You may or may not be familiar with Sigmund Freud’ pleasure/pain principle which suggests that while seeking pleasure, people will also seek to avoid pain and for the most part that is true. People generally go day to day working on their own self improvement, seeking pleasure from their efforts while trying not to hurt others in their process. However, things become somewhat messed up in this principle when dealing with cases of narcissism as these abusers actually get pleasure out of causing other people pain. What we would do well to understand is that the problem is never the person(s) on the receiving end of the abuse, in fact, quite the opposite. The abuser themselves are the ones who are filled with such a pain that blinds them to the fact they too have flaws and toxic traits, to the point where they feel they need to be belittling others just to feel good about themselves.
Through my own experience with my mother, i had to cause others pain to please her. For a child, this is a very emotionally and mentally damaging place to be. Every child wants to feel their mothers love and will do whatever is necessary to get that but for a mother to purposely put her child in a position of conflict for her own self serving reasons, in my opinion, she is not fit to be a parent.
After the breakdown of her and my dads marriage (i say breakdown…she had an affair and soon moved in with the guy and took us kids with her), we were soon being resettled into a whole new family setting. I as only 3-4 at the time and it wasn’t the fact everything was suddenly changing that i remember troubling me, it was being told he wasn’t my dad any more, that her new boyfriend was my dad and we were to call him that from then on. I remember that like it was yesterday, being sat on the stairs waiting for my dad to come get us for the day and she starts spitting out that crap. Of course i couldn’t bring myself to call my dad by his first name as she had told us to, but when we were at home with her i had to call her boyfriend dad too. And this is where it all started.
Suddenly, unbeknown to me at the time of course, i became nothing more than a pawn in her twisted games to score points and hurt my dad. For a woman who claimed to be so happy in her new found love, why was she so bitter about my dad moving on? He also moved on after losing his custody battle for us and i remember all too well how she would call his girlfriend(s) all the nasty names you could think of. She would tell us to try and steal his mail when we were at their house. She would tell us that he didn’t care about us and that his girlfriend was more important to him than we were and was generally just relentless in her attacks towards him. It is an absolute gut wrench to love both your parents but to have one constantly, maliciously, relentlessly attack the other, is just cruel to inflict on a child.
Ironically enough, to the outside world, she was always so well presented. Make up and hair always perfect and a friendly smile and pleasant demeanour for those who she spoke to but what a very different story behind closed doors and when no one else was around. This is why i trust very few people and am probably more suspicious of the seemingly “perfect” people than i am of the ones who are open and honest with themselves about who they are…flaws and all. I am not intimidated at all by what others have, what position they hold in society or how popular they are in their social crowds. Those are all just more factors to enable them to be sly coercive manipulators because they have more to hide behind and have portrayed themselves to be such lovely people, others become blind to the hidden agendas. We hear all too often the phrase, “i would never have thought they could do something like that”, or words to that affect, when true colours are exposed.
I hadn’t long started high school when the pressure of home life became too much and i finally snapped with a girl in my year who had started a rumour about my stepdad. I beat her up in the gym hall and when my mum found out, i didn’t get into trouble…she actually praised me for it and that started a ball rolling i soon lost control of. She seemed to want to encourage me to be that person and for the love of my mother…its what i felt i had to do just to make her like me. I soon had an ego and attitude that made people very wary of me but i was becoming useful for “friends”..(i’ll use that term loosely). I was becoming the defender so to speak.Id be the one who would fight battles for others, hurting others just to please the rest and as much as it seemed like i was part of the crowd, i really wasn’t. I never felt like i fitted in anywhere so just went along with what was expected of me just to please others and stay part of the group.
I always knew inside as i got older that i didn’t want to be that person, that wasn’t who i was and i certainly didn’t get any pleasure out of causing others pain. In fact, the only person i was really hurting was myself. I was falling deeper into a character that just wasn’t me but without any real parental guidance or support…anger just became my defence. It was all i knew in protecting myself.
My life spiralled into a vicious circle of drugs, parties and criminal charges until the day came i was back in court…again, but facing a prison sentence for a serious assault. I was told by the judge that if i was to appear in his court room again he would have no choice but to impose a custodial sentence and it was then i knew i had to leave my home town. If i stayed there i was going to end up dead or in jail.
