Thursday, May 5, 2016
They Want You To Feel Like You are Never Good Enough
Joan covered this topic:
The Challenge of Being Enough
And I wanted to as well....
"So just by realizing that it is foolish to even think in terms of trying to impress the narcs in the world. It really don't matter to them. To have something very impressive is ok, but only if you want it. Not because you feel forced to keep up with this crazy society. To me, some money in your pocket is much better. But some people buy and buy and buy, and they live stone cold broke with good money, where they could live well. Just to impress, I don't know, but all this stuff, to me. is meaningless."
One main difference between normal people with consciences and the narcissists, is the narcissists think they are perfect. They don't worry about people liking them, or being approved of. Often they are setting the standards now by how people are being measured in our crazy society. Joan is right it's a competition to nowhere. What if this stuff is meaningless to you as a person? It is to me.
Grow up as a scapegoat where your faults are always shoved in your face night and day, and be unloved and told you aren't good enough over and over, what toll does that take? It sets us up to live a life where we are always worried about pleasing others and some self appointed powers instead of ourselves.
Even now as I try to meet people sometimes I still slip into the people pleasing mode. Being fat in this society too adds the pressure to "be more than" with the taint of being told you must make excuses for existing at all. I believe if I can break out of this, it will improve my life by quite a bit.
Others are quiet and not busy with smiles or having to try so hard. Sometimes I think just go somewhere, "Don't try. Just be there. Don't bother cloaking or trying to appear like an outgoing person." Why must I always worry about the feelings of everyone else in the room? It's time to worry about my own feelings. Seeking approval is the surest way to bring the predators out. How can I get to the place where I can just be and not worry about "being somebody"? I am trying to retrain my mind.
People who had loving families have a foundation that was secure. This is lacking for the ACON recovering scapegoat. I thought about this, how they were loved just for being. They didn't have to bring narcissistic supply. They were worthy for just being a human baby. They were loved. They didn't have to constantly bend over backwards or seek to impress. They could just be. This is a secure foundation that can build a lot better life and better relationships with others.
How does one replace that? I believe if I had not found love early at the age of 25, I would have died. I remember thinking in my early 20s, I can find someone who loves me. I thought at the time, "He is out there." I know that sounds weird. It helped me not give up.
One bad thing about this not being loved, is it can impact one's relationship with God. I know intellectually and faith wise that God loves me but do I feel it? Not always. There's times I feel like God hates me or has the same rejecting attitudes towards me. After Aunt Scapegoat died, I have been struggling. This is a bad thing for a born again Christian to admit, but it has happened. Here I have to depend on God's Word and not places my own mind goes. ACONs can struggle spiritually, with parents telling us we were never good enough, where even God Himself is only seen as a severe judge and never as a good loving Father. Even the churches are imposing society's rules on more then God's. Remember Jesus Himself warned of the oppressive burdens of the Pharisees as a weight on everyone's back. I'll take God's demands over a bunch of narcissists.
I know to survive, I have to stop listening to people who focus on my faults or what they perceive as my faults. My happiness gets destroyed when I am told, "You are not good enough" over and over. Its time to bow out of the contest. Who are we all competing for to be the richest, and thinnest? The devil? The corporations that just want to make money as we people buy things to fix imperfections? I took a beating at some of those Lipedema health boards, shamed again as the supposedly "overeating" fatty that doesn't want to put the effort in. I get the feeling there's low stage Lipedema women there who all think they are scum for not being thin and "normal", A 500lb person can't take on that sort of baggage especially with people who aren't disabled and have near normal mobility.
In the family, I took the mental beating for years as the "loser" that didn't make enough money, and was too fat, and "weird". I think of the people where there's been severed relationships with. The catfish even acted like she was better then me and had "all the answers" but according to her story she was totally bed-bound and couldn't even walk, how does that work? You're more messed up than me but supposedly you have all the answers and can tell me what to do think, do and be? That goes for some others who judged from on high but who had serious, serious problems of their own. Even with my family judging me, I didn't choose to get these diseases, or for people behind desks to do thumbs down on my husband. Some of them even for all their money were really messed up with eating disorders, and unfaithful relationships and supposedly I'm the one with all the problems because I'm fat?
I got another "dead card", this one wishing me a "very happy anniversary". I just read them and toss them now. There's no real relationship with someone who just looks at your faults, and believes they are perfect. When a relationship has no vulnerability in it or any true sharing, then there's no relationship. In one way all narcissists are strangers to everyone. No person inside. The creeps on those other blogs all making excuses for narcissists, all act like they are judge and jury too. Like they can determine people's growth. Who made them God? I see people uninterested in growing at all. They boast of their evil deeds with glee. One of those main bloggers is hanging out and supporting a blog where psychopathy is CELEBRATED. They support a blogger full out who loves being a psychopath and has embraced the "condition". How is that growth unless Satan is your director?
