen in the future, in general or re. a specific person or situation (victim mentality / ‘learned helplessness’ / scapegoat)

NOTE: This is not the same as correctly knowing who someone or some situation actually is, & what to expect of them.
EXP: “My whole life my mom has said mean or insensitive to me or about me. She’s never changed, so I know any time I talk to her in the future it will be the same.”

❎ SIDEBAR
Projecting is NOT the same as Projection – a defense mechanism (via Freud), in which a person:
a. Re. US – When we unconsciously reject one or more unacceptable qualities we have – or believe we have – AND attribute / assign those same qualities to another person, animal or situation.
Often the ‘others’ do not have those characteristics. So it’s
inevitable that in some cases projection will result in false accusations.
“Everyone Else’s Fault?…..” //  Don’t Project Your … Inadequacy Onto Others

EXP: “I can’t trust anyone because everyone lies” (deny being a liar oneself)
“I know she hates me” (deny our own self-hate OR that we hate that person)
VARIATIONS:
• Complementary = assume others think or feel the same way we do about things
• Complimentary = assume others can do the same thing  – as well as OR in the same way – as we can
📌These are both expressions of narcissistic thinking (you & I are “one” – the WIC’s desperate desire for a symbiotic connection) (MORE…..)

b. Re. FAMILY – To attribute actual negative characteristics of our dysfunctional family members on to others, who may be like them, only a little, or not at all.
EXP: My father was a mean abusive drunk, therefore all men are bad / dangerous // “All authorities are evil, out to get me”

✳️ Back to PROJECTING
In BIZ: Positive OR Negative scenarios
In business it’s called forecasting, looking at all possible outcomes based on previous performance.
Projections are not budgets, rather “big picture, what if” exercises, done at a higher level of abstraction, ie context (See “D.Binds #3a“), with a ‘what is hoped for’ & “what could be” perspective.
NOTICE – a savvy business plan always includes 3 major possibilities. CHART

For ACoAs – However, most of us almost never project that things will work out, that we’ll be happy, that we’ll get what we asked for, that our relationships will be beneficial, that we’ll get the job we want…. No-o-o-o!
We assume the worst – only projecting negative outcomes – pain, disappointment, suffering, disaster.

▶️ The exceptions are the severe narcissists (& active addicts) who only project ‘positive’ possibilities, which often are simply pie-in-the-sky schemes which never come true, because either they don’t have the skill & inner motivation to make it happen, it’s a stupid idea, or not actually do-able.

WHY assume negatively? BECAUSE :
a. our childhood was filled with endless suffering & deprivation, so that’s our template for rdisaster forecasteality, becoming our world view  (POSTS: “Information & the Brain – How we learn“)

SCIENCE –Brain’s Negative Bias  : “The brain reacts more strongly to stimuli it deems negative, with a greater surge in electrical activity….. historically. our very survival depended on dodging danger. The brain developed systems that make it unavoidable for us not to notice danger & thus, hopefully, respond to it…..

b. we have unconsciously, but consistently been reproducing that original chaos & abandonment in our adult life. (Repetition Compulsion).
Unfortunately, it’s the WIC’s way of staying loyal to the family system, even though it was harmful to our parents & continues to harm us

PSYCH – Bad is stronger than good ….“Many kinds of trauma produce severe & lasting effects on behavior, but there is no corresponding concept of a positive event that can have similarly strong, lasting effects……”

NEXT: Projecting #2

Negative INTROJECT (Part 4)

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IF I LISTEN CAREFULLY
I’ll be able to catch the NI’s lies

PREVIOUS: Negative Introject (# 3)

 

💠PRISONERS of the Negative Introject  (Part 3)

💠INVENTORY
A starting point to free ourselves of our self-destructive attachment to the Negative Introject (PigP) is to clearly hear what’s being whispered in our inner ear. We may never completely rid ourselves of it, but can go a long way toward setting it aside

• Take each phrase below that applies – write down how it feels emotionally (Es), & what negative patterns you’ve developed in response to it (As). Then for each one, find a loving & logical counter you can tell your Inner Child.

