25 July 2021
The whole wiring of your brain is messed up. You have a concept of what a loving, stable, and supportive family should be like but it's just a concept in your head. The experience, the feeling is not there. The experience is there but it is 180. You know well what a manipulative family, incredibly unstable both emotionally and financially feels like. Immature is an underrated word to describe them. Narcissistic? Oh, that's playing on easy mode. They eat gaslighting for breakfast.
The most important unwritten rule is to never talk about what has happened. And if do, say as little as possible. Never admit your very messed-up actions towards your son. Time will take care of it all.
Normal people have no idea about the amount of rage that is idling in the background waiting to go full gear at just about the most wrong time. Its intensity... Just writing that feels so uncomfortable because I know most who read this will have no idea what I'm talking about and will have no choice but to see it through their lenses and think that I'm over-exaggerating.
For curious minds, I highly recommend researching Narcissism. I'm doing a bad job describing what being raised by a dysfunctional family does to your brain. Youtube is a good starting point. Doctor Ramani has some very good explanations. Surviving Narcissism channel. There is r/raisedbynarcissists.
I've spent many hours consuming content on the narc topic. Hoping my brain realizes that what has happened is not normal. And still, any time I notice someone is about to reduce the importance of the suffering as if "it's just in your head™" there is a pain like a bow being thrust into my chest and staying there.
Usually, the words of people who I consider intelligent hurt the most. Because then it's their intelligence vs my supposedly traumatic past. And you can't defend it with intelligence. Intelligence is mostly in the realm of words. You need to go deeper. A nervous system and a few brain wirings deeper. It's something that the other person needs to experience.
What sucks is that people who doubt our traumatic experiences have a very good reason. There are plenty of people who would take advantage of compassion. Trying to pretend they're hurt in order to gain the upper hand. Because being hurt and being on the same level as someone else, kind of implies that you should be treated better. But in reality, the other person may just like to keep it quiet or may not have his way with words. So you could be taking advantage when you try to share your story of being traumatized or hurt in the past.
That's such a delicate topic I can't yet find the right words to talk about it in a way that is satisfactory.