Guilt: the great inhibitor.

Posted on by

guilt_worry

When I started this blog, I also made a commitment to 100% honesty about my feelings, no matter what. Doing that was easier than I thought and due to my honesty, I’ve become less fearful of what other people think and my self esteem has improved (though it still has a long way to go to be in the “normal” range).

About a month ago, my parents discovered this blog. My mother, though she’s in her 80’s, is active on social media and has accounts with Facebook and LinkedIn. At first I was horrified, and waited for something terrible to happen.

Nothing did, at least nothing that was evident at first.

I worry less about my father reading this blog, but then again, he’s not an MN and he actually seemed somewhat supportive of what I’m doing. If he objected to my discussing my MN mother in such a negative way, he never let on that he did. My mother, as expected has said nothing. I quietly unfriended her on Facebook because I’m linking my blog posts there now (my profile is set up so only friends can view details), but she can still access this blog directly if she wants to.

And that’s where my problem comes in. Knowing that she is probably reading every word I say is causing me to censor what I post and be about 95% honest instead of 100%. It’s stupid, because she doesn’t approve of me anyway and will say bad things about me to others no matter what. She has for years. So I don’t really understand why I’m so worried about what this 80-something woman might say about this blog to her relatives.

guilty

Every time I want to post something, I’m hesitating if it’s about her. Since it would be dishonest of me to post wonderful, great things about her, I’m finding I’m not posting about her much lately at all.

My mother has terrified me my entire life. Even though I’m in my 50s now and I am very low contact with her (I only went No Contact with my ex), I still worry about what she might be thinking or saying about me. It’s so stupid–what difference could it possibly make? I’m not a child and I’ve already been abandoned emotionally by her, so why do I still care so much? I know I’m never going to win her approval even if I should ever become wildly successful (for her, it wouldn’t count as success because it would be ME) and what else can she say about me that she hasn’t already been saying? I don’t use real names so I can’t be sued. And finally, it’s not as if she hasn’t already read everything I’ve said about her under “My Story” already. There’s nothing worse I can say that I haven’t already said.

I know it’s irrational to censor myself for fear of what she’ll think, but I can’t seem to let go of my fear of her. I know she will never love me or approve of me. But I feel like she can still control me and she still scares me. I know much of this has a lot to do with having been programmed to always feel guilty and ashamed, even though ironically, both my parents believe guilt is a bad emotion.

How many of you have had to face this situation? What did you do to cope with it? I really need some help here, because if I can’t be 100% honest about EVERYTHING, that puts a damper on my healing.

17 thoughts on “Guilt: the great inhibitor.”

  1. I was just thinking the last couple of days how it’s very possible for my N to find me through my blog, if he cared to search for me. That thought weirds me out. Not sure what to think about it, but it’s made me more cautious. I wish I had advice for you on this, but I just don’t know. Hopefully others will have good insight.

    Liked by 2 people

    • The best way he can’t find you is to use fake names and make sure you don’t link your posts to any social media. I was only linking to Twitter for awhile (where no one in my family except my son has an account and I trust him) but started linking to FB and LI too for more visibility (and it’s worked, but at a price!)
      I am sorry you’re facing this situation. It really does suck.

      For some strange reason, I’m not afraid of my ex finding it (although he easily could and may already have). He’s more dangerous to me than my mother, and yet I don’t care if he sees it. The only reason I can think of for why I care if my mother sees it and don’t care if he sees it is that on some level I still need/want my mother’s approval. I don’t care what my ex thinks of me at all. I guess that’s the difference.
      I refuse to set this blog up so only WP members can see it, or require a sign in. I hate anything that requires a sign in and will probably bypass it, so I’m not going to do that here either.

      Liked by 3 people

      • I’ve definitely not linked anything in my blog with social media and I have blocked him on all social media as well and have any emails he might send me automatically deleted (where I don’t even know he’s written). My email has “quixotic” in it which is unique and it wouldn’t be totally out of the realm of possibility for him to search for something I’m most interested in which is “faith.” If he finds my blog ever he’ll know it’s me. I guess my fear is that he’ll somehow gaslight me into believing I was crazy all along because he’s soooooo good at that! He’d probably somehow make me feel crazy for “blocking” him from my life, “Hey, I was just *trying* to be a good friend. I don’t see why you are so worked up about all this” is what he’d say. His gaslighting is very subtle and I have difficulty believing he could be so cruel despite all evidence to the contrary! Despite all my reading up about narcississm and all the good “work” I’ve done with no contact if he finds a way to contact me again I’m toast. 😦 Even with the loving emotional support of my husband it would turn me upside down. What’s weird is that I’ve always cared more about my N’s approval than anyone else’s. He’s not a relative and I never even married him. I don’t even like or respect him. I just feel completely and utterly rejected by him and affected by it even 12 years after our relationship ended!

        Like

  2. Are you my cyber twin or what? I could have written this post. Well, actually, no I couldn’t, you did a much better job of putting these feelings into words than I have been able to do.

    Everything you wrote here: DITTO.

    I hope you never stop writing so honestly and openly. Your story, your words, your truth, and your courage is helping me immensely.

