Articles from February 2013

Raising Children Successfully Without Abuse, Spanking, Violence or Screaming

This blog has just been started: Potty Mouth Parenting.  Don’t let the title fool you: She’s not advocating cussing at children, just likes to cuss while explaining parenting skills to parents.  🙂

Not only does she promote childrearing without the use of any form of violence or screaming, but she has years of experience as a nanny and in other such environments.

Also on Facebook.

Quotes from her blogs:

You know how I tell you “NO FREAKING OUT?” Nowhere is that more important than here.

Does your child sometimes seem as if they may need an exorcism? Have they mastered that high pitch squeal that gets the neighborhood dogs barking? Does it seem like your child is intentionally trying to embarrass you in public?

Can they cry for hours on end? Do they tell you “NO!” like a billion times? Great! Congratulations, you have a typically developing child!

Temper tantrums are one of the “givens” in parenting. They ARE going to happen. They are. So get used to it…..

Your child is counting on you not to break.  They are counting on you to be the constant.  They are counting on you to be completely stable.

People buy A LOT of crap that they don’t need.  It’s our consumer lifestyle.  So, I thought I’d share with you a bunch of crap you can buy that is actually useful.

The first thing you need is a good, sturdy, tiny-butt toilet seat.  I am vehemently opposed to the “potty chair.”  You’re teaching your child to use the toilet, not shit in a bucket, so use the damn toilet.

I suggest replacing all of your toilet seats with one that has an integrated child seat.   Like this one.  Bemis makes them for round and oval toilets, they run about $40 each.  Well worth it in my opinion.

I’m sure other manufacturers make them as well, just look around for one to fit your toilet, it’s out there.  Depending on how old your child is, and their size, you could need the child seat for quite awhile.  The integrated child seat makes it so easy.

The point I want to make here is that if your child is showing signs that they are upset, for whatever reason it may be, it’s worth taking the time to show a little empathy. Doing so not only teaches them that they are valued and loved, and that their feelings are important, but it also shows them what empathy looks like.

So when they see someone who is upset, they will know how to respond. They will know that feelings are not “bad” or “scary.” They will become emotionally competent adults. What a fucking concept, huh?

OR try this on for size, your significant other of 10 years up and leaves you, or you get fired from your job, or a loved one dies. Then, I come over and say, “You’re fine. Stop crying.”

You can’t be mad when your child has an accident.  You knew it was bound to happen.  I don’t care if it is annoying, or time consuming, or gross, or inconvenient.  Suck it up.

I know adults who have shit their pants for one reason or another.  I know A LOT of women who pee every time they sneeze.  The point is you’re not immune to accidents because you’re an adult, so stop acting like you are, snob.  What are you, every James Spader character from the ‘80s?

While I certainly hope that you have fewer accidents than your child does, you’re not better than they are because statistically you don’t crap your pants as much as they do.

Also important to keep in mind, kids don’t like to shit themselves any more than you do.  They already feel bad enough, so keep your damn mouth shut.

I once heard a parent threaten to spank her child if she had an accident.  As if that poor child would do it on purpose!  There were plenty of other things about that mother’s parenting that made me finally report her to CPS a couple of years ago.

 

The Hypnotism Conversation with Richard: Things Narcissists Do

The conversation with Richard, about him hypnotizing me without my knowledge, happened on June 1, 2009 at 4 in the afternoon.  Quotes from that conversation:

Me: So–How do you hypnotize and what are your purposes (since you’re no longer trying to pick up chicks)?

Richard: How do I hypnotize?  Magick.

Me: Oh, come on.  🙂  Is it an eye thing?

R: Yes.

Me: I do remember one time when you seemed to be staring me down….

[That references the possible narcissistic stare mentioned in previous posts and here.  It happened in August 2008 while we watched The Apostle.]

Me: But other than that, I don’t recall anything unusual…..

R: It’s an eye thing, as well as many different semantics.  Also, questions.  A lot is in how you say things, not just with what I say…

Each gesture, movement and comfort you have towards the person initiating contact makes the process easier.  In essence, a handshake….

I unintentionally get you to open up.  A few times even when you did not want to.  I hit resistance.  But I pressured just enough. 

