Feeling Safe and Deflecting Shame from Others

The people that try to make you feel guilt or shame over not doing what they want you to do, are just serving their own agenda.

If they continue to try to emotionally manipulate you, they have no concern for your reality. They do not respect your right to see things from your own point of view.

People will claim to know what you should start doing…or stop doing..that will make you a better person. But take a closer look and see that they are trying to get you to fit into their own agenda.

You do not have to change your core beliefs to make someone else’s reality more comfortable. They are clearly not changing their beliefs to suit you.

If you are not trying to guilt and shame them, then what right do they have to do it to you. What gives one person, or one group of people, exclusive rights to know everything that everyone “should” and “should not” be doing?

Shaming people is not loving. Any group or individual that is making you feel bad about yourself, or trying to make you question your own truth to support theirs, is more concerned with serving their own agenda than wanting you to be your authentic self.

People that claim to care about your best interest, but try to shame and guilt you into changing for them, do not have your best interest at heart….but they have their own best interest at heart.

So let them continue to follow their own path and do what they feel best supports them…..while you follow your own path and do what best supports you.

Why is it okay for them to want an environment they feel safe and supported in….but you are selfish because you also want to feel safe and supported?

Reasons Fruit is Good for You….to keep in your purse

image from facebook  HERE

Nurturing Emotional Wounds

Emotions should be treated with kindness and a gentle spirit. When an emotions feels like it is too overwhelming you can console that feeling and care for it. 

Think of your emotions and feelings as children who need to be taken care of and nurtured. If you abandon your feelings they will only grow more. You have to walk with them and hold their hand. 

Emotional wounds

When you feel sadness, grief or anger there is always a reason for it. Sometimes the reason is obvious and other times the emotion is coming from an old emotional wound. 

Emotions are always trying to tell you something. They are trying to protect you from something. 

It can feel like we cannot handle feeling the emotions and so we try to bury and repress them. But this is a way of abandoning ourselves. 

Abandonment

You have already been abandoned by other people in your life. You have been rejected by people and hurt by people. Your emotions are telling you that you need to be cared for.

Self Love

Self love is a powerful thing. It is not selfish , even though you may have been taught that way. Often the people that discourage us from caring about our own feelings, do so for their own agenda. 

In another words, they try to get you to forget about your needs and feelings, because they are protecting their own needs and feelings. This is kind of hypocritical …isn’t it?

Emotional fractures.

Refusal to listen to your emotions will cause you to break down and become fractured. Emotional wounds are often fractures parts of you that were hurt and abandoned at an early age. 

These fractured child parts are trying to get your attention. They want to know that you have not abandoned them. Your inner child needs to know that it has not been abandoned by you too.

Nurture your pain.  

When emotional pain comes up please nurture it as you would a sick child. Care for your feelings and console those wounded parts of yourself. Ask them what they need and have not been getting.

You can find ways to heal the emotions if you listen to them first. It is not selfish to care about your own feelings and the needs of your emotional body. Your emotional health is connected to all of you.

Separation from the emotional body

In order to give of yourself, you have to have something left to give. When we neglect emotional wounds, part of ourselves becomes separated from the whole. 

You need to be whole and your emotions need to be integrated with all of you. Your spiritual health and emotional health are connected. Your physical health is also connected to your emotions. 

Inner Child 

Listen to your inner child and all of your emotions and feelings. Nothing comes up for no reason. There is always a reason if you are feeling something. 

You have much to offer the world. You are a unique person with very special gifts to offer and to explore. 

Acceptance of self

Everything about you will flow better when you nurture your feelings. Do not abandon yourselves by stuffing down your emotions. Allow your feelings to be accepted without judgement. 

You can survive the feelings as you experience them as a caretaker. You may fear that you will be overwhelmed by your emotions but you cannot push them away from you. 

Old emotional wounds

When you nurture and care for your feelings, the pain will release from you. You may find that the root causes are from long ago and the wounds have been re-opened by some person or situation. 

If this happens then the old emotional wounds were never healed from the past. They are coming up in order to ask you to care for them. 

Blessings, 

Annie ❤

 

Adult Children of Narcissistic Parents

Low self esteem.

Lack of being able to self generate feelings of self worth.

Fear of doing things that make other people upset, angry or disappointed.

Difficulty prioritizing oneself.

Trouble feeling motivated to get ahead in life. 

These are some of the symptoms of C-PTSD from growing up with a narcissistic parent. Your subconscious brain is programmed very early about your identity, and  your role in the family and your place in the world. 

Associations are deep in the subconscious.

If you do not comply with the other person, there will be consequences to pay. If you cause someone to become upset , you will pay dearly. 

People from more health families learn to look out for themselves. You learned that in order to protect yourself, you have to look out for others. 

People from functional families were taught to be in touch with their own feelings and to love themselves.

 If you were the child of a narcissist, you were taught to defend against the wrath f the narcissist by not expressing your own feelings. Eventually you began to have trouble identifying what you want at all. 

As an adult this wiring in your brain keeps you from taking care of yourself properly.

You still have that hyper-vigilance that there is a threat of danger when someone near you is not getting their way. 

You may have a fear of being abandoned by the people you love, if you consider your own needs to be equal to theirs. The longer you cater to the desires of other people, in a relationship, the more they come to expect that treatment from you. 

