Shame Holds us Back from Our Possibilities

This is a great talk by Brene Brown.

She describes the difference between shame and guilt very elegantly here. She has done extensive research about shame, and states that it is a cause of depression, anxiety and suicide in most cultures. 

She talks about shame as an epidemic in our culture and how the media and society program us for shame. The ads that tell us how we “should be,”
 and what we “should be doing.” …to the people in our lives that expect us to live up to unreasonable standards. 

Shame can come from abuse and emotional trauma in our childhoods, and in our adulthood experiences. Shame is programmed into us by others. You can re-wire the brain with thought patterns that are more supportive for you. Shame is a destroyer.

I believe that many mental disorders are based in shame. I work with abuse survivors that carry loads of shame from their past. Even when people come to the realization that they were abused, the shame does not just go away. In fact sometimes it becomes worse, during the healing process because old wounds are being opened up. 

Walking through the programs that are in your brain is important, to be able to find the truth about yourself. You are a special, unique person.

You do not have to carry toxic shame with you.

You cannot change the past, but you can change the meaning of the memories that you carry of it. 

The people that planted those seeds were just trying to meet their own agenda by keeping you down, and unsure of your value and place in the world. 

Brene Brown makes the point that creativity, inventiveness, and change come from a place of vulnerability. Doing things that are different, and uniquely you means you have to be somewhat vulnerable.

The greatest minds of the world came up with original ideas and creations and discoveries. They were not always met with acceptance. 

You do not have to follow the crowd. You have your own voice…you just have to find it and differentiate that authentic voice from the programs that were implanted into your brain. Shame is one of those programs that is no longer serving you. 

 

Pathological People -Charming Psychopaths

Pathological bullies walk amongst us, blending into the social groups…charming their captive audiences….forming cult-like followings of underlings that feel empowered by being allowed into the inner or outer circle of the narcissistic charmer…

Pathological predators watch you with eyes like a lion…sizing up their prey….planning their next move….figuring out your weaknesses….breaking down your strengths … intimidating you by eliciting unwanted feelings in you….

Psychopaths walk amongst us…they sit next to you at the bus stop….read your profile on the latest dating site….review your facebook pictures….pry into your work files….mirror your values in order to disguise themselves….

Pathological, malignant aliens blend into your church….smear you good name behind your back….use sex to manipulate their sexual partners….and the spouses of their sexual partners….

Pathological people have no conscience and feel no remorse for hurting others….causing financial devastatiothoneo individuals and families….destroying everything in their path….practicing facial expressions in the mirror…for emotions they don’t have…

Make no mistake…you have met one…they asked you things of a personal nature….testing you….they are waiting for their next chance to drink someone’s life force…to starve them of their will to live….

it might be you they are seducing….with big brown eyes…or sparking blues…a devilish smile when they look at you…

be careful not to believe everything you hear from someone that is dominating and flatters you too much……treats people kindly in person but hates them behind their back….you might be next

Red Flags of a Psychopathic Narcissist

When you are with a devil of a partner, you do not see their dark side at first. The really good predators are skilled at creating a shared psychosis…an illusion that you are two perfectly matched souls….destined to be together

When you are with an authentic partner, who has true compassion for you, they do not feel the need to state things like….

I have compassion for you.

I don’t usually have compassion for other people, but I have compassion for you.

Other people do not really understand you or see you. But only I see the real you.

No one sees your talent but me.

I am the only one who has really loved you.

I am the only one who could really love you.

You are so different from other people that I am the only one who understands you.

You are too special to be with anyone but me.

No one will love you the way I do.

You are the only one who can save me.

I would die without you.

You would die without me.

You and I do not belong in this world.

We are nothing without each other.

You can only do great things if you are with me.

I will kill myself if you leave me.

I will kill myself if you….

I will kill myself if you don’t….

My life was nothing before you.

You don’t need anyone but me.

Your friends are not really your friends. Only I am.

Everyone always lets me down in the end.

Everyone disappoints me sooner or later.

Every relationship I have ends up with them abusing me. You will do the same.

Everyone leaves me. So will you.

No one is willing to give me what I need.

I never get enough help from anyone.

People should help me and do what I ask, without wanting something in return.

If you really loved me you would not expect things in return for doing everyhing I ask you to do.

How can I believe you love me if you are not waiting by the phone when I call?

