Struggling not to fixate on PD people

[sambellscoup]

I've been thinking about the idea that they're not more important than me no matter how much they might act like it. But I guess fixating on their wants and needs and thinking up what ridiculous behaviours they might get up to next has been a coping mechanism for so long, it's like it hurts my brain to try convince myself I don't need to bother giving them space in my head any more. I can't seem to convince myself that their craziness is something I don't have to think about and plan around and worry about all the time. I'm hypervigilant about them even though I'm in a separate country, am almost NC now, and plan to never ever set foot in my childhood home again.

A large part of it is how unheard I feel. I can stand there and pluck up my courage to state my boundaries and all that will happen is they'll think up the fastest way possible to trash those boundaries. Or punish me for daring to speaking up. It just feels like a pointless exercise in which I get hurt again and they have a new piece of information to weaponise against me.

I'm so exhausted. I bet they don't obsessively keep me at the fronts of their brains all the time, but they've managed to program me very strongly to obsess over them even while they're not in my life.

I feel so different to other people around me. I'm afraid that people I meet will find out I have a messed up relationship with my family and dislike me for it. I feel shame over family madness my PD family members created, but somehow I'm the one carrying the shame.

I feel unable to remove them from my brain. Their behaviour will always shock me even though it won't surprise me. I feel socially stunted and an always to try make friends in case, as happened before, I get stuck with a "friend" with severe PD disorder and I don't recognise it until it's too late and they've wormed their way into my brain too.

I'm so exhausted. It's been years since I figured out what my family is really made of, learned about PDs and began allowing myself to have some boundaries. But I can't seem to create essential boundaries inside my own mind to keep them out.

As a child, I hoped and wished that one day, everyone would be grown up and sensible and would therefore try to get along and not act so crazy. I guess I haven't been able to fully let go of that, because I always wanted to do the right thing as a kid (probably the reason why I was scapegoated) and I truly wanted that cooperative, supportive environment in my family. I guess my inner child cannot yet accept that it's just not going to happen, and so it tries desperately to do what it knows best and appease the PD people since the shallow happiness they display for that is the closest thing to a genuinely happy family that my inner child will ever have.

My child self just wants a family. But she hasn't got one. And she's afraid of the pain of accepting that. So the boundaries don't fully close. But the poison coming in through the gap is too much to bear.

[ArmadilloKate]

I'm in exactly the same boat right now, trying to not have my life revolve around my PD mom and my brain can't let it go. Now that I'm very low contact (but still the drama finds me since I am local and she is terminally ill....see that sounds so mean 😪)...my brain is almost bored and anxious with no target to be anxious about. Tips welcome, just wanted you to know you are not alone in this exact feeling in this exact moment.

[Boat Babe]

This could be C-PTSD guys.  It sounds painful and exhausting for you and you need to find ways to help your mind and your feelings rebalance. To re-regulate your emotions and rewire your brains. It's possible, people have gone from pretty damn broken to absolute survive and thrive heroes. Therapy if you can afford it. A physical practice (dance, swimming, yoga whatever,) and a meditative practice  and being with good people. There are some good books on the subject too.

[ArmadilloKate]

Thanks BoatBabe, for me definitely to both CPTSD and therapy. Much better. Just dealing with the remnants. You really helpfully pointed me to OOTS on my first welcome mat post. 💕

[Boat Babe]

Thanks Kate. What goes round comes around. I turned up here in bits three years ago and people were AMAZING.  ❤️ Back atcha.

[p123]

Me too. After years I still can't stop myself getting massively stressed when Dad pulls another trick out of the bag.

I know I frustrate people on here. After all, hes not going to change and its no surprise when he escalates things.

[sambellscoup]

Thanks everyone for your replies, it means a lot to read your stories too and to feel understood.

I'm in counseling with someone experienced in CPTSD and dealing with narcissists. She brought up narcissism without me even mentioning it at all, so she really gets what I explain about my family dynamics.

After just having another session with her I came to realise that part of my fearful fixation comes from not so much what the PD family members will do, but from my fear of my own reaction. Fear of hearing and seeing myself get angry if they do act up, and the shame that I believe I'll feel afterwards. She basically told me I would be well within my rights to have a total outburst at them all, and the fact that someone had told me in entitled to my anger has calmed me down a lot! I need not fear my own anger if I'm actually allowed to have anger.

