Talking Loud, (they're) Hearing Nothing

I'm really interested in exploring the ways in which CPTSD and my experiences with parental narcissism and dysfunction have shaped my internal and external behavioral patterns. I want to understand it all. The good, the bad, the ugly and the sad. I think that's probably close to the proper ratio 3 awful things for 1 good. They are all lessons. For positives, I need to know them in minute detail to celebrate them. They have been denied to me. Obscured intentionally to keep me in a mental prison. I need to embrace them to utilize them. I want to know the negatives too. I was raised by a narcissist. There are unquestionably unwanted qualities that asshole passed down to me that I need to identify and work to surgically remove from my consciousness. There are products of abuse that I need to understand to heal and connect. It's exciting. I'm excited. Let's get started.

A primary way a psychologically abusive family systems betrays the fundamental roles of parenthood lies in trust. The child has none. Literally none. Quite the opposite, in fact. The child expects things to go wrong. Early trauma has made the child see threats everywhere. Instead of being conditioned for safety and healthy connection to the world around them at an early age the child is taught to view everything as a threat. I'm not sure people who haven't personally experienced this type of dysfunction have context to understand this. Even really well meaning and compassionate people. When I say the child sees threats this is existing on a subconscious level. He is not walking around saying, "Mommy, there's a threat. Mommy, there's a threat." The child has arranged the way he sees and interacts with the world at a base level in a way that will not be compatible with a "successful" life until it is corrected. He cannot grow properly because he has not been conditioned to see opportunity, only threats. His inner life is one of survival, not cultivation of success. The first step is proper identification. The ways that this type of dysfunction will morph and evolve to manifest later in life is unpredictable. Theres a scope of predictable responses but very little about the nuance of each experience will be identical. I am sure there are clues but again it's so far from most people's internal experience that words are incapable of providing an accurate description. It takes a level of self awareness and a courage to look at ourselves that takes time to cultivate. Patience is very important.

This brings me to one of the more insidious effects of this complete absence of trust. The child most of all doesn't trust themselves. This is at the root of their personal hell. This is a crucial point of healing. Through this journey I have been unpleasantly surprised by the ignorance of my entire family. My dad is hopeless. I'm not talking about him. All he gets is raw anger. It's his. I don't want it anymore. I'm speaking about the ones who were capable of seeing the truth but didn't listen to me or try to look beneath the surface. A child can't be expected to be their own parents. Someone is supposed to be watching them and knowing them. A child who grows up not trusting anything around or inside him always thinks he is wrong and that no one likes him. You might see all my life these days as rebelling against that. He has been taught that his reality would be defined by those around him, not by himself. So he listens to other people who have no fucking idea what they are talking about. Since he doesn't trust himself, he assumes whoever is giving him crucial life advice has thought about his unique situation and is operating from a more informed perspective. He believes them. Over and over I have been made aware this was never the case. There was no point in my life they had actually thought about it. The stuff I have assumed for literal decades they were qualified to talk about, it turns out they weren't. Even now they can't see that I followed their instructions for decades. It almost killed me. They are still giving me the exact same lazy advice and pretending I have no agency in the situation. I no longer have the time to accept that in my life. That perspective almost killed me. I will not allow it reflected back to me in the eyes of anyone. I don't care who they think they are supposed to be in my life. There is no one more important to a son than a father. If I gave up on that, I am willing to do literally anything to arrange my life into one that honors me in all my glory. We all deserve this.

I have to believe this is a common experience for mental health survivors. We survive the ignorance of those around us as much as the illness itself. Sometimes they are the same thing. I don't think most suicide would exist if we all knew how to love each other in the unique ways we need to be loved. So what do we do? How can we trust ourselves? How can we forgive those that deserve forgiveness and let go of who needs to be let go? I can only speak to my experience and hope it provides some clarity and illumination.

For me I had to sit with myself off my meds for a year and take whatever came my way to map the origins of my pain. Learning to trust is not the first step. Once I began to see my experience as one of trauma and abuse, as a reaction to something, not an organic illness due to genetics or the normal sadness of life I quickly realized I needed to feel what had been done to me. I needed to live in the mind my family created for me in order to free myself from it. It was fucking hell. Crying for a year. Being obsessed with killing myself for a year. With only my mom in my corner from a family perspective. I look at my journal from that time. It's difficult to see what was happening in my mind during that year. I can't in good faith recommend this to anyone else, but it worked.

