I was in my twenties when I realized that it is not normal that neither of my parents wanted custody of me when they got divorced. I am so used to being neglected that I don't even know I was being neglected.
..."What can't be changed must be a burden carried on..." JESSICA LANGES in that movie with Liam Nelson, whose name I've forgotten. I also carry this burden deeply within my dna... once I saw a documentary about this very subject...this 89 year old woman was talking about her memories, tears running down her face and she began to cry until she couldn't stop and then help came, ...change body position and posture. ...change thoughts do an action that self is loved, accepted, and forgiven. ...go, for a walk, get outside and realize that feelings are fleeting and can change when you allow for it. My brain 🧠 must exercise that ability to practice control and focus. Because I know that I am that 89 year old woman 😊❤🎉
Took me 49 years to learn that “it wasn’t THAT bad,” means it was EXACTLY that bad. Omissions of love, safety, being wanted…they are abuse. My core belief in EMDR: I will never matter to anyone. I am so sad for little me, sometimes.
I love that expression: "burdened by being a parent." My narcissistic mother. I honestly don't believe she wanted me - she certainly behaved like it all my life. I felt her dislike, even loathing of me. Finally went no contact March 2013 at 54 years old. Have worked so hard at healing and recovering from damage done in childhood. I divorced the passive aggressive covert narcissist June 2017 and set myself free from 14 years of insane marriage! Happy joyous and free and learning all about me!! Thank you for your input
I think we all believe our mother's loved us. I only learned through a dream that my mother did not bond with me, when born. My Dad said that Anna could not love. I thought he meant that she could not love him! No, no one; because of her difficult childhood. See? Unless complexes are understood, life is rough. Take care of yourselves my bros and sisters.
I cut off from my mother in Jan 2022 at age 52, I am still in the beginning stages of healing, but I cannot tell you how freeing it was. I wish you love and light on your journey to healing!
Your stories resonate with me. I'm about to go total no contact after being drawn in by my elderly narcissistic mother after 25 years of no contact as she enjoyed her life without me and my daughter and grandchildren. Thank you for not making me feel guilty.
I CRAVED my mother as a child and she was mostly indifferent to me. She would often leave us alone, with grandparents etc. I would smell her nightgown to smooth myself. I remember waking up at 1am and not finding her home and going absolutely hysterical..damn near mental breakdown screaming hysterical. Years later I still have this crave urge and she’s still indifferent to me. The best way to describe it is a hollow feeling..
Well- that made me tear up. Just did inner-child work cuz the mom-craving reference made me recall issues. So sad. Best deal with this mess now that we are aware. *hugs*
I'm so sorry you had to go through that and are still dealing with her indifference today. You didn't do anything to deserve her indifference. The problem is with her, not with you. You never were the problem.
My parents emotionally neglected me. I was never shown any physical affection or kindness. I realized this when at age 7 or so, my friend's mom just randomly gave me a small hug and called me "dear". I was in shock that that happened as my own mom had never done that. My dad never even talked to me unless I asked him about something he was interested in (he was a physics proffessor). I was critized my whole life. I ran away at 15, went back but left for good at 19. I am semi contact with my mom now (dad passed about 1 yr ago). At age 59 my mom still finds things to criticize me about i.e. my hair colour, my car, my house eventhough all of those things are just fine. I only ever felt close to my mom one time when she coloured with me in a colouring book for about half an hour at our cottage. Thats it. Very sad. I have been in therapy and on medication for about 25 years. Currently doing somatic therapy. This is the 1st time i have told my whole story in such a straight forward way. Patrick you helped me and many others more than you'll ever know. Thank you 💐❤.
My issues have some similarities in that my mother abruptly dropped taking care of me at age three when my sister was born. She sent me out to play in a dangerous area alone. And just didn't seem to want me around. I couldn't understand how I had gone from being loved and some degree of focus, to dropping off the list of loved ones. She seemed always angry and put out. I got locked out of the high security apartments(had to be buzzed in, and often she wouldn't get to it, )so I waited for adults to go I'm, and I'd follow stepped on broken bottles(was usually barefoot) chased by neighborhood teens, and sent on my own to church several blocks away to meet some rich lady I had never met who happened to live in a mansion so that I could be a playmate for her daughter , all when i was under age five. I would not treat a pet gerbil that way.
My father's whole life was basically a movie in his head and he couldn't tolerate anything that would contradict it. Whenever I did something with him it felt like I had to agree with everything he was saying and I had to like everything he decided I needed to like... It all felt like a setup, like we were "playing" father-daughter. I hated it because the rest of the time he was either disinterested or very dismissive and irresponsible. It made me super aversed to "fake" situations and disingenuous relationships, but I also didn't know what true genuine connections felt like. I only started to actually connect with people after cutting him off, because there was finally place for real life and real emotions.
Another comment that gives me hope. I feel so validated. "I only started to actually connect after cutting him off....because there was finally place for real life and and real emotions"
@@ebbyc1817 glad you find hope from my words! I'm jumping in to remind you that those things don't happen overnight either. At some points it felt like there was no progress, it's ok to go through periods of discouragement. If it ever happens to you, take a break, relax, but don't give up. One day, years later, you'll wake up and realize you reached a point you never thought would come to reality, and you'll be proud of yourself for sticking to your (metaphorical) guns!
If you decide to write a book, I will pre-order it. I am a post-graduate in clinical psychology and I have read a lot of self-help literature, but the way you get the problem and analyze it, and your command of the subject, are exceptional.
I started to self isolate very young and i felt exhausted all the time. I haven't felt close to another adult in a very long time. Im a people pleaser and I don't like asking for anything or accepting anything. I always feel like I owe or have to balance out the gesture. I can't speak up for myself assertively and I've been extremely passive aggressive or just avoidant of conflict depending on the person and situation. I allowed myself to be used and i put myself in it at times even. I was told things that adults should converse about and not a little girl. I feel like i wasn't able to ever be a little girl or that i deserved to be protected. I would feel afraid during parties that someone might come in my room thinking it was the bathroom and i could not dare say anything about it to anyone. I took care of a baby at age nine. There's so much i have held inside of me and i have literally felt like i was a bomb at times!
Avoidant dismissive lone wolf. Yup. I’ve learned not to trust or count on support from anyone but myself. Seems like relationships always have conditions and withholding of love. I had a cousin over for a sleepover when I was about 9. My dad came home drunk and beat up my mother. My cousin was terrified. She called her mother to come get her that night. The two moms laughed about how she was homesick. But we all knew what it was really about. I never tried to have any friends after that. Dad might come home drunk and embarrass us.
my ex was da and he wrote a story about being resurrected from death by a witch then the witch betrays him.before we met. he then pushed me over yrs until I betrayed him by writing on Facebook about the oddness I was reaching out with brain fog. he then questioned me at length till I cold see it as a type of betrayal then severed contact. its as if he feared and made happen what his fear was.
My mom got drunk, yelled at me ( when I had a friend over for a sleepover), and my mom pulled down her pants squatted and peed on the floor! All while telling me it was my fault.😒🙄
@kipberquirky Oh my goodness that must have been awful! 🥺 Both experiences must have been awful... I really can relate because I lost a friend who came sleeping at my house once, and that night there was a huge fight between my mother and my sister that included physical violence. I never really saw my friend again after that, or on rare occasions, because she avoided me...
Even better, just that defensive coping mechanisms are now not needed or justified. Seen as self sabotage by fully functional adults who were wanted and loved by capable caregivers. Embrace more grieving, but don't feel sorry for yourself. You're no longer a victim. Abandonment is only done to you/ by you. (as an adult) F##@k!!
Took me decades to realize how profoundly early attachment wounds have shaped every adult relationship I’ve had. My life changed once I started addressing and reparenting. It’s wild to observe outrageous narcissistic behavior in elderly parents, being able to identify and reject it, now.
My mother was a malignant narc, my brother the golden child, my father sacrificed me to save himself, I have never recovered, I 'm 59 , thank you very much
Wow I’m textbook dismissive avoidant. I’ve dated many people actually but can easily go years without a relationship with no desire. I am completely independent, and would never live with someone else because I need my safe space. I feel like I do make connections and am very empathetic, to a fault actually, but it’s so crucial to me to take care of myself. Dad was alcoholic who left me alone a lot as a kid and mother is like Joan Crawford movie type cruel. 🤷🏻♀️
I feel you so much. It's a both weird but I can't remember ever missing anybody. There are things that I can't share with people out loud bc they will think I'm rude but... I don't miss them. I don't miss my friends, my family, my boyfriend. I could really go without them. Ofc I love them but I am fine without them. My mom is a school teacher for children and my dad is a truck driver, rarely home. Mom tough me how to be strong, independent and myself. She never tough me how to do romantic love tho. Every moment spent with people that is out of the plan and is not necessary is like a chore. I'm fine with meeting friends once a week or less. I have my plans and I feel bad that I don't really care if they are in them or not. They can tag a long if they want. I will be fine with and without them. I think it hurts people around me and hurts my bf, but I just don't know how to need him more in my life. And that's the truth, I like him, I want him, but I don't need him. I don't need all the attention and effort and I don't know how to receive it. I would rather be left alone and chill.
When you state, "Neglect is a personal message..." it really resonates with the way my sisters and I grew up. Often we were told, "everything was done for us" but it seems in retrospect nothing was...I mean, I'm still alive, so I must have been okay? But the message my parents sent was: you're second. I'm first. I get what I want and tell you I'm doing it all for you, when in fact, not much those were just words. Intentions and actions are separate things. I know this from my own journey, now alone after two marriage and three kids: I didn't intend for anything the way it happened, but it did. Thanks SO MUCH for this channel!!! My sisters and i listen to many of your videos and sing your praises!! I still haven't found a therapist (financial problems 🙃) where I live so I try the journal prompts and listen to videos to get clues on how to make progress myself, though I know I'm going to need a therapist!
Yeah I always say that I implicitly knew as a kid that if my mom had to choose between herself or me, she'd come first - always. I'm jealous that your sisters are in on the healing journey. Mine use dissociation to cope with the past.
"Neglect is a personal message..."yes, it's so wild how I still sometimes intuitively think my family would have been good people if only I had been different, there's so much shame, bitterness, inferiority and therefore envy and rage associated with it, I'm working through it but it still often feels like I HAVE TO bend over backwards for people just to be acceptable, like my former partner, things did not go well and he treated me poorly but I still feel like I somehow owe him my time and it took the words of a sweet new friend (I've made quite a few friends lately, I never thought it possible in my mid-thirties) to make me come to my senses on the issue, he told me in no uncertain terms that I "shouldn't be so forgiving" and "someone who treated you like that is not your friend" and yet even just typing this out I feel a little like I'm overreacting, but it's lovely to have healthy friends though
I think the key word regarding intent is choices. In my unknowing relationship with a pornography addict, he was making all the choices (also, his grandfather molested him as a child). I would never intend or choose to have children with him if I knew then what I know now. Although my children are adults (estranged), if they could, they would (and have tried) continue a family pattern where everyone has choices except me.
I'm currently dismissive avoidant, but it's precisely because I've spent so much time and effort trying to acknowledge my own feelings and find my identity and boundaries, and I fight like hell to keep all of that now. If anyone tries to take even one centimeter of that away from me, they're gone.
@@rupertperiwinkle4477 firstly, it takes me a VERY long time to choose to be in a relationship, I mean years. Because I need to feel like my personhood is safe in someone else's hands. If I feel that, I let myself be with that person and I love them as fully as I can.
This is a cycle that must end. I had two narcissistic parents. It took until my 50's to realize my childhood was severely abnormal, and understand the psychological damage I had incurred in childhood, and walked forward with through life. Passed up on relationships that could have been good for me long-term, as I could not commit long-term, and also got involved with two other narcissists as partners. I walked away from my narcissistic family 4 years ago - wish I had done it 30 years earlier.
yes. from age 12 I knew I was damaged in some way my peers were not. a Narcissistic Psychopath father, a overburdened and over stressed neglectful mother.
It took me a long time to figure out, too. I thought something was broken in me my entire life, because that's how my parents made me feel all the time. Two out of three of my dad's kids ended up barely surviving drug addiction (my brother and I). That doesn't happen in a vacuum and it's not normal. Now my husband and I are both unlearning the toxicity our parents taught us and helping each other through it. His mother is a textbook narc, so now he can read her like a textbook. We decided that the buck stops with us so that our kids don't have to go through what we did. We love our kids unconditionally. That's how it should be. Our parents did not love us that way and it caused so much damage. It's like it gets passed down through generations too, but you have to make a choice to break the cycle. In a way I'm grateful even though I suffered, because it woke me up in a major way and led me to becoming a much, much stronger and happier person. It was a hard lesson to learn, though. It's never too late to break that vicious cycle, and now you can heal.
I regret how much of my life I have spent being confused and wondering what was wrong with me. When I did go to see therapists as a young person they had no idea what was going on with me and also I didn't know how to articulate to them anyhow. It is very difficult of a young person to understand all of this stuff. I want to get perspective and distance to be further away from the problem and not trapped in it. It's sad though I wish my life had been on an organized track earlier in life. It goes without saying that emotionally messed up parents really don't give very good guidance.
@@emmalouie1663 Yes, life would have been much smoother and more rewarding if we'd had the benefit of supportive and well-balanced parents. But we did not. Neither did they most probably. One can only get off the turning wheel of cause and effect.
Yep. Me too. I tried not to do the same thing with my boy but guess what! I did. I definately broke many cycles but many slipped through the cracks 😢. I wish this stuff was more accessible when I was younger but was playing out my shit. My son has issues but knows he is loved and he's very self aware so theres that. The legacy of this crap is rampant in so, so many of us, our parents included. I'm glad this generation has access to all this information.
Dismissive avoidant is me to the letter. I grew up with a mother who I believe had Anti-Social Personality Disorder. She was terribly narcissistic. She was also physically disabled, and literally everything revolved around her. None of my needs were met, and I was made to feel selfish by her and others for needing anything or being overwhelmed. She was 100% an energy vampire, and since I was the only one around her, I had to deal with everything on my own. She's deceased now, but I often just feel empty and emotionally dead inside.
Wow I'm so sorry you had to deal with all of that growing up and still to this day the lasting effects. I hope you're in therapy or getting some other kind of support because you deserve to heal.
Sorry for your experience and I relate to you. I had to decide to not let her steal the rest of my life. I’m reinventing myself on MY terms and I’ve moved away from her so she can’t pee-shoot my goals, dreams, and achievements any longer. I’m much healthier and happier. XoC
☹️☹️☹️ that really sucks. It's like you never got your cup filled as a kid. There's a great book called running on empty. It helped me. I feel empty and emotionless at times. It will pass, they're just feelings.
@@Squamata_Mama I am definitely in therapy. EMDR has been pretty helpful with processing pent up emotions, but I still have times when its hard to feel anything at all. I feel numb and tend to block out strong emotions - negative and posotive.
@@ebbyc1817 Thank you. I love exercise and music, especially listening to music while exercising. Also being in nature. I've been trying to do "anger work" to help myself tap into the strong emotions that are usually pent up. Its helpful, but I still have a long way to go before I'm fully emotionally healthy.
Omg, Patrick! This has opened my eyes that I may be repeating the narcissistic behaviors my parent displayed when I was growing up without realizing it and my heart is breaking for my daughter right now. Thank you for your videos . Now to find a therapist that can help with this type of work 🥺
Love on your daughter. Apologize where you know that she was hurt, sold short or sacrificed; ask for forgiveness, and then be compassionate to yourself… it’s hard to watch your children struggle in trying to hang on to a partner. The good or the not as good ones.
