In your battle to stagger through life, there are two big enemies you should avoid. Blame and Shame. If there is anything I have learned from my narc sister, it is that people who are devoid of either get on far better in life. It is much better to have a personality so devoid of empathy or reason that you don’t ever experience any. Not only are you happier, you can leave everyone else eating your dust whilst you move on to your next miserable task.
I wept for years over the behaviour of my siblings towards my mother. No decent person could be invited into my life, I thought. To make matters worse, the only positive person I knew had not turned out to be particularly positive in reality.
I regarded it as a smirch on my character, that three people who clearly regarded themselves as superior would behave in such a shoddy, selfish way. It took several years for me to wake up one morning and say “Wait a minute, I have taken care of both of their parents. I have given up any decent prospects to do so, and in addition I have repaired the family home at considerable expense of my time and money whilst they did nothing. Why am I still hearing tales of how selfish and nasty I am when I stopped speaking to them several years ago?”
This behaviour is called mobbing, and it is employed by stupid and deranged people to avoid responsibility for either helping or acknowledging anything you are doing. It is classic amongst non-caring children. It is a reason to do nothing. As long as they can make your life miserable, they have the excuse to then make your reaction to that, which in my case was to completely ignore them, into a good reason for being even more abusive. They will continue to do this as long as nobody from outside the family points it out, and nobody ever does. There is no mechanism for protecting carers from this form of abuse at all. Try searching for examples online, and you will not find any. I tried. It is rife, and yet there is no protection at all.
This is exactly how the public behave. Instead of taking any responsibility for making political decisions and employing anything in the way of actual reason to do so, they elect to delegate it by voting. A vote for conservative used to mean belief in the monarchy, in militarism and international standing. It now simply means that you consider the Conservatives to be better at making a more advantageous deal than anybody else, and to hell with the dead people.
“Things were better when there were gentlemen in charge.”
This was said by an elderly neighbour within my lifetime. This is a hangover from when it was considered noble to serve the public. The gentlemen in question frequently left their estates to the public. This is no longer how the class system operates, as I have previously mentioned. Those gentlemen no longer exist. To be a well-educated member of the upper classes now means that you are better at taking things than anyone else, a throwback to how many prominent aristocratic families got their status in the first place. It was highly relevant and useful when we were still conquering uncharted territory, but it does not work so well when the only thing left to take is right here. You may consider it astonishing that people who have every advantage seek to take more from you, but it is a dog-eat-dog world.
If you are, therefore, in a favoured position as a result of association with such people, it is far more difficult to express the ghastly horror when they take it one step too far, especially when you are conditioned to accept that they are also inclined to ‘mob’ you in much the same way a vile family does.
The recent experience of the last few years has taught me this: Sometimes it is expedient to employ the methods of the enemy to do the right thing. Ditch the blame and shame. Concentrate on what you are good at. By all means internally acknowledge your mistakes, but focus on what works in terms of moving forward. Build some new bridges.
I have moved on from the shame of having a repulsive family of money-grubbers, to experiencing shame at being in love with someone that I had no way of knowing was married when I exchanged a few sentences with him. I refuse to feel bad about it. There is no way that even I can twist it into being my fault.
Remember – strategy is our thing – focus on that.
I may have to rethink my strategy for the new project. I will keep you in the loop over the next few weeks, but it looks as if I will be earning the funding, at least.
Toodle pip,
Ina