The other night I was having all sorts of trouble sleeping while asleep…
I grind and clench my teeth when I sleep…
if you want your pencils sharpened, your pens destroyed, or to lose a finger… catch me when I’m sleeping and put them in my mouth when I’m not wearing my mouthguard – which is rare these days but now that they’ve stopped making the one I can actually sleep while using…
why do they do that, always discontinue stuff I like, need and use…!?
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fairly certain most exulansis isn’t exulansis but it seems like it is…
and sometimes what seems like it is is more interesting than what is…
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I’ve done this since I was a baby, every night without fail (one thing, at least, at which I don’t fail!), much to the dismay of my mother whose first complaint that I can recall (with my own memory rather than with hers for me…) was about the state in which I left the corners of my security blankets – shredded edges due to strong nibbling teeth, ragged untidy corners which bothered her but which soothed me when I rubbed them against my cheeks, so soft, which she, always the martyr, had to fix and make hard again (extra strong this time!)… so I could nibble them to shreds again (your extra strong will be worn down), to make them so soft…
One of the things my mother taught me – was that anything I could do, she intended to undo and ‘fix’. She was always trying to ‘fix’ me like my security blankets. And in the end she ended up breaking me with all her fixes into a form which became fixed (not as she would have wanted) and impossible for her to fix (as she wanted)… but that didn’t stop her from thinking their was a fix for what was wrong with me.
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one of the free online games – Text Twist – I like to play while taking breaks in between…
the games you like to play (as well as the ones you don’t) are revealing about you…
maybe…
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sometimes this can wake me up without actually making me fully conscious (which is great if you want to lucid dream… lucid dreaming is basically when you wake up in your own dream and can interfere with the dream, thus making it even more confusing by interfering with it),
and something about last night’s troubled sleep (some detail in a dream with which I didn’t interfere) made me realise (semi-consciously) that some of my grinding and clenching is due to looking for satisfaction but not finding it – it’s as though I’m trying to make a connection which just won’t be made (the cog teeth can’t find their perfect fit in the gears, so the machinery grinds to a halt but the system keeps trying to work, wearing out the mettle of the metal, causing fatigue and eventual breakage).
An inner wire is trying to touch another inner wire to carry a message from one to the other, but…
Something is blocking it!
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Another one of my favourite free online games to play – Hexiom Connect
for some reason my brain likes doing this… and likes to do it when other connections in life frustrate it.
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This is the science bit – Something in my brain is an obstacle to other somethings in my brain…
My brain has always been wired a bit skew-whiff… and maybe it knows it and wants to rectify the askew-ness, but that shit ain’t gonna happen no matter how hard it tries!
Why?
I’m sure some expert somewhere could wax lyrical about what’s wrong with me, my brain, and my wiring (if they gave a bleep… or got paid to do so – that ain’t happening!), but can their expertise be viewed as correct? Who decided their brain could pass judgment on other brains in such a manner?
Isn’t anything related to human brains… all about one brain studying others and deciding that it is right, and then bullying a bunch of other brains into agreeing with it that it is right, and that in its rightness it knows how things are and should be… and anything that isn’t in line with its dogma is wrong (and needs fixing, probably at great cost to those with the wrong stuff and great profit to those with the rights to the right stuff?
Bottom line – we’re all making shit up, but some shit gets a seal of approval while other shit gets branded as bunkum? But who decides which is which?
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there is joy in dyslexia which makes it worth having… even though non-dyslexic society wants those with dyslexia to know that you can be fixed (in other words – you shouldn’t enjoy what’s wrong with you!)
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In my childhood the ‘expert’ who decided which is which, what was right, what was wrong, who was a brain and who was not, and so on… was my mother.
My father was considered faulty due to [insert mother science stuff here].
Since half of me was faulty because of father input in being, and mother finding father’s input in me to be a sign of my being ‘just like him’ and therefore half-rubbish… I’m going to skip a bunch of stuff and cut to a random chase…
One of the things my mother taught me – was to hate.
To hate myself, to hate my father, to hate anyone my father pretended to love, to hate her (because someone who is all about hate can’t escape the consequences of their hate spiel even when they disguise themselves behind a facade of – I’m all about love!), to hate the world, to hate all the people in the world, to hate nature, to hate nurture, to hate… well, just hate everything, everyone, and you’ll be safe hating so you don’t have to take risks in not hating…
This is a penny which only dropped recently… really recently like right now!