6:06 Dismissive Avoidant is absolutely the style I dealt with… it hurts SO much. It especially hurt to be a child who loved music, in a house that enforced quiet with an iron fist. Except from the parents, of course. They could do whatever they wanted. “That’s beautiful sweetie…” always ended with “but can you stop?”
Ugh I won’t even lie, every time I realize how messed up my attachment style is, I sincerely wonder how anyone could ever love me because Im always scared that I’m emotionally draining someone. Plus I’m always convinced that someone doesn’t really like me, it’s just a transactional thing and I’m clearly not in on what they want from me yet. I know it’s a bad thing to say/think but I’m sure we’ve all thought it at one point. I got a lot of work to do. Thanks for your videos.
You sound like you‘d let people tell you their problems but won’t dare to share your own painful experiences. It‘s not easy for you either. Say you were that type of person in those situations, then you did more than enough. Even if you weren’t. You are alive, so this is enough. Your existence in itself is enough. I felt that I needed to say this ! You go :) sending love
My dad used to take me out for coffee to spend time together. We lived together, but every now and again we had little coffee meetings. We'd also have structured family meetings, and I remember having a meeting when I was 10 to calculate mine and my siblings allowance based on custody and age. I was neglected and shamed during the worst depressive episode of my life. I was suicidal, and cried for help plenty times, but ultimately I had to pull myself out of it on my own, and hold on for dear life until I was an adult. I shouldn't have had to do it on my own, and I definitely shouldn't have been isolated from friends after attempts. I grew up with a weird preoccupied, but occasionally dismissive style. When I ask for help and/or support, I usually have a good half hour shame attack about needing anything at all. I'm definitely getting better, but life could definitely be more fun lol
Your attachment style sounds like disorganized attachment, (it's mine) swinging between anxious and avoidant. Everything I've read about this style says it's the most difficult to treat-yeah. But looking at the bright side, maybe the swing between the two is just one's attempt to find balance and healthy attachment??
@@MsHazelie Fortunately, I've had a couple amazing, safe people in my life for a while, so I think that's really helped my healing. I'm still pretty avoidant with everyone outside my tiny circle, but not all is lost lol
Totally relate to you. I remember when I slit my wrists and tried to kill myself I didn't tell anyone about it for weeks. I was having an argument with my dad one night and he was essentially telling me how I needed to try harder in school and do something with my life or I'm going to be a failure, telling me my depression was laziness because he'd been depressed before and pulled himself out of it. I pulled up my sleeves and said this is what you make me do, I tried to kill myself and you still think I'm just lying and lazy? He looked at me with contempt and got up and walked away. I'll never forget that day how I cried for help and he just fucking left. Never spoke about it again. He continued to torment me until my early 20s. I think I was 17 then. Still live at home unfortunately but I have a gf now and spend most of my time at her place. I say all of 50 words to him a week at this point. Keeps me sane. I am so emotionally numb and dead inside I feel bad for my gf because I can barely give her the attention she needs due to self-hatred, shame and discomfort with intimacy. Fuck our parents for the shit they did to us. My mom died when I was 11 so I basically feel like an orphan at this point. It destroys my soul to think that I will never be unconditionally loved.
@@Silky2687 It's super bittersweet to hear someone relate to that kind of thing. I'm sorry for what you've been through.. You've got this, and if you can move, you'll notice the difference immediately. It's hard to recover when you're still around that person, so try not to be too hard on yourself. You are loveable regardless of the intimacy issues, and whatever other flaws you think you have. Everyone deserves to be loved, and you deserve to love yourself. I relate so much, and yet I've found someone to love me and be patient with me. It's been 3 years (2 years living together) and I haven't pushed him away yet lol. I imagine your girlfriend thinks way more highly of you than you think. Best of luck to you!
@@ft.meganmccarthy8865 Thank you for the kind words. I plan on going back to school next fall and moving out then so I look forward to that. It's nice to hear that you've been able to surround yourself with healthy and nurturing people. Wish you luck as well on your healing journey
This makes me feel seen and validated on so many levels. It’s encouraging to know that there are helpers out there who really get it. Thank you, Patrick!
I really struggled to imagine a day with my parents, they were always so unpredictable I never knew what to expect. They could ignore me completely, or blow up in rage, or get buddy-buddy with me over some juicy gossip, or some combination of all of them. Can "disassociation" be an attachment style? Acting as if other people (and even yourself) are not really real. Once I started to heal my disassociation my style became more anxious preoccupied.
Wow I felt the same way growing up so confused not knowing it’s it’s going to be abuse or neglect or rage. I am more preoccupied and disassociated if that would describe my attachment style
Due to being neglected for a solid 10 years i think being preoccupied is my default because I had to create my own stimulation as a child. Now I don’t know how to turn that off and socialize a “normal” amount. I never was spoken to very much growing up.
I think disassociation and dissociation are more a result/symptom of having experienced trauma rather than being an attachment style in and of itself, but I’m not sure. I definitely relate to what you said, though; I still struggle with dissociation on a near daily basis myself, but I think that once you begin to heal from your trauma, it becomes less prevalent. Dissociation due to trauma is (if I’m remembering correctly) sort of a leftover coping mechanism from childhood. Children have no way to escape from the situation they’re in, and the stress is too much for them to handle, so their brains react by detaching them from the situation. The resulting distance allows a child to weather their experiences without being fully “present” for everything that’s happening, because the situation is too stressful or overwhelming for the child to fully come to terms with. Since we learn it in childhood (even if we’re unaware it’s happening), it carries over into adulthood and we continue to use it as a coping mechanism to navigate toxic relationships and stressful life events. That’s just my two cents, but I’m glad you’re healing from your disassociation! I think that’s a good sign that you’re well on your way toward healing your attachment style too 👍
My mom was like this very unpredictable it terrified me as a kid. She could be screaming at me, or everything is fine or she would act like she doesn't care to get a rise out of me.
I live with my parents. Currently it’s just my dad and yes I’d say he’s a stranger. My mom is the narcissist. When she’s around it’s difficult. I’m trapped but working hard to leave this house.
I was the same for 13 years. Equated it to a prison sentence. One piece if advice. Seek counseling. I wish I had myself and didn't until I was almost 30. Ten years gone. They go by quick and that stuff can stick w you. Find your people, they're out there.
I can feel this in some ways. My father was non existent throughout my childhood and my mom was emotionally unstable. I mean she tried her best but in some ways her emotions always came first. Even tho i pushed myself to tell something to her, she'd just try to one up my problems with her problems. She also occasionally tried to say "but other people have it worse than us" which in turn made me feel guilty for feeling the emotions i was feeling. Due to all this, words hardly come out of my mouth and i choke up when i have to speak to people. Its hard but i am working on myself to leave the house too.
I'm in a similar situation. My narc ex-husband discarded me last year after 12 years of marriage, and I had to move back "home" to my toxic, narc family. My parents are divorced, have been for almost 20 years. I live with my mother and brother who are so completely and hopelessly enmeshed with each other that neither can function. Occasionally I go visit my father who left us, abandoned us and was never really there in my life growing up. I'm 40 years old, and I have nothing. I can't escape my family right now, but I'm desperate to because they're back to their old ways (that never changed) of sucking the life out of me. Healing from my ex-husband's abuse has been a lot easier because we're no contact and I don't live near him. But healing from my family's abuse is impossible because every day is a reminder that they are awful people who never loved me and treated me like a burden. I am completely and utterly alone. I completely understand how you feel trapped. Hang in there. You can get out, but it won't be easy and it won't happen overnight. Best of luck to you.
@@spacegirl226 I’m so sorry to hear about your situation. I’m glad you have these videos to rely on for help and understanding. We’re gonna make it through this. The fact that we’re here on this channel is a testament to that. 💪 May Elohim bring you comfort. 🫂
I exhibit signs of all 3 of these, and it's usually on a situational basis. But I survived an overwhelming mother. Lots of physical and emotional abuse.
Between my mother and father we covered every sicko trait you can have. Sucks being an only child to have no one to confirm yes it is not you. Thank you for this!
When you talked about the narc parent becoming depressed over the child getting a “C,” it took me back to third grade. We lived w/my mom’s parents, and she would take me for a drive to abuse me openly so they wouldn’t interfere. I had made my first “C” on a report card. She cried and yelled, “How could you do this to me?!” The irony? It wasn’t my “C.” Teacher had made a mistake. I don’t remember mom’s apology (she said sarcastically).
Welcome to hell. Already as a child I was different than the rest (just recently at 33 diagnosed with severe adhd, mostly due to my own interest in why I am like I am and why my life is this ratrace that im trying to escape over and over again) My parents used to beat me up and chase me around the house when they found out I was transfered to a lower class school because I'd rather doodle on the table than pay attention in class. I still remember laying on the floor as my mother beat me with a belt and I didn't understand anything. Getting abused for who you are, when you havent hurt anyone, or done anything remotely wrong, man, I cannot describe the feeling. Obviously this wasn't the only time of physical abuse like that, there were hundreds other times, where my mother would beat us so severely, just to treat to our wounds afterwards. But that one holds significant sentiment for me, because I was sick and needed help, instead all hell rained down on me all because I was different and my parents were too narcissistic too care or understand. And yes! They never. apologise. never. not once. The times they do, you know its either their guilt or desire for somethingn speaking, because afterwards they go do it again and again. Did your parents ever change? And do you still keep contact with them?
Wow! The threat of being kicked out of the family was very real. Parental contempt. My older brother was actually sent to foster care and he never lived with us again. Because he was a normal 8 year old. Being kicked out was a constant threat. Talk about double-bind!
I lost my Dad at age 2 and was left with a self serving, hateful narcissistic mother. She never took me to therapy after the death of my beloved Father but rather mocked me waiting for my Dad at the window after he already died. She ruined our family. I was the neglected scapegoat child and had extreme separation anxiety from her because I thought she would leave me too. She’s 87 and still hateful and manipulative!
I feel Your pain My Mom is 86 and Still as Evil , I am going no contact finally , and I’m 63 ! I’m so sorry for what your going through ! It’s such a shame your own mother Hates You , mine has tried Her whole miserable life to destroy my happiness! The Devil is a Liar !
I love the container you create by including yourself and your own examples in the discussion. It doesn’t feel like a therapist discussing case studies, although those are also very helpful. Here I feel like I’m in a support group. A peer group. And that we have a guest speaker, one of us who is an expert on the subject, inspired by his own experience, as opposed to a decision made in college for perhaps different reasons. This style on your channel really resonates for me. Thank you for this.
I see myself, mostly, in the anxious preoccupied area. It’s crazy when I look back and see how I am ALWAYS the caregiver. When first meeting someone, I sort of hang back to see what they need. It’s no wonder I chose a caregiving profession. While sitting here reflecting on how I relate to everyone this way, I can’t come up with another way to relate. I feel like this sounds ridiculous, but I really don’t know how else to be. I’ll listen to your UA-cam videos on innerchild work. Thanks so much for this video. By the way, I have trouble allowing others to help me also.
I feel like having such a strong relationship with animals all of my life has really helped me in so many ways. Showing affection, caring for another creature selflessly, unconditional love. I learned early that I couldn’t experience these things from the ones who should them, but I found them from in the end P.S. fearful avoidance is a hell of a drug
As a child, I’d say my needs were met but I was basically ignored. Once in a while my mom would pay attention to me and do something special with me. I didn’t have a dad in the picture. On a daily basis, I just went along taking care of myself and living in my own little world. I never knew what my mom was up to. Except when she went to work. Otherwise, I never really knew what she did. I suppose that all maybe caused dismissive avoidant with me…because I have a hard time in relationships, with affection, with feeling like my peaceful space is invaded. Kinda sad- Thank you for the enlightenment.
Me too, I was totally ignored by my mother and my father wasn't allowed by her to show any emotions. Relationships feel the same to me as yours,, almost an imposition on my time and me! And they generate an overload of emotions, sometimes minute by minute that leave me tired. Plus, I can't really bond anyway, so there is almost no point in relationships. I've had many ok friendships, ONLY bc of the harmony of beliefs in my religion, Jehovah's Witnesses and bc they are so, so forgiving with my severe lack of emotional skills and my oddball responses to their affections towards me. Other than that I wouldn't know what even a friendship was nevermind a male/female relationship. And I'm 65 and hardly have developed real emotions, sad. Ty for your comment.
you really have such a calming personality and aura, it's very hard for me to watch these videos in fear of becoming more depressed and angry. but you make it easier to let go of some burdens i feel.
Of all the mental health content providers, this Patrick Teahan is the one that seems as if he himself is consistently in a healthy place emotionally during the video.
I would love a talk on being the black sheep of a dysfunctional family system and how that leads to patterning being the scapegoat role again & again in different groups. I’m realizing my old behaviors before therapy did set me up to be around groups that had the same types of personality disorders in them, people that felt familiar - familial. I’ve basically been trying to reparent myself along with becoming a mother. I’ve been in therapy on & off since becoming a mother, to help understand the insanity I was raised in. I’m so grateful that I am the type who did seek out help and open up my own life to be able to be helped. As the scapegoat, we are raised to always take all the blame & it’s been a lifetime of not getting anyone to actually apologize when they are cruel to me. It’s been getting so much better the last decade and I had to go no contact five years ago. To seek help and assistance outside of my abusive family was seen as the work of the devil, because I got out of a family where my parents were the youth pastors growing up, in a fundamentalist evangelical cult. Being the scapegoat was also mixed into the spiritual realm of such extremes that the last time I saw my mother she tried to speak in tongues, rebuke me in the name of Jesus, & she hit me in front of my husband & my sons. I was 39. It’s very hard to process the spiritual abuse that goes with the abuse I suffered, because it’s such an added terror to add such extremism to the already hard to process physical & emotional abuse.
I’m also the black sheep of my family the scapegoat. My mother also hides behind her Christian beliefs. It’s all fake, she’s 2 very different people one with her children and a different person around her church friends. She’s physically abusive still to my 40 year old sister and last week called me cunt for calling her out on her abuse. I told her I would one day film her behaviour and send to her pastor. She had a meltdown it was like watching a 2 year old having a tantrum. Stomping here feet and banging her fists on the wall while calling me the most disgusting names!
Yes, Rebecca I can also identify with being a black sheep of my parents and brother. It hurts so bad, but it’s better to just not be around them. Even though now they just make up lies about me and try to keep me away from the rest of the family so I will be dismissed. Even try to pull my kids away too. They are NPD. And have a mask on in front of people but whenever the mask comes off, you better run. They can just cause so much fake drama that I have so called caused. So that’s the best thing to do is stay away. I have had to isolate for along time though, sometimes wondering when will it end? My mom forced us to go to a cult church which was so devastating and neglectful. There wet no celebrations and for a kid going to school and not allowed to celebrate anything was devastating. I believe parents should at least look back and see their mistakes and say they are sorry. All my dad said was he feels he did a very good job raising me. (Wow, sexual molestation was and is still denied!)😢
I tend to be insecure and need reassurance in the relationships and to find someone ready for this kinda commitment isnt easy nowdays so i just dont date.Saves me from going through uneccessary heartbreak.
Things always “felt” off but were dismissed and ridiculed. You have described my parents in a nutshell, now to start believing in myself again. Thank you so much Patrick, your videos are so incredibly helpful and uplifting.
A day with my Dad back in childhood would have been scary, because one had to always please him and it was a very fine line to walk, if one could do it at all, one did well if one could do it for most of the outing. Basically, be sweet, and don't have an opinion, and be pleased with whatever he does for you. You need to be obedient, compliant, and pleasant. He had an ego, but it was fragile. He needed to keep us down, to stay on top. And if you displeased him, or told him something he didn't want to know, boy you'd know about it. Even months later. The love tap was not just turned off, it was turned inside out. He would suck any good feeling you had out of you, in punishment. Make you cry to make himself feel stronger. I was trapped, in needing to please him, and not being able. No wonder I'm a mushed shell of a person, and he disliked me even more for that.
