really lost

April 12, 2004

i think i'm being hoovered but i just don't know.

i always said that even though i suffered like i did as a kid, my

parents always loved me. only problem with that is that had they

loved me, i wouldn't have suffered like i did.

and now i'm overwhelmed. yesterday (easter sunday) was the first

time i've been with my brother and mom at the same time since i

learned about bpd. their behavior was the same as always but thank

god now i can see what's going on. they ganged up on me - as always,

humiliate, discount, and ridicule me. so i finally stood up for

myself and copped an attitude with them. they both backed down. when

my brother pissed me off later, i left the house (we were at his

house for easter) and came home. i live just a few blocks away. my

mom showed up here a few hours later saying she didn't know i had

left and was, of course, concerned for my welfare, and hey, let's go

do some after-easter sale shopping. i didn't want to go. didn't want

her in my home. wanted her to go away but i went shopping anyway. it

was either that or she'd of sat there with me in my living room

wanting to talk and make me feel better. and of course making me

feel better means glorifying her and making me feel like an

insignificant idiot.

she's so subversive like that. an absolute master at sucking my

energy from me to glorify herself and confirm her worthiness to

herself. and she does it all under the guise of, i care about you

honey, of course i do.

i'm not sure which is worse, the moms some of you have who come

right out with their nastiness or the moms who are so manipulative

that even the person being manipulated can't believe it's happening.

so when i went back after we were done shopping (i went my own way

in the store), my brother looked like he had been crying or was

ready to. i had said a few smart-aleck things to him that were meant

to shut him up and they worked but i had never talked to him like

that before. so i came home feeling absolutely awful. i don't want

to hurt him. i'm tired of hurt. and i would continue letting him

hurt me but my counselor pointed out that my brother has done more

than his fair share of hurting me thruout my life so why am i trying

to be nice to him/help him when he needs it?

my mom is a seriously dark cloud who has disguised herself as

sunshine. i don't have a clue right now how to deal with that.

April 12, 2004

Busi,

I don't know of too many us on this board who don't have

manipulative nadas. Part of the hoovering stuff is something I think

all kos have to go through- whether w/nada or w/other co-

dependant/abusive relationships we've set up to immitate the

original way we were taught to love.

I hear you as I experienced something similar lately w/my nada's

visit. I think it is difficult to deal w/and I really like what Greg

posted about Stalin and Hitler. I mean it is very hard as an adult

to say we were humilated as children, BUT I THINK it is even harder

as adults to admit we are still being humiliated and hurt by an

abusive parent. It is much easier to act out on other people and be

dictators/monsters ourselves to let out the internal need for

justice and the illusion that we are strong in the face of abuse,

but in truth if we were really emotionally strong we'd just admit we

were abused and cry and move on.

In so far as your brother, he is acting, my guess, on you from what

he learned from nada too as my brother and I had some issues also

when I started coming out of the bp fog. He still doesn't want to

know too much but rather pretend he's not effected and granted he

does keep an enormous amount of distance between him and the foo. My

aunt on the other hand is more like your brother to me, but she is

learning as she stayed totally out of this last round w/nada and I

and knows not to get involved. But I've had to have it out w/her too

and make her aware of things and borderline personality disorder and

such.

I am not sure if your brother is receptive to it or not, being made

aware of the whole mental illness issues. That is something only you

can know of when to tell him or if you tell him about your journey

w/therapy. We, meaning the foo, we through years of therapy and

there wasn't a GD one of them that ever freaking mentioned

borderline personality disorder (granted this was in the late 80s

early 90s and so SWOE wasn't written, but they knew).

My cousins have gone through kind of what you're going throuhg in

that they both learned about bpd at the same time. One grew and

became strong and cut away and the other one still lives close to

her nada, gets hoovered all the time and still acts like a bp and is

super depressed for the most part. I can say it has been more

difficult for her to cut away b/c she was always the favored nation

and so she goes in spurts of growth- never to the level that we on

this board are at IMHO.