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my mother never saw her hate as hate…
it was love,
love disappointed, love thwarted, love frustrated, love in pain, love twisted,
love which loved too much,
love not received, given, or shared…
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I’ve only just realised that my mother was my teacher of hate…
I knew some of my hate (particularly self-hate – which was/is my main kind of hate) was inspired by her, but…
While I always knew she was an angry person… and hated…
for some reason I never made the connection between her anger and all the hate which rained and poured in my formative years (usually on top of me because I was the easiest target and empty vessel for it, others were harder to hit with it and hit back…), later on, and continuously whenever she was around…
To be fair to my rather stupid self… much of my time, early and later on, was spent focusing on spin – spinning her story, influence, character and personality into something it wasn’t (and denying my own to do so – my story was irrelevant – and since it was a spin-off of hers, hers was vital and needed attention!).
Yes, mother, you’re a good mother, you’re caring, kind, generous, wise, loving, no one understands you, no one appreciates how wonderful you are, how much you have sacrificed of yours for them…
if it weren’t for them… for us… for him… for me… you could be so much more, free, successful, beautiful, happy… and maybe you’d stop picking on us…
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excerpt via Eric Berne: Games People Play – If It Weren’t For You…
my mother’s favourite free offline game… which she taught me (if it weren’t for her… was one of my usual versions to play).
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but maybe your favourite thing to do is pick on us, that way you won’t pick on yourself, can distract yourself from what’s wrong with you by making everything wrong with us and thus all your wrongs become right…
although picking on us is like picking on yourself because what’s wrong with us is what’s wrong with you (but we won’t make you face that too often as you have a tantrum when we do that… and there are just so many times making you laugh by singing Row, Row, Row Your Boat badly will ward one of your tantrums off).
You’re wonderful… pity the rest of the world is so awful!
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One of the things my mother taught me – is that she’s wonderful, pity I’m so awful!
She did her best to make me better… but I will never be better, I can’t be or she’d have nothing to do… no one to compare herself favourably with… and then there’d be the kind of silence which brings personal reckoning (she hated silence of any kind, especially those).
I’m so tired, exhausted, done for… can I go and be alone now… I realise this is selfish, sorry for being such a terrible child, a burden to you, after all you’ve done for me… yes, I know you could abandon me, you threaten it every time you have a tantrum… sorry, your tantrums aren’t tantrums… yes, I know you almost died so I could live (but who exactly thought it was a good idea to have a child… something something about ‘it’ making you less selfish?…)…
oh, for a moment when you would just forget about me… but when you do it brings with it a foreboding… for forgetting me means you’ve got a new toy person to distract you from me, and that toy will eventually let you down and then you’ll come looking for me with a vengeance… wrong word, sorry, I always use the wrong word… but I daren’t use the right one…
Right now I could explain, excuse, logically analyse, deconstruct and reconstruct, and spin her hate until the perpetrator became an innocent victim of circumstances, life experiences, childhood trauma, unfairness, and the cruelties of living, of others… make it seem like nothing was ever her fault (it’s probably mine)… bring sympathy, empathy and compassion out in full force until you might relate to her and like her (and probably agree with her that I’m the problem)… or at least you’d find it hard to hate her.
But I’m not going to do what I… was trained to do.
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this image represents what I’ve been trained to do…
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One of the things my mother taught me – was to change allegiances to suit whatever story you were telling in the moment.
Betray everyone who was loyal to you (and your most recent story) and then act hurt because they got upset at you for it.
I never learned this lesson…
I mistakenly thought…
but then again she claimed to be loyal to a fault – as many people who are disloyal do, and she claimed never to be able to betray or tell a lie – as many people who betray and lie do. She accused my father of being this way (he was) and said she was the opposite of him (she wasn’t).
I’m bored of seeing why she was the way she was, why she did the things she did, the ins and outs, the ups and downs, the topsy turvy, how the threads got all knotted, and so on and so forth.
I understand…
and I’m fed up of being understanding…
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if you notice the typo…
take a moment to wonder if it is deliberate, a test…
then realise it isn’t and does it matter?
Isn’t psychology, grammar… just like everything else invented by the human brain…
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being understanding has got me into more complications and trouble than not being understanding… especially when it came to my mother.