“He needed to keep us down to stay on top.” Regrettably this sounds very familiar to me. My dad was an authoritarian dictator and my mom was his spy. I find the idea of a day alone with either of my parents incredibly uncomfortable.
@@sixsmith7653 Don’t spend time with them! It keeps you stuck and they don’t deserve your company. When I cut my family off it was incredibly empowering. Wish I’d done it when I was 18.
Being discarded by a dismissive avoidant makes so much more sense now. The lies by omission, the performative/transactional “affection”, lack of validation and all the things I didn’t want to admit that ultimately led to betrayal and silence. Never again, thank you for the insight.
I found this video very enlightning. My mother is the narcissistic immature one who used me for emotional support and parentified me. My father was the alcoholic narcissist that critisized and punissez, shamed any emotions of anger, sadness! I becamd his confidante, therapist, once mh parents divorced at sge 10. I am the anxious preoccupied style. It sure makes me understand my patterns and the work needed for my inner child to heal. Thank you !
Dismissive avoidant. I’ve always thought my attachment style is like throwing spaghetti at the wall to see if it sticks. It falls off every time. That’s exactly what it feels like for me. Every time I search myself to see if I care about something or someone, it feels like a balloon deflating. I want it to happen but 95% of the time the spaghetti falls off the wall. The only exception is my husband and my cats. Everyone else is barely tolerated.
"You're the expert of your own story." Thank you Patrick for that powerful reminder as so many of us come from being raised as invisible and invalid. The shadow self work/inner child healing is a lifelong excavation and pain-laden inquiry - NOT a quick diagnosis with assembly-line fixits as so many are selling these days. The decision to go no contact with my parents took three decades of my adult life to finally architect and only four months to tear down between my only sibling's suicide and the pandemic. Yours is the voice in my head as I continue to commando crawl through year 3 of lockdown as the sole caregiver to a toxic narcissistic mother and enabler father in cognitive decline. Thank you Patrick for your insight, compassion and generosity. Thank you kindred spirits in suffering for sharing your journeys on this channel. 🙏🖖🙏
I had two narcissistic parents too. Its twisted, but because they traveled so much, and the woman they hired to live with us while they were gone wasn't a narcissist, I honestly believe we were spared quite a bit. Twisted that we were spared by their absence. I'm grateful for the people who were around us as kids, as well as for how the world was truly a much different place back then. The world has become a mean place because of the internet, which thankfully didn't exist when we were young.
The world does seem worse. Well I think it is economically worse. It's said that current generations are doing worse financially than past generations. Even though people have trinkets they don't have real wealth and possibly more moving for jobs. Now jobs change all the time.
I think it's totally fair to say you were spared by being left with a healthier caregiver. I sometimes think this too because my mother had debilitating depression & religious fanaticism when I was young so was always sleeping on the couch or praying ( not present) while my father was a threatening tyrant. It wasn't until my mom somewhat "recovered" and left my father in my teens that I got to see how narcissistic and cruel a parent she actually was.
Every activity involving my mom was transactional. She always neede to be rewarded for doing bare-minimum. My dad never complained but let his partners tell him what to do but then if I had friction with his partner, he’d abandon me, attack me physically or catch me off guard with explosive screaming. What a shitshow.
I'm glad you brought up cycling through different attachment styles---I definitely do that, and have likewise been more anxious preoccupied in less healthy relationships (or just in less personal / close relationships) but more fearful avoidant or dismissive avoidant in healthier, close relationships. You kind of mention this at the end, but I wonder if it's because the first priority is to have some kind of consistent love and affection (so trying to achieve that with anxious preoccupation), but in a relationship where that love and affection is consistent, it's almost too much to deal with or it feels uncomfortable and foreign (so avoidance comes up).
I find I'm anxious with people I feel inferior to. And avoidant with people I feel superior to. Not so much, better than, or they're better than me, but more like, a perceived shortcoming. Like if someone has lots of really good friendships, and no drama in their life, I'm going to feel anxious with them, because I know they have better coping strategies. But if someone is more manipulative, doesn't state their needs, hides behind masks, I'm going to be more avoidant, not just because it's harder but because of the shortcoming. I'll see it as having bad coping strategies in relation to me.. It's like, trying to have a relationship with a child versus, trying to have a relationship with an elder. Hope this helps. Although another thought I just had, which is why I'm editing this, is maybe I know the likelihood of abandonment with someone with bad coping strategies, is much higher. So I'm more avoidant with them because I know it's going to end sooner or later.
But it's not cycling- that's classic fearful avoidant! A bad relationship (with insecure attachments) will make a fearful avoidant lean anxious bc have to cling to keep relationship going. Whereas a good relationship (with security) will make the fearful avoidant "deactivate" bc hard to accept as if the relationship is "too good to be true" so they pull back in defense. That said attachment styles can change as one works on themselves and often if their partner is secure so not all hope is lost. The book Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller is awesome for diving into this. However they don't have much on fearful avoidants so to really dig deep Tahis Gibson at the channel "The Personal Development School" is my fave!
@@mrslvw Thanks for the tips. I've read the book (Before I even knew what attachment really was). I think what you described about fearful avoidant makes sense. At least it helped me make sense of someone I know. He's more avoidant with his partner, who is anxious, according to him, but more anxious with me. Well, avoidant, then anxious. Like he'll try to be avoidant, and then after a while if it doesn't work, he'll become anxious. Like not call after a fight, or any kind of disagreement, and then after a while, if there's been no communication, he'll start calling all the time like he's freaking out. It's really stressful. Because you can't resolve the conflict, and you can't move on. I don't know how they find partners.
These attachment styles concept were mysterious to me, and information available about them was fuzzy and unclear. This video makes sense and makes it very clear and easy to understand it. Thank you Love this: "Neglect is personal message that we're not lovable, that we're not ok, we're not doing something right and we have to find some secret code to get the parent to engage. Which is origin of codependency."
Wow, burdened by being a parent, that describes my mother perfectly! I was made to feel that I was a burden just for existing, and especially because she had to be my parent. After many years of therapy where NPD was never mentioned, I finally learned about narcissistic abuse. I recognized my mother instantly, and the pieces of the puzzle finally came together! I know what happened and why I feel and operate the way I do, but I still can't seem to move out of my "stuckness", as the same tapes keep playing in my mind constantly. To complicate matters even more, I believe that I am ASD, but I haven't been able to get tested and diagnosed yet. I can see myself in all 3 of the attachment styles, I guess I'm just a bit of everything. But that could be because of the ASD, and the difficulties that I have in relating to the world due to being aneurotypical.
Oh wow. That was very insightful. I always wondered why I was always trying to help people, being the group mom, always doing things for people. I've always had to either walk on eggshells at home or make myself invisible to not be irritating. Then during the divorce I always was a parent therapist. They always tried to make me pick a side, telling me things I shouldn't have been told.
As an adopted person I was always told that my adoption was evidence that I was "wanted." However as an adult what I recognized that my parents wanted someone else, and those parts of me that did not match their preconceived image of me were NOT wanted.
this is EXACTLY how i feel! i’m an adoptee as well and it makes my blood boil when people say “you’re lucky you were chosen!” - it’s bullshit. i wasn’t chosen, i was next in line.
@@mamachungusand as an adopted person there’s also the flipside of, but would I have been chosen if my parents had had their own biological children? I recently found out that my birth mom and adoptive mom have the same first name, so I feel someone at the agency thought it would be cute to take a baby from a Nancy and give her to a different Nancy. This cute idea meant that I got sent to a family where not only did I not fit in emotionally / creatively, but also couldn’t have looked more physically different from them, leading to lots of curious questions from strangers and my parents shutting down and getting mad bc it’s “none of their damn business.” My sister and I were forbidden to tell anyone we were adopted. They told me to just tell people that I have the coloring of my dead grandmother, which I did until recently, when I started questioning why it was my job to pretend to be their biological offspring when I’m not?? And why two people who hated each other and hated kids were approved to adopt is a whole other conversation!! 😅
This hit home on so many levels. Fearful avoidant here and also a narcissist parent. To a 4 and 6 year old that are avoidant preoccupied and also fearful avoidant 😭 Currently feeling quite helpless as to how I heal my past childhood trauma while simultaneously helping curve theirs. I know from here on out things will be different. I can't and won't go back to how I have parented but fear the damage is done and am floundering at how to undo it.
You can give them what they dream of: a loving parent who makes them feel like they are wanted, cared for and treasured. Sounds like a good deal to me 🥰❤️
Find ways to connect with them and validate their feelings. If they are unable to articulate their emotions, help them learn what each one feels like. Spend quality time with them and ask them a lot of questions about their interests and love languages. Get comfortable talking about your own feelings and being honest with them and giving them a lot of physical affection.
You CAN do it! I didn’t figure this stuff out until my kids were all in their teens, and I’m just so thankful they still lived at home so I could live an apology to each of them. You have SO much more time than that! Educate yourself as much as you can on how to be emotionally healthy and validating. Figure out what your triggers are and how you can cope with them. Watch more of Patrick’s videos! Huge hugs! ❤️❤️
When I first started watching your videos a couple years ago, I had a very resentful feeling towards my parents, I was finally understanding myself and the reasons why I reacted the way I do and it just got me so angry and upset with them. Nowadays, the more I watch, the more I realize that my parents are reacting to their traumas and haven’t had the access, like I have, to help themselves. Knowing that, especially after they’ve both opened up to me (Woo! I became pregnant and seconds after finding out it’s sharing all the trauma stories we all have, that conversation was probably the most productive one I’ve ever had with them) I no longer have that anger. I have that feeling of, I need to help them in the best way I can and implementing certain ways to converse, like addressing the inner child, helps them and us move into a healthier relationship. I won’t ever be able to go back in the past and get the parents I needed, but they are here now and are making the effort to better themselves at 50 years old for the sake of their future grandson and their relationship with their children. That’s gotta be something
I definitely think about how much more information there is now about these things compared to in the past. I've never brought it up with my parents though they are too old and it's sort of pointless. I don't think I can forgive them they are just too messed up.
This was me 💯. In the past four years I'm growing and am beginning to feel like a different better person. I worked for a boss for two years and did not once stand up for myself against his harsh narcissist ways. It not only was mentally painful and stressful it eventually lead to physical pain. Intense physical pain that was "stuck" in the back of my leg like an axe has been thrown into me. Once covid came and everything shut down, I never went back and that pain is gone. Every single day I HAVE to work on myself, and these types of videos have saved me. Thank you ❤️
It’s trippy reading this. I also experienced a pain in the back leg, middle of the right calf, that developed at the end of 5 year toxic work environment. It was there for 3 months at work and 3 months after I left.
So so good. Thank you so much. I get triggered by my ultra sweet and ultra reassuring bf. It sucks because I don't wanna push him away but I literally can't help myself sometimes 🥺
Thank you so much makes total sense narcissistic mother growing up with me being a highly sensitive person. Thank you so much for sharing and working hard not to reflect this pain on my three girls. 🙏🏻🙏🙏🏽 working so much on inner child healing.
You are quite literally describing my life. Strangely, or perhaps not so much, I created a dysfunctional family just like my mother and father. Now my kids are really messed up after the divorce. They don't even know how to talk to me anymore. I understand now they're probably going to have to go through the same thing I did. And there's not much I can do to help them. I used to be one of these people. What I am doing now in my life and absence of my family being around me, is work on myself. Understanding these concepts and how they are affecting my present life is helping me quite a bit. I have learned a lot of very important terms like trauma bonding, transference and counter transference all that stuff. It makes me a little embarrassed to be a human.
This gives me a lot to think about and reflect on, even within myself. To ensure I remain a decent parent and role model for my own children. thank you for sharing this.
It’s so sad that most of all your life problems stem from the attachment and on going reinforcement of the initial attachment disorder. It’s great we know what happened but very sad that there’s not much we can do late in life about that.
I have always wondered why my father had shared so many intimate dysfunctional details of my parents intimate relationship. I now realize that I am going to have to recover from incest emotional abuse. Now all of my preoccupational anxiety I have suffered from my entire teens and adult life makes so much sense! Time to do the inner child work my mother keeps strongly suggesting I don’t do. Thank you Patrick!!
I must say that after watching your videos and the fairy ladys videos over the past 4 months, i have realized that my choices in partners have always been the type that mirrored my disfunctional parents in every way. I subconsciously thought it was normal, but it is far from normal. So I have made the conscious decision from your videos to learn what is normal, how to understand the reasons behind my choices in partners, realize I dont have to be a child in an adult relationship, and recognize when a potential mate is not a good choice before getting too far into it. Most of the past partners have had just as much of a dysfunctional past as I did. Doesnt work. Gotta keep workin! Thank you soooo much! I am determined to heal!
Thank you for acknowledging the neurodivergent community! I’m neurodivergent and queer, and so are most people I know, and it’s frustrating that we often fall through the cracks. I would like to become a mental health professional of some kind myself because of this.
I’ve formed a nervous habit of constantly checking other people’s work over the way my dad would go absolutely insane over little problems. “It’s a little thing, but it’s a big thing.” He’d say that all the time, especially about the little things we’d mess up. He’d say that in a way to be dismissive of us, but in a way that made it our fault we don’t do things certain ways rather than him trying to teach us. “It’s alright, I just know now that I can’t trust you to do that now.”
My sister and I have been very enmeshed with our mom since my dad left in 1973 and she made me her emotional partner and my older sister she parentified. I was the emotional substitute for her partner and my sister was the doer/care taker partner for her. i have looked at all of this long and hard over the past few years. i have struggled with fear, anxiety, depression, avoidance tendencies and learned helplessness all my life ( I am 52 now) which has lead me into all sorts of bad relationships and situations. In just the past 48 hours I've begun while looking again at one area of my life I have almost phobic reactions, to wonder "is this fear and anxiety and hopelessness and dread really mine or is it my mother's which I picked up, absorbed when I was young?" i am very strong and determined in most areas of my life so being stuck for decades in one area has perplexed me for so long. i was a highly sensitive child always reading the room for peoples vibes and moods and my mom had many mental health issues going on. I cant find anything on the internet or youtube about this type of thing, "carrying" your unhealthy parents stuff from childhood. Maybe its a part of differentiation??? I do almost feel if I "put down" the fears and anxieties and negativity of my mom's I will somehow be losing her even though she is still living and we are close and she is the same now as ever. Does this make sense? Is there work out there about this? Is this a core beliefs thing? I've been living with the core beliefs I observed and absorbed from my mom growing up and now I need to supplant with my own?
