the experience of an only child who was raised by two narcissistic parents...how does NPD affect one's family?

Saturday, April 28, 2012

rewriting history

This past week in session, my therapist suggested something very profound to me: I may only spend one hour per week in therapy, but my therapy isn’t limited to that one single hour.  I can be my own therapist during other hours during the week, and instead of listening to the introjections in my head that stem from my upbringing, I can start listening to introjections from the therapist in my own mind.  Talk about an empowering idea!
One thing that has been incredibly helpful recently - aside from writing almost every day on this blog - is rehashing memories of dealing with my parents through conversations with my amazing husband.  For the entire duration of the twelve years that my husband and I have been together, we’ve been trying to figure out strategies for dealing with my parents, meaning ways that WE can change our behavior to better accommodate their difficult eccentricities.  The idea that my parents likely have NPD takes this burden off of us, in that there is absolutely NOTHING we can do to improve the situation.  A reconciliation between two conflicting parties necessitates that everyone meets in the middle.  In the case where one conflicting party has NPD, there is no possibility for reconciliation because this party will NEVER budge.  And why?  Because NPD doesn’t allow for the possibility that this party may have ever done something in error.
Our topic of conversation over coffee and donuts this morning had to do with writing history.  Something that hit me: it’s no wonder that cult leaders often suffer from NPD, because narcissistic people often write their own stories - their own mythology - with a religious-like zeal.  They are always at the center of their mythology, and like a god, the world centers around them, their feelings, their whims, and their own motivations.  I started thinking about how my own parents have created mythology about their own experiences, and questioning the history they have written around me.  Granted, I don’t think that any history can be completely objective, as it’s always somewhat slanted toward the perspective of the person writing it.  However, there is something to be said for a simple “accounting” of actions that occurred.  The following paragraphs are some examples of my parents’ narratives regarding our family and our interactions, followed by an accounting, and then my own possible interpretation taking their NPD into consideration.
Example one:
My parents’ mythology: Jen was a brilliant child.  She started reading when she was only 18 months old!  She had a genius level IQ at a young age.  She loved attending science camps, and working with her science toys and microscopes.  Two things seem really weird to us: she never believed that she was brilliant, which is strange because we constantly told her that she was (she obviously just didn’t listen!).  The other weird thing is that she decide to become a musician.  Why would she waste her intellect by quitting her amazing job?  And then she just followed her husband because of his job, dropping everything that was important to her.  It’s such a waste of her abilities.
The accounting: Jen did have good scores on IQ tests, but those are simply a measure of potential in certain types of logic-reasoning situations, not really a measure of intelligence.  She may have recognized a word or two from the newspaper as a toddler, but it’s not like she was reading chapter books and COMPREHENDING them at that time.  She did play with science kits, but that’s only because what her parents bought for her for Christmas and birthdays, and it’s what was available in the house.  She actually really wanted to be a musician from a very young age, and has accounts of this written in her childhood diaries.  Mom and Dad did say things about her abilities with her science kits, but since it wasn’t what she enjoyed (only what was available), she always felt like her own interests weren’t valid, and so her self-esteem suffered as a result.  She did like going to science camps, but it was only because she got to escape the house for a while.  She never really did all that well studying the material presented in the classes.
Jen did relocate with her husband to a new city; her job in their old home was not a good situation, as she was grossly underpaid and she didn’t really want to be a teacher, desiring instead to work as a freelance musician.  She only took that job in the first place to help provide for her husband during his own job search, and the job provided good health insurance benefits.
My interpretation: my parents wanted me to be special, so that they would consequently feel special.  They wanted to tell anyone who would listen how special I was, so that it would reflect on them, making them seem like they were amazing parents.  They thrive on empty praise, and “kiss ass” behavior.  When my husband and I made a big decision to move across the country for my husband’s new job - which makes him incredibly happy! - they lost their source of narcissistic pride: the fact that I was a community college professor.  They couldn’t brag anymore about how well I was doing, since being a freelance musician doesn’t register as a respectable career in their minds.
Example two: 
My parents’ mythology: No one in the family cares about us.  Our relatives forget our birthdays all the time, and never send us cards.  We reach out constantly, sending gifts to all of our great-nieces and nephews, but we never receive a thank you card.  Our own daughter is neglectful, as she is difficult and doesn’t respond to our phone calls or text messages.  She doesn’t care about us, and she is very selfish.
The accounting: relatives do keep in touch with Mom and Dad; in fact, several in-laws have visited on multiple occasions throughout the years.  They aren’t the greatest about remembering birthdays and anniversaries, or even calling regularly, but when Mom and Dad are in town, these relatives do tend to drop everything to hang out with them.  Let’s be honest: sometimes when you have tons of relatives, it’s hard to keep track of a lot of dates, especially if you’re someone with a bunch of grandkids, whom you’d likely tend to prioritize in a different way than an older brother or sister.  Mom and Dad do send gifts to a lot of younger relatives, but they’re all incredibly busy raising children and working full-time jobs, just trying to make ends meet.  Moreover, it might make some people feel uncomfortable to have a distant relative spend a bunch of money on odd juvenile gifts; you might feel like you have to do something in return, and these people set the bar really high for financial expectations in gifts, which you might feel uncomfortable spending yourself.  
As for the daughter, Jen works a lot of hours.  Sometimes she’s just too busy to immediately return a phone call or text, and since she travels a lot for her work as a musician, sometimes she’s on an airplane or out of cell phone range.  Her financial situation isn’t the greatest, and while she and her husband are relatively stable, she’s not exactly in the position to refuse work.  As a result, she’s busy A LOT, and she prioritizes things to spend as much time as possible with her husband, a wonderful, supportive man whom she adores.
My interpretation: because my parents have NPD, nothing that anyone does for them - myself including - is ever enough.  They’re constantly looking for conflict, to find something “wrong” with any relative to make themselves look better.  Not everyone shows love in the same way.  Some people show love through making phone calls, others through purchases, others through spending time with loved ones, others through physical contact, etc.  My parents expect everyone to anticipate how they would like to be shown love and kindness, and expect everyone to drop everything to fulfill this intense need.  And when other people don’t operate under the same paradigm, they label these folks as “selfish” or “uncaring.”  That includes me.  They can’t even seem to comprehend the fact that my marriage is of the highest priority in my head...even after being married for TEN years.