The PigP (IT) voice, reflecting our actual family:
✒︎ “I’m JUST TRYING to HELP YOU”
• but everything it says is actually cruel, discouraging, fear-based & inaccurate or distortedinner talk
✒︎“I want to be proud of you, isn’t that normal?”
⚠️ unfortunately it’s ONLY about how we reflect on it, not what’s truly good for us

✒︎ “You can do anything you want”
⚠️ but only as long as it approves
✒︎ ”You’re such a Good Boy / Good Girl”
⚠️ as long as you act the way it wants

✒︎ “I just want to stop you from making a big mistake”
– It’s projecting:
⚠️ its own fear of taking any risk, much less positive ones
⚠️ mistakes it has made, without owning them or explaining to us
⚠️ its inability or unwillingness to see our personality & skills

Can it imagine us as a separate being who may know what we want? maybe very different from them?
OR PigP repeats:
About youinner-critic
• You’re a looser so don’t bother, you never do anything right anyway
• you’re ugly, stupid, selfish… no one will ever want / love you
• no matter what you do, you’ll never get anywhere ….
💟 NONE of these are true about us!

About the world : “Sure, you can leave home (us) but just remember —
• the world is a dog-eat-dog place, don’t trust anyone
• no one will help you, you’re on your owndog-eat-dog
• everyone’s out to get you, so always watch your back….”

This may be what our parents went through. In some ways it can be true about the outside world, but for us, it was definitely true about our home life!

The Negative Introject is ONLY interested in itself, NOT us, no matter what it’s saying.  We need to get this on a cellular level – even if it claims to “only wants our best”.
It’s really talking about its own survival, focused only on its own loneliness, fear of abandonment & self-hate, NOT ours. It’s their dis-owned projections that’s now our PigP.

Role reversal : to the degree that the PigP represent one or both damaged parents, who were also run by their WIC’s pain, it wants us to take care of it. The originals were narcissists (or sadists) – emotional children who wanted to be rescued, to vent their rage & frustrations, using us to dump that on. Only their needs counted!

For many of our caretakers, the only “power” they had in the world came from controlling weaker beings (us) who wouldn’t defy them or leave – sometimes employees or friends, often a spouse, always the kids.
This is crucial to understand, because the WIC is still trying to get their attention & love, which is not possible!

YES, our extejudgmentalrnal parents may say / have said they love us, but even if they felt an attachment, it is / was in a selfish way – as an extension of themselves, not for who we are inherently.
We can tell this by:
• the fact that we never felt safe, seen or loved by them, AND BY
• noticing all the ways they disapprove(d) of us – not just some behaviors & choices as teaching tools, (normal for loving parents), BUT of our Natural Self – our very essence!

AND NOW – if we spend any time with the original source of the Introject PigP we absorbed —> afterward we feel depressed, confused, rageful, incompetent, self-hating, guilty, even suicidal.

NEXT: Positive Introject – Healing

Negative INTROJECT (Part 2)

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those voices
YOU’RE DRIVING ME CRAZY!
Is it the Pig Parent or the damaged kid?

PREVIOUS: Negative Introject  (Part 1)

Pig Parent (PigP) comes from”Games People Play”

💠WHY is it so IMPORTANT to identify the PigP?  (Part 1)

💠HOW CAN WE TELL when the ‘PigP’ Introject is talking?
a. Using the ‘YOU’ form – when talking to ourselves in a negative, harsh way.
“You should have know better, You know everyone thinks you’re stupid, You could have done more” ….

In this form, our original caretakers can keep us terrified, dependent, dis-empowered – so they won’t lose their grip & fade away. The they wouldn’t get their needs met (thru us), not wanting to do that for themselves. That’s what they need us for!

denialOR we may only hear:
b. The ‘I’ form – the Wounded Inner Child (WIC) expressing its S-H in response to & fully believing the PP, who’s off stage – but definitely not absent – spewing it’s poison from the wings.
We can only hear it indirectly, as puppet master, when we self-talk in the same judgmental, impatient way they talked to us.
Only now it’s in the first person, the WIC mimicking : “I’m such a looser , I never do anything right , I don’t know how to do things , No one could ever love me”…..

‘b’ is much sneakier 
THEM: By being way in the background it can’t be held accountable – staying off the hot seat, harder to catch as the source of the abuse, which it’ll never admit to anyway, even when we try to confront it!

US: We collude (unconsciously) with it to keep it hidden from ourselves, because we can’t bear to admit how dangerous our ‘loved ones’ were. But now that they’re ‘inside’, we don’t know how to get rid of them.

💠 UNHEALTHY tries at shutting up the PigP :
• heavy drinking & drug use, & all other addictions (sex, food, spending, exercise, internet….)
• overworking, endless schooling, career we hate….
• suicide attempts or suicidal behavior (dangerous people & activities)

BTW – Some ACoAs refer to our PigP by a name & image that suits its character & our imagination: THE ‘Bat’ we hit ourselves with / ‘Bats’ – parent’s who only call at night when they’re drunk /  Vampire / Gorn – from Star Trek / Monster /  Mom or Dad / the Shadow….  What’s yours?

