Relationships with adult children of PD families?

[mary_poppins]

Hey all. How is everyone doing?

Have you ever managed to have relationships with adult children of PD parents?
I am in several support groups and have connected on my phone with some women. They are all nice but our conversations can be very triggering. For example, if we talk about our childhoods, they might say something that happened to them and I might start crying about it-their situation reminds me of my own.
Or if I say something to them and I trigger them, they become upset-example, I told a friend to get away from a toxic parent and she became so upset for telling her what to do.

I am so confused because I want her to be safe and well but she received this advice as an insult-she thinks I think she doesn't know how to care of herself. I did not imply that, I just said that because she was in no contact with her family in the past so I thought she could do that again.

Have you managed to have healthy relationships with traumatized people that doesn't involve a lot of triggers and upset feelings?

I'll try to make friends outside support groups. I think support groups trigger me a lot, even though they are supposed to help.

[Call Me Cordelia]

Hah most of my friends IRL are ACONS!

However, that isn't the focus of the relationships. And certainly not a deliberate choice. I live in a quasi-intentional community as I have mentioned before, and really people who have adequate family support don't really need to be here like I do. So, we almost all have some level of dysfunction we're rebuilding from in the next generation. With some close friends, I'm able to be open with them about man I'm feeling triggered by this thing and we can talk about it, and I do the same for them. But most of the time it's just normal. With others I am aware of narc dynamics within their FOOs but I keep those observations to myself and don't talk about my stuff either.

But whether the issue is trauma and family woundedness or something seemingly unrelated, people are going to have conflict. All our stuff rubs up against other people's stuff in relationships and it's just part of life. It took so many incidences of having a conflict, feeling really upset and out of control, but then being able to get back to calm and work it out and still be friends that I don't have quite that keyed up level of fear anymore. I still dislike conflict of course, but it really is just a normal part of life. As children we didn't really get this lesson in rupture and repair, so now's our time. It's possible that some people aren't going to be able to do this well with us, and you will learn who they are and adjust boundaries accordingly.

It helps to get calm, then look as objectively as possible at your own part and start with apologizing as genuinely appropriate. Maybe you did tell her what to do. Or let your own emotions take over your interaction. Or whatever. You can forgive yourself and ask forgiveness, and then go from there. 9/10 chance she is able to reciprocate.

But I agree with you about the good of finding friends outside a trauma focused group. There's just so much more to life to be interested in and make connections over.

[Rebel13]

Hi mary_poppins, I'm working on some of the same problems. I have several friends with similar backgrounds to me and they have some pretty visible struggles. (I do too, of course!) I'm starting to untangle the skein of how my upbringing is related to friendship difficulties. It's complicated! For example, I've had the experience you share of giving advice. Of course we care about our friends and we want to help. But, when I dig a little deeper into that, I find that I was raised to believe I was responsible for solving all problems (I was the scapegoat! Everything was my fault!). I also find a lot of anxiety about problems of any kind -- maybe echoes of that childhood fear that I'll be blamed and punished? This makes me rush in and try to solve problems that aren't mine to solve. (Plus other people's problems look so much easier than my own!  )

Here's something related that I shared recently in another thread:

I brought this up in therapy and my therapist said, "But that is their journey, not yours." I want to talk to her about it more, but in that moment I interpreted her tone and manner to almost imply that I'm TAKING SOMETHING AWAY FROM THEM by trying to solve problems that aren't mine to solve. My brain got REALLY stuck on that idea and I have been thinking about it a lot -- because of course as a codependent people-pleasing fixer I would NEVER want to take anything away from another person!!!!!

This article has been helping me a lot with this. I must have read it 20 times by now. I feel like I have been posting it everywhere, but here it is again: https://rickhanson.com/be-peace-pain-others/

What I'm trying is, when I'm thinking about a friend and her problems, to bring the focus back to myself. What does my concern about her problem say about ME? For example, is my reaction coming from my own fear of being dependent, alone or isolated, or lost, or out of control? I try to take a breath to help the anxiety, then name and acknowledge whatever feeling is there. (It's amazing how hard this is. I had no idea how fundamentally the narcissistic abuse disconnected me from an awareness of my own feelings. I'm using an app called How We Feel which I'm finding helpful.) Then I tell myself, "I don't have to solve that problem." Which, I'm finding, is a big relief!