Hello Melissa, your comment struck a chord with me. My mother, likely a psychopathic narcissist, was an emotional vampire to me when I was young, in part by making me her mini-me. By that I mean she did not differentiate between herself and me and used me to bolster and meet her emotional needs. As a little child, she was very loving towards me and arguably this saved me. Once I hit about 10 and started to become myself, that is when all the trouble really started. I was enlisted into my parent's marital problems and became, unwillingly, the honest broker and diplomat, essentially their translator (dad = rational, mum = emotional). It was extremely stressful and gave me lasting personality traits such as never feeling safe, hyper vigilance and so on. I put a stop to her vampirism when I was 16 and learned to manage her by rewarding good behaviour and punishing bad behaviour (by using my contact with her, something she craved). You can see from my language that I ended up as the parent in the relationship, something that only eased as she aged. I used to describe my experiences of her emotional inroads into me as like an invading army conquering an unarmed country: she just marched in causing chaos and mayhem and occupied the territory. This might better fit me than you for my mother was very aggressive. Learning to build the walls to keep her from doing this and feeding on me took a long time but 16 was the turning point. Shockingly, the last time I saw her alive she actually asked me to let me allow her to do this to me one more time! I was horrified that she had such audacity, not least as it clearly demonstrated that what she had done all those years ago, she knew what she was doing and had done it deliberately. Not only did I give her short shrift, I gave her a piece of my mind into the bargain and so our last contact was acrimonious and bitter. I am just a little older than you and have spent a lifetime unravelling the mischief from these depradations and related behaviours, like so many in these comments. I think this emotional colonisation or vampirism is particularly insidious as it creates confusion and difficulties with boundaries, both of which might help explain your fear and anxiety concerns. A lot of our ideas around emotional pleasure have their roots in our maternal relationship and if we think that requires no boundaries to reproduce then we are inviting chaos and mayhem into our lives all over again. That is just one side effect! My brother was also assigned a role in the dynamic and my mother was brazen enough to verbalise it by assigning him to our father (she obviously claimed me for herself). The divisions that this created are probably self evident, they were also permanent and played out across the extended family. In relation to your comment about carrying your parent's concerns inside yourself, you could be right. My instinct is however that the confusion this blurring of boundaries creates is really at the heart of the issue. My mother made be feel like I was nothing, I was a tool for her ends. I learned to discount myself to not even see myself, only to see the tasks and roles she set out for me. In such a situation, coming to even identify my own feelings and needs (let alone trying to meet any of them!), is very difficult indeed. Having your self hijacked by your mother didn't erase you, even if it may have made you the pack mule for her burdens. I strongly believe you can separate her from you and reclaim yourself. Best wishes in the journey.
Great video! Shame I didn't have it 40 years ago when relationships mattered. I have many talents and I always thought my intensity in pursuing them was a normal path for an artist. The truth is I buried myself in them to avoid the constant anxiety of being unloved, scapegoated and shamed when the adults in the room needed to use their angst to address my mother's narcissism and mental illness. I was the only one anyone could reason with so I was told, take care of your sister. But no one took care of me.
i'm dismissive avoidant when i'm alone (the therapy example happened to me, practice relationship anorexia, unable to connect to myself (or others), learned at 35 that everyone has feelings i just happened to have shut mine down before i could remember. but when i'm in relationships, i become fearful avoidant (stay in toxic relationships). damn this video really cleared up my confusion. i think that this is what i will actually need to work with a therapist on.
Am like that as well. Been on a real dismissive avoidant bend the last year or so. I can't say it's bad but it's also eating my soul slowly even if I choose not to notice.
13:49 Anxious Avoidant describes me with my mom, and early on in my romantic relationship. After my parent's divorce and my mom remarried, she wouldn't have time to spend with me because she was so busy with work and appeasing her narcissist husband. So as a teen, I learned that the only way for her to spend quality time with me is if I "give her time" by doing tasks off her to-do-list so that she didn't have to do them. Early on in my relationship with my boyfriend, if he had a to-do-list, but he didn't get something done because he was spending time with me, I would feel bad for "taking up his time." It took about a year of him saying "I'm choosing to spend my time with you because I want to" for me to have a more secure attachment style
I love my parents but it's always MY reality vs. THEIR realities and they REFUSE to ever look at situations, through any other lenses but their own. Dealing with this is EXHAUSTING, dangerous and just recently, almost cost me my life, as I have been very ill for a while and when I would tell them, "I don't feel well" they would repeatedly brush me off and say, "you're fine, you don't know what it is to be REALLY sick." Fast forward, to the present, where, I recently had emergency surgery and the doctors' found numerous other health issues which need immediate attention and was told that, "I am lucky to be alive." #ThanxFam
I like the thnx fam but yeah that's a really yuck feeling I almost died well you just weren't dying like I was .Like what yeah my bear has a big gun and a truck and then jumped over my house ....
It's a big one. Have you heard of Complex PTSD? It's another big part. There's a book by Pete Walker about it, and he's been on a few podcasts that you can listen to for free. The Being Human podcast has both him and Gordon Neufeld who I also recommend.
I appreciate that you mentioned these styles can fluctuate! I've observed this in myself at different phases of my previous 8 year relationship, and also in various friendships. I also appreciate that you approached the different styles with neutrality. You didn't portray any of them with heavy judgment, or this 'you're doomed/broken/you can never change' sort of attitude that I've seen in a lot of other sources. I've seen a few articles that slap labels around and make it sound completely set in stone. Also many sources have been very biased towards anxious preoccupied styles, and very against the dismissive avoidants, and portray the fearful avoidants as hopeless cases. As if the whole thing wasn't daunting enough, right? lol I love that you gave us ideas on where these mal-adaptations come from, and on your channel as a whole, you give us tools to adjust and do some work on our own, get some relief and make some progress. You're making mental health more accessible. So thank you again for the helpful info and resources!
I agree, hearing someone talk about these different coping strategies in a neutral, non-hierarchical, non- moralizing way is so helpful, and surprisingly difficult to find in general. I also feel like I've moved around the grid a lot, trying to figure out how to do relationships and also function. I maybe feel most stuck in the anxious avoidant quadrant, but I also feel like that has the biggest stigma - it's the borderline personality box (which is also unfairly stigmatized, definitely not trying to add to that judgement!). Anyway, I feel like I try to hide those push-pull tendencies as much as possible in order to maintain good relationships, but they feel overwhelming. And I think it makes a lot of sense, being sort of between the other two problematic attachment styles, I think it's a catch-22 type position: I can try to change in order to be more stable in this direction, but that means giving up relationships and a need for connection, or I can look for stability in the other direction, but that means giving up my personality, self-respect, identity, etc. At least in my life, it feels like the need to be an individual person with an identity is exactly equal to the need to be connected to others. No wonder there's that push-pull when you're here, neither option feels survivable. Well... that comment became longer than I intended. Basically, I agree!
I was once annoyed by people who seemed healthy and happy. I had trouble believing anyone would accept me, understand me and relate with me. I was very isolated, and I isolated myself. I didn’t know how to connect in healthy ways, so I became attracted to the familiar feeling of dysfunctional or otherwise unavailable people and situations. I’m learning. Now that I’m on my healing journey, I know that I’m not too much, not the weak link, not being dramatic, and that I can learn anything. I’m doing a lot better than I was and I’m so happy that I’ve built some sturdy bonds. My inner dialogue isn’t so negative anymore. I continue to nurture myself! And I have compassion for every version of myself along the way. I have compassion for other people too. It is safe to connect. It is safe to trust.
I’m truly happy that my husband and I went through therapy within our first year. It really helped us come into our own and work together better. Love is a choice ❤️
Me thinking today I have unhealthy attachment styles.. (attach way too fast, too soon or not at all to animals, people and objects) Then wondering about the parental connection to my childhood and thinking it’s probably extremely hard to change it 🤔 THEN this pops up!! 🤓 I will watch it 💞
My mother couldn’t even say I love you on her death bed. She said I always wanted to be rid of you. I was the one growing up that knew something was horribly wrong with her as a little girl I didn’t have a name for it. I would challenge her at every turn. She would say things that were ridiculous. I would tell my Dad when he got home. And she called me the liar. Dad would know how to calm her down. I would call her out. Not a good thing to do that’s for sure.
Same here, 277fnkymnky. You weren't alone in your experiences and your actions were rather mature and unfortunately bourne by a defensive position you never consented to.
You detected something was deeply wrong, and your father didn't validate that experience. It's not exactly gaslighting, but it makes you question your reality and whether you can trust both of them. Was it a wise thing to do? I'm not sure, but you were honoring the truth, whereas your father sounds like he was burying it or being in denial.
I was also the child who called out the parent. I suppose that’s why I was the “scapegoat” while my sibling flew under the radar as the “lost child”. We were both emotionally neglected but I was emotionally and physically abused as well. It might sound weird but I wouldn’t change that. It made it easier for me to seek help as an adult because abuse is a lot easier to identify than neglect. My sibling would probably say there was nothing wrong with our childhood, even though she’s emotionally shutdown and lives a life of quiet desperation.
@@kiwiluv9188 You could point her in the direction of Pete Walker. He's done an excellent job of explaining Complex Trauma and how it hides best within people who weren't physically abused. The Being Human podcast has him on it, it's worth a listen.
Allowing myself to imagine spending a day with either of my parents engendered an split-second gut-focused fear. I'm startled to realize that at age 67, after years of counseling and reading and emotional work and independence and death of both parents, I'm still impacted by those earliest relationships. And a failure to measure up.
What a complete lesson. This was so eye opening, I'm very grateful. As much as it's difficult to navigate those feelings, recognizing them is a great first step.
I literally cried every day of preschool kindergarten and first grade...they called me emotionally dysfunctional, and left it at that like I was a bad puppy(get rid of it and on to the next one) would have only taken a little bit of validation back then...30 years later it ain't that easy🤪🤪🤪
The parenting styles. My mother was all of those. Jeez. This is everything I’ve been unpacking in therapy every week since December 1. Thank you for putting names to it.
As the child of a narcissistic parent, it’s hard to accept that they did decide to take on a parenting role even if they weren’t intentional when procreating. Love your videos, Patrick. So helpful in my recovery.
I can see a clear pattern in my family tree if I'm allowed to categorize a bit. My mom was raised by an overbearing and thoughtless mother and neglectful father. She later married my dad, a mind f'er and she herself was immature / thoughtless parent. I am now afraid of becoming any of these to my own child, and my current attachment style with my husband is dismissive avoidant. Thank you for this video Patrick, gave me lots to ponder on as always!
That sounds so hard! I don’t have kids yet. Both my husband and I (especially me!) are trying to heal to one day not mess up our own kid(s). I hope your husband is consistent and safe. I was that to my husband (also dis. av.) and he is healing! I feel like awareness is most important otherwise we’re all lost so I want to celebrate that point in your journey. Believing the best for you 🙏🌷
@@desertboot9755 Sometimes habits can help us access a deeper quality (Fake it till you make it). I would suggest: ALWAYS look at your child and listen to her when she speaks to you, no matter how long it takes. She will come to know deep down that she matters. It sounds simple but isn’t in a monkey mind world, but this is the thing I’m most grateful I did with my son. It’s pretty radical, and radically validating in a screen-obsessed society, and it’s a gift you can give your children. Also, say “I’m sorry” a lot! Whenever it’s appropriate, say it! It gets easier the more you do it, lol. Last two bits of advice: LOTS of humor and playfulness. You’re not perfect but you can always lighten the mood, and that’s a huge breath of fresh air to your child. It’s like pressing the “re-start” button. And give your children lots of unconditional affection and tell them every day how much you delight in them. All of these make children more resilient and happy, and you can do all of them even if you still have baggage, even a lot of baggage, ha ha!
Would be nice to hear about how the survivors of this kind of parenting can impact attachments styles of their own children. And can work on their attachments styles with regards with their own children, to help break the cycle.
Currently trying to delve into my childhood traumas. My daughter is avoidant preoccupied and my son is fearful avoidant. In complete correlation to my fearful avoidant style and narcissistic parenting up to this point. I would really appreciate more on this topic of how to parent while reparenting myself😟 and how to heal my children in the process.
I agree. I'm watching this bc I KNOW I am messing my kids up. I'm trying to stop but this stuff is so pervasive. It's hard to raise children in a healthy environment when you, yourself are not emotionally balanced. When I had children I had no idea I was so unregulated. I would never have had children intentionally had I known what I do now. My eldest is 12 and I feel I've ruined him. He's riddled with anxiety. Sadly, that's what it took for me to even realize there was a problem with me. 😭 The guilt is nearly unbearable.
I have this pain as well. I didn’t know early on when my kids were small. I did know something wasn’t right and I wasn’t parenting the way I wanted to. I was in therapy for years before realizing I came from a narcissistic family system. I am healthier and I see the changes in my kids but they are basically almost out of the house and I find myself grieving over what could have been different and angry that my family didn’t get help so I could have been parented in a healthier way.
Patrick has a wide range of understanding; I wish I had discovered his talent in my 20s when I was so confused, and trying to understand myself. Yes, he is very articulate, as someone noted.
The insight you give is absolutely incredible, hands down one of the best channels about family trauma! Thanks for all the work you do Patrick, it really does make a difference for all of us
I was in my twenties when I realized that it is not normal that neither of my parents wanted custody of me when they got divorced. I am so used to being neglected that I don't even know I was being neglected.
I represent this remark. ♡
Yes, you think it’s normal to not be loved, not be cared for, to be a shadow, a burden.. a speck on the wall.
❤❤❤❤❤
..."What can't be changed must be a burden carried on..."
JESSICA LANGES
in that movie with Liam Nelson, whose name I've forgotten.
I also carry this burden deeply within my dna... once I saw a documentary about this very subject...this 89 year old woman was talking about her memories, tears running down her face and she began to cry until she couldn't stop and then help came,
...change body position and posture.
...change thoughts do an action that self is loved, accepted, and forgiven.
...go, for a walk, get outside and realize that feelings are fleeting and can change when you allow for it.
My brain 🧠 must exercise that ability to practice control and focus.
Because I know that I am that 89 year old woman 😊❤🎉
❤ 🙏
"The child will be indebted for any kind of caregiving" ooof that hit home
Took me 49 years to learn that “it wasn’t THAT bad,” means it was EXACTLY that bad. Omissions of love, safety, being wanted…they are abuse. My core belief in EMDR: I will never matter to anyone. I am so sad for little me, sometimes.
You do matter.
And you will matter to someone.
You DO matter. And I hope one day you realise you’ve come this far and to this point because YOU matter to YOU 💛
You and the little you inside of you both matter so much.
I feel the same way. It's hard for me to believe, even when told, that people can love me. I've been told my whole life how unlovable I am.
Your comment has just brought me to tears and also renewed my undercurrent of livid anger that is always on a low boil right below the surface.
I love that expression: "burdened by being a parent." My narcissistic mother. I honestly don't believe she wanted me - she certainly behaved like it all my life. I felt her dislike, even loathing of me. Finally went no contact March 2013 at 54 years old. Have worked so hard at healing and recovering from damage done in childhood. I divorced the passive aggressive covert narcissist June 2017 and set myself free from 14 years of insane marriage! Happy joyous and free and learning all about me!! Thank you for your input
I think we all believe our mother's loved us. I only learned through a dream that my mother did not bond with me, when born.
My Dad said that Anna could not love. I thought he meant that she could not love him! No, no one; because of her difficult childhood. See? Unless complexes are understood, life is rough. Take care of yourselves my bros and sisters.
I cut off from my mother in Jan 2022 at age 52, I am still in the beginning stages of healing, but I cannot tell you how freeing it was. I wish you love and light on your journey to healing!
I hope you find healing and love of oneself more going forward..you are loved,valued and you matter!!
So happy for you. It’s still a tough journey but you will be more free.
Your stories resonate with me. I'm about to go total no contact after being drawn in by my elderly narcissistic mother after 25 years of no contact as she enjoyed her life without me and my daughter and grandchildren. Thank you for not making me feel guilty.
I CRAVED my mother as a child and she was mostly indifferent to me. She would often leave us alone, with grandparents etc. I would smell her nightgown to smooth myself. I remember waking up at 1am and not finding her home and going absolutely hysterical..damn near mental breakdown screaming hysterical. Years later I still have this crave urge and she’s still indifferent to me. The best way to describe it is a hollow feeling..
Well- that made me tear up. Just did inner-child work cuz the mom-craving reference made me recall issues. So sad. Best deal with this mess now that we are aware. *hugs*
I hope this doesn't sound too weird, but reading this made me want to hug the little you.
You weren’t unworthy. She was unworthy.
