Getting over the fear of being "exposed"

[Invisiblewoman]

I grew up with a complicated mother whose favourite past-time was making me feel like everyone knew about my shame. Which of course was something she invented.

I remember after going through a round of physical abuse and her telling me, "everyone just thinks you feel sorry for yourself" with an emphasis on "everyone."

I had this profound sense that everyone did know something was wrong because my mom would shamelessly tell people her thoughts on me. I can remember overhearing a phone conversation she was having with someone, and in a very catty, and nasty sounding way she said, "my fucking daughter is home again."

She had kicked me out of the house and had people calling the police because legally I should have been home.

I once remember her provoking a situation that caused me to go homeless, and her saying to my face that she was going to lie and get away with it. And she did, and everyone acted like I had victimized her, again.

I remember being an adult in my late 30s and having a man (a total stranger) come up to me in our church and accuse me of treating my mother horribly. My mother used to let her son beat me in front of her for things like, telling a high school guidance my feelings.

I had a partner who suffered with a physical disability, and she said to me one day, "If you don't tell me what his disability is I will tell the entire family that your relationship is failing."

Literally our relationship was built on threats of exposure, with false accusations and emotional blackmail.

My other relatives literally did the same thing all over again when she died. Communication via triangulation with veiled threats of exposure and telling me "everyone thinks you're just angry, even [person I had never met] says you're just an angry person."

When I asked them for direct communication they immediately back peddled accused me of imagining things, and then said, "don't drag so and so into this."

I remember responding and saying, "what do they have to do with the conversation we are having?" When I pointed out the discrepancy in what they said to me, they of course dragged that person into the conversation to put me down, and accuse me of lying.

I am just so done with the fuckery. I am going to talk more about it.

[Invisiblewoman]

I started attending a meetup with a good group of people. Surprisingly a lot of them are connected with groups for narcissistic survivors, so i feel pretty comfortable there.

My biggest issue is avoidance and social phobia. I literally think it stems from my upbringing because you just don't always trust situations, and if I am feeling stressed I may trust a situation for the wrong reason, get into a bad relationship/ friendship etc. So I am slowly picking my friends. I have a solid friend from high school which helps. I also visited the tool box and reviewed stinkin thinkin. Remembering the abuse and trying to understand why, and how it seems to affect my whole family dynamic is a bit much at times. So I do keep healthy, and do everything I can for my physical health (abstain from alcohol and weed). it's very easy for me to withdraw and seek solitude, as I think that was my coping mechanism growing up.

I need to build my social network with solid folks. I did some deeper work for CPTSD and did some cognitive processing therapy which helped (basically it helps you re-examine the need to blame one's self while ignoring other heavily influential factors- like abusive family).

When I first started this process I thought everything was my fault and I had to fix my family. I needed to figure out the magic set of words for my family to get them to communicate with me like a regular person. There is no magic set of words. When I started reaching out I thought I was the problem, until someone told me they thought my family system was classically narcissistic, and invalidating. I thought because of the things I was told, and the threats and demands that were made towards me was because I must be the problem. Maybe I am the narcissist. I really didn't try to complain, or play victim. I recognized a typical unhealthy pattern and said something.

I heard it somewhere that unhealthy families will view you trying to assert yourself respectfully as adversarial. I felt they were trying to train me to be a doormat.

[moglow]

When I first started this process I thought everything was my fault and I had to fix my family. I needed to figure out the magic set of words for my family to get them to communicate with me like a regular person. There is no magic set of words. When I started reaching out I thought I was the problem, until someone told me they thought my family system was classically narcissistic, and invalidating. I thought because of the things I was told, and the threats and demands that were made towards me was because I must be the problem. Maybe I am the narcissist. I really didn't try to complain, or play victim. I recognized a typical unhealthy pattern and said something.

]InvisibleWoman, that's all so very true! When I started reaching out ... things shifted for me. A weight lifted. Sane people reached back with stories of their own [about my and their own families], some I'd have never expected or imagined. I started seeing daylight, like a light at the end of a long tunnel.

I heard it somewhere that unhealthy families will view you trying to assert yourself respectfully as adversarial. I felt they were trying to train me to be a doormat.

I've heard the same. I think we *were* trained as doormats, were/are very much seen as adversarial when we woke up and stepped out of our assigned roles. We've upset their status quo - and that's OKAY!! It's better than okay, really. We get to be our true selves [once we figure out who that is!].