Best of luck to you. For me, I had to move and then move again and

I'm now thinking that even 1000 miles away is too close to nada for

me- ha! But yes, you got hoovered, and no, you're not at all alone

in this. We've all been hoovered multiple times on this board and it

is hard to break away. Give yourself the credit you deserve for

being able to name it and notice it- those first steps are the

hardest- and for me even after two years of knowing and learning

aobut bpd, my nada just hoovered me again. And so I've got to cut

myself some slack too and realize I'm human and tend to interact

w/nada like I would most people. The only problem is that even

though she isn't like most people w/her mental illness, she can and

does appear like most people. It would be easier at times if my nada

was psychotic like one of my friend's mothers so at least then it

would be more obvious, huh?

Kerrie

f

> i think i'm being hoovered but i just don't know.

>

> i always said that even though i suffered like i did as a kid, my

> parents always loved me. only problem with that is that had they

> loved me, i wouldn't have suffered like i did.

>

> and now i'm overwhelmed. yesterday (easter sunday) was the first

> time i've been with my brother and mom at the same time since i

> learned about bpd. their behavior was the same as always but thank

> god now i can see what's going on. they ganged up on me - as

always,

> humiliate, discount, and ridicule me. so i finally stood up for

> myself and copped an attitude with them. they both backed down.

when

> my brother pissed me off later, i left the house (we were at his

> house for easter) and came home. i live just a few blocks away. my

> mom showed up here a few hours later saying she didn't know i had

> left and was, of course, concerned for my welfare, and hey, let's

go

> do some after-easter sale shopping. i didn't want to go. didn't

want

> her in my home. wanted her to go away but i went shopping anyway.

it

> was either that or she'd of sat there with me in my living room

> wanting to talk and make me feel better. and of course making me

> feel better means glorifying her and making me feel like an

> insignificant idiot.

>

> she's so subversive like that. an absolute master at sucking my

> energy from me to glorify herself and confirm her worthiness to

> herself. and she does it all under the guise of, i care about you

> honey, of course i do.

>

> i'm not sure which is worse, the moms some of you have who come

> right out with their nastiness or the moms who are so manipulative

> that even the person being manipulated can't believe it's

happening.

>

> so when i went back after we were done shopping (i went my own way

> in the store), my brother looked like he had been crying or was

> ready to. i had said a few smart-aleck things to him that were

meant

> to shut him up and they worked but i had never talked to him like

> that before. so i came home feeling absolutely awful. i don't want

> to hurt him. i'm tired of hurt. and i would continue letting him

> hurt me but my counselor pointed out that my brother has done more

> than his fair share of hurting me thruout my life so why am i

trying

> to be nice to him/help him when he needs it?

>

> my mom is a seriously dark cloud who has disguised herself as

> sunshine. i don't have a clue right now how to deal with that.

April 12, 2004

Busi,

Wow! Sounds like you had a heck of a day. I'm sure it was pretty

exhausting! Yet your strength and the clarity you are getting really

shine through in your post.

I HEAR you on the " subtle abuse " stuff...where it can be so hard to

determine what is abusive and what is not - and sometimes even hard

to determine what happened and what didn't. It's like the FOG they

talk about really is a thick fog - where I know reality is distorted,

but I am not sure what way sometimes.

Interesting that someone has recently made me aware how much I second

guess myself - and I have become more and more aware of how mixed

messages send my mind in a tail-spin, trying to figure out what is

what, until it all tangles together in a heap.

I am revisiting the information on Double Bind (Paradoxical)

communication again - and some of the pieces are starting to fit

together in a better way for me.

Though the following information discusses double bind messages and

their possible role in the development of schizophrenia - I think it

can also explain some of the KO experience well.

I know I am not schizophrenic - yet I certainly have been reduced to

incoherent thinking and speaking in the face of double bind messages.

And even the section:

" Finally, the complete set of ingredients is no longer necessary

when the victim has learned to perceive his universe in double bind

patterns. Almost any part of a double bind sequence may then be

sufficient to precipitate panic or rage. "

can somewhat explain how, since I have been " conditioned " to perceive

the world in a " double bind " sort of a way - even PARTS of that

pattern can throw me back into the confusion, incoherence, and

sometimes panic.