Years passed and my potential was being realised by various people who i worked along side. I trained up to pub management level with the company i started working for in the city. I had so much appraisal for who i was and what i was capable of on a professional level and it as music to my ears! I was being appreciated and recognised for who i really was under all the bravado but that trait of aggression and anger still firmly had a hold and it was my automatic default mode when things took a nose dive to go on the attack.
Things finally came crashing down after a failed marriage to a violent alcoholic, (a guy so quiet and placid out in social gatherings but a whole different ball game behind closed doors). I had tried to get back in touch with my dad after not speaking for almost 2 years but he never returned any my calls or messages so to me at the time, i just felt more alone than i ever had and so turned to the only thing i knew would give me a quick fix…drugs! I completely screwed up my job, hurt the people who had helped me and fell straight back into the cycle of destruction i knew all too well.
By this point, i was at the doctors begging them to just cut my mother out of me. I knew i had her traits, i hated myself for having her temperament and mannerisms and i felt a knife in my heart anytime someone said i was like her. I hated her, i hated what she had made me into and i hated myself for not being able to control it..and then i had my son! What an absolute game changer that was.
My son saved my life. It took a full on emotional breakdown and my mother to die for me to finally find my peace and start healing from my past properly but my son made me realise just how unlike my mother i actually was. I realised from there i had been conditioned and programmed to satisfy her twisted mind. As he got older, id look at him and wonder how any mother could hurt their kids the way mine did. I just couldn’t comprehend how anyone could take pleasure out of causing their child so much pain with mental, emotional and physical abuse, and for what? Because i loved my dad! Parents who use their kids to score points against the other parent are in my opinion..absolute scum of the earth no matter how well presented in society they may be.
I’m far from being a perfect parent, we all are! But what i have made sure of is that my son has a great relationship with his dad no matter what happened between us. We co-parent so well and i respect his decisions and judgement when it comes to discipline as we are teaching him that despite us being separated, he needs to respect the different rules in the separate houses….and it works perfectly as he knows he cant play us off against each other and neither one of us would want to encourage that. I certainly would never want him to feel the pain i endured in my mothers games of twisting us against my dad. I am a strict parent, quite old school to be honest and believe that manners, morals and respect are fundamental in raising children. Its easier to build a strong child than repair a broken adult..i’m living proof of that! Any time i end up loosing my shit with him, once the situation has calmed down i will sit down and talk to him about why i was upset with him. I have no problem in admitting if i have been unnecessarily snappy and i will apologise to him when i need to. The earlier we can teach our kids its OK to be upset or feeling crap, but its never OK to hurt other people as a result of that, the earlier they can understand their own feelings and have a better understanding of how to deal with things better as they grow up. I want him to be able to take responsibility and be accountable for his actions. He has watched me do the same. Life will be so much easier and he can deal with situations far quicker if he learns early to put his hands up to his mistakes. As i told him, he’s human, its OK to make mistakes as long as he is learning from them and not trying to always blame other people. We talk a lot in our house. If there’s an issue, we sit down and talk it through until we reach a solution or understanding of where each other is coming from.
Its been almost 2 and a half years since my mum died and the change i have felt within myself in that time has been something else entirely. We don’t realise the impact someone has on us until they are no longer holding the strings over us. Especially our own mother! It feels like all the parts of me that i hated slowly dissolved, my peace became my priority and i just don’t have a fight left in me anymore. Don’t get me wrong, i’m still well aware i have triggers and am very much a strong minded woman but even that is becoming easier to manage and i work daily on myself to be better than i was. I don’t even try to fit in anywhere anymore as I understand that most people only see things from their own perspective, i’m too honest and truthful about who i am and that intimidates anyone who puts on a false face. Not everyone wants to see you do well, there are those who get pleasure out of seeing others in pain and finally… you can’t argue with fucking stupid!….these ones have a problem for every solution no matter how reasonable you try to be. But on the plus side, when you stop trying to please everyone and concentrate on yourself, all the right things and people gravitate towards you. This is where i am in life now, happy, stable, content and head over heels in love.
Sending love and healing to all who need it……….
By Sharon Paxton