Example three:
My parents’ mythology: Our daughter was a bad teenager, and she was extremely difficult.  She gave us no end of problems, and talked back constantly.  We did so much for her - we paid for her college, bought her a car, and supported her so much financially that we are in terrible debt.  She isn’t grateful, and never says thank you.  Today, the fact that she doesn’t speak to is in incredibly hurtful considering everything that we have done for her, and we can’t understand why she simply can’t just call us and tell us that she loves us.  It’s like a slap in the face!  She must be very mentally unbalanced and ill, and she needs our help to be a good person.
The accounting: Jen had a really rough time in school, because Mom and Dad moved a lot for work and she was constantly getting bullied.  She tried really hard to fit in at school and make that also coincide with Mom and Dad’s expectations, but it never really worked.  By the time she was about 13, she gave up trying and starting taking it all out on herself because she thought something was really wrong since it felt like nothing she ever did could make it right.  At that age she started vocalizing that what Mom and Dad expected caused others to make fun of her.  She had problems with drinking, cutting, anorexia, and other self-destructive behaviors of which Mom and Dad SAW the evidence, but refused to do anything since they were worried someone in the community might get word of it.  Instead, they told her to never talk about any of her problems at home or school to anyone; she wrote about this in her diaries, because of this rule.
Jen actually got a substantial scholarship to college, and while it didn’t pay for everything, it made an enormous dent in the expenses.  She also worked full-time on every summer and winter break, including overtime hours.  Starting her sophomore year in college, she began working multiple jobs to make ends meet, and in the eighteen years since she left home, she asked for financial help two times.  And both times, she repaid the debt ahead of schedule.  Ironically, Dad borrowed money from Jen on occasions, including one time where he demanded student loan money from her to pay his mortgage and then didn’t pay her back quickly, even though she was working full-time at a minimum wage job (while going to graduate school full-time) to support herself.
My interpretation: Being told constantly that I was a “bad kid” was so frustrating, because I didn’t really ever do anything THAT bad in the grand scheme of life.  Everything I did that was perceived as “bad” was really just a reaction to being bullied, hurting, feeling awful about myself, hating my body (because everyone, my parents included!) made fun of how weird I looked, along with intense feelings of self-loathing and inadequacy.  I got frustrated at age 13 with pleasing Mom and Dad, who told me things would get better if I just “played the game” and they never did.  When I spoke up for myself, it was met with a ridiculous amount of conflict.  I never was just allowed to be my own person, and my own emotions were constantly invalidated.  I was told incessantly that I was oversensitive and overreactive.  All of those experiences scarred me as an adult.  I never wanted to be dependent on them for anything and so I worked my ass off so that I would never have to ask them for any sort of help or assistance.  
I’m not a bad person.  Even today, I still love my parents, which is hard to believe when I go back and read through all of these blog entries!  I’m also very grateful for the opportunity to attend college.  But I do realize that I’ll never have a real relationship with them, because that would necessitate facing these mythologies and possibly re-writing our history together.  People with NPD don’t just suddenly do this, even when confronted.  I think my parents thrive on the idea that I’m sick because they simply can’t face the possibility that I don’t want to have anything to do with them today due to THEIR OWN behavior.  Me being sick is simply a convenient explanation.
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Friday, April 27, 2012

be very very afraid: fear as control

Much of my adult life, I’ve been plagued with panic attacks and bouts of paranoia anytime I’ve been faced with unfamiliar or new situations.  From simply attending a conference at work to flying on an airplane, I’ve literally been struck with terror, and have had to force myself through feelings of intense discomfort in order to accomplish almost anything.  And I’ve tried EVERYTHING to address these issues!  I’ve been to therapists, acupuncture, meditation courses, holistic healers, and tried self-hypnosis, energy medicine, EFT, prescription medication, and everything else one can imagine to just “survive” the challenges of being placed in a situation that could have even the slightest possibility of being “unsafe.”  
Most of these tools have helped to differing degrees, but the one thing that they have had in common is that they have never eradicated the source of my distress.  Throughout my years in therapy, a common conversation I’ve had has always been about these panic attacks and intense fear of public situations and travel.  I’m even scared of the telephone!  I had become incredibly frustrated over the past several years because even though I had been directly addressing these problems, I couldn’t figure out WHY they existed.  Where in the hell did they come from?  One thing that was identified is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which makes perfect sense, having been through intense bullying as a child and physical, sexual, and emotional abuse as a young adult at the hands of two boyfriends.  However, PTSD is a symptom, not a cause.    Why and how did I even get into these abusive situations in the first place?
The identification of narcissistic personality disorder in my family of origin was a watershed moment in my therapy, to say the very least.  NPD - in BOTH of my parents (and I’m an only child!) - manifested itself in a textbook manner, illustrated in many of the situations I encountered growing up.  Parents with NPD tend to be either completely uninvolved in their childrens’ lives or, on the other end of the spectrum, controlling to the “nth” degree, partly because they see their children as an extension of themselves, rather than separate individuals.  My own parents were definitely of the latter variety - the domineering, controlling parents.  Fear was one of their favorite methods of control.
How did my family use fear to control me?  How have they continued to use fear over the years to keep me under their control?  Here are a few illustrative examples:
1.  One of the more irrational fears I’ve had as an adult has to do with flying.  Sure, it’s a common phobia, but I’m a musician, and I travel around the world to produce shows and play gigs.  My poor husband would frequently end up with bruises on his wrist, because I would squeeze it SO hard if we encountered even the slightest bit of turbulence on a flight.  I could never figure out exactly where this crazy fear originated, especially because I am a frequent traveller.