You do not remember because it was all conversation, nothing more.  The only thing I do is bring a picture about that you travel though, in your own mind.  You are able to recall things easier though. 

Now I can bring about an Alpha Trance.  I was also trained to do that.

He did not do that to me; an Alpha Trance is when you’re put to “sleep.”  He used conversational-style hypnotism on me.

As I can see in the conversation, at the time it all sounded totally cool.  He made it sound so benign.  Said he was doing it to help and not hinder, or break me down.

But now–especially after discovering how many people use these mind control techniques without another’s knowledge, and for what various purposes–it seems so manipulative.

What did he get me to say?  When did he use it?  As you see above, he did it at least several times, a few times getting me to open up to him even when I did not want to.  And I never had a clue.

Is this why I was so easily led by anything he told me?  Why I believed and trusted him even when I shouldn’t have?  Why I became his acolyte of sorts, not just influenced spiritually, but in other ways as well?  Why I followed him so easily into behaviors which led to my downfall?

It may not be magic, it may have the best of intentions, but how can I be sure he was telling me the full truth about why he used it when I can’t even remember him doing it?

Was this all part of grooming?  When I think back over what he did, I really think this was part of grooming me into various things: getting me to trust him, keeping me around as a valuable narcissistic supply because of my generosity and intelligence, influencing me into accepting certain behaviors as being perfectly normal and natural, basically setting me up….

Grooming is the predatory act of maneuvering another individual into a position that makes them more isolated, dependent, likely to trust, and more vulnerable to abusive behavior….

Grooming can feel exhilarating – at first. The predator employs attentiveness, sensitivity, (false) empathy and plenty of positive reinforcement to seduce their victim.

For their part, victims can be so enthralled with, or overwhelmed by the attention they are receiving; they will often overlook or ignore red flags that might alert them that the person who is showering them with that attention is somehow “off”.

Little by little, the abuser breaks through a victim’s natural defenses, gains trust, and manipulates or coerces the victim into doing his/her bidding.

The victim finds themselves willingly handing over money or assets, engaging in inappropriate, illegal or morally ambiguous actives, or acting as a proxy for the abuser, fighting the abuser’s battles, and carrying out their will.

The victim often feels confusion, shame, guilt, remorse and disgust at his or her own participation. Equally powerful, is the panic that comes with the threat of being exposed for engaging these activities.

There may also an overwhelming fear of losing the emotional bond that has been established with an abuser. The victim becomes trapped, depressed or despondent. —Grooming

Is hypnosis real?  The Mayo Clinic says so.  While the effectiveness of covert hypnosis is debated, there is some evidence it’s for real.

 

Freaked Out by Near-Miss This Morning

Every once in a while, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’ll have a dream about death, funerals, and the like.  Not only is this the dread of every person, the thing which all creatures resist, but as of late (as in, the past 7 years) this has been a periodic preoccupation: What if the atheists are right, what if this really is all there is and one day I will cease to be, not just physically but my soul as well?

This morning, I had another dream–not about death, but in a dorm room full of otherwise cheerful people was a section with a sort of funeral parlor, and somebody’s urn.  So when I woke for church, this dream got me thinking, What if this were my last day on Earth?  As I got ready, the thoughts kept coming back: What if we get into an accident on the way to church?

Since such thoughts do come occasionally yet nothing happens, I try to disregard them, consider them just imaginings, not in any way a foreboding.  It is, after all, a very real threat to all living beings, that something unforeseen will happen, but usually it does not.  But I got into the car and thought, What if this, a cold morning in a cold car, is my last?  (My husband was driving.)

As we passed the big display/sign of a local college, I saw the time, 9:47, and thought, what if that’s my last….You get the picture.  I tried to discount these as silly thoughts, because while such things do happen to people all the time, you’re far more likely to get through the day as usual.

I have had precognitive dreams in the past about other things, especially in the couple of years after the mental Link with my ex Peter.  Some people have doubted the Link existed, but Peter claimed it did, it happened after he hypnotized me with a crystal, and for a while we seemed to hear each other’s thoughts and feel each other’s pain.  If it was real and not him fooling me, it probably opened up my mind psychically for a while.

But I have not had precognitive dreams for many years, probably because–even though my pastor believed in psychic ability, since it links us to God–I feared that Peter and I had been getting into demonic areas, so I turned away from all psychic things.