How can you do things for other people when I am so needy?

How can you do things for yourself (like take a shower) without checking that I am okay first?

I should not have to be there for you to prove my love.

Love is about you being there for me and doing things for me that I can do myself.

Love is being there for me when you have an impotant business meeting to go to.

Love is being there for me, when your friend or family member has an emergency.

Love is about being there for me when you have an emergency.

Love is being there for me when you are sick or sleep deprived.

Love is giving up all your friends and family for me.

Love is you knowing that my job is more important than yours, but that I not help you pay your bills.

Love is YOU paying attention to MEEEEEE and me ignoring, rejecting, demeaning, minimizing and lying about you.

 

 

Two New Videos on Narcissistic Abuse

Adult Children of Alcoholics

People who grew up with alcoholic parents usually realize at some point that there are certain behaviors and thought patterns that are happening that are different from other adults.

This realization often comes as a result of problems with relationships, particularly romantic partner relationships. You may have struggled with feelings of inadequacy and depression.

You may also struggle with a mental illness like an anxiety disorder or even bipolar disorder. The situations that people grew up in were similar in some ways but with important differences. This is why everyone did not end up with the same disorders.

The important things to talk about here are the things that are similar between adult children of alcoholics and what you can do to help yourself. If you grew up in a house with an alcoholic parent then your normal emotional ans social development was interfered with in some way.

You were exposed to bad communication and you did not get the emotional support you needed. There was not enough validation of you as a person with individual thoughts, ideas, feelings and identity.

When early programming is screwed up you are left with a brain that does not process and function in the best way to serve you. The proper “software” that you needed to function well as an adult was not installed into your brain’s hard drive.

As an adult you now struggle with feeling adequate and asserting your boundaries. You also may have trouble maintaining a sense of identity and your role in relationships.

There are thought patterns that are inflexible and also work against you. Thought patterns are habits, just like anything else can become a habit. They can be re-programmed with NLP and NLP hypnosis.

Black and white thinking is a typical pattern for people that are ACOA’s. This is when you see situations as rigid and being two sided, with no other possibilities. Things have to be one way or the other and your brain is trapped into this box that you were taught is real.

Catastrophic thinking is also a typical pattern of thought of ACOA’s. This is when your brain begins with one event and projects into the future a series of consequences that you believe will inevitably follow , ultimately ending in your pain or destruction.

These programs were installed into your brain from early ages and trained into you over time. You were brainwashed into accepting your fate about certain kinds of scenarios.

In order to avoid painful communication, shaming, and other abuse, you had to comply with your alcoholic parent, your codependent parent and other care givers that were revolving around the alcoholic parent.

These coping skills you learned were survival techniques in order for you to stay safe and to feel safe. You endured years of various kinds of emotional / mental abuse.

You were made to focus on needs of the  the alcoholic parent.If they were prone to rages, then you were conditioned to always be on alert for anything that would set them off. You had to alter your natural behavior so as not to incur the wrath of the parent.

Your relationship with the non-alcoholic parent was probably not normal either. They may have been a codependent that was catering to the alcoholic and they may also have had other mental disorders or at least emotional problems from living in the situation themselves.

In order to overcome the thought patterns that are working against you now, you need to identify what they are and why they are not serving you.

Your life can improve and you can have more possibilities and options open to you, if you can understand what parts of your thinking are programs that other people installed into you.

Seeing the difference between your own thoughts and feelings as opposed to those that were trained into you, is a step towards being able to be true to yourself and have more possibilities open to you.

 

 

 

 

The Art of the Abuse , Bullying Cycle

Just because someone has momentarily stopped tormenting, bullying and abusing you does not mean they are being kind.

It can be easy to confuse the lack of cruelty with kindness. You may even project intentions into someone’s actions, assuming they have changed and now intend to be good to you.

How many times have they “changed” for the better? How many cycles have you lived through?

Don’t deceive yourself about what comes next or think it will be different this time. Selfish, self centered people will repeat the same patterns.

In fact, many abusive, narcissistic people know that a reprieve from the abuse on you will make you suffer more the next time. The act of starting and stopping their bullying tactics is all part of the same cycle.

Your nervous system is more severely interfered with when the abuse starts and stops. It creates a false sense of hope which causes you to be crushed with disappointment, disillusionmant and causes mental instability.