Recently, through my therapy and through intense meditation sessions, I’ve been having flashbacks of scenes of my childhood.  One of the memories that just popped up for me is of flying for the first time as a little girl when I was only two years old.  We used to vacation in Florida every year for at least two to three weeks, and the flight to Tampa or Orlando was a huge deal.  My mother would dress me in a fancy outfit, usually with a matching hat and purse.  Everything about the flight was regimented, from the way she would plan out my clothing to what games she would bring and when she would bring them out on the flight.  My father would never sleep the night before, due to some sort of crazy nerves in regards to travel.  He would make us arrive at the airport literally FOUR hours before the flight...and this was in the days prior to 9/11, where there weren’t such intense screening processes as today.
My father would cross his fingers at the beginning and end of every flight.  He told me - when I was as young as a toddler - that most accidents on flights occurred at take-off and at landing, so that was when we should both pray to not crash (and die).  He also told me that hijackings took place usually at these times as well, so to keep vigilant.  During the flight, my mother would take Dramamine, being terrified of heights, and she would frequently “white-knuckle” the armrests, even if the flight was smooth.
Since both my parents are narcissistic, they never stopped to ask themselves whether or not this kind of behavior was appropriate in front of a child.  This seems even more outrageous to me today, considering that I was a mere TODDLER when this began!  Why would you instill such an irrational fear in a little girl’s mind?  As an adult, these “introjections” were perpetually present in my head, enough so that I avoided flying overseas as an adult.  I actually turned down work opportunities, controlled by this paranoia and fear instilled in my psyche from the time I was a tiny little innocent girl.
2.  No matter how I felt growing up, I had to constantly tell my parents “I love you.”  It didn’t matter if we had just had a huge blow-out fight, or if we were in public, or if I was on the phone at a friend’s house as a teenager; each and every conversation had to end with this de rigeur declaration of undying affection.
Why?  Again, through my recent self-work, I’ve had some flashbacks of old conversations, especially with my father, when I was a little girl.  I remember him telling me that “you just never knew” if you were going to get in a car accident and die on the side of the highway.  Anytime you said goodbye to a loved one, it could very possibly be the last time you would ever see them.  And what would you want the last thing you heard before you died to be?  “I love you.”  Of course!
Another thing I remember especially about my father was his behavior over the holidays.  Each and every year, at times like Christmas and at Thanksgiving - usually over family dinner with just the three of us - he’d say, “Well, I won’t be around here next year this time, so we’d better make this the best holiday ever.”  I was told, by my mother, that my grandfather used to say this as well, so that’s where Dad got it from.  She’d laugh it off, and say that he was just joking and being dramatic.  
In light of the fact that both of my parents have NPD, I now see what all of these behaviors were really about.  They were both intensely paranoid that SOMETHING might happen to them, and needed me - as a LITTLE GIRL - to soothe them and make them feel better.  I was just a tool to placate their own irrational fear.
As an adult, these patterns have persisted in how my parents have dealt with me.  Just last week, after not hearing from me for about a month, my mother sent me a letter saying that she just couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to speak to her and Dad, and that it makes her feel so badly that I just don’t call to say a simple, “How are you?  I love you.”  Ugh.  It makes my skin positively crawl - literally everything is about her and my father.  Classic narcissism.
3.  The phrase “God-fearing” certainly applies to my family - not only to my parents, but to my extended family who were all very strict evangelical Christians.  Growing up, I was made to go to church each and every Sunday, rain or shine.  I also had to participate in Sunday school and confirmation classes and youth group and church choir.  Unfortunately for me, the bullying that so frequently happened at school continued at church.  One of the worst experiences I had at church as a young girl was being told by my youth pastor that I was going to hell because my parents had only had me “dedicated” at my birth, instead of having been baptized.  He declared this in front of the entire confirmation class, who laughed.  I was mortified, not to mention terrified.
My parents were not unaware that these kinds of things were going on.  No matter what they may claim today - their most frequent excuse is “you never told us!” making all of this MY FAULT yet again - they knew.  I have years upon years of diary and journal entries from growing up, documenting these very things.  In fact, my journals from my teenage and pre-teen years are filled with crazy, paranoid entries about how I was so scared of the devil, and how I wanted to be “close to Jesus” but I just “couldn’t sense Him anywhere...there must be something wrong with me...I must be damned to hell!”
Fear, fear, fear.  Why on earth should an innocent little girl, one who was continually beat up and victimized in school, think that she’s going to hell?  Wouldn’t “normal” parents step in, and offer her constant reassurance?  Or take her to a different church where she wouldn’t be teased?  Or maybe even not force her to go to church if it was such a toxic environment?  Instead, my own narcissistic parents were more concerned about the appearance of being a devout and God-fearing family.  I remember one time when my father was interviewed in the local newspaper, and he stated that the most three important things were (in order): God, family, and country.  Yet at the same time, my parents never really talked about God or Jesus at home; I was just told that I had to go to church.  No matter if I was sick.  No matter if I was bullied.  No matter if I didn’t “feel the presence of God” myself.  After all, “what would people in the community think” if we weren’t upstanding members of a local church?  (Yes, in case you’re wondering, my parents did indeed speak in these kinds of terms.)
When I first left home, I quit going to church.  Later, however, I started working as a church musician even though I hated the thought of attending church.  This continued for nearly twenty years, probably in some vain hope that my parents would approve of me, and my job would earn some sort of respect in their eyes.  Even though I had many painful experiences dealing with the church (which could fill an entire blog of its own!), and even though I was working in churches that were diametrically opposed to my personal political and social beliefs, my parents continually insisted that I attend...even as an adult!  Here I am now, as a woman in my mid-30s, with parents who regularly fear for my soul, even though they never themselves actually discuss spirituality outside of the context of “you just go to church every week” as some sort of strange absolutist regime.
No respect, no empathy, no putting themselves in my shoes after all of the crazy things I’ve seen and endured due to my years employed by the church and attending church as a victimized child.  There is not even a tiny bit of recognition of these things by my family.  My NPD parents are only concerned with being seen as upstanding, being seen as involved...and creating fear of “what others might think” due to having different opinions.  It makes me want to vomit, thinking about religion or spirituality used in this type of context.