I remember a woman too who took a jaundiced eye at people in a support group and said, "People here have not grown". Her life history was far from perfect. She boasted of professional jobs to come. Well I already had some in my 20s. She looked down her nose at me. Be careful of the self-appointed gurus who claim to have all the answers or who think they are better then you. I don't trust the jerks who speak to me of "personal growth" and who have claimed they are shining stars of it. Often you are looking at narcissists.
"Ill never be who and what they want" and even if I lost all my extra weight or got rich, etc, it still wouldn't be good enough and now I'm pissed from being put under constant measure. I'm sick of it. I sometimes think of these requirements I'm under. All numbers. Perfect blood sugars? Well being up for two hours in the middle of the night to help my husband fix a computer problem meant a messed up blood sugar this morning. Not losing weight? Well the fridge is full of boiled eggs, vegetables, lean proteins, and boxes of salad greens and I'm staying fat. Other numbers denote bad credit, piling bills, and money that is always lacking. We have become a society enslaved to numbers. The bean counters don't just bury our wallets in the numbers now they want your soul too and they have many people's souls. The narcissists love this stuff, after all they are the ones who have helped to set it up!
They are beating people with the measuring sticks in society. The mostly a-religious society that has turned perfect health, finances and house decor into a religion. Measure up! There's a reason so many reality shows have THREE JUDGES judging cooking, clothes, and songs. Just like the Inquisition, with three judges saying "Yes or No". "Please like me", we see so many on TV exclaiming. Rebellion has been beaten out of the human populace. Even in Hunger Games, they still played the game instead of saying "NO".
It's living life under the endless expectations, that instead of being based in the true desire for someone to have a better life are more based in oppression. Having things expected of you, that you cannot do. People who are sick in this society have to learn to say no, or we will die. They always want more.
As I wrote to Joan, this society has gotten so judgmental. Everything's a contest, and we always have to worry about doing everything "right" and no one gets to enjoy life anymore. Even fun itself and living life has become a contest on Facebook, to compare who has the happiest life. The powers that be have made everyone into scrurrying around, scared slaves, who think "we are never good enough". I see it all around me. What's so perfect about these false judges? Do we want to match the celebrities who while they seem to have it all, like Prince, always seem to die young of drug abuse and other problems? Maybe in their case, they get hooked on drugs to keep the fast pace going. Human beings have their limitations.
Life has become a big show-off instead of people living just to live. This is how narcissists live. Do they really enjoy their money? As mentioned by Joan, no they really don't. Most sacrifice everything including integrity for it. Narcissists never can just take a look at art, or a bird or enjoy those things. Those are things that take one away from producing and the achievement treadmill. I watched narcissists who made far more money then me, never have any fun or enjoy any of it. So if you decide to compete, realize what you are getting yourself into!
Vacations seemed more taken for the pictures and the telling rather then the experience of it all. Nature does bore them. What's next, they ask? They are always running from one thing to the next. They exhaust me. They get bored by hobbies and things you have loved for an entire life, and preach "Move on!" "Grow!" "Compete!" They get out the spreadsheets and compare numbers. They strap on Fibits and feel proud. They measure their pounds lost and compare credit scores. God, they are boring!
It creeped me out how my own family never understood my art or things I liked. My enthusiasms bored them as I was not adding to my status or theirs. I've noticed with the Trophy Children phenomenon, it sure brings a lot of conformity. Breeding itself made a contest in the land of the supposedly free. Are any millennials rebelling against the system anymore? They seem to want to fit in at all costs. That worries me.
There's no art, no soul, no beauty of the sunset. What are their brains filled with? They don't appreciate anything. All they care about is the contest. The winning. What do they win but a vacation to hell and a dead conscience?
So what use is the approval treadmill to me or you? No use at all.
I grew up very conscience of not being a burden on others. Some where it turned me into a pathological door mat. Placating these people does no good and that's why I am done with it.
ReplyDeleteIt turned me into a pathological doormat too. I remember her voice in my head saying "People don't like you" and trying so hard to fix it. Well trying to placate only digs the scapegoat hole deeper.
DeleteI grew up being told I was spoiled and selfish. This made me a doormat for life cause I hated being called that. I've been trying so hard to conquer this one.
DeleteSounds like projection, your mother was the spoiled and selfish one. I was made a doormat, being told "no one likes you" so the game then was to try and get people to like me. A trap I am finding hard to get out of even now. All it does is set one up for the predators. I think even about that catfish person and some of her back stabby comments and how I made excuses for it all, she's sick etc.