💠PURPOSE of the PigP
a. The WIC hangs on to it with a fanatic devotion because it’s the only version of a ‘parent’ it’s ever known. It’s afraid to let go because  – as one ACoA screamed in therapy “What will I do without them?”
Slowly replacing it using the UNIT to consistently, lovingly parent ourself, the WIC will let go, but not quickly or easily!

b. The PigP uses it’s convoluted, sadistic power to pour gas on the flame of life’s stresses TO:
• validate its beliefs (T) & actions (A), so it never has to face change
• mask its own FoA by keeping us symbiotically attached.
⚠️If we stay convinced their abuse was our fault, we’ll never expel it

💠POWER of the PigPintrojecting
a. Technically – it’s wired into our brain from birth into deep pathways, by repetition & emotional bonds (the limbic system & frontal cortex).  Each groove forms the easiest way electrical energy travels (strongest chemical trace), so it becomes our default setting

AA-ers say “Alcoholics dig their own ruts, then decorate them – making them so comfortable they never want to move out!”

b. Psychologically – From the WIC
• all children are completely loyal to their parents & their zeitgeist, but ACoAs can’t afford to admit how toxic they were. We love & need them, even when we hate them. So we keep protecting them – at our own peril!

• Those original adults taught us to be afraid of the world AND that we are unlovable. Our connection to them is painful, but the world feels even worse, so we won’t ‘leave home’. Convinced no one else will want uego statess &/or they’ll trample us, we stay attached to the PigP rather than risk the ‘horror’ of the unknown. (Acceptance, #1)

From the PigP – Internalized voices have a life of their own (ego states), made up of our family’s:
• dis-owned emotions (S-H, fear, rage, shame, guilt, loneliness, hopelessness…..) AND
• destructive thoughts, rigid beliefs, irrational opinions (‘stinking thinking’), & occasionally something useful, positive, interesting…..

NEXT: Negative Introject (Part 3)

Negative INTROJECT (Part 1)

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

IT’S EITHER ME OR THEM.
So far they’ve been winning!

PREVIOUS: Mind-reading vs Intuition #3

REVIEW posts : ‘Ego States’

SITE: Antidotes to Toxic Intimacy

INTRO-Who?
💠GENERAL: From the very beginning of life all children are PMES (Mental, Emotional, Physical & Spiritual) sponges – ‘swallowing whole’ every moment of every part of their environment. Kids are highly intuitive & very observant. We picked up:
• what we saw, what we heard, where we went
• how we were treated, at home & outside
AND
• our parents’ emotions, values, opinions and secrets – whether obvious, unexpressed, or those hidden from themselves (denied)
• how adults treated each other – our parents with each others & our siblings, their parents & siblings, their exes, friends, bosses…  (Antidotes)

BUT, all of that was experienced & processed thru the lens of a child’s limited brain capacity & mental perspective, AND their specific personality. Therefore, each child in a family will have a different ‘story’ of what happened.
So to get an accurate picture we’d need everyone’s point of view formed into a psychological collage.

💠IN THE PRESENTgood voice
In common: Everyone has an Inner Guide to good & proper behavior – our inborn, God-given conscience, & the beneficial or harmful ‘super-ego’ version of our specific society. (This is NOT schizophrenia, or other mental illness)

People with relatively sane childhoods have an OK or POSITIVE INTROJECT for self-soothing, & to be of legitimate help to others

However, ACoAs raised in an emotionally unhealthy, neglectful, abusive, torturing environment have a Negative Introject – cruel, distorted, rigid, unsympathetic, & a LIAR! – the Pig Parent (PigP) from”Games People Play“. We absorbed:
• some good stuff, here & there, but mainly it was …..
• …. all the damage & dysfunction of our home & community!  Imagine – every kid has to try to make sense of their ‘world’ with distorted info & very limited experience, & many without any loving help to navigate life. This turned into Self-Hate, the #1 defense used to keep from going crazy.

💠MAKE UP of the PigP
• Our version** of each major caretaker – anyone who was important to us, &/or that we spent a lot of time with
** Remember – we did NOT misunderstand, exaggerate or distort our perception of them.
Later on we sometimes get additional facts that form a deeper – but not necessarily better – opinion of them.  More often it validates our early experiences!
bad voiceThe PigP is :
• a specific parent with the most forceful, controlling &/or crazy personality, & now is our loudest voice
• parts of our psyche we disown – a pitiless ‘conscience’, an ‘alcoholic Higher Power’, distortions of positive life-rules…..
• the rules of our social & spiritual communities

At the same time:
• not all those who raised us / taught us – were evil, just very damaged – so we’ve also internalized some of their skills, hopes, dreams, talents, knowledge, goals… as much as were visible. BUT it’s a small part of the PP, compared to their sickness