In conclusion:
I told my therapist in session just a couple of weeks ago that I think my parents thrived on me being sick, both as a child and as an adult.  When he asked “Why?”, I replied, “Because they used my being sick as a way they could make me feel better, when in reality, they were sick and my ‘sickness’ made them feel better.”  It’s all just an illustration of how twisted the psychology of a parent with NPD works.  It’s even sicker to realize how the fear-method of control makes one irrationally afraid of common scenarios...and fails to teach a child proper methods for dealing with real life.
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Thursday, April 26, 2012

I hate classical music

From the time I was a tiny little girl, I always knew I wanted to be a musician.  My earliest musical memory is from the late 70s, watching Kiss on television; like most children (and it’s easy to see as an adult how that band was marketed largely toward kids), I loved the costumes and the lights and the pyrotechnics!  Fire!  
As a child in the early 80s, cable television was becoming more and more common.  We had cable installed at our house when I was probably about 5 or 6 years old.  My parents were gone frequently, as I’ve discussed in earlier blog entries.  Both were involved with jobs in higher education.  My father, especially, took his gig as a public school superintendent incredibly seriously.  He went to every school event - from the football games to the choir concerts and every possible thing in-between.  My mother also worked long hours, but she was more of the “over-achiever” in the classroom.  At that time, she was teaching kindergarten, and for anyone who thinks that kindergarten teachers just cut up construction paper and make macaroni crafts for their kids has never met MY mother.  Her life positively revolved around the classroom, and even as recently as a year ago (when she finally retired), she would spend ridiculous amounts of money out of her own pocket on materials for the classroom.  There’s a fine line between a teacher who takes her job seriously and works hard and one who goes over the top in terms of her so-called “commitment.”  My mother was of the latter variety, and expected constant recognition for her commitment to excellence and her constant giving 110%.
As a result, I was alone a great deal of the time.  Sure, there were occasions that I had babysitters, and I LIVED for those nights with a teenager in the house.  We’d listen to 45s of Prince and Cyndi Lauper, dancing around the house with an abandon that was certainly never present in the oppressive, proper, and stifled environment my parents tried to cultivate.  When my family was home, the only “approved” kinds of games were imagination games.  Instead of toys for Christmas, I was purchased science kits, microscope sets, a dissection kit complete with dead worms and frogs, Mensa genius quiz books (my mother especially seemed to be obsessed with constantly having me IQ tested; I’m guessing this was in some vain hope that I was a wunderkind of some sort)...most toys I owned were educational in some variety or other.  And while I did have Transformers and He-Man, which I mainly played with the boys down the street, most “kid” like things, such as Atari or later Nintendo games, were absolutely forbidden.
One of the greatest things about my babysitters was getting to watch censored television!  In fact, it was at a day care center that I first saw Kiss on television.  My babysitters knew MTV wasn’t allowed in our household, but often watched videos regardless.  And as a result, I would as well.  When I got a little bit older, by about age 8 or so, my parents began leaving me alone in the house relatively frequently.  At that time, my MTV fascination turned into a full-blown obsession.  This was the heyday of hair metal, and I completely absorbed my young eyes and ears in the world of Priest, the Scorpions, and Dio, and later Bon Jovi, Europe, and Whitesnake.
I was in love with music.  I knew - just knew without any doubt in my little 7 or 8 year old mind - that someday I’d be a musician.  I’d ride onto stage on a big motorcycle, don a skintight leather outfit like Lita Ford, strap on my Les Paul, plug into that Marshall stack, and SHRED.  I would get tattoos, have the biggest hair, and sing to hordes of adoring fans packing arena after arena.  I remember creating my own little mini electric guitars out of empty wrapping paper rolls, and jumping around my room listening to the final track of the A side of Europe’s “The Final Countdown” tape (I think the tune was called “Ninja” or something like that...I just thought it ROCKED, and frankly, I had a love affair with Joey Tempest’s hair!).  I saved up any allowance money I earned or holiday gifts from grandparents to buy tapes of the bands I heard on MTV, but kept the fact that I watched MTV completely secret from my parents, since it was absolutely forbidden.
My parents knew I loved music, and that I was a good little singer as I sang in church choir from the time I was only 2 or 3.  But, they didn’t really get the “rock” thing.  Good girls didn’t play electric guitars, and even though I begged to take lessons like one of my friends who had been purchased a black flying V Gibson by her estranged father, my own parents insisted I take piano lessons.  That was much more fitting for a girl, the daughter of the superintendent.  My grandparents even went a step further with this claim, telling me that all rock musicians burned in hell, and that African witch doctors used rock music to help the devil possess people’s souls.  I should add here that my parents to this day deny that they even had any comprehension that I liked rock music; it’s a classic example of narcissistic parents to not take notice of what is of interest to their children unless it is something that they can use to make themselves more grandiose.  So, when I said that I wanted to play rock music, my parents heard that translated as, “our daughter should study classical music because rich people like that and it’s classy and she can play for all of our friends and colleagues and she’ll look well-rounded and it’ll be a great hobby for her when she becomes a doctor later on, something we can really take credit for and be proud of!!!”
As a result, I took what I could get when it came to music.  I threw myself into classical piano lessons, as it was the only form of music acceptable to my parents.  (It was the only form of music they would even recognize even though I was constantly belting out Whitesnake’s “Still of the Night” at the top of my lungs!)  In any form, music was such an escape from the constant stifling Mensa quiz books, and early taking of the SATs (like in 7th grade, unbelievably).  Oh, to just be able to sit down at the piano and play.  Sure, Mozart was nothing like Iron Maiden, but hey, it was something!  I got to be a pretty decent player, albeit far from a prodigy, and my parents did notice this.  They’d ask me frequently to play for their work friends and relatives, who would invariably talk over anything I performed.  It always embarrassed me, as I’d be told to play, but my parents wouldn’t really have an idea of WHAT I was playing and then would talk over the performance.  I felt like some sort of trained dog, and it was like my piano playing became the “shake your paw” routine.  And to hear my parents talk about my playing, it was like I was the 10 year old version of Van Cliburn or something, even though I was just a slightly better than average performer...I knew this, deep down, and it always made me feel so uncomfortable to hear my parents brag about my piano playing to relatives because I most definitely couldn’t keep up with their incredible claims.