Excerpts from a couple articles follow:

http://www.goertzel.org/dynapsyc/1997/Koopmans.html

Double Bind as a Theory

Bateson et al. (1956) proposed that schizophrenic symptoms are an

expression of social interactions in which the individual is

repeatedly exposed to conflicting injunctions, without having the

opportunity to adequately respond to those injunctions, or to ignore

them (i.e., to escape the field). For example, if a mother tells her

son that she loves him, while at the same time turning her head away

in disgust, the child receives two conflicting messages about their

relationship on different communicative levels, one of affection on

the verbal level, and one of animosity on the nonverbal level. It is

argued that the child's ability to respond to the mother is

incapacitated by such contradictions across communicative levels,

because one message invalidates the other. Because of the child's

vital dependence on the mother, Bateson et al. argue that the child

is also not able to comment on the fact that a contradiction has

occurred, i.e., the child is unable to metacommunicate (Bateson et

al., 1956).

The symptomatology of schizophrenia, it is argued, reflects the

accommodation of the individual to a prolonged exposure to such

interactions. Once 'victims' have learned to perceive their universe

in terms of contradictory environmental input, the inability to

respond effectively to stimuli from the environment is no longer

contingent on the extent to which stimuli from the environment are

contradictory in specific interactive sequences. Instead, the

individual will generally experience any input from the environment

as conflicting information without being able to discriminate between

different communicative levels. In the long run, this inability

manifests itself as typically schizophrenic symptoms such as

flattened affect, delusions and hallucinations, and incoherent

thinking and speaking (Bateson et al., 1956).

It is further stipulated by Bateson et al. (1956) that double bind

interactions have a pathogenic effect only if they occur in a context

where the accurate discrimination of messages is of vital importance

for the participants, and in a relational context which is

characterized by intense levels of involvement between the

participants. The interaction between parents and children within the

nuclear family is a typical example of such a relational context.

http://www.23nlpeople.com/double_bind.htm

Bateson writes (Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia):

" The necessary ingredients for a double bind situation, as we see it,

are:

1. Two or more persons. Of these, we designate one, for purposes of

our definition, as the " victim. " We do not assume that the double

bind is inflicted by the mother alone, but that it may be done either

by mother alone or by some combination of mother, father, and/or

siblings. "

2. Repeated experience. We assume that the double bind is a recurrent

theme in the experience of the victim. Our hypothesis does not invoke

a single traumatic experience, but such repeated experience that the

double bind structure comes to be an habitual expectation.

3. A primary negative injunction. This may have either of two forms:

(a) " Do not do so and so, or I will punish you, " or ( " If you do

not do so and so, I will punish you. " Here we select a context of

learning based on avoidance of punishment rather than a context of

reward seeking. There is perhaps no formal reason for this selection.

We assume that the punishment may be either the withdrawal of love or

the expression of hate or anger - or most devastating - the kind of

abandonment that results from the parent's expression of extreme

helplessness.

4. A secondary injunction conflicting with the first at a more

abstract level, and like the first enforced by punishments or signal

which threaten survival. This secondary injunction is more difficult

to describe than the primary for two reasons. First, the secondary

injunction is commonly communicated to the child by nonverbal means.

Posture, gesture, tone of voice, meaningful action, and the

implications concealed in verbal comment may all be used to convey

this more abstract message. Second, the secondary injunction may

impinge upon any element of the primary prohibition. Verbalization of

the secondary injunction may, therefore, include a wide variety of

forms; for example, " Do not see this as punishment " ; " Do not see me

as the punishing agent " ; " Do not submit to my prohibitions " ; " Do not

think of what you must not do " ; " Do not question my love of which the

primary prohibition is (or is not) an example " ; and so on. Other

examples become possible when the double bind is inflicted not by one

individual but by two. For example, one parent may negate at a more

abstract level the injunctions of the other.

5. A tertiary negative injunction prohibiting the victim from

escaping from the field. In a formal sense it is perhaps unnecessary

to list this injunction as a separate item since the reinforcement at

the other two levels involves a threat to survival, and if the double

binds are imposed during infancy, escape is naturally impossible.

However, it seems that in some cases the escape from the field is

made impossible by certain devices which are not purely negative,

e.g., capricious promises of love, and the like.

6. Finally, the complete set of ingredients is no longer necessary