💠WHY is it so IMPORTANT to identify the PigP?
Because we copy it! To the degree that we ‘honor & obey’ it – we feed our S-H, live in fear, sabotage ourselves, choose inappropriate people, can’t grow into our best self, hurt others & allow others to hurt us !

a. IF we were in pain as kids, and are in pain now, even if we don’t remember what happened, or don’t understand why – we can be sure that:
• we absorbed what others in the family were feeling – especially whatever they refused to acknowledge (their suffering was ‘in the air’)
• we felt our own daily emotional pain, without anyone to comfort us, to validate our feelings, to explain that it was NOT about us & so NOT our faultbroken heart

b. We may have a limited understanding of who everyone in our family was – what their motives were, what they went thru, what their ‘diagnosis’ may be – since even with our intuition we couldn’t possibly know all the facts of their lives – unless we’re told

BUT the one thing we can be sure was not a distortion : Our suffering NOW is all the proof we need of how bad it was. Not being able to remember is not an excuse to maintain denial. Emotions say it all.

NEXT: Negative Introject (Part 2)

ACoAs & BEING VISIBLE (Part 2)

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

invisibilityI DESPERATELY WANT TO BE ACKNOWLEDGED
but I don’t want to expose the real me!

PREVIOUS: ACoAs Being VISIBLE (#1)

POSTS: “Healthy Adult…” and “Separation & Individuation”

1. WOUNDED CHILD (Part 1)

2. AS ADULTS
STAYING Invisible – In the present we have many options never available to us as kids – such as searching out people who are relatively ‘sane’ & already capable of seeing & hearing us.
However, as long as the WIC is still running our emotional & mental life, it is the Ego State in charge of the picking process. So we’ll continue to choose friends, mates, even jobs, whose abuse & incompatibility with us make us feel unsafe

This reinforces the WIC’s conviction that we should stay invisible, not just because of the unhealthy people we surround ourselves with, but because of the WIC unconscious connection to the Negative Introject (IT), which is our real source of threatplexiglass

EXP: In doing early childhood visualizations, Tamara had an scene of herself as a 15 months old, sitting alone on bare earth in a big yard, only wearing diapers & a tiny top.

Near by her mother was hanging the wash on a clothes line, talking & laughing with another women, paying no attention to her little daughter.
It was as if there was an infinitely large sheet of plexiglass between Tamara & her mother – they could see, but not hear each other.
The infant sat there alone, unnoticed, neglected, unable to get thru to her mother – bewildered & scared! She had not created the wall, so she couldn’t tear it down & it was too vast to be gotten around. She WAS utterly alone!

🥀 This image represented her daily emotional experience growing up with a narcissistic mother, who was controlling & over-protective, while at the same time accused the child of being ‘difficult’, distant & disrespectful.  Tamara’s mother had made her feel invisible & then blamed her for the result!

Now, the only possible result of our True Self becoming visible is a feeling of danger. Our WIC is convinced that if we can be seen, we’ll toxic beliefseveryone else in the world will treat us as badly as our family did.
So we continue to hide behind our glass wall**. We think that even if we tried to have a presence, we’d likely fail (not prepared, don’t know enough…)

The WIC says : “If I show who I really am & go for what I want”, then : • I’ll be made fun of, judged, criticized
• no one will want me or what I have to offer
• no one will pay me for what I do
• people will be jealous of me, & then attack / try to stop me”…..
AND even if I by some miracle manage, it will be taken away

**Glass wall: While we’re trying to hide behind a creative facade, we do NOT really go completely unnoticed. Depending on how we function in the world, other people see various aspects of us – both our good qualities & our damage.

• What all ACoAs** present to the world is our ‘defensive persona’, an outer shell housed in the PP or WIC ego states, & in some cases a clever but unhealthy Adult. The sad thing is that we believe this outer shell is the real us. Actually, it’s a mis-directed version of our natural personality, distorted by childhood abuse & neglect

While many of us are terrified of even that much exposure, those of us who tend towards the blatant are nevertheless suppressing or perverting the healthy Natural Child, trying to show the world (our parents) we deserve to be valued (“look at me – and – I hate you all”), as compensation

**This is not to diminish the accomplishments of many determined & talented ACoAs who have worked hard to achieve one or more goals. And not all successful people function exclusively from damage – it depends on how authentic they are in their personal life.
In PMES terms, most function out of their (P) Physical & (M) Mental aspects, but rarely (E) Emotionally or (S) Spiritually mature.

NEXT: ACoAs being Visible (Part 3)