As I grew into a teenager, and college loomed, I made it known that I wanted to study music as my chosen career path.  My parents continued to pay for piano lessons, and I continued to buy tapes of metal and later industrial music on the “down low” since they hated it.  I continued to sneak in MTV, as it was still forbidden to me even as a high school student.  But even though my parents were “supportive” of me playing the piano, it wasn’t something suitable for college study, this “music thing.”  I could only study music if I had something solid to fall back on, like science or pre-med or engineering.  “Just think what you can do for your country,” my father would say, and “you’ll never get a good job.”  At this time (high school), I was composing a great deal and performing my own music, but my mother would say that what I was doing was “weird,” and ask me why I couldn’t “just write a song for Barbra Streisand” to sing.
Ugh.  I went off to college, and started as a double major in music composition and engineering.  I dropped the engineering major within a week.  I hated science.  My dad freaked out and threatened to cut me off if I didn’t get another double major, so I picked Latin.  No better fall-back plan than a dead language, right?  There were some things acceptable about what I was doing, however, mainly because my training was focused on classical music.  My parents would brag to their friends and relatives about all of my accomplishments, frequently over-stating and exaggerating, along with painting this weird image of me as some sort of virtuosic classical player.  But at home, if they had to listen to what I had composed at conservatory, my mother would deride my music, call it “weird” and “dissonant.”  I’d invariably get the Barbra Streisand comment over and over again.  They never really would ASK me about what kinds of music I liked; it was all about them telling me what kind of music I enjoyed to write and play.  Huh?
Then I went to graduate school.  I earned a Ph.D., which my father told me I needed to earn because he never finished his, even though I had a nervous breakdown due to stress from going to school full-time and working full-time for year after year after year.  (As an aside, my parents like to talk about how my college education put them in terrible debt, and will tell anyone who will listen about “how much they sacrificed” for me, when in reality, I worked full-time almost the entire way through school.  They never mention that.)  I continued concentrating on classical music, as a composer.  And I was absolutely jaded and miserable.
After earning my Ph.D., I found a teaching job at a college, mainly covering the basics of classical music.  And again, I was miserable, not to mention constantly pissed off and irritated.  I couldn’t figure out why, as I was teaching music, and that’s what I loved!  On my 30th birthday, getting ready for a work day, I opened my closet, and looking at the racks of Ann Taylor and Banana Republic sensible business casual separates, I suddenly thought:
“This is not my life.”
It’s not.  It’s not ME.  I’ve been backpedaling ever since.  What music did I love?  Where did it all start?  And I started playing in rock and metal bands, and have never been happier.  My parents hated this when they first found out, saying how all my training was going to waste, and that I was just having an early mid-life crisis.  They’d criticize me if I played a gig that didn’t pay well, and would ask all kinds of inappropriate questions about how much money I was making to make me defend my choices.  They’d avoid telling any of my relatives about what I was really doing, instead focusing on weird tidbits of information they’d glean in phone conversations about my job and over-inflating these to make it sound like I was still classy and associating with the wealthy intelligentsia associated with classical music.
The truth is, though: I don’t like classical music.  I’d rather sing Maiden than Mozart any given day.  I realized just recently through my therapy that I dedicated my ENTIRE career life to a path of music that I HATE in order to maintain some level of acceptability in my parents’ eyes.  But even when I tried, my parents still called what I did “weird.”  I remember even learning how to play the organ, becoming a professional church musician, and being told by my mother that my playing was only “adequate.”  Anything I’ve accomplished, they’ve taken credit for, like it’s something THEY did...when in reality, they continually discouraged me from pursuing a career in the arts and still - to this day - they tell me that I would have been better off if I had just become a doctor or a lawyer.  This past week, I realized the reason I pursued classical music as my career was so that I could be a musician in a way that would earn me some sort of recognition by my family, to not feel like my interests were completely invisible.  It’s a heavy thing to realize that what you’ve studied and dedicated your entire life to is a complete and total farce.  No wonder why I felt inadequate and like a “faker” through years of conservatory and academy training.  No wonder why I had a shitty attitude.  I HATED the music I was studying, and I was studying it for someone else...Mom and Dad.  Not me.
Wow.  It felt good to say this.
So now what?  I’ve cut my family out of my life in a “temporary separation” while I focus on my own recovery process.  What do I want to pursue?  What kind of musician do I want to be?  I’m going back to that old image of the gorgeous woman with the big hair in her leather outfit on stage, rocking out to an audience of screaming metalheads.  Sure, maybe I’m a little bit too old to rock the leather, but I can still record and do session work or produce.  To come full circle, getting in touch with that little girl dancing around to 45s, is an organic feeling.  It’s never too late to start over.
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Tuesday, April 24, 2012

the empty glass

Most people know the image of the half-empty versus half-full glass as a measure of one’s pessimistic or optimistic outlook on life.  In the case of a narcissist, the image of a glass with a hole in the bottom of it is an interesting analogy.  The narcissist is thirsty, so he or she asks someone else to fill up the glass with water.  But since the glass has a hole in the bottom of it, the water drains out before the narcissist can fully quench his or her thirst.  The narcissist asks again and again for more water, only to have the glass filled up, and the thirst to return since the water keeps draining and draining, even after constant replenishing.
Obviously, the metaphor here is that the water represents the attention that people in periphery to the narcissist give to the person in question.  The narcissist is desperately THIRSTY for attention (and needs that attention to feel good like we as humans need water to survive); however, the narcissist is flawed because his or her “glass” is defective (has a hole in the bottom).  I can go a step further with this metaphor, adding that the narcissist - the person holding the glass - is blind, and can’t perceive that the glass is defective.  The narcissist thinks there’s nothing wrong with his or her glass (someone with NPD thinks that he or she couldn’t possibly have any psychological issues) because he or she simply can’t see the hole in the bottom.  The narcissist gets angry when someone says there’s something wrong with the glass, and gets upset when he or she is thirsty...moreover, that narcissist is always dependent on SOMEONE ELSE to fill up the glass.