I'm so sorry you had to go through that and are still dealing with her indifference today. You didn't do anything to deserve her indifference. The problem is with her, not with you. You never were the problem.
That made my heart hurt. 😢 I’m so sorry for your pain. Hollow feelings hurt deeply.
My parents emotionally neglected me. I was never shown any physical affection or kindness. I realized this when at age 7 or so, my friend's mom just randomly gave me a small hug and called me "dear". I was in shock that that happened as my own mom had never done that. My dad never even talked to me unless I asked him about something he was interested in (he was a physics proffessor). I was critized my whole life. I ran away at 15, went back but left for good at 19. I am semi contact with my mom now (dad passed about 1 yr ago). At age 59 my mom still finds things to criticize me about i.e. my hair colour, my car, my house eventhough all of those things are just fine. I only ever felt close to my mom one time when she coloured with me in a colouring book for about half an hour at our cottage. Thats it. Very sad. I have been in therapy and on medication for about 25 years. Currently doing somatic therapy. This is the 1st time i have told my whole story in such a straight forward way. Patrick you helped me and many others more than you'll ever know. Thank you 💐❤.
Thanks for sharing!
Yes Thankyou for sharing. I have many similarities. ❤
My issues have some similarities in that my mother abruptly dropped taking care of me at age three when my sister was born. She sent me out to play in a dangerous area alone. And just didn't seem to want me around. I couldn't understand how I had gone from being loved and some degree of focus, to dropping off the list of loved ones. She seemed always angry and put out. I got locked out of the high security apartments(had to be buzzed in, and often she wouldn't get to it, )so I waited for adults to go I'm, and I'd follow stepped on broken bottles(was usually barefoot) chased by neighborhood teens, and sent on my own to church several blocks away to meet some rich lady I had never met who happened to live in a mansion so that I could be a playmate for her daughter , all when i was under age five. I would not treat a pet gerbil that way.
Same history… just realizing it now at 49 years old.
Thank you for sharing! YOUR comment helped me. ❤
Well now I know why nobody ever “broke up” with me - I make sure to do it first!! Dismissive Avoidant. Never knew that.
My father's whole life was basically a movie in his head and he couldn't tolerate anything that would contradict it. Whenever I did something with him it felt like I had to agree with everything he was saying and I had to like everything he decided I needed to like... It all felt like a setup, like we were "playing" father-daughter. I hated it because the rest of the time he was either disinterested or very dismissive and irresponsible. It made me super aversed to "fake" situations and disingenuous relationships, but I also didn't know what true genuine connections felt like. I only started to actually connect with people after cutting him off, because there was finally place for real life and real emotions.
same here,Michelle!
Same but my mother would always look to my siblings and I for validation and would get angry if we didn’t agree.
My dad was like that and also a sex energy vampire. When he died, I felt like I was freed from prison.
Another comment that gives me hope. I feel so validated.
"I only started to actually connect after cutting him off....because there was finally place for real life and and real emotions"
@@ebbyc1817 glad you find hope from my words! I'm jumping in to remind you that those things don't happen overnight either. At some points it felt like there was no progress, it's ok to go through periods of discouragement. If it ever happens to you, take a break, relax, but don't give up. One day, years later, you'll wake up and realize you reached a point you never thought would come to reality, and you'll be proud of yourself for sticking to your (metaphorical) guns!
If you decide to write a book, I will pre-order it. I am a post-graduate in clinical psychology and I have read a lot of self-help literature, but the way you get the problem and analyze it, and your command of the subject, are exceptional.
Me too (about the book). I almost wish i was from a war-torn country so i could get the therapy from him
I wish the same. 🥺
Here here!!!! I would also!
Same. I’ll buy 2.
I will pre order it too
I started to self isolate very young and i felt exhausted all the time. I haven't felt close to another adult in a very long time. Im a people pleaser and I don't like asking for anything or accepting anything. I always feel like I owe or have to balance out the gesture. I can't speak up for myself assertively and I've been extremely passive aggressive or just avoidant of conflict depending on the person and situation. I allowed myself to be used and i put myself in it at times even. I was told things that adults should converse about and not a little girl. I feel like i wasn't able to ever be a little girl or that i deserved to be protected. I would feel afraid during parties that someone might come in my room thinking it was the bathroom and i could not dare say anything about it to anyone. I took care of a baby at age nine. There's so much i have held inside of me and i have literally felt like i was a bomb at times!
Avoidant dismissive lone wolf. Yup. I’ve learned not to trust or count on support from anyone but myself. Seems like relationships always have conditions and withholding of love. I had a cousin over for a sleepover when I was about 9. My dad came home drunk and beat up my mother. My cousin was terrified. She called her mother to come get her that night. The two moms laughed about how she was homesick. But we all knew what it was really about. I never tried to have any friends after that. Dad might come home drunk and embarrass us.
my ex was da and he wrote a story about being resurrected from death by a witch then the witch betrays him.before we met. he then pushed me over yrs until I betrayed him by writing on Facebook about the oddness I was reaching out with brain fog. he then questioned me at length till I cold see it as a type of betrayal then severed contact. its as if he feared and made happen what his fear was.
My mom got drunk, yelled at me ( when I had a friend over for a sleepover), and my mom pulled down her pants squatted and peed on the floor! All while telling me it was my fault.😒🙄
@kipberquirky Oh my goodness that must have been awful! 🥺 Both experiences must have been awful... I really can relate because I lost a friend who came sleeping at my house once, and that night there was a huge fight between my mother and my sister that included physical violence. I never really saw my friend again after that, or on rare occasions, because she avoided me...
Even your aunt failed you by not taking you with her or calling the police. Laughing about homesickness says they were all in deep denial 😢
Sounds to me that it was your mother who dropped the ball.
It is very difficult growing up with a Narcissist. It effects your whole life
It does
Even better, just that defensive coping mechanisms are now not needed or justified.
Seen as self sabotage by fully functional adults who were wanted and loved by capable caregivers.
Embrace more grieving, but don't feel sorry for yourself. You're no longer a victim.
Abandonment is only done to you/ by you. (as an adult)
F##@k!!
Took me decades to realize how profoundly early attachment wounds have shaped every adult relationship I’ve had. My life changed once I started addressing and reparenting. It’s wild to observe outrageous narcissistic behavior in elderly parents, being able to identify and reject it, now.
I'm in the same boat, and completely understand what you speak of! Wow!
How to do reparent? 😭 I find this extremely difficult. How do you parent yourself?
I definitely relate. I didn’t figure this out until shortly before my mom passed.
@@steffaely hey there are some good books out there about this. Understanding childhood CPTSD by Pete Walker is a good place to start.
Yes. Wild is the right word for it.
My mother was a malignant narc, my brother the golden child, my father sacrificed me to save himself, I have never recovered, I 'm 59 , thank you very much
Oh man I got myself a charcuterie board of narcissistic parenting styles. My parents made sure I got to tryout every single style. How sweet of them
I must be dining at the same restaurant as you because I too got a taste of all styles. 😂
Much love to all those in the comment section, it’s so touching to feel I’m not alone in this, I wish you all peace of mind xxx
❤
❤ you are kind…
Wow I’m textbook dismissive avoidant. I’ve dated many people actually but can easily go years without a relationship with no desire. I am completely independent, and would never live with someone else because I need my safe space. I feel like I do make connections and am very empathetic, to a fault actually, but it’s so crucial to me to take care of myself. Dad was alcoholic who left me alone a lot as a kid and mother is like Joan Crawford movie type cruel. 🤷🏻♀️
I feel you so much. It's a both weird but I can't remember ever missing anybody. There are things that I can't share with people out loud bc they will think I'm rude but...
I don't miss them. I don't miss my friends, my family, my boyfriend. I could really go without them. Ofc I love them but I am fine without them.
My mom is a school teacher for children and my dad is a truck driver, rarely home. Mom tough me how to be strong, independent and myself. She never tough me how to do romantic love tho.
Every moment spent with people that is out of the plan and is not necessary is like a chore. I'm fine with meeting friends once a week or less. I have my plans and I feel bad that I don't really care if they are in them or not. They can tag a long if they want. I will be fine with and without them.
I think it hurts people around me and hurts my bf, but I just don't know how to need him more in my life. And that's the truth, I like him, I want him, but I don't need him. I don't need all the attention and effort and I don't know how to receive it. I would rather be left alone and chill.
When you state, "Neglect is a personal message..." it really resonates with the way my sisters and I grew up. Often we were told, "everything was done for us" but it seems in retrospect nothing was...I mean, I'm still alive, so I must have been okay? But the message my parents sent was: you're second. I'm first. I get what I want and tell you I'm doing it all for you, when in fact, not much those were just words. Intentions and actions are separate things. I know this from my own journey, now alone after two marriage and three kids: I didn't intend for anything the way it happened, but it did. Thanks SO MUCH for this channel!!! My sisters and i listen to many of your videos and sing your praises!! I still haven't found a therapist (financial problems 🙃) where I live so I try the journal prompts and listen to videos to get clues on how to make progress myself, though I know I'm going to need a therapist!
Yeah I always say that I implicitly knew as a kid that if my mom had to choose between herself or me, she'd come first - always.
I'm jealous that your sisters are in on the healing journey. Mine use dissociation to cope with the past.
"Neglect is a personal message..."yes, it's so wild how I still sometimes intuitively think my family would have been good people if only I had been different, there's so much shame, bitterness, inferiority and therefore envy and rage associated with it, I'm working through it but it still often feels like I HAVE TO bend over backwards for people just to be acceptable, like my former partner, things did not go well and he treated me poorly but I still feel like I somehow owe him my time and it took the words of a sweet new friend (I've made quite a few friends lately, I never thought it possible in my mid-thirties) to make me come to my senses on the issue, he told me in no uncertain terms that I "shouldn't be so forgiving" and "someone who treated you like that is not your friend" and yet even just typing this out I feel a little like I'm overreacting, but it's lovely to have healthy friends though
@@andreakoroknai1071 💛💛💛
I think the key word regarding intent is choices. In my unknowing relationship with a pornography addict, he was making all the choices (also, his grandfather molested him as a child). I would never intend or choose to have children with him if I knew then what I know now. Although my children are adults (estranged), if they could, they would (and have tried) continue a family pattern where everyone has choices except me.
@@nunyabizness573 Thank you for sharing that. 💛🌼🥲
I'm currently dismissive avoidant, but it's precisely because I've spent so much time and effort trying to acknowledge my own feelings and find my identity and boundaries, and I fight like hell to keep all of that now. If anyone tries to take even one centimeter of that away from me, they're gone.
How do you behave in relationships?
@@rupertperiwinkle4477 firstly, it takes me a VERY long time to choose to be in a relationship, I mean years. Because I need to feel like my personhood is safe in someone else's hands. If I feel that, I let myself be with that person and I love them as fully as I can.
This is a cycle that must end. I had two narcissistic parents. It took until my 50's to realize my childhood was severely abnormal, and understand the psychological damage I had incurred in childhood, and walked forward with through life. Passed up on relationships that could have been good for me long-term, as I could not commit long-term, and also got involved with two other narcissists as partners. I walked away from my narcissistic family 4 years ago - wish I had done it 30 years earlier.
yes. from age 12 I knew I was damaged in some way my peers were not. a Narcissistic Psychopath father, a overburdened and over stressed neglectful mother.
It took me a long time to figure out, too. I thought something was broken in me my entire life, because that's how my parents made me feel all the time. Two out of three of my dad's kids ended up barely surviving drug addiction (my brother and I). That doesn't happen in a vacuum and it's not normal.
Now my husband and I are both unlearning the toxicity our parents taught us and helping each other through it. His mother is a textbook narc, so now he can read her like a textbook. We decided that the buck stops with us so that our kids don't have to go through what we did. We love our kids unconditionally. That's how it should be. Our parents did not love us that way and it caused so much damage. It's like it gets passed down through generations too, but you have to make a choice to break the cycle.
In a way I'm grateful even though I suffered, because it woke me up in a major way and led me to becoming a much, much stronger and happier person. It was a hard lesson to learn, though. It's never too late to break that vicious cycle, and now you can heal.
I regret how much of my life I have spent being confused and wondering what was wrong with me. When I did go to see therapists as a young person they had no idea what was going on with me and also I didn't know how to articulate to them anyhow. It is very difficult of a young person to understand all of this stuff. I want to get perspective and distance to be further away from the problem and not trapped in it. It's sad though I wish my life had been on an organized track earlier in life. It goes without saying that emotionally messed up parents really don't give very good guidance.
@@emmalouie1663 Yes, life would have been much smoother and more rewarding if we'd had the benefit of supportive and well-balanced parents. But we did not. Neither did they most probably. One can only get off the turning wheel of cause and effect.
Yep. Me too. I tried not to do the same thing with my boy but guess what! I did. I definately broke many cycles but many slipped through the cracks 😢. I wish this stuff was more accessible when I was younger but was playing out my shit. My son has issues but knows he is loved and he's very self aware so theres that.
The legacy of this crap is rampant in so, so many of us, our parents included. I'm glad this generation has access to all this information.
Dismissive avoidant is me to the letter. I grew up with a mother who I believe had Anti-Social Personality Disorder. She was terribly narcissistic. She was also physically disabled, and literally everything revolved around her. None of my needs were met, and I was made to feel selfish by her and others for needing anything or being overwhelmed. She was 100% an energy vampire, and since I was the only one around her, I had to deal with everything on my own. She's deceased now, but I often just feel empty and emotionally dead inside.
Wow I'm so sorry you had to deal with all of that growing up and still to this day the lasting effects. I hope you're in therapy or getting some other kind of support because you deserve to heal.
Sorry for your experience and I relate to you. I had to decide to not let her steal the rest of my life. I’m reinventing myself on MY terms and I’ve moved away from her so she can’t pee-shoot my goals, dreams, and achievements any longer. I’m much healthier and happier. XoC
☹️☹️☹️ that really sucks.
It's like you never got your cup filled as a kid. There's a great book called running on empty. It helped me.
I feel empty and emotionless at times. It will pass, they're just feelings.
@@Squamata_Mama I am definitely in therapy. EMDR has been pretty helpful with processing pent up emotions, but I still have times when its hard to feel anything at all. I feel numb and tend to block out strong emotions - negative and posotive.
@@ebbyc1817 Thank you. I love exercise and music, especially listening to music while exercising. Also being in nature. I've been trying to do "anger work" to help myself tap into the strong emotions that are usually pent up. Its helpful, but I still have a long way to go before I'm fully emotionally healthy.
Omg, Patrick!
This has opened my eyes that I may be repeating the narcissistic behaviors my parent displayed when I was growing up without realizing it and my heart is breaking for my daughter right now.
Thank you for your videos . Now to find a therapist that can help with this type of work 🥺
Love on your daughter. Apologize where you know that she was hurt, sold short or sacrificed; ask for forgiveness, and then be compassionate to yourself… it’s hard to watch your children struggle in trying to hang on to a partner. The good or the not as good ones.
Yes! "Cherish and enjoy having children" thank you for this beautiful statement, Patrick. They didn't make the choice to come here.
6:06 Dismissive Avoidant is absolutely the style I dealt with… it hurts SO much. It especially hurt to be a child who loved music, in a house that enforced quiet with an iron fist. Except from the parents, of course. They could do whatever they wanted.
“That’s beautiful sweetie…” always ended with “but can you stop?”
Ugh I won’t even lie, every time I realize how messed up my attachment style is, I sincerely wonder how anyone could ever love me because Im always scared that I’m emotionally draining someone. Plus I’m always convinced that someone doesn’t really like me, it’s just a transactional thing and I’m clearly not in on what they want from me yet. I know it’s a bad thing to say/think but I’m sure we’ve all thought it at one point. I got a lot of work to do. Thanks for your videos.