Now I have to work on getting in touch with it and not stuffing it down again. I've received this calm respite from the rage that's been simmering under the surface and the fear that was fighting it back, but the temptation is to think "Oh I feel better now so I'll stop trying to address this" which would just feed back into the process.

I have a clash of frustration that my voice has never been heard with the frustration that I feel so afraid to express myself because of the pain of being silenced or disregarded when I try. But if I commit to giving up and never trying to have a voice on some level, I'll have to repress that anger and frustration all over again and I'll be back to square one.

I'm really grateful for your responses and for getting to see other people's thought processes too, and knowing I'm not alone with all this baggage.

[Adria]

You are so not alone.  I've been NC for 30 years and all the feelings you describe can still get me.  Maybe it is CPTSD. It can creep up or come out of the blue and feel like I'm back at square one sometimes.

Anyway please don't be too hard on yourself.

Here are some great Jerry Wise videos that have helped me a lot: Maybe you will like them as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUvN6iXTN8Q (Building up the ability to go without love and approval.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hZvRf2tR2w (Three Steps to Self Differentiatian)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yN3n3zOA37I (Letting Everybody Around You Grow Up)

[sambellscoup]

@Adria thank you, I'm working my way through his videos over the past few days and I like how he explains things! Even the point that there are so different kinds of supply and if I want to stop providing supply, I need to not fixate on them because even though they mightn't be aware that I am, it's still feeding into the toxic family system albeit from far away.

Also my counselor mentioned something purely in passing while making a point about something else - that this pain was my pain, not theirs. That stuck with me when I left the appointment, and I was actually excited to think of how although they inflicted pain on me, it now belongs to me, and I get to choose what I do with it. It's separate from them. It doesn't have to tie me to them. So I think I saw that pain as something tying me to them, but now I can decide that it doesn't!

[sambellscoup]

Aldo I've come to recognise that when my mother sends fitting monkeys my way, the flying monkeys aren't innocent ignoramuses. They should be mature enough not to take part in triangulation. So today when I got a post to my FB wall baiting me, I deleted the post immediately, then blocked that relative and all the others on that side of the family since I barely know them anyway and they're all potential flying monkeys who gave engaged in triangulation before. Feels good!! And again, the pain of sadness that this whole family situation could have been so much better than this, that pain is mine and mine alone and does not tie me to them.

[Sapling]

I feel so different to other people around me. I'm afraid that people I meet will find out I have a messed up relationship with my family and dislike me for it. I feel shame over family madness my PD family members created, but somehow I'm the one carrying the shame.

Hi sambellscoup, There is some great advice and resources on this thread. I just wanted to chime in and say- this is really tough, always having your folks inside your head, and I can relate. You are not alone in what you're going through. I remember clearly having the same fear that people I met would find out I had a messed up relationship with my family and dislike me too. I lied about my family for so long because I was afraid that I would not "attract" love if I admitted what they were like. So, I want to speak to that fear of yours and say- if someone dislikes you simply because, in the lottery of life you were born into a dysfunctional situation, then shame on them. There's more to you than that. The reality (as you can see from this forum) is that a LOT of people survive their FOO and grow into lovely, kind, caring, generous people. Its not easy- some of us have to work hard to weed out the fleas or self-defeating coping mechanisms we inherited from our FOO and develop healthier habits and ways of relating to people. You sound like you are on your way to doing that. Hang in there with the therapy and keep sharing on here.  Sending you a 

[raspberryoxygen]

Hi Sambell, I also fixate on my BPD mom, thinking of what I'll do if she comes up on my boundaries (no talk about food, body, or clothes, no soothing her feelings over her own bad behavior, no letting her be my mouthpiece to relatives). I seem to ,,practice" being terrified of her reaction if I stand up for myself as an adult who deserves basic respect as a human being. But I think I worry over my relationship with her and over every other relationship because I think that's the key to being loved. If I just make it perfect in my brain, I'll be loved. But it's actually making my social anxiety worse. I'm making myself feel so unsafe. I have a visual image of my body with, like, extra legs and arms just dangling out and those are the obsessive thoughts about others that are making it so hard to go about in the world. Perversely, I can connect MORE to others by withdrawing these obsessive thoughts about my mother (and about other people, because all of my relationships are the same), even though my emotionally immature self thinks that these extra thoughts are THE KEY to relationships. So by pulling all the ,,dangling bits" back into my body I feel safe enough to connect with others. I can ,,hide" in my body and be safe to connect with others without all these pseudo-relationship-building-thoughts hanging around. I hope it makes some sense to someone. Hugs to you.