How’s that for an image?
Both of my parents were like this.  I can remember from my earliest childhood being told upon misbehaving that I wouldn’t do this or that “if I really loved them.”  While my father’s upbringing is an enigma to me (he’s never spoken about it), I know for a fact that my mother never bonded with her own mother, as my grandmother had a severe nervous breakdown when my mother was first born.  My mother intensely personalized everything as a result; her NPD likely stems from this, not that I’m an expert.  As a child, I was often told to do certain things in certain ways to “keep Mom happy” and to “show Mom that you love her.”  I was told to do these things by my father, who was an extreme enabler, and a narcissist himself, obsessed with power, wealth, and status.
If anyone actually knew what was going on in our seemingly perfect household, in our beautiful home that looked like it could have been featured in Better Homes and Gardens, they would have been shocked to know that my parents frequently argued.  The terms of the argument were often “you wouldn’t do this if you really loved me” on the part of my mother, who would fly into crazy rages, and occasionally even end up cuddled into the fetal position in the closet, crying hysterically, having a flashback of old childhood abuse.  My father would simply go off on his own and do whatever the hell he felt like doing, purchasing expensive clothing, cars, and other items to feed his ego.  He’d hide the evidence of all of this in various ways, including having me hide the bills from my mother (which involved not being allowed to go out after school with friends because I’d have to intercept the postman every day before my mom got home).
Nothing was EVER enough for my parents.  I couldn’t please them no matter what I tried - and believe me, I tried.  I was a straight A kid, a kid who never gave teachers any trouble.  I didn’t talk back in school...well, to be honest, I didn’t TALK period.  I went to church as I was told to do each and every Sunday, even though I was incessantly bullied (yes, in church!).  I would obediently buy gifts for my parents for each and every holiday, in as thoughtful of a manner as possible, egged on by my father.  “If you love your mom, just do this for her,” he’d always say to me.  I was taught to always say “I love you” before leaving the house, or before either or them left the house, or before we ended a conversation on the phone, no matter how I was feeling or whether or not we had just been in a fight.  I was told that I should always do this because “you never know if someone’s going to get in a car accident on the way home” and would presumably die on the side of the road.  I was also told that my grandparents never showed Mom that they loved her, so it was “my responsibility” to help make up for this.  My love would miraculously make it all better!  Fear, guilt...all great things to burden onto a child who is only nine or ten years old.
Even though I did everything to “fill the glass” for Mom and Dad, it never seemed to work for long.  In time, I was a “bad kid” again, “mouthing off,” or “acting up.”  Even though I was a straight A student who never got into trouble in school, at home, I’d be spanked frequently (until I was 15 years old and threatened to call Child Protective Services on my father) and I was perpetually grounded and forbidden from watching television and using the telephone.  Even though I went to church every Sunday, I was still convinced that I was going to hell, and that the devil was on his way to get me.  Even though I wore all of the clothes that Mom and Dad bought, I was still made fun of in school for looking like a freak (and believe me, I looked ridiculous...who dresses a seven year old girl in a power suit for picture day?).  Even though I ignored the bullying in school, it only got worse and worse through the years.  My childhood diaries are filled with entries describing how I perpetually had to apologize to my parents, even though I was in extreme emotional pain, and by the time I was a teenager, was suffering from a full-fledged eating disorder.
As an adult, I went through college and graduate school and earned a PhD.  I worked full-time through much of my time in higher education to support myself, but I was still told by my family that I was “spoiled” and that they were “broke” because of funding my education.  I met my wonderful husband twelve years ago, after escaping a series of abusive relationships, but my wedding wasn’t classy enough, and I made the enormous mistake of living in sin with my future husband for a year before we eventually married.  I worked in a church as an organist at the time, but I was told by my father that he couldn’t believe the church would continue to employ me due to my immoral lifestyle.  I got a job as a professor in a community college, where I worked well over 70 hours a week, but when I became unhappy because of an abusive colleague, I was told by my parents that I was lucky to have that job, and that I just needed to learn how to “play the game.”  I pursued gigs in classical music, which my parents sort of knew things about (but were never really trained), but was always told things like “your playing was adequate” and “that sounds weird.”  If a gig didn’t pay that much, why was I wasting my time?  It seemed like something was always wrong with me, no matter what I achieved, no matter what gifts I sent, no matter how many times I called home and listened to my mom go on and on and on without ever even asking how I was doing.
My family came to visit this past year for the holidays.  I cleaned the house.  I bought their favorite foods.  I cooked every day.  I even baked bread from scratch.  I took them to the mall (their favorite activity) even though I didn’t have any money to shop with at the time.  I communicated clearly with them about my husband’s schedule, and his obligations to work-related activities and other professional obligations during that time.  Despite all of this, I was told things like “that show you’re watching is stupid.”  I was told, when my mother had a hysterical fit at the mall after I declined wanting her to buy me a pair of shoes, that I was selfish and that I needed to “learn how to play the game better.”    I was told that my husband was insensitive and selfish for working on his professional obligations and that it was stupid for him to buy food that was his family tradition.  This all transpired after being forced to go to a movie that I didn’t want to see (The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo) that depicted a couple of very brutal rape scene which caused me to have a panic attack/flashback of my own painful experiences.  Yet I was the one who was punished, yet again, with the silent treatment.  Mom and Dad sat sullenly on the couch all throughout Christmas, lamenting the fact that there weren’t enough presents, that it wasn’t like the old days, that I wasn’t letting Mom cook in the way she wanted, that I didn’t like going to church, and so on.  Dad also told me that I needed to keep any conflicts between us as a secret from my husband because these things were “between family only.”  Wow.
All of a sudden, I finally saw that empty glass.  I realized that it was an impossible task to keep trying to fill it up, as both my mother and father have an unquenchable thirst.  I saw that the glass had a hole in it, and that I could spend my entire life trying to fill it with love and understanding, only to have it drain out onto the floor...and that they would always be blind to the fact that this was even happening.