You sound like you‘d let people tell you their problems but won’t dare to share your own painful experiences. It‘s not easy for you either. Say you were that type of person in those situations, then you did more than enough. Even if you weren’t. You are alive, so this is enough. Your existence in itself is enough. I felt that I needed to say this ! You go :) sending love
😢
Same
💯 🎯
I can definitely identify with this but never knew why. It's starting to make sense.
My father didn't want children, his parents didn't want children, and my mother's parents didn't want children. No wonder they were so messed up.
My dad used to take me out for coffee to spend time together. We lived together, but every now and again we had little coffee meetings. We'd also have structured family meetings, and I remember having a meeting when I was 10 to calculate mine and my siblings allowance based on custody and age. I was neglected and shamed during the worst depressive episode of my life. I was suicidal, and cried for help plenty times, but ultimately I had to pull myself out of it on my own, and hold on for dear life until I was an adult. I shouldn't have had to do it on my own, and I definitely shouldn't have been isolated from friends after attempts.
I grew up with a weird preoccupied, but occasionally dismissive style. When I ask for help and/or support, I usually have a good half hour shame attack about needing anything at all.
I'm definitely getting better, but life could definitely be more fun lol
Your attachment style sounds like disorganized attachment, (it's mine) swinging between anxious and avoidant. Everything I've read about this style says it's the most difficult to treat-yeah. But looking at the bright side, maybe the swing between the two is just one's attempt to find balance and healthy attachment??
@@MsHazelie Fortunately, I've had a couple amazing, safe people in my life for a while, so I think that's really helped my healing. I'm still pretty avoidant with everyone outside my tiny circle, but not all is lost lol
Totally relate to you. I remember when I slit my wrists and tried to kill myself I didn't tell anyone about it for weeks. I was having an argument with my dad one night and he was essentially telling me how I needed to try harder in school and do something with my life or I'm going to be a failure, telling me my depression was laziness because he'd been depressed before and pulled himself out of it. I pulled up my sleeves and said this is what you make me do, I tried to kill myself and you still think I'm just lying and lazy? He looked at me with contempt and got up and walked away. I'll never forget that day how I cried for help and he just fucking left. Never spoke about it again. He continued to torment me until my early 20s. I think I was 17 then.
Still live at home unfortunately but I have a gf now and spend most of my time at her place. I say all of 50 words to him a week at this point. Keeps me sane. I am so emotionally numb and dead inside I feel bad for my gf because I can barely give her the attention she needs due to self-hatred, shame and discomfort with intimacy.
Fuck our parents for the shit they did to us. My mom died when I was 11 so I basically feel like an orphan at this point. It destroys my soul to think that I will never be unconditionally loved.
@@Silky2687 It's super bittersweet to hear someone relate to that kind of thing. I'm sorry for what you've been through.. You've got this, and if you can move, you'll notice the difference immediately. It's hard to recover when you're still around that person, so try not to be too hard on yourself.
You are loveable regardless of the intimacy issues, and whatever other flaws you think you have. Everyone deserves to be loved, and you deserve to love yourself.
I relate so much, and yet I've found someone to love me and be patient with me. It's been 3 years (2 years living together) and I haven't pushed him away yet lol. I imagine your girlfriend thinks way more highly of you than you think. Best of luck to you!
@@ft.meganmccarthy8865 Thank you for the kind words. I plan on going back to school next fall and moving out then so I look forward to that.
It's nice to hear that you've been able to surround yourself with healthy and nurturing people. Wish you luck as well on your healing journey
This makes me feel seen and validated on so many levels. It’s encouraging to know that there are helpers out there who really get it. Thank you, Patrick!
I really struggled to imagine a day with my parents, they were always so unpredictable I never knew what to expect. They could ignore me completely, or blow up in rage, or get buddy-buddy with me over some juicy gossip, or some combination of all of them.
Can "disassociation" be an attachment style? Acting as if other people (and even yourself) are not really real. Once I started to heal my disassociation my style became more anxious preoccupied.
Wow I felt the same way growing up so confused not knowing it’s it’s going to be abuse or neglect or rage.
I am more preoccupied and disassociated if that would describe my attachment style
Due to being neglected for a solid 10 years i think being preoccupied is my default because I had to create my own stimulation as a child. Now I don’t know how to turn that off and socialize a “normal” amount. I never was spoken to very much growing up.
I think disassociation and dissociation are more a result/symptom of having experienced trauma rather than being an attachment style in and of itself, but I’m not sure. I definitely relate to what you said, though; I still struggle with dissociation on a near daily basis myself, but I think that once you begin to heal from your trauma, it becomes less prevalent. Dissociation due to trauma is (if I’m remembering correctly) sort of a leftover coping mechanism from childhood. Children have no way to escape from the situation they’re in, and the stress is too much for them to handle, so their brains react by detaching them from the situation. The resulting distance allows a child to weather their experiences without being fully “present” for everything that’s happening, because the situation is too stressful or overwhelming for the child to fully come to terms with. Since we learn it in childhood (even if we’re unaware it’s happening), it carries over into adulthood and we continue to use it as a coping mechanism to navigate toxic relationships and stressful life events. That’s just my two cents, but I’m glad you’re healing from your disassociation! I think that’s a good sign that you’re well on your way toward healing your attachment style too 👍
my parents, especially my dad on every other weekend visits, you just described to a "T." great comment, ty!😀
My mom was like this very unpredictable it terrified me as a kid. She could be screaming at me, or everything is fine or she would act like she doesn't care to get a rise out of me.
I live with my parents. Currently it’s just my dad and yes I’d say he’s a stranger. My mom is the narcissist. When she’s around it’s difficult. I’m trapped but working hard to leave this house.
I was the same for 13 years. Equated it to a prison sentence.
One piece if advice. Seek counseling. I wish I had myself and didn't until I was almost 30. Ten years gone. They go by quick and that stuff can stick w you. Find your people, they're out there.
I can feel this in some ways. My father was non existent throughout my childhood and my mom was emotionally unstable. I mean she tried her best but in some ways her emotions always came first. Even tho i pushed myself to tell something to her, she'd just try to one up my problems with her problems. She also occasionally tried to say "but other people have it worse than us" which in turn made me feel guilty for feeling the emotions i was feeling. Due to all this, words hardly come out of my mouth and i choke up when i have to speak to people. Its hard but i am working on myself to leave the house too.
I'm in a similar situation. My narc ex-husband discarded me last year after 12 years of marriage, and I had to move back "home" to my toxic, narc family. My parents are divorced, have been for almost 20 years. I live with my mother and brother who are so completely and hopelessly enmeshed with each other that neither can function. Occasionally I go visit my father who left us, abandoned us and was never really there in my life growing up.
I'm 40 years old, and I have nothing. I can't escape my family right now, but I'm desperate to because they're back to their old ways (that never changed) of sucking the life out of me. Healing from my ex-husband's abuse has been a lot easier because we're no contact and I don't live near him. But healing from my family's abuse is impossible because every day is a reminder that they are awful people who never loved me and treated me like a burden. I am completely and utterly alone.
I completely understand how you feel trapped. Hang in there. You can get out, but it won't be easy and it won't happen overnight. Best of luck to you.
@@spacegirl226 I’m so sorry to hear about your situation. I’m glad you have these videos to rely on for help and understanding. We’re gonna make it through this. The fact that we’re here on this channel is a testament to that. 💪 May Elohim bring you comfort. 🫂
I exhibit signs of all 3 of these, and it's usually on a situational basis. But I survived an overwhelming mother. Lots of physical and emotional abuse.
Probably FA mostly?
Between my mother and father we covered every sicko trait you can have. Sucks being an only child to have no one to confirm yes it is not you. Thank you for this!
Dear friend, It’s not you ❤
Your opinion of you is what matters & the most important. Getting to that place takes time. You deserve to be kind to you. Blessings ❤
I'm the same, only child also.
When you talked about the narc parent becoming depressed over the child getting a “C,” it took me back to third grade. We lived w/my mom’s parents, and she would take me for a drive to abuse me openly so they wouldn’t interfere. I had made my first “C” on a report card. She cried and yelled, “How could you do this to me?!” The irony? It wasn’t my “C.” Teacher had made a mistake. I don’t remember mom’s apology (she said sarcastically).
Welcome to hell. Already as a child I was different than the rest (just recently at 33 diagnosed with severe adhd, mostly due to my own interest in why I am like I am and why my life is this ratrace that im trying to escape over and over again)
My parents used to beat me up and chase me around the house when they found out I was transfered to a lower class school because I'd rather doodle on the table than pay attention in class. I still remember laying on the floor as my mother beat me with a belt and I didn't understand anything. Getting abused for who you are, when you havent hurt anyone, or done anything remotely wrong, man, I cannot describe the feeling. Obviously this wasn't the only time of physical abuse like that, there were hundreds other times, where my mother would beat us so severely, just to treat to our wounds afterwards. But that one holds significant sentiment for me, because I was sick and needed help, instead all hell rained down on me all because I was different and my parents were too narcissistic too care or understand.
And yes! They never. apologise. never. not once. The times they do, you know its either their guilt or desire for somethingn speaking, because afterwards they go do it again and again.
Did your parents ever change? And do you still keep contact with them?
Wow! The threat of being kicked out of the family was very real. Parental contempt. My older brother was actually sent to foster care and he never lived with us again. Because he was a normal 8 year old. Being kicked out was a constant threat. Talk about double-bind!
I lost my Dad at age 2 and was left with a self serving, hateful narcissistic mother. She never took me to therapy after the death of my beloved Father but rather mocked me waiting for my Dad at the window after he already died. She ruined our family. I was the neglected scapegoat child and had extreme separation anxiety from her because I thought she would leave me too. She’s 87 and still hateful and manipulative!
Wow, 87 years old and still a cvnt! I'm sorry 😢
I feel Your pain My Mom is 86 and Still as Evil , I am going no contact finally , and I’m 63 ! I’m so sorry for what your going through ! It’s such a shame your own mother Hates You , mine has tried Her whole miserable life to destroy my happiness! The Devil is a Liar !
I love the container you create by including yourself and your own examples in the discussion. It doesn’t feel like a therapist discussing case studies, although those are also very helpful. Here I feel like I’m in a support group. A peer group. And that we have a guest speaker, one of us who is an expert on the subject, inspired by his own experience, as opposed to a decision made in college for perhaps different reasons. This style on your channel really resonates for me. Thank you for this.
I see myself, mostly, in the anxious preoccupied area. It’s crazy when I look back and see how I am ALWAYS the caregiver. When first meeting someone, I sort of hang back to see what they need. It’s no wonder I chose a caregiving profession. While sitting here reflecting on how I relate to everyone this way, I can’t come up with another way to relate. I feel like this sounds ridiculous, but I really don’t know how else to be. I’ll listen to your UA-cam videos on innerchild work. Thanks so much for this video. By the way, I have trouble allowing others to help me also.
the CrappyChildhoodFairy videos on YT are great
Check out the personal development school channel
I so relate to this!
I relate to this as well!
I feel like having such a strong relationship with animals all of my life has really helped me in so many ways. Showing affection, caring for another creature selflessly, unconditional love. I learned early that I couldn’t experience these things from the ones who should them, but I found them from in the end
P.S. fearful avoidance is a hell of a drug
i'm honestly stunned. i've never understood myself better than i do now, because you spelled it all out so clearly.
As a child, I’d say my needs were met but I was basically ignored. Once in a while my mom would pay attention to me and do something special with me. I didn’t have a dad in the picture. On a daily basis, I just went along taking care of myself and living in my own little world. I never knew what my mom was up to. Except when she went to work. Otherwise, I never really knew what she did.
I suppose that all maybe caused dismissive avoidant with me…because I have a hard time in relationships, with affection, with feeling like my peaceful space is invaded.
Kinda sad-
Thank you for the enlightenment.
Me too, I was totally ignored by my mother and my father wasn't allowed by her to show any emotions. Relationships feel the same to me as yours,, almost an imposition on my time and me! And they generate an overload of emotions, sometimes minute by minute that leave me tired. Plus, I can't really bond anyway, so there is almost no point in relationships. I've had many ok friendships, ONLY bc of the harmony of beliefs in my religion, Jehovah's Witnesses and bc they are so, so forgiving with my severe lack of emotional skills and my oddball responses to their affections towards me. Other than that I wouldn't know what even a friendship was nevermind a male/female relationship. And I'm 65 and hardly have developed real emotions, sad. Ty for your comment.
you really have such a calming personality and aura, it's very hard for me to watch these videos in fear of becoming more depressed and angry. but you make it easier to let go of some burdens i feel.
Of all the mental health content providers, this Patrick Teahan is the one that seems as if he himself is consistently in a healthy place emotionally during the video.
Dr. K is another one who actually seems emotionally very calm and secure and comfortable with himself in all his HealthyGamerGG videos too.
I would love a talk on being the black sheep of a dysfunctional family system and how that leads to patterning being the scapegoat role again & again in different groups. I’m realizing my old behaviors before therapy did set me up to be around groups that had the same types of personality disorders in them, people that felt familiar - familial. I’ve basically been trying to reparent myself along with becoming a mother. I’ve been in therapy on & off since becoming a mother, to help understand the insanity I was raised in. I’m so grateful that I am the type who did seek out help and open up my own life to be able to be helped. As the scapegoat, we are raised to always take all the blame & it’s been a lifetime of not getting anyone to actually apologize when they are cruel to me. It’s been getting so much better the last decade and I had to go no contact five years ago. To seek help and assistance outside of my abusive family was seen as the work of the devil, because I got out of a family where my parents were the youth pastors growing up, in a fundamentalist evangelical cult. Being the scapegoat was also mixed into the spiritual realm of such extremes that the last time I saw my mother she tried to speak in tongues, rebuke me in the name of Jesus, & she hit me in front of my husband & my sons. I was 39. It’s very hard to process the spiritual abuse that goes with the abuse I suffered, because it’s such an added terror to add such extremism to the already hard to process physical & emotional abuse.
I can't even imagine! I wish I could give you the biggest hug.
I’m also the black sheep of my family the scapegoat. My mother also hides behind her Christian beliefs. It’s all fake, she’s 2 very different people one with her children and a different person around her church friends. She’s physically abusive still to my 40 year old sister and last week called me cunt for calling her out on her abuse. I told her I would one day film her behaviour and send to her pastor. She had a meltdown it was like watching a 2 year old having a tantrum. Stomping here feet and banging her fists on the wall while calling me the most disgusting names!
Yes, Rebecca I can also identify with being a black sheep of my parents and brother. It hurts so bad, but it’s better to just not be around them. Even though now they just make up lies about me and try to keep me away from the rest of the family so I will be dismissed. Even try to pull my kids away too. They are NPD. And have a mask on in front of people but whenever the mask comes off, you better run. They can just cause so much fake drama that I have so called caused. So that’s the best thing to do is stay away. I have had to isolate for along time though, sometimes wondering when will it end? My mom forced us to go to a cult church which was so devastating and neglectful. There wet no celebrations and for a kid going to school and not allowed to celebrate anything was devastating. I believe parents should at least look back and see their mistakes and say they are sorry. All my dad said was he feels he did a very good job raising me. (Wow, sexual molestation was and is still denied!)😢
Totally get it! And the impact that being around a 'golden unicorn' can make me feel so much worse in myself
The amount of good you do by putting out these videos is tremendous. I hope you realise how worthwhile your efforts are.
I tend to be insecure and need reassurance in the relationships and to find someone ready for this kinda commitment isnt easy nowdays so i just dont date.Saves me from going through uneccessary heartbreak.