In the IRC conversation in which Richard explained how he hypnotized me without my knowledge, I mentioned that Peter hypnotized me with a crystal; Richard replied, “A crystal?  Oh lawdy.  He was using New Age hypnotherapy, drawing energy from the sources to alter your perceptions, aka demonic.”

So not only was it possible that we did indeed have a mental link, thanks to this hypnotism, but that God and my own fear helped pull me out of it and away from demonic influences.

So the psychic abilities I seemed to have for a while after the Link ended, I have not felt in many, many years.  And I have death dreams far too often to take them seriously.

I turned to look at the sign as we passed, trying to see the temperature.  Then all of a sudden, as I turned back, my husband slammed on the brakes!

He thought he had the green light; a car was turning right in front of us, not stopping.  For a moment, I thought it was a foreboding after all.

We got out of it all right.  The brakes worked; nobody slammed into us; both cars just kept on driving on.

And I quietly freaked out, wondering…..Was that what my forebodings were all about?

Which also begs the question: If it was indeed a foreboding, then can such prophecies be diverted?  In other words, I could very easily have died, but because my husband acted fast enough with instinct, none of us even got hurt.  So they are not set in stone, but are warnings so we can change the future.

Whatever the case, that was frickin’ freaky.  And I’m so glad I’m sitting here typing this instead of in a hospital bed–or worse.

 

Catching FLEAS from Narcissists and Abusers

I have caught my own FLEAS while dealing with Tracy.

Sometimes, we who have been targeted by the abuses of a narcissist, wonder if we, too, are now narcissists.  It can be catching, especially if we are raised by narcs.

But the recovery community uses the term “fleas” to describe our own harmful behaviors, picked up from the narcs, but which do not mean we ourselves are narcs.  The trick is to figure out whether you are a narc yourself, or just have “fleas” which you can kill off with a good flea bath.

As posted in FLEAS – Bad Behavior Patterns and Habits Picked Up from Living or Dealing with a Narcissist by Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers:

Now, you may not have NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder). Some children of Narcissists do, and some don’t. Let’s say you don’t, but you were raised by someone who did/does. Therefore you have some issues that can take the shape of NPD – like a shadow or a snow angel, or even an echo.

You’ll have some issues in the same sorts of areas that Narcissism occupies, because you picked up these fleas FROM a Narcissist.

…..But you don’t have NPD.

What you have is the shadow – “maladaptive behaviors”, as psychologists call them, the unhelpful patterns you have been taught, and which you have had to resort all your life.

And they are glued in, most often, by the shame you have been made to carry.

What you have is nicknamed “FLEAS.” They’re the bad behavior patterns and habits we picked up from living with a nutcase who had total and unhealthy control over us. They are the pain and guilt and crazy patterns we had to take on as children in order to just survive. And they’re completely un-learnable.  (Meaning, you can un-learn them!)

One of the most common issues that newbies demonstrate is a tremendous fear that they themselves have NPD.

It’s a perfectly understandable fear. All human beings do Narcissistic things, and when DoNM’s who don’t have NPD recognize and acknowledge their own self-centered behaviors, they sometimes worry that they have NPD.

They feel guilty about possibly having hurt someone’s feelings, been self-centered, etc., and they panic. It can really be upsetting, even terrifying. And they beat themselves up mercilessly for it – because that’s what they’ve been taught to do.

You’ll notice that I said, “Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers who don’t have NPD”…

In order for someone to recognize, acknowledge and feel guilty about their own Narcissistic behaviors, they first have to have a level of empathy and sense of emotional responsibility that Narcissists, by definition, do not possess.

On the DoNM forum, the usual response to such a person is, ‘If you’re that worried about the impact of your behavior on others, and you’re willing to publicly share your fear of being NPD, trust us — you don’t have NPD… you just have FLEAS.’”

Violet writes in Am I a Narcissist, Too?  All About Fleas:

We can pick up fleas anywhere. I have seen things on FaceBook, people saying really hurtful, mean things about LGBT people, about people of colour, about the poor and disadvantaged, about women, and they are absolutely shameless about it.

Some of these people are narcissists, but others have picked up fleas from narcissistic politicians, pastors, or other authority figures they either revere or fear. Taken out of that environment and shown how their words and attitudes actually hurt other living, breathing human beings, some of these people will feel shame for what they said and the hurt they caused.