People around you can become conditioned to expect you to always agree, always go along with them, and never challenge them. 

One of the many problems of this “people pleaser” behavior is that it attracts narcissists and predators. Narcissists and psychopaths want easy prey or at least a victim that had obvious emotional wounds that they can use to use against you. 

If you have never practiced standing up for yourself, then you have no idea how to do this, and you fear the consequences of doing so. What would happen to your relationships if you said “no” to someone? 

What would happen to your world of you began to prioritize your own needs? What consequences would follow if you believed that your needs and ideas were just as valuable as those of the people in your life?

Well, you can see the people in the world who are not afraid to say “no.” You interact with them all the time. They say “no” to you all the time. These people are not all in the same category. 

There are people who do what they want all the time. They never let people cross their boundaries. In fact, they cross over into your world and stomp all over your rights and invade your boundaries all the time. 

These are the narcissists. You may have a fear of becoming like that. You do not want to become the parent that emotionally abused you. The very person that caused much of your difficulty in getting what you want out of life. 

But there is another category of people who stand up for themselves. These are people that have healthy boundaries but still respect the rights of other people. They do not exploit and manipulate others. 

They express their feelings and let people know what they want. They go after the things they want out of life and they consider their personal dreams, desires and emotions to be a high priority. 

 These are not narcissists. They do not use aggressive, emotionally manipulative communication. They do not covertly try to get emotional reactions from you, in order to exploit and control you. 

There is a line between assertive and aggressive. You are being assertive when you express what you do and do not want.

You are being aggressive when you make it clear that you do not care what the other person wants. You undermine, lie to, and gaslight people to get your way. 

Being assertive and having healthy boundaries does not have to injure other people.

You are not a bad person for looking out for yourself.

You are not a narcissist if you care about your own feelings and needs. You are a normal human being. 

I will write about this topic again in the future. Please leave comments below about a specific question or particular problem that you have.

Give me some ideas about problems of having C-PTSD  (complex PTSD) that you are dealing with. 

I want to hear from adult children of narcissistic parents. Also from anyone that grew up under the heavy cloud of a narcissist in some capacity. It is not always a parent. 

Also, if you feel that your ability to move forward and get momentum in life has been affected by narcissistic abuse, either during childhood or as an adult, please leave me any ideas about questions I can address in a future post. 

 

 

 

Toxic People Spew Poison

People that care about you…and care about others in general, do not use bullying tactics to get their agenda met. They do not intentionally overblow, contort, and reframe events.

Caring people do not have a ridiculously overblown reaction to a little thing that you did “wrong” ( against their personal rules) and then tell all of your friends, family or co-workers that you victimized them.

Someone who wants to be your friend does not refuse to hear your side of a disagreement, shift blame for their over reaction onto you and then put malicious words in your mouth that you never said.

Toxic people pretend to be your friend until they feel threatened by you, have no more use for you, or you refuse to agree with everything they say…and do everything they want.

Narcissists see themselves as more entitled than you to everything , whether you deserve it more or not.

Narcissists want you to admire their greatness and submit to being their minion.

If you stop catering to their ever-changing whims, they will gather their other minions to turn against you….and destroy things you care about…..friendships, your reputation, your job, your marriage, your business, your self esteem, or your ability to move forward with your life.

They won’t change, even if they tell you they will. If they turned against you or discarded you once …they will do it again…and harder.

Once you begin to feel your self esteem go down every time you talk with someone, it is time to back away.

Once you begin to notice that every time you have a conversation with them you have to go back over the entire thing in your head to figure out what the hell just happened….it is time to back away….or run if you can..

Relationships should involve two people…..

Two different sets of opinions that are respected

Two different sets of personal boundaries that are respected

Two sets of ideals and thoughts that are respected

Two different schedules that are respected

Two different ways of feeling about situations that are respected

Two different sets of dreams , skills, talents and aspirations that are supported and respected

Two different individual people that are respected

Get the idea?

Narcissists are poisonous.

Run.

 

 

 

 

 

Top Ten Things Women Hate About the Holidays – Annie’s Top Ten Lists

10. You spend 40 hours of work to afford the gifts, 20 hours shopping for them, 4 hours wrapping them and they are all torn open in less than 15 minutes.

9. Your mother in law will come to visit for longer than usual.

8. She will re-organize your kitchen, in spite of your pleas not to, and you cannot find the things you need to make the holiday dinner.

7. Little children will leave toys that roll, right at the top of the stairs.

6. All those family members that you have “been too busy to get back to” suddenly realize you are off from work.

5. The men monopolize the tv, with football and yell things a lot.

4. Other women comment on your weight, one way or another. (Why do they do this? Who the hell asked them?)

3. When women end up at your house, before you have gotten any make-up on, they say “Oh, Annie you really can pull off that “natural look” can’t you? I just can’t do it myself. But you can manage to pull it off.

2. You have to tell your 16 year old to pull up her shirt to cover her cleavage better, before Grandma gets there for dinner. Then your 12 year walks into dinner late, with her shirt even lower.

1. Aunt Mary eats your hidden stash of emergency chocolate or Uncle Bob drinks all of your hidden stash of wine coolers which you bought specifically to get through the day.