LifeRecovery

I want to add to that for me this is getting to the guts of coming from scarcity instead of fullness and joy, that I tried to ask about months ago.

Some of it is rules based, some of it is about constraint and some of it is just plain frozen.

Many of the response are jangling something deep inside my chest. It is such a relief to not feel alone with this stuff.

More later I have to work through a number of other pieces.

hopeful4

Aeryn...i think its important to remember WHY you do Alanon or writing class or anything extra. To enrich and improve your own life. Your coming into yourself and realizing who you are inside, something so many of us lose and never find again. So you live outside the box...who cares because its who you are! Thanks for sharing!

lillamy

Sorry to be using y'all as my therapist but I figure there may be something useful here for someone else too.

I just realized that I'm punishing myself. I'm so sure I've broken the rules (because bad things happened to me, I must have!) and I'm so sure that there is some cosmic punishment just waiting to drop down on me... So if I punish myself (by not allowing myself things, experiences, rest, healthy living) then maybe the Universe will see that I'm already punishing myself so that big punishment for whatever it is I did wrong might not have to drop on me just yet...

The weird thing is that this goes totally against my conscious faith in a good, gracious, merciful God. But this is till what my subconscious days: I have broken the rules and must be punished.

Booo

Aeryn. I want to add,as I don't think I was too clear. I was raised without many rules. A lot of horrible advice as the product of an alcoholic and enabler, but very very few rules.
I was completely at a loss to what real rules were, really. So when I was on my own at last, I started asking people and watching people and saw them follow rules I did not even know EXISTED! Not law, just common rules . I am lucky that I have always been a fairly decent girl or it would have been a lot of hell to pay had I chosen horrible actions.

so now, I find the rule. I apply the rule. I watch others BREAK the rules and SUCCEED. This I do not understand , something is not right. It does not seem fair.
So NOW if it hurts no one, then I DO go rouge and break the rules, as long as no one gets hurt.
Wow. Rules are hard to explain.

Aeryn

lillamy,

the unconscious is so powerful it's amazing...my following of the "rules" had a lot to do with that. My mother (controlling NPD) chose my first bachelor's degree for me (and I hated it as well as the resulting career...however for my Master's *I* chose my major...and guess what I chose another "practical" major not because I wanted to do that but because my mother had engrained that into my unconscious - to be successful you must have a "practical" degree...risks are unacceptable. UGH! The first step I think is unveiling these unconscious thoughts though.

For me I did feel some sort of backlash everytime I tried to deviate from the rules my mother gave me - she would actually punish me with things like the silent treatment etc...but I see what you mean by punishment too...when things go wrong after taking a risk I too think I've often thought, oh I deserve this because I didn't do the "right" thing!

I am trying my best to not let the rules engrained in my subconscious affect my decisions but it really is a struggle because I got so used to following them....it's like on automatic pilot!

Aeryn

BTW- I was just thinking something that happened to me yesterday also has to do with the "rules". I got a letter from my NPD mother (I'm NC with her and she hires PIs to try to track me and tries to force contact)...the general pattern is I get a traumatic letter (the last one told me she "knew about my failed marriage and separation" - despite the fact that she lives 3000 miles away and we have no mutual family members or friends) and then silence and then another. I'm just sitting here staring at it...I KNOW not to open it but in the past I always have....so I was thinking why do I do it? Maybe it's because the rules say "moms are nice and love their children".....my case doesn't follow these rules but I feel this strange sense of obligation to see what she has to say because "mom knows better"...UGH.....so perhaps the rules infiltrate this realm as well.

Booo

One thing I learned in therapy, I never had the mom that met the "rules" of motherhood. Some of them sadly, just do not count as moms. Awful to say, yet rings so true.

LifeRecovery

I have been circling around this topic in therapy the last few weeks.

Part of what is coming to light is the following
-I take on other people's stuff and can't tell what is theirs and what is mine. At one point it felt like this huge hot wave coming at me. I could not protect or block myself from it. THere was so much of it.
-That I don't trust myself. That my experience is not enough. As a result I fall back on the rules. There is some sense of safety in these rules.

BodkinVanHorn

Thank you!thank you! I needed to read this today!

CactusJill

Me too - for me it is rooted in codependency. I am so used to considering others' feelings before my own that sometimes I really have to check myself and figure out what I want and if this "rule" is right for me. It isn't easy!

Aeryn

It's definitely not rooted in codependency for me...after a year of therapy I no longer identify as codependent for a few reasons - one being that the term has a negative connotation associated with it and part of my therapy is getting rid of negative self talk. In addition I found myself using my "codependency" to blame myself for things and to discredit my emotions...so labeling myself codependent hindered my therapy rather than furthered it. In addition I relate to the feeling of being controlled rather than being the contoller of things. Controlling people trigger me in horrible ways - that includes the subtle control of "judgement disguised as protective boundaries and observation". Things like someone telling me how I feel - no one but me has a right to place any emotions or feelings on me (so someone telling me I'm angry/sad/happy etc. to me is control).

Anyway I digress...I identify as an ACOA/ACON that when living with an A developed some mal adaptive behaviors that were just extensions of mal adaptive behaviors learned in childhood that worked then but no longer work as an adult. What I realized was I got stuck in a childhood pattern of trying to maintain an image at all costs for outsiders to see and that image was all "the rules" - what people say you should have to be happy (husband, kids, house, PTA meetings, bake sales). The thing is that stuff even if its what you want can't make you the individual whole or really happy....so the rules for me lead to me personally being unhappy but having some lame image that makes others think I'm happy. I think there are many many happy images out there in the world that aren't so happy at all - but it's hard not to fall for those images.

So I guess that's the rules for me - trying to maintain the image of what others tell me I should be rather than what I want to be to appear to be a "good" person. ACONs (children of narcissists) are taught they are inherently bad and not worthy of living as themselves...so my grasping at the rules for me are grasping at anything to take me out of that bad label I got in an NDP/A home as a child. What I am teaching myself in therapy is that they (my parents) were both very sick and it wasn't me it was them and it's OK as an adult to be me and take care of me.

LR - I don't trust myself either but because of that ingrained childhood message that I was bad....so I rely on the rules for that reason as well but the lack of trust I have in myself comes from a different source. I wasn't taking on others stuff I was just weighted down in the idea that I was inherently not worthy of living as me and needed to follow "the rules" to maintain the image that I was ok to others (so to try to hide my true self - that is what I was taught to do and I just sort continued it as an adult).