    Liked by 1 person

  3. I’ve had the same feelings about my sister. But what’s she going to do? Hate me more? If she reads my blog it can’t do either of us any harm. Could it be that you don’t like the idea of your mom reading it, and… once again… denying everything? That used to be the thing that pissed me off most about my mother, even after I gave up on approval. It just infuriated me that she could deny, even with irrefutable proof right in front of her.

    Liked by 1 person

    • My mother definitely denies things so my fear could be due to that–I’m really not sure what I’m afraid of but that could be part of it. Or I’m just afraid of her narcissistic rages (even though she’s over 1500 miles away, we haven’t seen each other in 5 years and we speak about once a year).

      Liked by 1 person

  4. Well, I can certainly understand your irrational desire for your mother’s approval, even while you realize you’re never going to have it. I was the same way with my father for many years, even though I knew he was never going to approve of me, and even though I had cut back my contact with him to the bare minimum because I just couldn’t deal with his negativity. (I already had enough trouble with self hatred; I didn’t need him reinforcing it.) The weird thing is that it bothered me as much as it did. I could have earned his approval if, beginning in childhood, I had just ordered my life according to his advice. The fact that I didn’t (because I knew my life would be miserable if I did) seems to indicate that I really didn’t care what he thought… yet I continued to feel hurt by his low opinion of me. That was why I kept my contact with him as infrequent and as brief as possible. I felt bad about it, but sometimes you just have to know your own limits.

    Liked by 2 people

    • It bothered you, because you knew that if he’d been a normal father, he would have loved you unconditionally and accepted you for who you were, not for some fictional person he wanted you to be.
      With my parents (my mother in particular) you are not acceptable if you are not financially and professionally successful . She values surface things like appearance and wealth. She does not value qualities like being a nice person. Had I been a big success, she might have had some grudging respect for me, but she would still hate me because she’d be jealous. As it stands now, she hates me and doesn’t respect me. The real reason she hates me (and hsa since I was about 5) and I became her scapegoat was because of my high sensitivity. I’m the truth teller, the person she feared because I could see through her. Narcs are terrified of being seen through and called out. I guess knowing she knows I am doing what she most feared (calling out the narcs on this blog which includes her) feels like a huge risk to me because it means I am throwing away any chance there is for her to ever love me. Of course, she will never love me, and maybe on some level even has a certain respect for what I am doing (but if so, I will never know about it).

      Liked by 2 people

      • My father also put way too much stock in things like physical appearance (he judged all my boyfriends and all my brothers’ girlfriends on how good-looking they were), career success, high income, etc. It drove him crazy that I didn’t worry about stuff like that. I had one or two good-looking boyfriends back in my youth, but I also learned very early on that the best-looking guys aren’t always the nicest, and that in fact the nicest guys tended to be the not-so-good-looking ones. Whenever I was dating one of the latter, my dad would have fits. It also irritated the heck out of him that I didn’t pursue a career that actually involved regular paychecks, as opposed to being a full time mother. As far as he was concerned, I was just sitting around the house all day wasting time, when I could have left the kids with a babysitter and gone out and gotten a job and earned money. He had a really unfortunate tendency to judge all human activity by its monetary value, and he really looked down on anyone who didn’t.

        Liked by 1 person

  5. I do know how you feel. I often can think about my mother in a gentler light, but I know that is only my imagination. Like when my newest grandchild was born in December, I was envisioning mother was there. She wasn’t but I could see in my mind’s eye, the terrible look she was giving me. You know, with her eye’s wide open and blank stare, that I saw as loving and mean. And I need her approval.

    But that is an empty look, that is in need of narcissistic supply. A predator on the loose that is all it is. Then I envision her yelling at me, and I laugh. She is a predator, that has been sapped of her power ever since my awakening.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Yes, they are predators. We have stripped them of their danger by doing what we are doing. My mother always hated me because she knew from the time I was 5 or 6 that I was the family truth teller because of my high sensitivity. She couldn’t stand that about me and decided to make me a scapegoat. As I said to Bluebird, she only values material wealth and appearance, not innate qualities like altruism or compassion. She thinks nice people are “insipid.” Well, what I am doing with this blog isn’t “nice” but I am doing what I do best–telling the truth.
      Even if I was this professionally successful person she seemed to want me to be, she would still hate me, and on top of that there would be envy too. She never wanted me to succeed, not really. I was trained from an early age to not think for myself or have any ideas of my own. Easier to scapegoat me that way, I guess. Well, those days are over–I’m still poor, but like myself better and no longer allow her to use me as her emotional punching bag.

      Liked by 1 person

      • My mother did that to me too. She “wanted” me to succeed. It was never possible with my upbringing. I’ve been poor all my life with this dream of success haunting me the whole time. Then I came online and found a whole bunch of people suffering like me. Abusive relationships, no money, I’ve so been through all of that.
        It wasn’t my fault. But you are right. We must value ourselves now regardless of our circumstances.

        Liked by 1 person

        • Like you, I always felt like I was the only person in the world with the kind of problems I have, until I found the narcissistic abuse community less than one year ago.
          So many of us struggle with poverty or near poverty.
          It’s good to know we’re not alone. Thank God for the Internet!

          Like

Comments are closed.