Negativity

[escapingman]

My uNPDw just came back from a few days away with a friend, she has not stopped complaining. She must have spent 2 hours telling me and the kids stories in a monolog so no one has had a chance to even interact, all bad, negative, absolute awful. Me and one child (the Scape Goated one) was just looking at her, then at each other and rolled our eyes. The Golden Child laughed and thought it all was hilarious and was complimenting uNPDw how good she was at telling the stories. SG asked me to come with her and she was complaining to me how fake it all was, thank God, and why would anyone only complain. It is always the same, I am tired about it. So uNPDw had been telling all this stories, oh sorry more are to come but she said she doesn't want to tell them all at once, I asked so your weekend was crap then. Oh no, she answers, it was a great weekend. You could bl**dy fool me, 2 hours rant about everything that went wrong and how horrible the friend was. But I know from experience, all negative, all the time, then I am supposed to feel sorry for her for going on holiday.

At least one of my children gets it now, we are both sick of it.

[JollyJazz]

Sorry to hear that.

Yes, my PD brother is just a font of negativity and complaining, I think the lack of empathy is reflected in how tiresome for the listener it is when someone just complains non-stop!!

[moglow]

Mommie dearest in a nutshell. Try to lighten the mood or change the subject and she'd feel all put upon, that she "just needed to vent!" Oh. But that's all we seem to hear. And she wondered why no one calls or visits? 🤷🏻

[j.banquo]

It's so exhausting, I hear you. Relentless, about people she cares about, so you're weirdly defending people you barely know.

The expectation of negative things happening too - some people I know don't feel loved without negative attention, and positive attention makes them recoil. They're not all PD people, but the ones who are it's obvious, since they expect everything to be negative, but have no awareness they're doing it.

One person saw me sitting with a notebook, pencil in hand, in thought, and concluded that I was going to take notes during our casual coffee, was offended, and wouldn't hear otherwise. She was increasingly delusional about my actions, and what I think of her, and it meant she didn't feel loved.

[GentleSoul]

Escaping Man, Sorry to hear that, I very much relate on the endless PD negativity.  It sucks all air out of the room and is exhausting.

Jolly Jazz,  Thanks for expressing your thought that it is due to the classic PD lack of empathy meaning they never thought about how it might impact others.  Interesting. I had never thought of it that way.  I tend to agree with you.

[j.banquo]

I think the lack of empathy is reflected in how tiresome for the listener it is when someone just complains non-stop!!

Jolly Jazz,  Thanks for expressing your thought that it is due to the classic PD lack of empathy meaning they never thought about how it might impact others.  Interesting. I had never thought of it that way.  I tend to agree with you.

I very much agree with this.When I made sure to always ask PDP how their day was, how whichever new health problem was, I noticed that nothing I did taught them to do the same. It was almost always a monologue I'd have to interrupt to get a word in edgewise, and then I'd get interrupted, subtly undermined, or insulted. Or a request for me to not interrupt, lol.



I have some thoughts that may help someone reading this navigate that lack.



I've broken through. Once after I was made to play "here are 10 examples to demonstrate what you already know," I gave up, PDP got angry. But I laughed, and automatically said "it's okay, I'm not upset with you, we can talk about it later. It's okay, it's just something it's important to me for you to understand." She was dumbstruck, and looked surprised, and then she wasn't angry and manipulative, she became calm.

The only other tactic that has ever worked to stop manipulation and gaslighting in their tracks has been to suddenly and end the conversation by bringing it back around to the beginning, and giving a non-specific apology.

So, the negativity, it can be interrupted when necessary.



She became even more hostile after that, I think, because it must have felt like a trick. That was a day or two later, though, after she had had time to think, and dwell.

The lack of empathy is, functionally, complete, pathological, and results in the intent to cause even total destruction of someone they care about. They don't have access to their empathic abilities.

At the same time, I really think that that lack of empathy isn't always there. I think that they misunderstand what their their instincts are telling them. When I learned that one of the several behaviors I'd picked up from my family were hurtful to others, often it was because someone important said "this is hurtful to me." I'd explore it, decide if it was a universal thing, and meanwhile respect it as a boundary.

Often I just simply changed. An ex said you know, you can act excited to see people and even hug them, and I felt relief and said really? Oh!

PDPs don't do that though, with neutral comments like that, they entrench and lash out, and they can't have empathy then, since they're in defense mode.



I bet it goes further; I know what that feels like because that looks like a CPTSD flashback, based on my direct experience, so who would they even be having empathy for? Someone causing them terror or despair in that moment. What even is the concept of another person in a moment like that?



It doesn't matter why they do it; the effects are the same, but it feels better to me to know it isn't precisely on purpose. I've recently seen PDs' cognitive skills and common sense and values just disappear, still i am sure they're there, because many helped to teach me empathy, by example. Respect, taking responsibility, cooperation, compromise. The resulting behavior is also so blindly self-destructive and so contrary to even common sense strategy, it's clear that they're panicking. They became 100% delusional about what the obvious results of their actions would be, and they usually know.

They have real instincts about those things. They've even correctly identified parallel experiences from their lives, and shared what they learned in order to help me or comfort me.

[blew]

Negativity? It starts with the first words out of her mouth in the morning and it never lets up.  EVERYTHING is negative.  Every single event, large and small, that happens during any given day, is fodder for the complaints, judgmental statements and anger.  No one is good enough.  Everyone else is flawed. And not just flawed, but "an idiot," "stupid" and any number of other over the top epithets.

Then there is the conversational narcissism.  She can talk almost non-stop for hours (not exaggerating!) at a time.  If she runs out of "material," she'll tell me the ENTIRE plot of book she's reading or a movie she saw.  My favorite part is where she tells me all about a movie and then says, "You should go see it!"  WTF?  Why would I?  I already know everything that happens to every character.  The concept of "spoiler alert" does not exist in her world.

At the end of all this comes the lament about friends she's "done so much for" but have left her behind. She really and truly doesn't understand that being a friend means occasionally NOT talking about yourself, about listening and about understanding that we are all flawed....

[Liketheducks]

I'm on vacation right now with another couple.  The other wife is unpd.   We're in freaking paradise, able to travel during a pandemic, and ALL she does is complain, find fault, say mean things....it is EXHAUSTING.    She has a complete and utter lack of gratitude. Such entitlement!