I wanted to share two quotes I found on another page.
"Triangulation is important to the psychopath against his/her victims. It’s important that he/she has a ‘following’, those who stand unquestioning and in idol worship of the psychopath/narcissist. This is very evident now with those in power, against the voiceless. The voiceless are victimized. The victimized are blamed, scapegoated and demonized. They are labeled, stereotyped and harmed. The positive thinking tyranny (positive thinking pathologized), whether intentional or unintentional, suppress those who are truly in pain and label them as ‘toxic’, ‘drama provoking’, ‘drama queens’, ‘lazy’, ‘playing the victim’, and ad nauseum, isolating them further from what appears to be disappearing support, because labels give people justification to do nothing and feel ‘okay’ about it."
I fear this is something growing in society overall beyond narcissistic systems and groups. Too many in narcissistic family systems will turn against a person that the sociopath has decided to scapegoat. I like what is said about the "positive thinking tyranny" as I wrote about the "Be Positive or Else"! messages too.
I believe that narcissists and psychopaths can turn on a person easily too, if they talk about any hardships or expose those. Those can be used against a person and thrown back in their face. As one of my commenters mentioned on another article, it is like they are a tape recorder recording everything to use later. Here too Aspies need to be careful, we process information differently and some will simply not understand. Some will see your tendency for personal ruminating as a "personal insult". They will be angry that you have not "fixed" yourself or gotten yourself up by your "bootstraps". Being an Aspie, with all the social rules to follow, if an Aspie relaxes too much, it can mean trouble. People indoctrinated into the "positive thinking" tyranny will tell a troubled Aspie, that they are failing to solve their problems quickly enough. Analytical thought in our society today is seen as a negative. Those who go "too deep" are told they are wrong. Only success is to be respected.
The "positive thinking" tyranny, will often demand your silence. The cultural matrix now is to present one's self as in control, always improving and triumphant. If you fail to do this, it can make life a bit scary.
Often narcissist families and even some others will reject those they see as failing to do all three. It can be scary sometimes writing a blog like this because I am exposing some vulnerabilities, troubles and health challenges.
In the society we are ending up with, hardships, any weakness or failure is seen as something to exploit and reject. This makes me wonder what will happen to literature and the arts as the positivity tyranny will demand silence to the true human condition. As society grows more narcissistic, the warped "positive thinking" which isn't positive at all, seeks to serve as a silencing tool for those who make a stand or even talk about what is really happening to them. Sadly the demanded narcissistic supply of the narcissists demands endless smiling compliance. Every ACON knows what this is like. There is no real joy in forced conformity. The positive thinking matrix, actually kills joy as one always has to focus on their appearance and if they said or did the right thing.
The toxic, narcissist or sociopath in a narcissist family system or other often will suppress victims of abuse telling the group you are a "complainer", or a "trouble-maker", or "negative". This is one insidious thing about scapegoating, and here they can silence your protests against your treatment quite a bit among too many who don't see through their manipulations. This works because in doing so, as you continue to stand up for yourself, it is just written off as another "complaint". I knew even with my family I had to go NC. Short of a lobotomy freezing and erasing every memory or negative emotion, why take the route of smiling compliance?
http://theabilitytolove.wordpress.com/2014/02/15/an-open-letter-to-adult-children-of-psychopaths-narcissists-sociopaths/
Someone told me that the only reason I think my mother was so bad was that she was MY mother. I told them the reason you don't is because she wasn't yours. Every person seems to think they the star in their own private Horatio Alger story. And they spew that rhetoric about putting one foot in front of the other and finding yourself rich and affluent. I always ask these people what they consider the hard knocks they rose above. It's usually something like being asked to pledge the fraternity that wasn't first on their list or not getting a corvette on their sixteenth birthday like they wanted. Boo effing hoo! Try growing up with a psychopath so toxic their dysfunction rubs off on everyone and you end up with your whole family standing on your neck.
ReplyDeleteQ, I have heard the same. For years I was told to negate my own emotions, own feelings and more. I ignored my own feelings even that said DANGER. I had to get into my mid 30s and be around other more healthy people and families to even get a real inkling of what was normal. One thing I have learned in mixed online 'support" company is don't bring up poverty or other issues. It makes people angry when you pop the Horatio Alger bubble and the "positive thinking" one at the same time. Yes you will ask what their "hard knocks" were and they will tell you, "Oh my Mom slapped me" [one time] or yes they were put into a second tier fraternity. One thing I am noticing is the positive thinking brainwash sessions are making it so anyone who doesn't immediately get rich or totally heal their body [even with evidence of massive work on the health to stay alive], is trash to be thrown out by some of these folks. With some I can understand the context they didn't have a psychopath parent or one out to destroy them but others seem to cheer for the psychopaths in an inverse way, they praise the narcissistic philosophies of the system. They end up standing on your neck too, just because the others did. They are playing King of the Mountain too, look up at "the kings" too who tell them, who to be.