Others will not, and they will rationalize and justify what they said, even blame their victims for their hurt (I have actually seen someone say that feeling hurt by the words of a bully is a choice, that you can choose not to be hurt and therefore what the bullies say and do is OK!) : these people are most likely narcissists.

I’ve seen versions of this as well.  For example, statements that we choose to be offended by others; that we can simply stop being offended.  Or, “I’m not responsible for your emotions.”

There are different ways people mean this, however.  The first was said in the context of, Yes, what they said is offensive, but you can choose your own reactions–thereby not giving the offender power over you.

The second, I’ve seen used as an excuse to do whatever you want, because it’s the other person’s fault if they’re offended.  It was said by Richard to me, after I told him he was doing some things that hurt me.  I forget what they were, just that it was close to the time we broke off the friendship, and that he basically took the responsibility for my being hurt off his shoulders, putting it on mine.  ???!!!

I’ve seen it in other places as well, the excuse that if we hurt somebody, it’s their fault for being hurt.  That’s very narcissistic, and goes against everything my husband and I were taught growing up.  It’s yet another sign that I’ve pegged Richard correctly as a narcissist.

If you’ve hurt and offended someone, the very least you can do is apologize for hurting them, even if you don’t feel your action was wrong in and of itself.  You can listen to how you can avoid hurting that person again.

Sure there are times when that person was offended by an innocent action which should not be offensive (ie, offended by a gay man kissing his partner in public, or offended by an introvert who means well but is quiet, or offended by a woman breastfeeding her baby at the mall).

But oftentimes, the offensive act could simply be avoided next time.

(Also see this post.)

Tracy, too, as I saw time and again, would justify whatever she did, even though it hurt others.  She hurt Todd, so she justified it as his fault.  She hurt me, so to this day she justifies her actions as “nothing wrong” and talks like my being hurt is somehow “childish.”

Even Richard told me back in February 2008, Good luck getting an apology out of her, because she rarely apologizes to anyone, thinking whatever she does is justified.  I don’t have the e-mail in front of me and don’t recall if I kept it, but I still remember it.

(I remember thinking when I got it, “I don’t want to deal with that woman anymore!”  This was the first time I seriously thought about breaking off the friendship.)

She used Richard’s past abuses of the children to justify her own abuses of the children (I have an e-mail proving this).  Which means she’s like this to everybody: me, Todd, even Richard.  And this is one of the signs of a narcissist, according to the above.

There is more good stuff in that blog post, explaining how we can tell if we’re narcissists or have just picked up some “fleas”–and how to eradicate those fleas.

From the website Out of the Fog (Fear, Obligation, Guilt):

Fleas – When a non-personality-disordered individual (Non-PD) begins imitating or emulating some of the disordered behavior of a loved one or family member with a personality disorder this is sometimes referred to as “getting fleas”….

Sometimes, when a person has been exposed to an abusive situation for a sustained period, they will look for ways to escape – and sometimes they will experiment or resort to behaviors which are not characteristic but serve as a mechanism to demonstrate their anger.

These behaviors are often destructive and counter-productive and rarely get the abuse victim what they want. These behaviors usually result in regret, shame and apologies from the abuse victim towards their perpetrator. Some perpetrators may seize on such incidents as justification for their own abusive behavior or as a diversion from it….

However, most Non-PD’s are more accustomed to “keeping the peace” than being aggressors and most of us are not comfortable or accomplished in winning arguments or fights.

We will often back down or feel remorse after lashing out. We may begin to compare our behavior to that of the person with the personality disorder and wonder if we are the ones who have “the” problem.

It is common for Non-PD’s to begin to question if they are the one who suffers from a personality disorder. It is also common for Non-PD’s to greatly fear retribution after an angry outburst and engage in a manipulative campaign, similar to hoovering to try to deflect consequences or payback.

That link also gives ways to avoid catching “fleas.”

When looking back over and writing about the situation with Richard and Tracy, I discovered my own “fleas” caught from dealing with Tracy’s abuses and Richard’s abusive enabling of her abuses–or, as a mutual friend once put it, coddling her BS, just as Richard complained people did for Tracy’s mentally ill mother.