I did it. I went back on my meds with the understanding I needed. With the compassion needed for myself to give the scared child within me who never developed the protection he has always needed. I gave it to myself by acknowledging him and loving him. I allowed him cry as much as he needed. There are tears streaming down my face right now. They are gifts. Every tear is a piece of all the pain and sadness they have given me leaving my body. I don't know when but eventually I will be drained. And I will be free. I cannot dictate the timeline. I can only remain true to my intent. I told him my inner child that he could be angry. He could threaten the ones that have stolen so much from him. If he needed to he could physically hurt them. I am not afraid to go to jail to protect him and free him. I am that serious about this. Luckily, he hasn't needed me to do that. I recognized how much sadness had weighed him down and kept him from who he was and I comforted him. My six foot four frame has hidden him and obscured his existence. I had to give him space to grow into me. Give him what the adults in my life denied him.

He didn't need a job. He didn't need a college degree. He didn't need to graduate high school. He didn't need to graduate grade school. He wasn't ready or properly prepared for any of that. He needed love and to be listened to and understood. The whole time. The fact that I did all things while he was still me should make everyone stare at me with awe. All those things prevented me from giving him what he needed. I told him that and that I was sorry I hadn't come for him soon. He listened.

My mom told me a story that broke my heart yesterday. Tragic and beautiful sadness. The day my dad left they called me in from Elephant Park. We lived across the street. We sat down in a circle and they told us he was leaving. I don't remember this next part. I think this is one of the breaks. As my dad pulled out of the driveway, my 10 year old sister and mother stood at the top of the driveway as I ran after the car. My sister turned to my mother and said "dad just stole Chris's soul". She was right. At 10. She's forgotten. I really wish she would let herself remember. I still need her. I still want her to love me and protect me. When I look back I'm positive that the distance between us is by my fathers and his wife's design. Soon after the divorce, within a year or two my dad took my to Florida to see my grandparents. We got to the house and he immediately announced he was leaving. I melted down. Screaming. Bawling. For hours after he was gone. I know now what that was. I had already been traumatized and retraumatized by the age of 8. If he couldn't stop himself from this type of abuse for a 7 and 8 year old, I would ask you to consider what the rest of my life with him has been like. There's saying everyone raised by a narc should embrace and use as motivation to leave: "If he doesn't care when you're 7, he's not going to care when you're 15 or 25 or 38 or 77." They have no choice. Find the strength to leave and do it as soon as possible.

Keep in mind my dad has identified as a yoga and meditation teacher since before I was born. A disciple of the Swami Rama. An icon of the new age music scene. I can't believe I wrote that bullshit but it's true. His mask is one of compassion and understanding. His life is about cruelty, abuse and lies. He gives me books that are profound. But he doesn't grant me the lessons he claims to have learned. Like here's THE book on trauma that I read, you should read it. It might help you and also you haven't been traumatized, I've never abandoned you and the problem is I've done too much. He has said all those things. Its abuse to tell someone with the book you give them you understand them and then spend your life belligerently mistreating them in direct violation of the teachings you share. Its totally fucked psychologically. I think dealing with it might actually lead to enlightenment. That would be ironic. Karmic blowout here I come. Imagine how confusing that is to child? How many layers of foundational lies my life was based on. It's fucking insane. I'm 41. It boggles my mind even now and I've been thinking about it for 35 years. How could a child be expected to navigate a man like this. Everyone knew he was like this. My dad's brother had to basically go no contact. I understand. When we reconnected he was openly disturbed as I described the way my father has behaved as parent. All he really said was "I had always assumed at least he treated his children differently". He didn't and the sad reality was it was worse. I tell that poor child running after that car to stop. That it's not his fault. That this is a monster. You deserved protection from him and goddamn the adults in your life who didn't give it to you.

This is a process for which there is no timeline. We must free ourselves from the agents of mistrust before we can even think about building systems of trust. There is no point taking cold medicine if you continue to sleep outside naked in January. When looking at our lives and making the types of decisions we must make, it is imperative to be patient. There will be no linear path forward. It will be fits of progress and clarity mixed with regressive slides backwards. The key is to begin to recognize the backwards slides for what they are. They are as much part of the process as as the progress. In these regressions we see our thought processes and our conditioned responses and we are offered a chance to change. We can create different responses. It just takes time and committed effort to change. The only way to change is to change. To forcefully and with focused intent change our inner dialog and our conditioned response systems all we have to do is stop ourselves from telling us one thing and tell us another. Over and over and over. I believe in all of you as much as I now believe in myself. Go inward and love the part of you that needs loving and tell them a new story. The old one isn't needed anymore.