“an anxious preoccupied person might give me a lot of power that i DONT WANT” the way this exactly summarized my pattern in relationships omg
Things always “felt” off but were dismissed and ridiculed. You have described my parents in a nutshell, now to start believing in myself again. Thank you so much Patrick, your videos are so incredibly helpful and uplifting.
A day with my Dad back in childhood would have been scary, because one had to always please him and it was a very fine line to walk, if one could do it at all, one did well if one could do it for most of the outing. Basically, be sweet, and don't have an opinion, and be pleased with whatever he does for you. You need to be obedient, compliant, and pleasant. He had an ego, but it was fragile. He needed to keep us down, to stay on top. And if you displeased him, or told him something he didn't want to know, boy you'd know about it. Even months later. The love tap was not just turned off, it was turned inside out. He would suck any good feeling you had out of you, in punishment. Make you cry to make himself feel stronger. I was trapped, in needing to please him, and not being able. No wonder I'm a mushed shell of a person, and he disliked me even more for that.
“He needed to keep us down to stay on top.” Regrettably this sounds very familiar to me. My dad was an authoritarian dictator and my mom was his spy.
I find the idea of a day alone with either of my parents incredibly uncomfortable.
"be sweet, and don't have an opinion" & "if you told him something he didn't want to know..." ring so familiar
#CrappyChildhoodFairy on youtube
mine a narcissistic psychopath. Never alone with him, terrified of him
@@sixsmith7653 Don’t spend time with them! It keeps you stuck and they don’t deserve your company. When I cut my family off it was incredibly empowering. Wish I’d done it when I was 18.
I just found your channel like 5 minutes ago. I really didn't anticipate stumbling upon somebody that can read my mind on the internet. Like WTF... 🤯
These videos are a godsend for so many. You don't have to make them but you do. I thank you sincerely from here in Edinburgh ⭐
Being discarded by a dismissive avoidant makes so much more sense now. The lies by omission, the performative/transactional “affection”, lack of validation and all the things I didn’t want to admit that ultimately led to betrayal and silence. Never again, thank you for the insight.
I found this video very enlightning. My mother is the narcissistic immature one who used me for emotional support and parentified me. My father was the alcoholic narcissist that critisized and punissez, shamed any emotions of anger, sadness! I becamd his confidante, therapist, once mh parents divorced at sge 10. I am the anxious preoccupied style. It sure makes me understand my patterns and the work needed for my inner child to heal. Thank you !
Dismissive avoidant. I’ve always thought my attachment style is like throwing spaghetti at the wall to see if it sticks. It falls off every time. That’s exactly what it feels like for me. Every time I search myself to see if I care about something or someone, it feels like a balloon deflating. I want it to happen but 95% of the time the spaghetti falls off the wall. The only exception is my husband and my cats. Everyone else is barely tolerated.
I mean, you found a husband to love; that’s more than most of us.
This sounds like me. I and my husband are also house humans - the cats actually run everything,
Hey, you don’t need a million people. It sounds like you have your own little family. Bless that :)
I feel like I could have written that. Including the cats!
I know all about this.
"You're the expert of your own story." Thank you Patrick for that powerful reminder as so many of us come from being raised as invisible and invalid. The shadow self work/inner child healing is a lifelong excavation and pain-laden inquiry - NOT a quick diagnosis with assembly-line fixits as so many are selling these days. The decision to go no contact with my parents took three decades of my adult life to finally architect and only four months to tear down between my only sibling's suicide and the pandemic.
Yours is the voice in my head as I continue to commando crawl through year 3 of lockdown as the sole caregiver to a toxic narcissistic mother and enabler father in cognitive decline.
Thank you Patrick for your insight, compassion and generosity. Thank you kindred spirits in suffering for sharing your journeys on this channel. 🙏🖖🙏
I had two narcissistic parents too. Its twisted, but because they traveled so much, and the woman they hired to live with us while they were gone wasn't a narcissist, I honestly believe we were spared quite a bit. Twisted that we were spared by their absence. I'm grateful for the people who were around us as kids, as well as for how the world was truly a much different place back then. The world has become a mean place because of the internet, which thankfully didn't exist when we were young.
The world does seem worse. Well I think it is economically worse. It's said that current generations are doing worse financially than past generations. Even though people have trinkets they don't have real wealth and possibly more moving for jobs. Now jobs change all the time.
I think it's totally fair to say you were spared by being left with a healthier caregiver.
I sometimes think this too because my mother had debilitating depression & religious fanaticism when I was young so was always sleeping on the couch or praying ( not present) while my father was a threatening tyrant. It wasn't until my mom somewhat "recovered" and left my father in my teens that I got to see how narcissistic and cruel a parent she actually was.
Every activity involving my mom was transactional. She always neede to be rewarded for doing bare-minimum. My dad never complained but let his partners tell him what to do but then if I had friction with his partner, he’d abandon me, attack me physically or catch me off guard with explosive screaming. What a shitshow.
I'm glad you brought up cycling through different attachment styles---I definitely do that, and have likewise been more anxious preoccupied in less healthy relationships (or just in less personal / close relationships) but more fearful avoidant or dismissive avoidant in healthier, close relationships. You kind of mention this at the end, but I wonder if it's because the first priority is to have some kind of consistent love and affection (so trying to achieve that with anxious preoccupation), but in a relationship where that love and affection is consistent, it's almost too much to deal with or it feels uncomfortable and foreign (so avoidance comes up).
I find I'm anxious with people I feel inferior to. And avoidant with people I feel superior to. Not so much, better than, or they're better than me, but more like, a perceived shortcoming. Like if someone has lots of really good friendships, and no drama in their life, I'm going to feel anxious with them, because I know they have better coping strategies. But if someone is more manipulative, doesn't state their needs, hides behind masks, I'm going to be more avoidant, not just because it's harder but because of the shortcoming. I'll see it as having bad coping strategies in relation to me.. It's like, trying to have a relationship with a child versus, trying to have a relationship with an elder.
Hope this helps.
Although another thought I just had, which is why I'm editing this, is maybe I know the likelihood of abandonment with someone with bad coping strategies, is much higher. So I'm more avoidant with them because I know it's going to end sooner or later.
@@ebbyc1817 exactly
But it's not cycling- that's classic fearful avoidant! A bad relationship (with insecure attachments) will make a fearful avoidant lean anxious bc have to cling to keep relationship going. Whereas a good relationship (with security) will make the fearful avoidant "deactivate" bc hard to accept as if the relationship is "too good to be true" so they pull back in defense.
That said attachment styles can change as one works on themselves and often if their partner is secure so not all hope is lost.
The book Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller is awesome for diving into this. However they don't have much on fearful avoidants so to really dig deep Tahis Gibson at the channel "The Personal Development School" is my fave!
@@mrslvw Thanks for the tips. I've read the book (Before I even knew what attachment really was).
I think what you described about fearful avoidant makes sense. At least it helped me make sense of someone I know. He's more avoidant with his partner, who is anxious, according to him, but more anxious with me. Well, avoidant, then anxious. Like he'll try to be avoidant, and then after a while if it doesn't work, he'll become anxious. Like not call after a fight, or any kind of disagreement, and then after a while, if there's been no communication, he'll start calling all the time like he's freaking out. It's really stressful. Because you can't resolve the conflict, and you can't move on. I don't know how they find partners.
@@ebbyc1817 wow sounds like a fun one:/ I'm still figuring it all out myself bc it does get so complicated
These attachment styles concept were mysterious to me, and information available about them was fuzzy and unclear.
This video makes sense and makes it very clear and easy to understand it. Thank you
Love this:
"Neglect is personal message that we're not lovable, that we're not ok, we're not doing something right and we have to find some secret code to get the parent to engage. Which is origin of codependency."
Wow, burdened by being a parent, that describes my mother perfectly! I was made to feel that I was a burden just for existing, and especially because she had to be my parent. After many years of therapy where NPD was never mentioned, I finally learned about narcissistic abuse. I recognized my mother instantly, and the pieces of the puzzle finally came together! I know what happened and why I feel and operate the way I do, but I still can't seem to move out of my "stuckness", as the same tapes keep playing in my mind constantly.
To complicate matters even more, I believe that I am ASD, but I haven't been able to get tested and diagnosed yet.
I can see myself in all 3 of the attachment styles, I guess I'm just a bit of everything. But that could be because of the ASD, and the difficulties that I have in relating to the world due to being aneurotypical.
"you're the expert on your own story." Thanks for that validation! ❤
Oh wow. That was very insightful. I always wondered why I was always trying to help people, being the group mom, always doing things for people. I've always had to either walk on eggshells at home or make myself invisible to not be irritating. Then during the divorce I always was a parent therapist. They always tried to make me pick a side, telling me things I shouldn't have been told.
As an adopted person I was always told that my adoption was evidence that I was "wanted." However as an adult what I recognized that my parents wanted someone else, and those parts of me that did not match their preconceived image of me were NOT wanted.
this is EXACTLY how i feel! i’m an adoptee as well and it makes my blood boil when people say “you’re lucky you were chosen!” - it’s bullshit. i wasn’t chosen, i was next in line.
@@mamachungusand as an adopted person there’s also the flipside of, but would I have been chosen if my parents had had their own biological children?
I recently found out that my birth mom and adoptive mom have the same first name, so I feel someone at the agency thought it would be cute to take a baby from a Nancy and give her to a different Nancy. This cute idea meant that I got sent to a family where not only did I not fit in emotionally / creatively, but also couldn’t have looked more physically different from them, leading to lots of curious questions from strangers and my parents shutting down and getting mad bc it’s “none of their damn business.” My sister and I were forbidden to tell anyone we were adopted.
They told me to just tell people that I have the coloring of my dead grandmother, which I did until recently, when I started questioning why it was my job to pretend to be their biological offspring when I’m not??
And why two people who hated each other and hated kids were approved to adopt is a whole other conversation!! 😅
Born and not wanted much either. Want for yourself, let others want you.
This hit home on so many levels. Fearful avoidant here and also a narcissist parent. To a 4 and 6 year old that are avoidant preoccupied and also fearful avoidant 😭
Currently feeling quite helpless as to how I heal my past childhood trauma while simultaneously helping curve theirs. I know from here on out things will be different. I can't and won't go back to how I have parented but fear the damage is done and am floundering at how to undo it.
You can give them what they dream of: a loving parent who makes them feel like they are wanted, cared for and treasured. Sounds like a good deal to me 🥰❤️
Find ways to connect with them and validate their feelings. If they are unable to articulate their emotions, help them learn what each one feels like. Spend quality time with them and ask them a lot of questions about their interests and love languages. Get comfortable talking about your own feelings and being honest with them and giving them a lot of physical affection.
You CAN do it! I didn’t figure this stuff out until my kids were all in their teens, and I’m just so thankful they still lived at home so I could live an apology to each of them. You have SO much more time than that! Educate yourself as much as you can on how to be emotionally healthy and validating. Figure out what your triggers are and how you can cope with them. Watch more of Patrick’s videos! Huge hugs! ❤️❤️
Jonice Webb has got some great books about helping yourself with attachment issues and how to help your children 🙌🏼
When I first started watching your videos a couple years ago, I had a very resentful feeling towards my parents, I was finally understanding myself and the reasons why I reacted the way I do and it just got me so angry and upset with them. Nowadays, the more I watch, the more I realize that my parents are reacting to their traumas and haven’t had the access, like I have, to help themselves. Knowing that, especially after they’ve both opened up to me (Woo! I became pregnant and seconds after finding out it’s sharing all the trauma stories we all have, that conversation was probably the most productive one I’ve ever had with them) I no longer have that anger. I have that feeling of, I need to help them in the best way I can and implementing certain ways to converse, like addressing the inner child, helps them and us move into a healthier relationship. I won’t ever be able to go back in the past and get the parents I needed, but they are here now and are making the effort to better themselves at 50 years old for the sake of their future grandson and their relationship with their children. That’s gotta be something
Happy for you
I love this
I definitely think about how much more information there is now about these things compared to in the past. I've never brought it up with my parents though they are too old and it's sort of pointless. I don't think I can forgive them they are just too messed up.
Wow..sounds healthier👏🏾👍🏾❤️
Your comment really hit home. Thank you for your insight ❤
This was me 💯. In the past four years I'm growing and am beginning to feel like a different better person. I worked for a boss for two years and did not once stand up for myself against his harsh narcissist ways. It not only was mentally painful and stressful it eventually lead to physical pain. Intense physical pain that was "stuck" in the back of my leg like an axe has been thrown into me.
Once covid came and everything shut down, I never went back and that pain is gone.
Every single day I HAVE to work on myself, and these types of videos have saved me.
Thank you ❤️
Interesting point about the back of the leg
It’s trippy reading this. I also experienced a pain in the back leg, middle of the right calf, that developed at the end of 5 year toxic work environment. It was there for 3 months at work and 3 months after I left.
So so good. Thank you so much. I get triggered by my ultra sweet and ultra reassuring bf. It sucks because I don't wanna push him away but I literally can't help myself sometimes 🥺
20 mins in, bookmark. Sorry to others who also have gone through any of these things. We all will get through it one day.
23 m8n, second bookmark.
25 mins, third bookmark
Thank you so much makes total sense narcissistic mother growing up with me being a highly sensitive person. Thank you so much for sharing and working hard not to reflect this pain on my three girls. 🙏🏻🙏🙏🏽 working so much on inner child healing.
You are quite literally describing my life. Strangely, or perhaps not so much, I created a dysfunctional family just like my mother and father. Now my kids are really messed up after the divorce. They don't even know how to talk to me anymore. I understand now they're probably going to have to go through the same thing I did. And there's not much I can do to help them. I used to be one of these people. What I am doing now in my life and absence of my family being around me, is work on myself. Understanding these concepts and how they are affecting my present life is helping me quite a bit. I have learned a lot of very important terms like trauma bonding, transference and counter transference all that stuff. It makes me a little embarrassed to be a human.
I have a securely attached fiance' and I'm so glad he didn't experience some of the crazy things I did.
This gives me a lot to think about and reflect on, even within myself. To ensure I remain a decent parent and role model for my own children. thank you for sharing this.
It’s so sad that most of all your life problems stem from the attachment and on going reinforcement of the initial attachment disorder. It’s great we know what happened but very sad that there’s not much we can do late in life about that.
You are a healer.❤
I have always wondered why my father had shared so many intimate dysfunctional details of my parents intimate relationship. I now realize that I am going to have to recover from incest emotional abuse. Now all of my preoccupational anxiety I have suffered from my entire teens and adult life makes so much sense! Time to do the inner child work my mother keeps strongly suggesting I don’t do.
Thank you Patrick!!
I must say that after watching your videos and the fairy ladys videos over the past 4 months, i have realized that my choices in partners have always been the type that mirrored my disfunctional parents in every way. I subconsciously thought it was normal, but it is far from normal. So I have made the conscious decision from your videos to learn what is normal, how to understand the reasons behind my choices in partners, realize I dont have to be a child in an adult relationship, and recognize when a potential mate is not a good choice before getting too far into it. Most of the past partners have had just as much of a dysfunctional past as I did. Doesnt work. Gotta keep workin! Thank you soooo much! I am determined to heal!
@advocateforsuccess7707 Awesome post!
Thank you for acknowledging the neurodivergent community! I’m neurodivergent and queer, and so are most people I know, and it’s frustrating that we often fall through the cracks. I would like to become a mental health professional of some kind myself because of this.
I’ve formed a nervous habit of constantly checking other people’s work over the way my dad would go absolutely insane over little problems.
“It’s a little thing, but it’s a big thing.” He’d say that all the time, especially about the little things we’d mess up. He’d say that in a way to be dismissive of us, but in a way that made it our fault we don’t do things certain ways rather than him trying to teach us. “It’s alright, I just know now that I can’t trust you to do that now.”