The starting and stopping cycle causes PTSD and other kinds of anxiety disorders. The brain’s system of fight or flight does not know when to turn off because the threat is unpredictable and imminent.

Coaching for Victims of Narcissistic Psychopath Abuse

gentlekindnesscoaching.com

New Job New Schedule – Escape Planning

I am getting settled into this new schedule. I have now been at my new part time job for about 2 weeks.

I am working as a mother’s helper / tutor for 2 wonderful children ages 9 and 12. I arrive daily at the house on weekdays at 2:30. I try to be here before the 12 year old’s bus arrives so she will not arrive to an empty house.

Then we work on her homework until her brother arrives at 3 :45 ish.

There is love in this house because the mother is kind and she encourages her kids to be creative and to be kids.

It is a very different atmosphere than the “kids should be quiet and not bother the adults unless they are being useful” household that I struggle to breath in , where I live, every day.

The ex in-laws I live with ensure their ominous, all powerful presense in “their house” and make sure that there is no one other than them that is treated with respect.

As far as they are concerned there are no adults in the house other than the 2 of them. The 4 other adults in the house, including myself are treated as teenagers. The ominous cloud that permeates the house is fueled by implied threats, shaming and constant boundary violation.

It is hard to explain without giving examples but I will not do that now.

Being in this new environment for a few hours a day is good for me. Now I remember what it feels like to be treated as an equal by another adult ( the mother who I work for) rather than a tool or a pawn in someone’s game to meet their agenda, with no consideration of my having a right to my own dreams.

I believe this contrast is good for me to experience. After a while you forget what “normal” is. When you are living in a household that is like a mini cult with everyone fearing the retaliation of the leader, you become lost in a fog of the shared psychosis of the group.

I am always the one that is called ” the most difficult person in the house”  but the reality is that they fear the fact that I can see through their brainwashing tactics now.

They are trying desperately to recondition me with rewards and punishments. But I have been doing extensive

How to Spot a Liar

This is a really great lecture by David Snyder about how to tell if someone is lying. There is all kinds of information in this video that you will learn and most likely see for the first time. 

David Snyder is an excellent teacher. He has a background in NLP, psychology, hypnosis, energy healing, martial arts, acupuncture and other related subjects. He is fun to watch and listen to.

He mentions the tv series  Lie to Me, which I ended up watching because of him. This tv series is really excellent and I recommend you checking it out. 

I learned things from this video and others by David Snyder that I never knew including the “triune brain theory” This is about the three brains that we have and how they interact with each other. I will have an upcoming post about the three brain theory that I am currently working on.

Check out this lesson by David Snyder. I think you will really enjoy it and you will be able to see some things in a new way.

Adult Children from Dysfunctional Families Dealing with Emotions and C-PTSD

This term “dysfunctional family” is a catch all basket term that includes a variety of types of malfunction within the family that can cause trauma and C-PTSD to the child.

Children of alcoholic parents fall into this category and even have their own phrase, which many of you have heard “Adult Children of Alcoholics.” Of course adult children of drug addicted parents, whether narcotic addicted or even prescription drug abusers also falls into this basket term.

The family can be dysfunctional when one or both of he parents are abusive in a physical, sexual, mental, emotional or any psychological way. Abuse can occur from other members of the family other than the parents. Even siblings and grandparents can cause the home to be unhealthy psychologically for the children growing up in it.

Some preteens ans teens are left alone most of the time due to a single parent work schedule and no other relative available. Having to parent yourself all the time can cause psychological dysfunction and important “brain software upgrades” can be missed at these ages. 

This may not be the parent’s fault and may be circumstantial but can be as devastating to the child than if it were intentional. The intention of the parent to be abusive or to create a psychologically damaging atmosphere to grow up in is not the main factor of whether or not the child is damaged.

If you were in any atmosphere that interfered with your normal social and psychological development them you may have C-PTSD from your childhood. C-PTSD is Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

C-PTSD is caused by years of being in various situations where you felt unsafe and you also felt trapped into the situation with no choice to leave it. 

As a child we are mostly sentenced to the life we are living in therefore there is a feeling of powerlessness about having to stay in the situation. It can feel like a prison.

If there was a divorce or other upheaval like moving a lot, then we may have been in multiple environments with different kinds of abuse, or trauma that happened at various ages and from various different people. This is the root cause of C-PTSD.