I had to pay either way, and anyway… because with her it was all about her getting her payment whether you owed her or not – she always thought you owed her, whoever you were! And whatever you paid her was never enough, never good enough for her…
One of the things my mother taught me – don’t be like her because… she’s still an angry bitter hater and it poisons everything and everyone, including you, the angry bitter hater who usually thinks they’re not one.
I’m at that age where I should be realising with horror that I’m just like my mother…
sometimes I notice aspects of her in me, but…
since she stole a lot of me (I won’t explain this – if you know the humdrum conundrum of narcissists you’ll understand this one), those aspects could be mine and not hers.
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nope, but it does make me hungry (if I’m really hungry the fingers would look tasty, hair and all, too)…
this would have made my mother froth at the mouth… and go into a long lecture about how wrong it all is!
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Figuring out what is mine and what is not mine has been a free offline puzzle I’ve been working on for decades…
sometimes it’s easier to sort out than at other times, because disentangling ourselves from others is not always possible… but occasionally the lines are clearly drawn (yet we paint over them anyway).
Once in a while I’m struck by sudden – why am I doing this, feeling this, being this way… it’s just not me, so why is it me!?
One of the things my mother taught me – was to be anxious all the time about everything and everyone…. and then hate everything and everyone because of it…
whatever I was… thinking, doing, feeling, being… was a mistake which had happened, was about to happen, would happen soon…
I could prevent it but I would fail to do so and the other shoe would drop crushing any minute happy… happy was never allowed!
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I suppose she also taught me some other things… but since I never finish anything I start (according to her), I’ll just leave it right here and now as it is…
What say you?
An Upturned Soul 
I appreciate what you share in this musing, as well as the witty and insightful images you’ve chosen (several of which made me laugh). I recognize some of what you’ve shared from my own experience. Definitely a journey of sorting, disentangling, pruning, reclaiming (or planting anew). Thanks for the post.
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Thank you very much for sharing 🙂
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I say that you’re wayyyy too hard on yourself (and that’s not finding fault, it simply IS). I discovered recently that there’s a narcissistic personality disorder relative in my family and as you’ve blogged about in other posts, she echoes what your parents did/do to YOU (I’m not up to speed about whether or not your parents are alive). This individual has ruined the lives of her four children (all grown now) and one in particular. The eldest child still lives in a sort of terror of her mother, what that woman will do or say about her; how the eldest child is never ‘good enough’ at anything, and the odd thing is that this eldest child says the same thing about herself now. As if it’s ingrained from all those years of hearing it. Damn. Looking in from the outside as I am, I wonder why the victims of these horrible people don’t just say “I’m FINE AS I AM and f*ck off and die if you don’t believe that” but the person I know who is the victim said about her mother “She’ll get me back if I did that, she’ll do something so evil you couldn’t imagine ..” Really? I’m so very sorry for anyone who is changed by a narcissist. So very sorry.
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Thank you for sharing 🙂
Yup, you’re right, I am hard on myself which is why I often tell people to be gentle with themselves – it’s something I’m learning to do, when we’re gentle with ourselves we become gentler towards others and it makes relationships much more pleasant. How we treat ourselves often gets passed on.
The eldest child of whom you speak may well have tried confronting her mother which is why she knows from experience that her mother will return with a vengeance. Telling a narcissist, particularly one who is your parent and thus thinks they own you and you owe them, to fuck off is simply waving a red flag in front of a bull – a very determined, persistent and stubborn bull who is self-righteously convinced that they are the victim and everyone else is the horrible person therefore anything they do in retaliation is just and justified.
And yes really, narcissist parents can indeed find things to do to their children which are so evil you couldn’t imagine them, which is why it can sound farfetched to outsiders when you tell them about your experiences. Although these days children of narcissists can just point to Trump as an example of what it’s like to have a narc parent.
Freeing yourself from a narcissist parent is incredibly difficult, even if you do finally manage to get away from them physically, you carry a pocket-sized version of them around inside of you who still nags, criticises and bullies you incessantly like they did 24/7 when you were their hostage, who won’t allow you to ever feel fine as you are, and makes you raggedly sensitised to the narcissism in society (which also never stops hammering you with the message that you’re not good enough, and have to be and do better – you’re too thin, too fat, not rich enough, too rich, not successful enough, too successful, not confident, too confident who do you think you are!, too empathic, not empathic enough, too stupid, too smart stop being such a know-it-all, too naive, too cynical, too soft, too hard, too young, too old, and so on and so forth). If someone tells you something often enough it gets lodged in the brain and it can be tough to oust it.