ReplyDeletePeep,that is how I got chronically clinically depressed; I was absolutely told, not to have any feelings or get angry, or express myself, or I would be in horrible trouble with my dad. That's how I got so depressed, I was depressed most of my life. Yes, I am aware that Americans still think "anything is possible in America!" Which is a bunch of crap, especially now. (My sister and I looked up the characteristics of our dad, and found out he was a narcissist.)D.B.--Oregon
DeleteIn a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act... George Orwell
ReplyDeleteI would wonder why some people live in such a dream world if not for the 24/7 tripe Madison Avenue slings at them. The "Be all you can be" mentality (no dig intended at the armed forces) And the constant buy the luxury a person of your caliber deserves crapola. I was too far steeped in reality to fall for that simplistic garbage and if conspicuous consumption is an indicator of high IQ we have a lot of untapped Einsteins running around.
Love George Orwell. I wonder if ACONs get a special affinity for his writing...Maybe I should write on him here.
DeleteI think many are deceived by the Madison Avenue, "be all you can be", "you can have it all", "bucket list galore dream land. Toss in some spice from Disney World and you have a populace that believes all your "dreams will come true" as things fall apart around them. Reality upsets them. I think I have been too far steeped in reality too via my own life and work I used to do, to fall for the lies. LOL about the untapped Einsteins.
hi, I just started reading 500 poundpeepagain, and I'm so sorry I haven't kept up with it. I'll tell you something; I was a kid in the 50s, when everybody thought America had it so great? Well do you know what it was like? It was extremely conformist to the max! So bad, if you didn't buy the car your neighbor had, or "keep up with the Joneses", and buy the same stuff and spend as much money as they did, you were very inferior. That's how I remember, my family was pretty poor (my dad had just survived cancer with huge doctor bills). So we were poor, and we were put down for it socially. The 50s is the reason Mad Magazine came out; because the society was so CONFORMIST and so MATERIAL, Mad Magazine was the voice of nonconformity, satire, humor, and tweaking conformism and Madison Avenue. It was pretty bad then.you people who watch "madmen"? It was worse than that. For all the financial riches, if you weren't good enough at doing that and you were poor, you were really in a pit. It looks like it's gone back to that.shit.– –D.B., In Oregon
Deletethat is another thing that was going on in the 50s way into the 60s among MANY people; scientists and extremely brilliant people and very smart people and inventors, because they were DIFFERENT, were very put down, even made fun of in movies, and ridiculed.. Does anybody remember any of those "flubber" movies? The scientist was always an outcast or weird?--D.B. Oregon
DeleteI think it would be more burdensome to us to try to be positive when you just can't. Narcs don't want to hear of any troubles because they don't care about anyone but themselves. I had a MN friend like that once. Tell me to cheer up so I could listen to her troubles.
ReplyDeleteIt is mind control.
I think it is too. I was thinking today this stuff makes me more depressed and sucks the joy out of life, because everything is about appearances, pleasing others, fitting in and being told to listen to the troubles of others while you are told you are a bad person for daring to share any. I feel like the whole "positive" vs "negative" talk has gotten out of hand, the substance of messages ignored for the analysis of the tone and those busy looking for offense. You are right about narcs wanting to hear about troubles. Not much narc supply in that. I feel like it is mind control, they are working to silence so many from so many angles.
Deletehoney, that's exactly what it was like in the 50s; all appearances and money and social status. SOCIAL STATUS, was the biggest deal of all, and "knowing the right people" and "getting up the ladder of success at work." If you were an artist, you are automatically a beatnik. Or you had to be. And if you were DIFFERENT, you were in a ton of trouble! that's why the 60s were so important; the children fromthe 50s needed to break out, and they sure did.– –.Dot, in Oregon
DeleteI got a book on "self-help to help your depression" anditsaid something very interesting in it. It said that one of the main reasons there is a huge amount of depression in the United States, is, it is not okay to express negative or painful feelings here. You have to be HAPPY or OKAY all the time, and that is one of the reasons for the huge amount of addictions, to liquor, to drugs, etc.and it's one of the reasons Americans get so depressed.
DeleteYes everyone has to pretend to be happy and sadness is only for "losers" in this society which gets draining all the pretending and fake smiles just like a cult that tells it's members to "keep sweet" or else! Many take drugs to escape their emotions and shut them down to function in this crazy place.
DeleteI probably would have been considered a beatnik. My father screamed "hippie" at me for wanting to be an art teacher.
DeleteAnother book that promotes this is "Who moved My Cheese" . I did a critique on it for a university class in 2009 and blasted it. It absolves any company for laying off, moving jobs overseas, avoiding taxes, bad healthcare policies, not giving raises, etc, and shifts the blame to the reader. It said that the company or corporation you work for is under no obligation to you for anything, heck you should be paying them for the privilege for a place to go everyday. The biggest piece of propaganda I have ever seen
ReplyDeleteI was rereading your post and feel I wandered away from the true message. I know that why mother labeled me as a alcoholic loser and my ex labels me as an ass who abandoned his mother after her stroke. Between the two of them I didn't breath an unencumbered breath until I was in my fifties. That is an inconvenient truth they both nurtured. If not to outsiders I am sure that was the delusion they presented to each other so they could continue to sleep at night.
ReplyDelete