Complex trauma is built over time and compounded by one traumatic event or situation being piled on top of the next.

There can be years and years of traumatic experiences from emotional abuse by different relatives and non-relatives like babysitters and people that dated our parent. Moving and having to be the new kid at school and adjust to unfamiliar houses and neighborhoods can also be traumatic. 

Being different than the other kids at school who have more stable lives can lead to bullying at school, which further compounds the complex trauma.

As you were growing up you may have felt like there was something wrong with you because you never seemed to fit in with the other kids who did not share your trauma and inadequate support system.

The feeling that there was something wrong with you further compounded the trauma.

As you got older the type of abuse you were exposed to probably changed. As a small child you may have been emotionally abused by being ignored and minimized. As a teenager the abuse may have increased to aggressive yelling. hitting, or being thrown out of the house for periods of time.

Layers of Abuse and Trauma

The combinations and layers of abuse, neglect, and trauma that can occur are endless. Each person has their own experience and each person’s past is unique. Your story won’t be just like anyone else’s.

If you feel like something is wrong with you and it feels like it goes back into your teenage years or your childhood, then you probably have complex post traumatic stress disorder. 

I am going to write a series of posts about C-PTSD because I feel that so many people are suffering from this and either do not know that they are, or have no where to turn to for help with it. The results of C-PTSD can be devastating. Most people with C-PTSD have mental illness of one kind or another or a co-morbid condition of more than one mental disorder. 

Depression is common with any kind post traumatic stress disorder. There will also be hyper vigilance about things that feel threatening.

The amygdala has become dysfunctional and the fight or flight mode is likely to turn itself on at the slightest trigger of a memory associated with earlier trauma, even of the trauma happened before your conscious memory can remember. 

Trauma and abuse can occur in infants and very small children.

The memory from this age cannot be stored in the conscious memory system. The memory will be stored in the subconscious as feelings of fear and being unsafe.

 There can be triggers that set of your fight or flight mode and you do not understand them because they are from when you were too young to remember. If you came from trauma that you do remember, it is very possible that there is also trauma that you do not remember that is from when you were an infant and in your toddler years. 

Flashbacks are pictures, sights, sounds, feelings and other memories of a traumatic event or situation which come back to our brains like they are happening right now.

Emotional Flashbacks

Emotional flashbacks are a flooding of a negative feeling that overcomes you when something triggers a past trauma. Emotional flashbacks may come to you like anxiety attack or a wave of depression. They may come in form a sudden distrust of a person or situation that is triggering the memory of a past abuse.

Realizing that we may not remember all of the reasons why we experience floods of seemingly illogical emotions can help us to heal from our trauma.

We never feel things for no reason. People may tell you that you are overly sensitive or too thin skinned or that you tend to over-react to things, but you are none of those things.

If you are sensitive to people saying certain kinds of things to you, then it is a response to earlier wounds that were inflicted upon you. When old wounds are opened up and even pressed into, there is going to be an emotional response. This is no overreacting, it is simply reacting to someone throwing salt into an open wound.

Some of your wounds may have occurred too young for you to remember.

Some of your wounds may have caused during adulthood such as a partner being abusive. Even then this abuse was also probably opening older wounds that you already had.

Most people do not stay is abusive relationships unless they were trained to do that as a child. Abuse victims get that same feelings of being trapped into a cage that they had when they were growing up. 

Fight, Flight or Freeze

The fight or flight mode actually has one more possible part to it, which is the “freeze” mode. It is really “fight, flight or freeze.”

When we feel that we are in danger, especially if it triggers earlier trauma then the brain often goes into the freeze mode. This is a way of the brain trying to protect us although it may not serve us as adults. These post traumatic stress responses are very powerful because they are embedded in our subconscious. 

Our subconscious brain has a lot of power over our feelings and our reactions. In order to heal from complex trauma and post traumatic stress much of the work needs to be done at the level of the subconscious brain.

This can be done through meditation, certain NLP techniques, listening to audios designed for this that put us into a light hypnotic state. If you prefer you can go to someone who does hypnosis and specializes in C-PTSD and PTSD.

I will close for now because this is getting so long to read. I plan to write a few more articles about this topic. This was intended to the introductory article about this.

Blessings to all,

Annie