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Bruxism! I have it too – just got a mouth guard – hope i can get on with it. It’s often associated with mercury toxicity (along with other neurological ‘quirks’), and parasite infection (due to the mercury bombing the immune system so it becomes incapable of destroying parasites.) I see bruxism as a response from the inner consciousness trying to get rid of the toxic problem in the mouth – the amalgams. Do you have any?
Thought i would mention it, just in case it’s news to you..?
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Thank you for sharing 🙂
There are quite a few discussions online about mouthguards from bruxism sufferers, with a general consensus that using the expensive one your dentist makes for you is too painful to sleep in. I use a cheap pliable gel one which molds to your teeth, and use it on the lower teeth rather than the upper ones, I found on the lower teeth it is more comfortable. Those ones are the only ones I haven’t sleep-removed – as in remove them during sleep and wake up realising I’ve done that. It takes awhile to get used to sleeping with a mouthguard and figuring out what works best for you personally.
I don’t have any mercury amalgams, up until recently I’d only ever had one filling as a teenager, but I’ve heard about the consequences caused by them, and followed the story of a blogger who was having them removed. All the health problems she was having gradually cleared up once they were all gone. I don’t think she mentioned having bruxism though.
I’ve had bruxism all my life, there’s a theory that it’s hereditary, but it’s one of many theories about the condition, no one seems to know what causes it or how to stop it. I did find this article interesting, but it’s still speculation – http://energeticsinstitute.com.au/bruxism-tmj/
Best wishes!
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After reading about both of your parents i´m puzzled do they actually like each other? It seems like a cat after the mouse chase and after a while they switch sides. It seems like they hate and despises each other but yet can´t live alone. What held that dysfunctional relationsship together?
One thing i have learned about narcissists is to never go inside their head and try to understand them, its just confusing and you get dizzy like a cat that slipped into the washing machine and now gets the full centrifugal programme at 7200 RPM.
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Thank you for sharing 🙂
Ha! I’ve often been puzzled by that too!
They were obsessed with each other, and that mutual obsession created a very strong bond. For some people hate is better than love, they feel it more deeply and strongly (and also feel more important when they’re the object of someone’s hate – if you hate them then they must be important to you), and they find it a far more passionate experience.
My parents loved to hate each other, it was a folie a deux.
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Reading that was like living a life. im still processing it into my own experience. But wanted to say thank you in the meantime.
Great articulate thoughts.
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Thank you for sharing 🙂
I’m always in the process of processing 😉
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I sometimes feel like we had the same mother (and I suppose in a way we did). The fact that narcissism is on a spectrum and that it can also present in individual ways is sometimes blown apart by how formulaic it can be. I shudder at times at how similar our mothers are and will take a long time to read aboutq yours because I’m continually leaping into the past and the past and the past. You always say that you’re a mess (although I don’t see you that way at all – mess does happen and we’re all messy to some degree) and I think I get that. I’ve always felt confused and two steps behind everyone else – everything seems to go too fast. The more I was shouted at for that – by both mother and ex-narc – the worse it became. Freeze-dried brain syndrome. It’s very hard for others to understand that sense of feeling “less than” even when you know you really aren’t. As you say, we have a pocket version of our very own for reference purposes.
Great post. 🙂
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Thank you very much 🙂
The past is relevant to the present, so when we’re nudged to go back it’s usually because something in the now has linked to something in the then, and in some ways it can be an opportunity to heal both here and then, perhaps by understanding a thread of the story thus far. What triggers a leap into the past can be as simple as wondering why we’re acting or reacting in a certain way, or asking ourselves – Why do I do/think that? or it can be a deja vu where we find ourselves in a similar scenario to one we’ve been in before, and the mind tends to give us a list of all the other times which can go way back as it searches for ‘patient zero’ – where it all began.
The thing about narcissists like our mothers is that they were petrified – hence the rigidity of their systems which they then imposed on others and why these systems had to be imposed on others. The shouting is when they’re panicking and are desperately trying to regain control. Their anger masks their fear but you pick up on the fear anyway – you could say the fear you’re picking up on is your own because their anger inspires fear, and there is that, but their anger is scared anger. The ‘freeze-dried brain syndrome’ is theirs passed onto you – you experience what’s going on with them, but you don’t have the reasons and causes which they have for having it so you get stuck with an issue which doesn’t have a personal explanation.