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Sunday, April 22, 2012

happy sober birthday to me!

Today is an important day for me: my sober birthday.  As of today, I’ve been “on the wagon” for twelve solid years.  
Twelve years ago tonight I was sitting at a bar with a “friend.”  I was on my third vodka and tonic of the night, and I was already feeling ill.  I was 22 years old at this point, and I had been drinking from the time I was 13 or 14.  From the time I was about 18 or 19 until 22, I drank heavily.  My average day usually consisted of waking up (often in the afternoon), putting a couple of shots of whisky into my coffee, going to school and work with a water bottle full of vodka (or half vodka, half orange juice), and then ending the evening with more drinking, often alone.  I drank generally around a full bottle of hard liquor a day.  By early April of 2000, crazy things started happening with my body chemistry.  The weirdest thing I noticed was the constant vomiting.  I just couldn’t keep anything down anymore.  On top of that, I was incessantly dehydrated, as the only fluids I consistently consumed were either caffeinated (coffee) or alcoholic.  As a result, I suffered from chronic bladder infections.
That night at the bar, despondently looking down at my drink, I suddenly said to my drinking buddy, “I’m never going to drink again.”  I just couldn’t...it was like a switch just flipped!  Needless to say, my friend was pretty damn shocked.  I wasn’t.  It was this crazy moment of clarity where I just KNEW I’d never go back.  And I haven’t yet (knock on wood!).  I suffered through a painful physical withdrawal.  I never went to a 12-step program, or even sought help as I was too embarrassed and paranoid about voicing my problems in a room full of strangers.  Instead, I moved to the opposite side of the country, hoping that a clean start would keep me clean as well.  I’d just forget about it all.  I went to therapy, but mainly for reasons to do with my boyfriend at the time who was rather verbally and psychologically abusive.  I never really dealt with the addiction, but it was always there in the back of my mind as this old wound, never fully healed.  At this point in my life, I’m dealing with the repercussions of my addiction, as I’m trying to be completely and totally open about every aspect of my life.  I’ve learned that wounds can never fully heal if you perpetually keep them covered up in secret; instead, they’ll slowly fester, until you can’t ignore them anymore.  
You may be asking, what does this talk have to do with the narcissistic family, or with being raised by narcissistic parents?  What I’ve discovered recently is that I started drinking as an escape from my family situation when I was young.  My parents worked many, many hours, and were rarely home.  I was an only child; my parents were extremely overprotective and overbearing, and they kept me largely isolated from other people.  I remember what summers were like: I would have to stay at my home all day, doing what my father termed as “playing Cinderella.”  My mother would have a long list of chores each day to accomplish, including such glamorous tasks as bleaching out the grout in bathroom showers with a toothbrush, or clipping the buds off of mums bushes in the backyard.  If the phone rang, I was to answer it like as secretary, “Hello, Jones residence, Jennifer speaking.”  I avoided answering the phone, even for friends, because it was so embarrassing to speak like this.  Occasionally, I would be permitted to attend a camp - but only one that was of an academic variety (I even took a college-level physics course after 8th grade!).  I was allowed to go to cross-country practice, but only because sports were needed for a solid college application.  I couldn’t participate in any other community sports activities (like softball), because they would interrupt Mom and Dad’s vacation time in Florida.
By the time I was 13 or 14, I was extremely sad and depressed.  I had grown up as a misfit in school.  We moved many times, and I was severely bullied as my dad was the superintendent and my parents dressed me in ridiculously over-formal clothing that never fit in with the other kids.  My parents knew about the bullying since I came home crying almost every day, but told me that I wasn’t allowed to attend another school because it would look bad for my father’s job as a school superintendent.  I was also told not to fight back, because that too would reflect badly on Dad.  It was so frustrating!  That coupled with the exorbitant amount of chores (Mom’s standards were insane!) made me simply freak out over the summer months, those long, boring months of total isolation.
I started cutting my arms with kitchen knives at that time, sort of like a game of chicken, to see how much I could hurt myself and whether or not my parents would notice (they didn’t).  Then I started raiding Dad’s liquor cabinet.  I discovered that I could empty a bottle of vodka, and replace it with water, and no one would realize the liquor was gone since vodka looks just like water.  I would mix the vodka with my father’s allergy medications, just to sleep all afternoon.  I only really did this over the summer months during high school (not regularly), and replaced the boozing practice with more and more strange cutting rituals during school months.  My folks only caught me cutting once, and when I cried and begged for help because I couldn’t stop, they told me that they couldn’t take me to a therapist because it would look bad for Dad’s job (yet again).  I learned - as a result - to never show any pain.  Drinking became a real crutch, and I used it to deal with feeling totally inadequate and insecure all throughout my college years and graduate school.  I used it to numb the pain of an intensely abusive relationship with a man.  I used it to forget being raped at age 21.
My parents apparently “had no idea” I was an alcoholic.  In recent history, they would accuse me of blowing things out of proportion.  “You’re just so sensitive, Jen.  Stop exaggerating.  That didn’t really happen.”  I realize today that a great deal of the impetus behind my drinking was not only to numb how sad and isolated I felt as a girl, but it was also to try and get my parents to notice ME.  To them, I was a doll that they could dress up pretty, who would play nice songs on the piano for their colleagues, who would get the good grades in school to make them proud, who would grow up to be a scientist or a doctor or a lawyer, etc.  I never felt like any of these things.  Drinking was antithetical to their strict “moral” codes...and I thought by imbibing that I would gain some sort of notice, some sort of validation of my own existence.
This never has happened.  If you have narcissistic parents like mine, it never will.  Don’t hope for it - you’ll never get an apology.  You’ll never get a sympathetic ear (unless it benefits them in the short term).  Most times, what you went through will never even be acknowledged.  If it even comes up in conversation, you’ll hear how one of them “had it worse” so as a result you have no right to complain about anything.  You’re just oversensitive, and guilty of exaggerating your own experiences. I was so angry for so many years about this - that I could never talk to my family, get help from my family, confide in family, receive any sort of emotional support from my family.  I thought it was some defect in myself that made these things impossible; now I know it’s the other way around.