I was angry with her abuses and bullying, and trying to fight and resist them.  Tracy would then pounce on these fleas or other mistakes and bring them up, whether to Richard and/or to me, again and again and again, as proof of my “bad” character.

I grew up with a narcissistic brother, but the rest of my family (except for an aunt by marriage) is not narcissistic.  I was bullied as a child, but this is common for anyone who is in any way different from the “norm,” and I was an imaginative, socially awkward child who struggled to fit in, who did not understand why everyone called me “weird.”

But ever since I left my childhood bullies behind and entered adulthood, moved away from my brother, and found a husband who is not a narcissist, who is willing to face his own flaws and improve on them–I was not used to being so relentlessly bullied by anyone.

I thought most adults were far too mature to do this, that most childhood bullies and “mean girls” grew up eventually.  (In fact, this belief allowed me to forgive my childhood bullies.)

The things Tracy said to and about me, cuts on my character, snarks at anything I did or said, cutting on the most innocuous of things (like my husband being the cook), even outright lies (like that I did not serve vegetables or that I manipulated my husband or that I never tried to befriend her or that I was never allowed all the privileges of Richard’s other friends), startled and appalled me: a definite smear campaign.

Even worse was that I occasionally did do things were wrong, “fleas” which I picked up in desperation to try to somehow deal with and fend off her many attacks.  And when I did, she grabbed onto them and would not let them go–the proverbial dog with a bone.

I’d apologize, and/or never do those things again, thinking that was enough–but they would be brought up again and again anyway, as if I did them continuously and never stopped.

There was a serious power imbalance, power struggle.  Friendships are not supposed to be one person in charge, making all the rules, which the other has to obey.  They’re supposed to be give and take.  And I was sick of trying and trying only to get more bullying and abuse all the time.

She also complained about things I did which were not wrong, such as when I told my husband in what I thought was a private conversation, how she was abusing and bullying me, Richard and the children.  I could stand up in righteous indignation and know that she was being unjust.

But when I did do something wrong, it became something she could use against me in perpetuity.  She did the same thing to Richard, from things he has told me.

There’s nothing you can do to make up for these things.  There’s no way you can get a narc to back off from your faults.  When you commit the mistake, she goes into orgasmic glee as she smears you on Facebook and says what a wonderful day she’s having.  When you apologize, she uses this chance to beat you over the head about what a worm you are for having done it.

Meanwhile, the many abuses she has committed against you and others are forgotten, never apologized for because you “deserved” them, and you better “grow up” and accept these abuses as your due because you’re so horrible, so it does you no good to point them out to her.  All you can do is escape and lick your wounds till they heal–far away from the narc.

For an example of how completely a narcissist can justify, excuse and forget her own many abuses, just see what Tracy wrote to me here.

If you can look with regret on your own mistakes and sins without justifying them, maybe understand why you did them but without excusing yourself, then no, you are no narcissist: You have just caught fleas.

 

Research Against Helicoptering Parents

Hover No More: Helicopter Parents May Breed Depression and Incompetence in Their Children

The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting

I grew up in a city of 100,000, large enough for crime, abductions, various such things, even in the 70s.

But most of us walked or biked to school.  Only the kids with disabilities, and the very few who got driven by their parents, got to school via vehicle, in my first elementary school.

My second was a special school for the gifted, so many of us had to be bussed.  In middle and high school, bussing was more common, but either you were bussed or you walked.

In fact, my parents tell me I started walking to school by myself at a mere five years old, having insisted on it just a few days after starting Kindergarten.

(I also got lost.  But I soon learned the way: turn right at the big decorative rock.  I was helped by a kindly old man, who nowadays supposedly I should have rejected as a dangerous stranger.)

Instead of helicoptering, I’ve been trying to carry on my mother’s more hands-off approach, the kind my generation grew up with.

However, it’s hard to do at times, because 30 years is a long stretch of time to remember everything your parents did, other parents act like you’re neglectful if your second-grader walks to school by himself, and there’s so much contradicting advice these days.

For example, Supernanny is great for learning how to discipline children without abuse (including screaming) or even light spanking, but even she seems to encourage a certain amount of hovering (why should I be responsible for keeping my kids entertained and “stimulated”?).

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