One of the things I like to do is explore those parts of me with which the narcissists in my life have had a problem, and review them from the perspective of it not being a problem. My mother had a problem with my ‘mess’. Funnily enough, for all her ‘I’m such a queen of tidy’ and her saintly martyric ‘I always have to tidy up after messy others!’… opening one of her drawers or cupboards unleashed a pigsty hidden within. It was all a facade, a facade she was driven to create with terror nipping at her heels. That terror was passed on, but… once it become ours, it can be befriended 😉
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Yes. That leap into the past is important for figuring out what’s going on in the present. I’ve made the connection that part of the reason why I was an angry adolescent/teenager is because of the angry atmosphere I was raised in – it’s what was “normal” for me. And, I was also a teenager and subject to shifting emotions anyway. At the time it started to dawn on me that some people were raised quite differently, that not everyone was coming from a similar background. I started to learn about being my own person from many of the people around me as opposed to my own family. Even so, I never really felt like I fit in with my peers, I often felt like an outsider.
What you point out about not having an explanation is very true. There’s an emotional load without a personal connection. I still get freeze-dried brain syndrome, and can’t think myself out of a paper bag. It usually happens when I’m confronted with over the top emotional accusations.
I like your idea of exploring the parts with which the narcissists have had problems. That’s a really helpful suggestion. I frequently was accused of being stubborn and intractable. You’re right about befriending the terror. 🙂
Thanks for your very insightful and helpful response. 🙂
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In some ways the freeze-dried brain syndrome is a vital component of your instinct – it’s letting you know that someone is dumping their unwanted stuff onto you. Sometimes not being able to think is exactly what you should be doing. Sometimes it’s not your task to think about the things which someone else should be thinking about.
When someone is into ‘OTT emotional accusation’ mode, it’s best to let them get it out of their system, interrupting them simply makes the trial and tribulation last longer. They’ve taken a trip into a past of their own and they’re not really there in the moment with you anymore – you’re a blend of everyone who has ever hurt them, every pain they’ve ever suffered has taken the reins of their mouth. I tend to wait for people to run out of steam and try to figure out what they’re really looking for – usually they just need someone to hear them out, acknowledge their pain and hurt, and maybe an apology for all the wrongs and injustices they’ve suffered. When someone accuses you of something you haven’t done, they’ve been triggered somehow, are caught in a drama-loop – you’re not you anymore to them…
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(Sorry for the late response – I was brain busy at a conference/workshop in preparation for my next job.)
Very good point. It’s true that I’m not responsible for thinking about things that someone else should be thinking about (and I love how you have put that). Someone I know tends to do that OTT stuff fairly often and then gets upset when I don’t respond, starts demanding a response, in fact. That causes me to withdraw even further. Trying to figure out what they’re really looking for makes complete sense. Thanks. 🙂
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Your posts are so precious. I enjoyed one about Pluto Saturn electrification (T Pluto is squaring Saturn in my 12th, and then in the next decade all the other planets in my little 12th house nest – fun times…. projections projections of others, I mastered that one for sure) , and those about the lessons from your mother and father. It sounds funny but that ‘mother’ at the moment is Germany to me… I won’t even try to explain.
Keep up great writings… You are one of those few who somehow always manages to stay fresh, regardless of a repeating topics… I mean life is a repeating ball…
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Thank you very much 🙂
I’ve grown to rather like the vibe of the Pluto/Saturn square – Saturn reins in Pluto which is helpful, gives it more structure, and they’re both similar in certain ways, they both like the spartan, the authentic, the bare bones.
However the 12th house is a tough one, energies work differently in it, they get transmogrified.
I can relate to the concept of ‘mother’ being Germany for you. ‘Mother’ and ‘father’ aren’t just about our birth parents, and ‘parents’ can be anyone or anything. We carry a ‘mother’ and ‘father’ within us and transfer those ideas to others, to things – in some ways it’s us but we need for it to be outside of us.
Have you checked out the Astrocartography of Germany for your chart? It’s an intriguing way of looking at the world and the places we travel to, live, and how they affect us.
Also worth trying is replacing your place of birth with the place in Germany which means the most to you and seeing how it changes your natal chart – how it shifts the planets and who you become because of the shift (you’re still you, but the shift may mean different things are brought into play and prominence).
Remember that everything you’re going through… it’s you creating yourself! Your atoms need the friction to spark!
Take good care of yourself!
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