If You're Happy and You Know It, Punish Yourself

by Quercus


Last week's trip to the psychologist met with an interesting revelation. I was recounting my waves of despair, the debilitating 'break-downs' I occasionally have to endure. They seem to come out of nowhere for the most part, and I can't do much to stop them.

I've forgotten much of what he said (of course! Mind like a sieve!), but I wanted to know where these mental tsunamis were coming from.

He said the following:

"You cannot allow yourself to be happy. You have much to be happy for, but you cannot permit yourself to see it as such. When you do feel happy, you quickly punish yourself. You cause your own misery. It isn't a conscious decision to do so, but you have learned that when you are happy, your mother will hurt you. Because this happened chronically throughout your childhood, you had to adapt - so you punish yourself, you make yourself miserable, and you avoid having your mother hurting you. It was more tolerable for you to be hurt by yourself than it was to deal with your mother intentionally hurting you."

So I said, "Aha! This makes sense! So . . . all I have to do is allow myself to feel happy!" ("Yes."). "So if I focus on all the positives in my life, spend the rest of the day counting my blessings, it'll be good for me, won't it? I'll just let myself be happy!"

And he said,

"Oh no. No, you can't feel happy! If you do, you're going to drown yourself in another tidal wave of despair!"

It turns out that whenever I feel happy, part of me kicks in to induce misery. It's an automated response. So I said, "Really? Now that I know where they're coming from, can't I simply prevent those thoughts?"

He said,

"But you can't. You don't have control over that part of your mind. It's unconscious, it's practically independent of your thoughts."

So I said, "Well, what can we do, then? If I can't do anything about it, isn't it hopeless then? If I can't challenge that part of my mind, then will I be forced to endure it forever?!"

It was a long conversation after that, but the nuts and bolts of it were:

• Therapy allows me to become aware of the unconscious part of my mind. My psychologist holds up a metaphorical mirror to get me to see parts of me I don't have access to. A different analogy would be that he points out the keyholes, and I peek through to catch glimpses of my unconscious mind from behind locked doors.
• When I become aware of it, slowly it will move towards the conscious part of my mind (this takes time, and isn't something I logically understand, but it is something I can feel, in a manner of speaking). To carry on with the keyhole analogy, I eventually craft the appropriate keys and open the doors.
• Once it crosses over into the conscious realm of my mind, I'm then able to challenge it, battle it, slay it, that sort of thing. Once I can open the doors, I can move about in the space behind the doors (it becomes accessible - I can interact with the space). Now I can start straightening things out, rearranging objects, changing the space to suit me.

I guess this is why therapy is such a 'process'. It's not easy, either emotionally or practically speaking. But it's worth it.

Healing Daughter commenting on a previous post spurred me to write today. It was her comment that said:

"I will say it takes years to correct your mother's voice, and even now, 13 months later I can still hear my mother's voice sometimes clear as day, but the difference is slapping those critical remarks down."

It does take time to quash the negativity. And the weirdest thing is, though we hear our abusive parent's voice, it's really our own minds telling us these things, over and over again. We have been conditioned to do so. We are doing the dirty-work of the narcissistic parents for them.

In my case, it appears to be going on behind locked doors in my mind. I have to break-in and and stop the despair-wave-generating machines. It just takes a little while to find the keyholes in the dark (or am I blind?), with the help of my psychologist leading me to them. Then we have to work together to jimmy the locks or carve a key to fit. In the meanwhile, I have to ride out the storms that my unconscious mind generates.

Ironically, it appears that my unconscious mind prefers injuring me to allowing my mother to injure me. I've been a self-punishing child for years. This is the insidious legacy that the abusive, narcissistic parent leaves us. A legacy of self-hatred, self-flagellation to keep us where they want us: beaten down, never to rise higher or level to themselves. The Narcissist has to be the 'top dog', the 'alpha male or female', the creme de la creme. They gave birth to us to be small versions of them. They did not bargain for us growing up to become more than what they are, or even equal to themselves in stature. That's where all the trouble lies - if only we could remain small, helpless, dependent and attached. Then we might have been loved, albeit conditionally. It was an impossible role for us to fill.

An admission - I didn't want to grow up. Not only did being a grown-up look miserable to me, I also knew that the more I grew and learned and developed, the less I was loved.

Do you know what my NM said to this? That I must have enjoyed my childhood SO MUCH that I didn't want to grow up.

The truth was I hated my childhood, and feared my life was only about to get worse. And I was right.

There is good news, though. It seems that, once I distance myself from her, I can break-in to parts of my own mind, with the help of a good and competent shrink, and reprogram the brainwashed parts. Now, for the first time in my life, I can legitimately look forward to a brighter future.

I would like to encourage all readers to seek good and appropriate therapy. It's never too late for therapy, and it may help you more than you could ever realise. Remember to shop around for the right fit! Just as the wrong sized shoe isn't helpful, a poor match for you in the therapist department is going to be a wasted investment and a source of discomfort.