When I'm with my friends, I'm trying to get out of that problem-solving mindset and into the open-heart place that Rick Hanson talks about in his article linked above. Just trying to listen for my friend to talk about how she feels and what her experience is like, if she wants to. If it seems appropriate, I try to ask questions -- "What's that like for you? Why do you say that? What do you think you might want to do about that?" or say things like, "That sounds really hard." Much easier said than done, because of all of the dynamics listed above! I'm also trying to not give advice unless specifically asked, and then speaking from my own experience.

I don't know if any of that resonates with you, or is helpful at all. But thanks for bringing up the topic. It helps me to reflect on it more. I wish you good luck in figuring out what works for you!

[mary_poppins]

TY, guys for answering.

@Call me Cordelia

Yes, I apologized but she did not acknowledge that, nor does she seem to care. She kept going about the fact that it's not my right to tell her to go no contact. I agree, it is not. She is anyway suffering because of her mother and she brought up stuff in our convesation that was triggering (what her mom did to her)-so I advised no contact.

This is not the only time it happened. In our group we talk so much about no contact. The majority of people are no contact with their parents (or many of them have been no contact at least once) and when I bring up the fact that no contact works with NPD people, she immediately gets triggered and interrupts or says something against no contact.

Anyway, I don't feel good talking about our stuff anymore. This is ALL we talk about and it's exhausting and challenging. I feel either like a therapist with her or as a member of a therapy group and she's there with me. I am glad you have relationships with ACONS and have dealt with conflict. This gives me hope.

[mary_poppins]

Hi mary_poppins, I'm working on some of the same problems. I have several friends with similar backgrounds to me and they have some pretty visible struggles. (I do too, of course!) I'm starting to untangle the skein of how my upbringing is related to friendship difficulties. It's complicated! For example, I've had the experience you share of giving advice. Of course we care about our friends and we want to help. But, when I dig a little deeper into that, I find that I was raised to believe I was responsible for solving all problems (I was the scapegoat! Everything was my fault!). I also find a lot of anxiety about problems of any kind -- maybe echoes of that childhood fear that I'll be blamed and punished? This makes me rush in and try to solve problems that aren't mine to solve. (Plus other people's problems look so much easier than my own!  )

Here's something related that I shared recently in another thread:

I brought this up in therapy and my therapist said, "But that is their journey, not yours." I want to talk to her about it more, but in that moment I interpreted her tone and manner to almost imply that I'm TAKING SOMETHING AWAY FROM THEM by trying to solve problems that aren't mine to solve. My brain got REALLY stuck on that idea and I have been thinking about it a lot -- because of course as a codependent people-pleasing fixer I would NEVER want to take anything away from another person!!!!!

This article has been helping me a lot with this. I must have read it 20 times by now. I feel like I have been posting it everywhere, but here it is again: https://rickhanson.com/be-peace-pain-others/

What I'm trying is, when I'm thinking about a friend and her problems, to bring the focus back to myself. What does my concern about her problem say about ME? For example, is my reaction coming from my own fear of being dependent, alone or isolated, or lost, or out of control? I try to take a breath to help the anxiety, then name and acknowledge whatever feeling is there. (It's amazing how hard this is. I had no idea how fundamentally the narcissistic abuse disconnected me from an awareness of my own feelings. I'm using an app called How We Feel which I'm finding helpful.) Then I tell myself, "I don't have to solve that problem." Which, I'm finding, is a big relief!

When I'm with my friends, I'm trying to get out of that problem-solving mindset and into the open-heart place that Rick Hanson talks about in his article linked above. Just trying to listen for my friend to talk about how she feels and what her experience is like, if she wants to. If it seems appropriate, I try to ask questions -- "What's that like for you? Why do you say that? What do you think you might want to do about that?" or say things like, "That sounds really hard." Much easier said than done, because of all of the dynamics listed above! I'm also trying to not give advice unless specifically asked, and then speaking from my own experience.

I don't know if any of that resonates with you, or is helpful at all. But thanks for bringing up the topic. It helps me to reflect on it more. I wish you good luck in figuring out what works for you!

Hi Rebel. Yes, all that helps. I think I do feel responsible for my friends' problems and as soon as they have something nasty going on, I jump in to fix them. But you're right, this is a codependency trait. (I always forget that codependency manifests like this) This friend said that she is waiting for her mom to die so she won't need to go no contact (but NPD people live a long time-at least in my family) which means, she'll be at her mom's mercy until then. Which is fine, I need to remember it's her choice and people are different than me (just because I went no contact it doesn't mean others can do the same thing)-and have different mindsets.

I'll read that article and use your statements. Thanks.