"Why Most Narcissistic Abuse Victims Struggle With Cleaning and Tidying"

 

This video was great and described a major problem with cleaning. One day I told my husband, "When it gets really messy in here, I feel afraid!". It's hard to explain. The details are always so many. America being a messed up country, disabled people cannot get help even if you can't walk or move to clean the house or apartment. No one cares if you barely can walk to the bathroom, keep your place clean anyway! No church, social agency or anyone else [except maybe a friend here or there] is going to help with this! Your dreams of a super-organized person coming in to clean the place up aren't ever going to happen. Desperation and fear aren't good to have if you need to clean.  The tub needed fixed, we had to clean for hours. Sometimes I just fill up trash bags, to get it clean. I cleaned from bed yesterday. I've been sick, it's a long story, not contagious, but needed a surgery, thankfully done under local anesthesia, and haven't been functioning well. Supposedly I'm healing but it's been slow. This was low stress cleaning at least done without shame or fear. My purse, my diabetes bag were cleaned out, I emptied a box I had thrown stuff in, see method below, and then ripped the box apart and put it into the trash bag from bed. My husband did do laundry and did the dishes.

My cooking has been strange and utilitarian to save on effort but still get some results. I bought a giant thing of chicken thighs and baked them and just threw them together with rice noodles or rice and veg for 4 days. I weighed 460 the other day. 

 Cleaning is hard, and no one talks about how hard it is. There's other things like art I'd rather be doing. Every movement hurts. Of course, cleaning sucks. It seems like in a sane country, sick and disabled people could get help with cleaning or organization but that's not America. Cleaning supplies cost money. This is on my list of things to do but I need bleach, paper towels, Fantastik, and other spray cleaners. He got me some scratchy pads to clean off the stove. Cooking sucks, it makes a mess too. Once I get the cleaning supplies, this place will be in better shape. 

I have major hang ups with cleaning, and it seems things are always falling apart and little pieces of paper falling. Throwing away stuff? Never shopping because you're broke? The crap seems to pile up anyway. They talk about in the video, how the narcissistic parents demanded endless perfection and even if you cleaned but left one bowl in a sink or one toy on your bedroom floor, the rages we experienced impacted our lives. Flashbacks can happen even years later. Spill something on the floor, there's a little spark inside, "Oh no one is going to backhand me now, I live in peace now". 

I had memories too leaving in one bowl in the sink and the rage that followed. Let's be real these narcissists even if you cleaned the place from top to bottom, they are going to find or make up a "mistake" anyway. If someone is too neat, they make me nervous. Will criticism come? My body and brain don't work right to clean. Why is there never enough counter space? Why is everything always too small. How do two people make 5-6 giant trash bags a week and this even during weeks, where I am not cooking much? Why does it take trash bags and endless wiping of counters? The paper towels disappear like farts in the wind. I freeze like this video describes, and sometimes just stare at it all. I have written about being overwhelmed for years. I overcame some of this stuff, but it probably will be a life-long battle.

Cleaning as the video describes does equate to danger for me! I had mean now ex-friends, say "Why don't you clean this place up?" One refused to help. I learned if anyone else says that to me, I'm asking them to help me clean it up or else leave. There's the fat thing with messiness, the "fat slob" tropes. Well if you were trapped in a body that can barely move, how clean would you be? He talks about shame, I relate to all that. I have driven myself into illness more times than not trying to be "clean". Maybe people in normal bodies you can do it, and it works out. I wrote about how I grew up with extreme clean-freaks, maybe the cleanliness was like the play MacBeth, they were trying to make up for their lack of consciences. I silenced the inner critic during years of no contact, but there's always this little fear. "Someone will see" [the maintenance man, the building manager, the house-call doctor] and "punishment" will follow.  My doctors never cared. I would make jokes about the mess, they said they have seen worse. The legions of uncared for elderly, disabled and others are probably numerous in America today. I have a nice husband to do my stinky laundry and he knows will cook something even if boring and gluten free.  When is the next "inspection"? So wonder those are nightmare inducing situations for me. 

The video says: "The more you bully yourself to clean the more you trigger the freeze response". That's true. I did move away from that silencing the voices from the past, but it's a problem for many ACONs. Rich women with white gloved fingers and endless money to pretty things up and for cleaning supplies, didn't have my life, at a certain point I shrugged and thought, "I will do my best!" Why should I be held to the same standards? Their advice to override the freeze response is helpful.  The "low demand" advice is good, do small pieces don't be overwhelmed by the whole thing. That's one reason I hate housework, the endless steps. Where the vlogger tells you to collect things into a laundry basket, this is one thing I've done for a few years. I take a big box, and just clear everything off, the table top, the floor, and then I can sort the box later, maybe even not the same day. This technique helped me a lot. He has other good advice too, "flood the brain with dopamine instead of cortisol". I plastered my apartment in art all over the place including art of friends, to help me on the dopamine thing. I have little art works to put up today, that part of cleaning is something "fun" to me.  Check the video out. This is a horrible problem for many ACONs and that advice in this video is good.

My old articles on cleaning