DeleteLife has gotten so competitive. Oh no, I just said that. That means I'm a big chicken or something. No one has gotten out of grade school, and for me that was no fun then, and it still isn't. My best memories of childhood consist of standing on top of a culvert and looking at the ice starting to melt in the springtime. Watching the sun glint in the early morning light while waiting for the school bus. My brother and I used to wait there together, and he used to put rocks across it, so we could walk across it. That brother is gone now, taken in a huff, beating me up to near unconsciousness when I was 15 and he was 19 or 20. But when I think of us as small children, these were the best memories. When he looked at me with a smile on his face, not sneering at me when he became older, telling me that I was not good enough.
ReplyDeleteWhen I ran from one marriage to another, never living in the same place for very long, he called me a gypsy. That I "Never seem to impress him". He could never put his arm around me in love and tell me that he cares? Not even once?
Sorry, Peep, in a strange mood today. This is hard. I feel overwhelmed with the workings of the world. I know we all need God's grace to sustain us in such a time, and a lot of his grace. I'm blowing it every single day on my own. I know God won't share the throne with anyone, even me. I step off the throne of my heart daily, and as angry as I feel, I give that over to God too. And I was just reading in the bible this morning about a guy in chains telling us to be thankful, and that is very hard to do.
Its all competition and what if some of us don't want to compete and don't care anymore? I think the worse aspects of grade school have continued too. The pecking order, whose the popular kid...
DeleteI remember the scenes like you describe. My favorite thing was riding my bike feeling the cool air on my face as I went down hills, going to the woods, and walking and exploring for hours. There was fun with friends and games. Yes I lost a sister and a brother too, they aren't there anymore. The sister even once loved me and looked to me, for help. That's strange to think of now, how that girl is gone. It is the same as having a sister in the grave. So sorry you had the "lost" of a brother like that. Those are my best memories too. Sometimes I get into this weird imagination and think, "I had a sister who loved me once.". The shell that exists doesn't care about or love anyone. She never noticed my leaving, you know. Just didn't care.
And think about these relationships...
Destroyed on the altar of "NOT GOOD ENOUGH"
and competing for narcs.
They embraced evil and threw us away to "be good enough".
That's it pure and simple.
Glad you got away from that ex. Sounds like he wanted impressing, glad you didn't. I'm glad I avoided that in love, I was so ready to be single forever, thinking no man would have me, love just came like lightening.
I feel overwhelmed by this world too. Yes we need God's grace. The be happy or else crowd, must not need much from God since they think they are so perfect and always so right. Yes sometimes I feel angry too. It seems God would understand. I don't want a fake relationship with God where He is just somebody else I have to hide parts from to survive.
Agree about the thankful thing. It's not easy to do.
I'm just relearning the bible. It makes more sense now actually. I'm eliminating the programming getting to the real deal of what everything is about. I struggle with anger, but maybe I shouldn't have to. As I read, the more I realize I don't have to.
DeleteGlad you are studying the bible. I don't think I'd be a Christian if I hadn't read it for myself and what is actually in there. Depending only on the preachers and their unicorn dreams, globalism and claims that "holy" living brings money and stability would have lend me to a bad end. Anger is a natural emotion, leave it to the "growth" zombies to try and squelch it out of us.
DeleteWow so much well said!We've definitely gotten to this place. It's extremely sad. I hear you. I am trying to stop listening to all the voices shouting how you must be this or that. It's so hard to drown out society and our acon upbringing.
ReplyDeleteThanks anon. Yes we've gotten to this place and I believe they are destroying many a soul with their endless competition and emotional Hunger Games. I'm tired of all the voices too. It has worn me out. So many telling us who to be and what to do. The definition of every narc always telling us we aren't good enough and must be more like them.
DeleteYeah no matter what you do it will never be enough. Lose weight and you are bony buy this car and you are that buy that car and you are this. Even my father was drifting that direction when he died. There was another guy in scouts and he had just started in with why can't you be more like Dwayne.......He was getting very passive aggressive. I don't know how much of this can be laid at my mothers feet but he seemed to use me to sub consciously fight back at my mother. The scout troop went camping and this really bad cold front came through and it rained about 4 or 5 inches and we broke camp and came back on Sunday I asked my father if he would turn up the heat in his car. So he turns it up to about 11 and in a minute or two it was like living in hell so I complained and he just left it up high. I think his early demise might have been the best for us. I think we might have ended up hating each other.
ReplyDeleteI think it would have got worse too. You were getting the same dynamic I got with my father. She turned him against me so fast. Even the change from 1993 to 1994/5 was so immense. He was angry I was moving away but he wasn't helping me stay off the streets either. The narcs/sociopaths set this up speaking in their ears about how horrible we were supposed to be night and day 24/7. My mother's smear campaigns never ended and even the stuff done via subtle gesture was a lot too. Normal people wouldn't care if someone asked to turn up the heat in the car. So yeah he was using you to fight back but probably also agreeing with her nonsense too and slowly being brainwashed.
Delete