“The Peace that Surpasses All Understanding”….

To readers of this blog from the DoNMs website: I can no longer support that site in good conscience.  Details aren’t that important or that interesting, nor do I know much of  anything, except there seems to be a nasty dogfight between different websites that are concerned with the very same issues that we should be all united around: the effects of NMs on our lives.  Personalities, Ego, Competition, flaming, etc…are not the stuff of healthy dialogue about these important issues. Life is TOO good to be involved in what seems to be narcissistic behavior by the very people who should know better.  Who are looked to by others as leaders.

I just don’t have time for stupid bullshit, and I don’t think people who take these issues seriously do either.

However, I appreciate the readers from those different websites here, and you will never be turned away or told you don’t have the right to post your opinions here, whether it is of your religious, political or any other personal values you hold dear.

Lady Nyo

 

People come across this quote from Isaiah in the Bible.   I am not applying this quote in a religious sense.

Recently, my husband, son and I decided to make a radical rupture with a particular part of our family.  Over the years, too many years, there has been a lot of issues, in particular with one member.  The excuse of the behavior of this person can’t be laid on the doorstep of  years, which are many, but  in something more troubling.  Some people came in for a lot of insults, belittling behavior, forms of abuse and just…well, pure hatred.  Some people were held in esteem (few) and many were trashed.  It really depended upon the whims of this person, and it changed like the weather.

When we are children, we have few options. When we are adults, we have choices.  To continue to hope  a person will stop their abuse is rather naive.  Some people are driven by things  others of us don’t understand.  Perhaps they  are driven by jealousy, illusions about their importance in the world, competition, and other strange things.  Sometimes family members who surround such a person feed this narcissism because they don’t have the stones to walk away. Some use their religion to excuse what they do.

 John has an answer to this:  “When you see evil, you walk away.” 

 In my estimation, evil isn’t something with horns and a forked tail: it’s the conscious abuse of people who are vulnerable or just available.   It’s the pointed abuse of children, adults,  and after years of this behavior, it is more than ‘abuse’….it becomes a conscious evil.  It can become random, without thought by the abuser, and these people know the effects.  They take a  delight in what they have done to another.  With some people, they just see others as prey.

It took me a long time and some pretty intense therapy, but I realized  I was deeply afraid of this person.  There was no trust: this person’s behavior did not inspire trust or comfort.  This person inspired self-doubt, undercut positive things I and others had done.  Why have someone like this in your life?  They may be an important fixture in the family of origin, but living like this, never being able to trust the behavior of this person from one day to the next…well, this is hell.  And my little family decided we didn’t deserve this hell.

There are certainly ‘benefits’ for those who surround the main irritant:  by being ‘yes men and women’ to these disturbed people, by keeping their heads down, they don’t become the targets of these people.  But this is really a sort of slavery.  (and you can’t really trust this main irritant. Given time, the target changes)

Our little family, with the support of others, in particular our family counsellor and what was to become a new spiritual ‘home’ decided we could do better.

But why stop there?  We also decided to clean our lives of people who really weren’t on a positive track: this was hard because we want to give the benefit to all people and not act like the ‘main irritant’, (‘loved ones’ were disposable) but we also knew  a lot more was at stake.  The ‘health’ of our little family was our priority.

We decided to start attending the Unitarian Universalist congregation here in Atlanta.  I was nudged repeatedly by some good people before, but just didn’t think we would ever find a place where we were comfortable with the dogma of religion.  We wanted to protect our ‘religious intellectualism’, we wanted no creeds, no signing on the bottom line.  We wanted to sit a spell and feel a gathering spiritual energy and see if it permeated our own hearts.

So, these past few months have been a heady sort of change:  making that rupture with family who are abusive and finding a spiritual place where we can investigate questions, beliefs, and see how they hold water, where we feel there is growth….

And, one of the best realities is this: the majority of the world is NORMAL. They function in normal, loving, compassionate ways. 

We have relaxed with the knowledge  we have escaped something depleting of dignity.   Constant walking on eggs, constant fear  whatever is said or done is taken in the wrong way. There was no win-win situation there. This is no way to live…and you have to sum up what is on the other side: is it something you want in your life? Or is it something you just have to endure until the abuser is gone?  We decided to make our escape now. It had gone on too long.

Well, this has become a time of “Peace that Surpasses All Understanding”.  It is a peace that we didn’t think possible, but we had to clear out the underbrush to see the possibilities.

Lady Nyo

–

I have always known

That at last I would

Take this road, but yesterday

I did not know that it would be today.

–

Narihira, 9th century Japanese poet

Tags: Abusive behavior, breaking contact with family elements, Daughters of Narcissistic parents, family issues, Peace, self-esteem, Unitarian Universalists