My sister and I have been very enmeshed with our mom since my dad left in 1973 and she made me her emotional partner and my older sister she parentified. I was the emotional substitute for her partner and my sister was the doer/care taker partner for her. i have looked at all of this long and hard over the past few years. i have struggled with fear, anxiety, depression, avoidance tendencies and learned helplessness all my life ( I am 52 now) which has lead me into all sorts of bad relationships and situations. In just the past 48 hours I've begun while looking again at one area of my life I have almost phobic reactions, to wonder "is this fear and anxiety and hopelessness and dread really mine or is it my mother's which I picked up, absorbed when I was young?" i am very strong and determined in most areas of my life so being stuck for decades in one area has perplexed me for so long. i was a highly sensitive child always reading the room for peoples vibes and moods and my mom had many mental health issues going on. I cant find anything on the internet or youtube about this type of thing, "carrying" your unhealthy parents stuff from childhood. Maybe its a part of differentiation??? I do almost feel if I "put down" the fears and anxieties and negativity of my mom's I will somehow be losing her even though she is still living and we are close and she is the same now as ever. Does this make sense? Is there work out there about this? Is this a core beliefs thing? I've been living with the core beliefs I observed and absorbed from my mom growing up and now I need to supplant with my own?
Hello Melissa, your comment struck a chord with me. My mother, likely a psychopathic narcissist, was an emotional vampire to me when I was young, in part by making me her mini-me. By that I mean she did not differentiate between herself and me and used me to bolster and meet her emotional needs. As a little child, she was very loving towards me and arguably this saved me. Once I hit about 10 and started to become myself, that is when all the trouble really started. I was enlisted into my parent's marital problems and became, unwillingly, the honest broker and diplomat, essentially their translator (dad = rational, mum = emotional). It was extremely stressful and gave me lasting personality traits such as never feeling safe, hyper vigilance and so on. I put a stop to her vampirism when I was 16 and learned to manage her by rewarding good behaviour and punishing bad behaviour (by using my contact with her, something she craved). You can see from my language that I ended up as the parent in the relationship, something that only eased as she aged. I used to describe my experiences of her emotional inroads into me as like an invading army conquering an unarmed country: she just marched in causing chaos and mayhem and occupied the territory. This might better fit me than you for my mother was very aggressive. Learning to build the walls to keep her from doing this and feeding on me took a long time but 16 was the turning point. Shockingly, the last time I saw her alive she actually asked me to let me allow her to do this to me one more time! I was horrified that she had such audacity, not least as it clearly demonstrated that what she had done all those years ago, she knew what she was doing and had done it deliberately. Not only did I give her short shrift, I gave her a piece of my mind into the bargain and so our last contact was acrimonious and bitter.
I am just a little older than you and have spent a lifetime unravelling the mischief from these depradations and related behaviours, like so many in these comments. I think this emotional colonisation or vampirism is particularly insidious as it creates confusion and difficulties with boundaries, both of which might help explain your fear and anxiety concerns. A lot of our ideas around emotional pleasure have their roots in our maternal relationship and if we think that requires no boundaries to reproduce then we are inviting chaos and mayhem into our lives all over again. That is just one side effect! My brother was also assigned a role in the dynamic and my mother was brazen enough to verbalise it by assigning him to our father (she obviously claimed me for herself). The divisions that this created are probably self evident, they were also permanent and played out across the extended family.
In relation to your comment about carrying your parent's concerns inside yourself, you could be right. My instinct is however that the confusion this blurring of boundaries creates is really at the heart of the issue. My mother made be feel like I was nothing, I was a tool for her ends. I learned to discount myself to not even see myself, only to see the tasks and roles she set out for me. In such a situation, coming to even identify my own feelings and needs (let alone trying to meet any of them!), is very difficult indeed. Having your self hijacked by your mother didn't erase you, even if it may have made you the pack mule for her burdens. I strongly believe you can separate her from you and reclaim yourself. Best wishes in the journey.
Great video! Shame I didn't have it 40 years ago when relationships mattered. I have many talents and I always thought my intensity in pursuing them was a normal path for an artist. The truth is I buried myself in them to avoid the constant anxiety of being unloved, scapegoated and shamed when the adults in the room needed to use their angst to address my mother's narcissism and mental illness. I was the only one anyone could reason with so I was told, take care of your sister. But no one took care of me.
i'm dismissive avoidant when i'm alone (the therapy example happened to me, practice relationship anorexia, unable to connect to myself (or others), learned at 35 that everyone has feelings i just happened to have shut mine down before i could remember.
but when i'm in relationships, i become fearful avoidant (stay in toxic relationships).
damn this video really cleared up my confusion. i think that this is what i will actually need to work with a therapist on.
Am like that as well. Been on a real dismissive avoidant bend the last year or so. I can't say it's bad but it's also eating my soul slowly even if I choose not to notice.
13:49 Anxious Avoidant describes me with my mom, and early on in my romantic relationship. After my parent's divorce and my mom remarried, she wouldn't have time to spend with me because she was so busy with work and appeasing her narcissist husband. So as a teen, I learned that the only way for her to spend quality time with me is if I "give her time" by doing tasks off her to-do-list so that she didn't have to do them.
Early on in my relationship with my boyfriend, if he had a to-do-list, but he didn't get something done because he was spending time with me, I would feel bad for "taking up his time." It took about a year of him saying "I'm choosing to spend my time with you because I want to" for me to have a more secure attachment style
I love my parents but it's always MY reality vs. THEIR realities and they REFUSE to ever look at situations, through any other lenses but their own. Dealing with this is EXHAUSTING, dangerous and just recently, almost cost me my life, as I have been very ill for a while and when I would tell them, "I don't feel well" they would repeatedly brush me off and say, "you're fine, you don't know what it is to be REALLY sick." Fast forward, to the present, where, I recently had emergency surgery and the doctors' found numerous other health issues which need immediate attention and was told that, "I am lucky to be alive." #ThanxFam
So very sorry. ❤
I like the thnx fam but yeah that's a really yuck feeling I almost died well you just weren't dying like I was .Like what yeah my bear has a big gun and a truck and then jumped over my house ....
Dismissive avoidant. I feel like I just got a huge piece of the puzzle 😳😥
It's a big one. Have you heard of Complex PTSD? It's another big part. There's a book by Pete Walker about it, and he's been on a few podcasts that you can listen to for free. The Being Human podcast has both him and Gordon Neufeld who I also recommend.
@@PuntedKitten I have, thank you and I'll check out Pete Walker and Gordon Neufeld!
I appreciate that you mentioned these styles can fluctuate! I've observed this in myself at different phases of my previous 8 year relationship, and also in various friendships.
I also appreciate that you approached the different styles with neutrality. You didn't portray any of them with heavy judgment, or this 'you're doomed/broken/you can never change' sort of attitude that I've seen in a lot of other sources. I've seen a few articles that slap labels around and make it sound completely set in stone. Also many sources have been very biased towards anxious preoccupied styles, and very against the dismissive avoidants, and portray the fearful avoidants as hopeless cases. As if the whole thing wasn't daunting enough, right? lol
I love that you gave us ideas on where these mal-adaptations come from, and on your channel as a whole, you give us tools to adjust and do some work on our own, get some relief and make some progress. You're making mental health more accessible. So thank you again for the helpful info and resources!
I agree, hearing someone talk about these different coping strategies in a neutral, non-hierarchical, non- moralizing way is so helpful, and surprisingly difficult to find in general. I also feel like I've moved around the grid a lot, trying to figure out how to do relationships and also function. I maybe feel most stuck in the anxious avoidant quadrant, but I also feel like that has the biggest stigma - it's the borderline personality box (which is also unfairly stigmatized, definitely not trying to add to that judgement!). Anyway, I feel like I try to hide those push-pull tendencies as much as possible in order to maintain good relationships, but they feel overwhelming. And I think it makes a lot of sense, being sort of between the other two problematic attachment styles, I think it's a catch-22 type position: I can try to change in order to be more stable in this direction, but that means giving up relationships and a need for connection, or I can look for stability in the other direction, but that means giving up my personality, self-respect, identity, etc. At least in my life, it feels like the need to be an individual person with an identity is exactly equal to the need to be connected to others. No wonder there's that push-pull when you're here, neither option feels survivable.
Well... that comment became longer than I intended. Basically, I agree!
I was once annoyed by people who seemed healthy and happy. I had trouble believing anyone would accept me, understand me and relate with me. I was very isolated, and I isolated myself. I didn’t know how to connect in healthy ways, so I became attracted to the familiar feeling of dysfunctional or otherwise unavailable people and situations.
I’m learning.
Now that I’m on my healing journey, I know that I’m not too much, not the weak link, not being dramatic, and that I can learn anything. I’m doing a lot better than I was and I’m so happy that I’ve built some sturdy bonds. My inner dialogue isn’t so negative anymore.
I continue to nurture myself! And I have compassion for every version of myself along the way. I have compassion for other people too. It is safe to connect. It is safe to trust.
Congrats on your healing! Are you willing to share what therapies you did to heal?
I’m truly happy that my husband and I went through therapy within our first year. It really helped us come into our own and work together better. Love is a choice ❤️
Keep working. It ain’t over.
“Love is a choice” is a nice sentiment, but it’s terribly trauma-uninformed. Not what people here need.
Love is a choice ❤ I love that sentiment
Me thinking today I have unhealthy attachment styles..
(attach way too fast, too soon or not at all to animals, people and objects)
Then wondering about the parental connection to my childhood and thinking it’s probably extremely hard to change it 🤔 THEN this pops up!! 🤓 I will watch it 💞
My mother couldn’t even say I love you on her death bed. She said I always wanted to be rid of you. I was the one growing up that knew something was horribly wrong with her as a little girl I didn’t have a name for it. I would challenge her at every turn. She would say things that were ridiculous. I would tell my Dad when he got home. And she called me the liar. Dad would know how to calm her down. I would call her out. Not a good thing to do that’s for sure.
Same here, 277fnkymnky. You weren't alone in your experiences and your actions were rather mature and unfortunately bourne by a defensive position you never consented to.
You detected something was deeply wrong, and your father didn't validate that experience. It's not exactly gaslighting, but it makes you question your reality and whether you can trust both of them. Was it a wise thing to do? I'm not sure, but you were honoring the truth, whereas your father sounds like he was burying it or being in denial.
I was also the child who called out the parent. I suppose that’s why I was the “scapegoat” while my sibling flew under the radar as the “lost child”. We were both emotionally neglected but I was emotionally and physically abused as well. It might sound weird but I wouldn’t change that. It made it easier for me to seek help as an adult because abuse is a lot easier to identify than neglect. My sibling would probably say there was nothing wrong with our childhood, even though she’s emotionally shutdown and lives a life of quiet desperation.
I clutched my heart at the second line of your comment. Omygosh. So sorry.
@@kiwiluv9188 You could point her in the direction of Pete Walker. He's done an excellent job of explaining Complex Trauma and how it hides best within people who weren't physically abused. The Being Human podcast has him on it, it's worth a listen.
Describing me. Things I’ve spent 60+ years figuring out for myself. This is a big help. You seem to be me.
Allowing myself to imagine spending a day with either of my parents engendered an split-second gut-focused fear. I'm startled to realize that at age 67, after years of counseling and reading and emotional work and independence and death of both parents, I'm still impacted by those earliest relationships. And a failure to measure up.
What a complete lesson. This was so eye opening, I'm very grateful. As much as it's difficult to navigate those feelings, recognizing them is a great first step.
I literally cried every day of preschool kindergarten and first grade...they called me emotionally dysfunctional, and left it at that like I was a bad puppy(get rid of it and on to the next one) would have only taken a little bit of validation back then...30 years later it ain't that easy🤪🤪🤪
The parenting styles. My mother was all of those. Jeez. This is everything I’ve been unpacking in therapy every week since December 1. Thank you for putting names to it.
As the child of a narcissistic parent, it’s hard to accept that they did decide to take on a parenting role even if they weren’t intentional when procreating. Love your videos, Patrick. So helpful in my recovery.
I can see a clear pattern in my family tree if I'm allowed to categorize a bit. My mom was raised by an overbearing and thoughtless mother and neglectful father. She later married my dad, a mind f'er and she herself was immature / thoughtless parent. I am now afraid of becoming any of these to my own child, and my current attachment style with my husband is dismissive avoidant. Thank you for this video Patrick, gave me lots to ponder on as always!
That sounds so hard! I don’t have kids yet. Both my husband and I (especially me!) are trying to heal to one day not mess up our own kid(s). I hope your husband is consistent and safe. I was that to my husband (also dis. av.) and he is healing! I feel like awareness is most important otherwise we’re all lost so I want to celebrate that point in your journey. Believing the best for you 🙏🌷
Yes, I listen to these and see my own attachment issues and I'm worried about what I'm doing to my own children.
@@desertboot9755 Sometimes habits can help us access a deeper quality (Fake it till you make it). I would suggest: ALWAYS look at your child and listen to her when she speaks to you, no matter how long it takes. She will come to know deep down that she matters. It sounds simple but isn’t in a monkey mind world, but this is the thing I’m most grateful I did with my son. It’s pretty radical, and radically validating in a screen-obsessed society, and it’s a gift you can give your children. Also, say “I’m sorry” a lot! Whenever it’s appropriate, say it! It gets easier the more you do it, lol. Last two bits of advice: LOTS of humor and playfulness. You’re not perfect but you can always lighten the mood, and that’s a huge breath of fresh air to your child. It’s like pressing the “re-start” button. And give your children lots of unconditional affection and tell them every day how much you delight in them. All of these make children more resilient and happy, and you can do all of them even if you still have baggage, even a lot of baggage, ha ha!
omg sounds like a replica here .... wow wow wow . we aren’t alone after all LoL
Would be nice to hear about how the survivors of this kind of parenting can impact attachments styles of their own children. And can work on their attachments styles with regards with their own children, to help break the cycle.
Currently trying to delve into my childhood traumas. My daughter is avoidant preoccupied and my son is fearful avoidant.
In complete correlation to my fearful avoidant style and narcissistic parenting up to this point. I would really appreciate more on this topic of how to parent while reparenting myself😟 and how to heal my children in the process.
I agree. I'm watching this bc I KNOW I am messing my kids up. I'm trying to stop but this stuff is so pervasive. It's hard to raise children in a healthy environment when you, yourself are not emotionally balanced. When I had children I had no idea I was so unregulated. I would never have had children intentionally had I known what I do now. My eldest is 12 and I feel I've ruined him. He's riddled with anxiety. Sadly, that's what it took for me to even realize there was a problem with me. 😭 The guilt is nearly unbearable.
I have this pain as well. I didn’t know early on when my kids were small. I did know something wasn’t right and I wasn’t parenting the way I wanted to. I was in therapy for years before realizing I came from a narcissistic family system. I am healthier and I see the changes in my kids but they are basically almost out of the house and I find myself grieving over what could have been different and angry that my family didn’t get help so I could have been parented in a healthier way.
All I ever wanted to be was a good mom to my kids, not like good in other’s eyes but the mom they needed. I feel like I have failed them.
@@LadybugLuvblahblah What would you do differently if you'd have a re-do after therapy?
Patrick has a wide range of understanding; I wish I had discovered his talent in my 20s when I was so confused, and trying to understand myself. Yes, he is very articulate, as someone noted.
I’ve just watched this and for the first time in I don’t know how long…I am overwhelming sobbing
The insight you give is absolutely incredible, hands down one of the best channels about family trauma! Thanks for all the work you do Patrick, it really does make a difference for all of us