Dictating who you are

[Call Me Cordelia]

So what do you call it when the pwPD decides for you what your likes and dislikes are and then ignores or rejects all evidence to the contrary? Like flat out refuses to believe you when you tell them, Mom, I have never liked carrot cake but they still give it to you for your next birthday? And then guilt trips you about how you don't actually need to worry about your waistline or makes up some other farfetched explanation for why you aren't inhaling your "favorite" cake?

I have maaaaaany memories along this theme. Today the one that came up was my mother dictated my favorite color for me from before I was old enough to know my colors. For years I told her it wasn't so. When I got married, she told her whole family oh no Cordelia's going to want a yellow wedding and most people look awful in yellow. My wedding was blue. My mother took credit for talking me out of yellow. At that point in my life I had stopped trying to figure her out and her relatives weren't really part of my life so I just shrugged it off because so what my wedding wasn't yellow. I never wanted it to be. But what the heck.

At this point in my life I have done pretty well with figuring out what I actually do and don't like. I in fact have developed quite a good sense of style, if I do say so myself! But every so often, this casting of myself as this imaginary person still catches me off guard, questioning myself unnecessarily.

[Call Me Cordelia]

The ones like favorite color and things like that are obvious and not so very important in the end. But the stuff like... Well, you always wanted to be a nurse. And you've always been afraid of water. That kind of projection is more subtle and hard to grasp. And has more impact. Because well hello I did NOT want to be a nurse! Not really. And I did NOT want to marry my high school sweetheart anymore! And so forth. It's a sense of being on the defensive for simply seeking to go about it my life, even though I've gotten away from the situations that put me there to begin with. It's also a pervasive sense that I'm not allowed to change or change my mind. Or when I do, I feel that defensiveness and fear. Does anybody relate?

[Poison Ivy]

I can relate to this. One example: When I was a child, my "what I want to be when I grow up" job was physician. I discovered in high school that although I was generally a good student (e.g., I was the valedictorian of my high school class), I struggled in science classes. I did not pursue medical school. At some point, either both parents or only my mom said something like, "Can you believe that daughter wanted to be a doctor; how could she; she has no compassion." I was and remain stunned by this. I am very compassionate and I am much more empathetic and sympathetic and in touch with emotions (mine and other people's) than either parent.

[walking on broken glass]

I can think of similar things. My parents at one point decided that I only eat white bread and I don't like wholemeal or brown bread. Every time I would go back for a visit and they were going out to buy bread for breakfast, they would say 'oh but we buy brown bread and you don't like it'. Every single time I protested that this was not true and yet we kept having this discussion.

Another favourite family myth was that I was squeamish about blood tests. It so happened that once when I was little and had my blood taken for tests, when I stood up to leave I fainted, and since then the myth of me being scared was created. It also grew to include any medical stuff, "WOBG does not like hospitals / cannot stand needles etc." Well, of course hospitals are not my favourite place (!) but I've never been particularly squeamish.

When my partner and I got a cat, my dad said to me that there is no way I would clean up the litter and that I would make my partner do all of that because, again, I was too delicate and squeamish to deal with it. I honestly have no idea where this came from. We never had any pets and I've always been a very clean and responsible person.

I think it's not enough for them to just exercise control over our likes and distastes; they want to create false ones to control too.

[Rebel13]

Maybe this is indicative of their lack of connection to reality? I have been noticing this kind of, let's say, compartmentalization recently at the political level where I live. Kind of the opposite, like, no memory of things that actually happened, and the events or actions would be denied if they were brought up.

I was ALSO told my favorite color was yellow when it was actually blue. Another one that came up in therapy recently -- I used to have pain on ovulation, and when I told my mother that as a young teen, she said, "Well, I'VE never felt that, and I don't believe you do either!"

Sheesh. They really can, and do, make up their own "facts", and stick to them as long as it pleases them, at the same time letting go of any reality that doesn't. It boggles the mind.

[Prototypian]

I haven't seen this.  I think the ocpd person doesn't want to control their spouse as much as to conform the world to their rigorous views.   A difference is that my spouse got angry that I believed that "cyclists should move over when there is a backed up line of cars behind them"

My spouse was furious at me for this belief not because I was acting on it or anyone was hurt by it but because according to the law the cyclists had the same rights as any car.   

Note that she wasn't assuming I should believe or feel some way.  She was furious that the law stated one thing and I felt or believed something else.   And this was anger enough to be violently mad at me.   To the point that I got out of the car and walked home.   

But there was never a misappropriation of my own beliefs or thoughts.  And I've never been treated as though I don't exist, only that any views I have outside of what are expressly the rules are very much wrong.  But I don't think it's to specifically control me.  She gets just as angry at a stranger for jaywalking or a kid riding a bike without a helmet as she does at me and the anger is not the act, it's when that person dismisses the obvious rule.

[MaxedOut]

I don't remember if it had a name but I remember discussion of this in books/resources about borderline. And explanation of it as related both to identity shakiness, fear of abandonment, and shame avoidance. That we are good when mirrors of their views or mirroring their conceptions of us and bad and threatening when not. That really helped my better understanding of some of the behavior towards me when my ex was splitting on others or just had really visceral responses to things I thought of a typical differences between people.

I don't remember the more in depth bit I read but... one dive mentioned that at the more extremes it can pretty depersonalizing towards us and regressive in mid state for them, like we are almost naughty dolls/teddy bears. Ring a bell for anyone?

[Rebel13]

Oh gosh, I was my mom's naughty dolly ever since I got old enough to have opinions she didn't like.

[NarcKiddo]

This resonates all over the place for me. And started so early that I just went along with it because doing anything else was unwise. The saddest example of that was at my grandfather's funeral, when we all went back to the house afterwards. My grandmother had laid on sandwiches and cake. My mother and I were sitting in her dining room with her and she offered us some food. My mother said "Oh, no thank you, I'm not hungry." She had the look and tone I knew well, which told me that by "I" she meant "We", so I said I was not hungry either. That made my grandmother nearly cry. I am not sure why - whether it was the rejection of the food or her realising that I actually really wanted to eat her lovely cake.

The comment about being a doll also resonates hugely because that is exactly how my mother treats me and my sibling. We are given clothing and jewellery that does not suit, or does not fit properly, or that we do not like and we are expected to wear it.

Because my mother has two children we are interchangeable. So she will declare that one of us likes/dislikes something when in fact it is the other. She will also use our names interchangeably or tell stories about one that actually apply to the other.

I am in my 50s now and until I started waking up in my 40s I actually had no idea who I am or what I like. I am only now finding out. So well done to you, Cordelia, on figuring that out. It's not always an easy task.

[Catothecat]

This was ongoing in interactions with my narc mom, who wasn't even PD.  She had her own narrative about me and my life and it included a lot of fiction that let her off the hook when it came to what exactly happened and how she behaved.  She resisted admitting she was wrong, or that she did something she shouldn't have done.  So what she would do is change the circumstances of the event to arrive at a conclusion that suited her own needs.  What actually happened, what I actually DID, didn't matter.  What mattered was what she thought and after the thought became a fact in her mind, nothing I said would change it.  She might temporarily agree with me but within a short time was back to her original narrative.

It took me decades to stop fighting it, to stop arguing with her, and get past it by forcing a change in subject or even by saying, I don't want to hear it.  Just stop.  Naturally she wouldn't for very long but it temporarily lowered my blood pressure!