Emotional Fibromyalgia
I was reading a post today about someone living with chronic pain...and how to handle that.
It seems to me that living with an alcoholic family is the emotional equivalent. Constant pain. It dulls some days, but it never stops. And I realize it's never going to. Even when my parents die, they've trained my siblings well. And my parents and siblings are leaving my kids in confusion as to who I am, such that I had yet another incident of 'let's keep everything a secret from mom' this weekend. (They believe they have to keep secrets from me because I'm 'unreasonable' because that's the family narrative.)
At my daughter's wedding a couple months ago, I happened to wake up just at the wrong/right time to hear one of my siblings encouraging my youngest child to just keep secrets from me--just make sure she doesn't find out.
Same weekend, my oldest sibling took her chance, as my boyfriend came out of the reception line, I kid you not, to pull him into the family drama. She pulled him aside--at what was supposed to be a joyous occasion, my child's wedding--and start talking to him about my (supposed) problems and how he had to talk sense into me, had to get me to come around....and then, just to leave us in some doubt whether we were being set up on a comedy 'punked' type show, assured him, "She thinks we talk about her, but we don't! We NEVER talk about her! We don't talk about her!"
I watched the narcissistic mother video someone else posted here, and a few other videos that brought in its wake, of narcissistic parents, talking about how these people train the next generation to carry on with the abuse and ugliness even after their deaths.
How do people cope with chronic pain?
How do we cope with knowing this is our life, and this ugliness is NOT going to end? Ever.