Sound familiar to any of you?  If so, my advice is to forget about trying to get your family to recognize you.  Get help for yourself, and for no one else.  That’s where I’m at today, twelve years after that final vodka and tonic.  I am my own mother now.
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Saturday, April 21, 2012

why blog about NPD?

I have now spent nearly seventeen years in therapy, trying to figure out my “issues,” which ranged from alcoholism (I’m now twelve years sober) to a history of relationships with abusive men (although today I’m happily married to a wonderful man).  These years of therapy have been extremely helpful in many arenas of my life, particularly in managing my panic attacks, post-traumatic stress episodes, and tendencies toward addictive and other self-sabotaging behaviors.  However, while therapy has had many beneficial effects, it never seemed to “fix” me.  I have often felt like a lost cause, as I was simply unable to completely leave behind certain self-destructive tendencies, and also to let go of past traumas.  I formerly was convinced I was unfixable, and after I moved across the country with my husband last summer, I gave up on therapy, figuring I had come as far as I could possibly go.
Following the move, I sunk into an on-again, off-again depression beginning last August.  It was puzzling to me, as the move was a good one for good reasons, and I was able to finally achieve my goal of working as a freelance musician once again, leaving behind a job that made me miserable for years.  The fact that I couldn’t figure out WHY I was depressed made me even MORE depressed, along with increasingly frustrated.  I experienced painful days where I could barely get out of bed, let alone try to meet new people here in town.  I isolated myself in my beautiful home, spending countless hours on the couch listlessly watching the television.  
By the second week of January, my depression spiraled downward to the point of suicide.  One particularly cold and blustery night, I went into a dissociative trance, wandering out of my house in the middle of the night in just a light shirt and a pair of sandals.  I just started walking, aiming to throw myself off of a tall bridge in the middle of our town, when all of a sudden, I heard a voice tell me in my head that “you can’t do this to your husband.”  That voice immediately snapped me out of my trance, and I returned home to a terrified and panicked husband who told me that I needed to get help “or else.”  The next day, I spent hours researching therapists in town, along with our insurance benefits.  And then I made the phone call.  I was back on the couch a few days later.
At first, I felt like I was back on the hamster wheel in my sessions, rehashing old hurts yet again, not making any progress.  As the weeks passed, my new therapist gave me the exercise of journaling, something I hadn’t done since my years in high school.  Writing helped me to start putting the pieces of the puzzle together, and I found that the source of my current depression was somehow related to my family.  I grew up as an only child in a relatively well-to-do family.  My dad was a public school superintendent, and my mom worked in public school administration.  (Funny that I identify both of them first with their jobs!  Yet this is how they always self-identified...the public persona of the job was always so important to both of them, and the “status” of being a “very important person” in town was always of primary importance to my father in particular.)  My parents were both very controlling and strict as I grew up.  As a result, I left home at only 16 years old; I was accepted into a special program at a college across the country for high school juniors.  It was my ticket out of the house.
During college, I predictably rebelled against my strict upbringing.  I partied, experimented with drugs and alcohol, had way too many boyfriends, wore crazy clothes and dyed my hair funny colors, got piercings and tattoos...anything one can imagine, I tried.  By the time I was 22 years old, I was a full-fledged alcoholic in an abusive relationship.  When my health began to rapidly decline due to my excessive drinking, I quit.  I moved across the country again for a clean start, where I met my husband shortly after.
I thought the rest was history.  But it wasn’t.  Things never got easier, especially with my family.  Fast-forward to this past Christmas: my parents came to visit us in our new, spacious, gorgeous home.  I decorated for them, bought their favorite foods, took them to do their favorite activities...and the holiday still was disastrous.  When they left the day after Christmas, I felt like I had survived a war of apocalyptic proportions; I was shell-shocked, drained, and empty.  My suicidal episode followed days later.  It wasn’t until I started journaling that I found this connection - between my family and the depressive state that made me just want to escape in the only way I could possibly imagine...through dying.
A few weeks ago, during a session, my therapist suddenly demanded that I google “narcissistic personality disorder” via the Mayo Clinic website on my smartphone.  Holy crap...this was my dad!  This was my mom!  The bells went off in my head.  I started researching, reading everything I could find on NPD from clinical books to blogs from adult children of narcissists (ACONs).  NPD was the answer.  It was the missing puzzle piece I had been trying so desperately to locate all of these years, the key to explaining much of my behavior, my relationship with my family, and with others.  
So, what is NPD?  My therapist helpfully summarized it as the “three E’s” - lack of empathy, entitlement, and emptiness inside.  People with NPD have little to no empathy for others’ feelings.  They often feel entitled to special treatment, having an over-inflated self image.  Nothing is ever their fault, and everything is ALWAYS about them.  This is because they are empty people deeply inside, often due to some sort of trauma as a child, like neglect at the hands of their own parents.  People who suffer from NPD rarely seek help (because they are perpetually in complete denial that would need any!), and as a result it is considered to be an untreatable disorder in many ways.  This summary accurately pinpointed both of my parents’ behaviors.  In fact, the descriptions of parents with NPD were so dead on that it was almost frightening.
Today, I’m in active recovery as an ACON.  Journaling is part of my therapy, and as a result, I decided to start this blog.  I don’t want or need recognition for this; in fact, all of the names here have been changed.  My goal is to provide a personal account of what it was like to grow up as the child of two people with NPD in order to help other ACONs who have been in the same situation as myself.  If you grew up with a narcissistic parent, you may have been made to feel like YOU are always the one with the problem by that parent...since a narcissist is never at fault for anything.  But let me tell you - you’re not the one with the problem.
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About Me

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I'm an ACON (adult child of a narcissist) in recovery. Both of my parents suffer from Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and as an only child, this greatly impacted my experiences both growing up and as an adult. Here, I share many of my experiences to help others during their own recovery processes.
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