For the first 45 years of my life, I frequently did NOT want to live. Recurring family conflicts, a culture of fear and violence, the burden of responsibility for my parents who each had a finger permanently pressed on self destruct … left me in a near constant state of overwhelm and panic.
Over the last 3 years since contact ceased with my birth family, I have wholeheartedly wanted to live. I have felt liberated. An intense pressure has lifted. I am learning about myself and what I need to stay well. My moods are stable. I feel safe and I feel optimistic about the future.
But when I close my eyes at bedtime, the ghosts of my past visit me. When that happens I wake in the middle of the night, sweat drenched, boiling hot, throat parched. The dreams are so real and steeped in threat. My heart is hammering as I try and orientate myself, prove to myself I am safe.
Last week the bad dreams came knocking. I woke up sobbing, crying ‘help, help, help, help’ over and over. My voice tiny and strangled like I was fighting to make a sound. Woken by my crying, my youngest son asked ‘Mummy what’s wrong?!’
‘I had a bad dream about Nanny’ I stammered.
He wrapped his skinny arms around me and cuddled me back to sleep. But the next morning I felt angry and ashamed. My child should not have to comfort me when I’m afraid. I should be comforting him.
These dreams have plagued me on and off since I was a young child. But they have been particularly distressing in frequency and content since I started therapy again. I say again, because I’ve sought therapeutic support often in my adult life – but this time was different. I wasn’t doing it to fix the broken, desperate, fear filled me of my past. I was doing it to nurture the happiest and strongest version of me. To build resilience and protect myself from future hurts, because on the rare occasions my mother has reached out since our estrangement (always with her own agenda, never with remorse or apology), I have been left crushed.
So my husband helped me find a therapist. One who understands neurodivergent brains. And in our introductory session she asked me ‘what would you want to focus on during our time together? So I took a big breath and I told her……
I’m scared something is wrong with me. Almost everyone from my birth family has turned their back on me. I don’t understand why. Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve always been disposable. No matter how much I loved them and tried to help them, they just used me and let me down. They disregarded my feelings and opinions. Judged me for being different to them. Wounded me physically and mentally. And then blamed me for everything.
Before I go any further I want to clarify something; this is not a pity party. I don’t court sympathy. I refuse to be cast as a victim. I was neither perfect nor innocent growing up. When your trusted adults are a violent alcoholic and an enmeshed and competitive narcissist, you grow up learning all the wrong behaviours. I was defensive and angry. I lashed out with my tongue and occasionally my fists. I trusted no one and felt threatened by everything. My Autistic brain meant I communicated without a filter. I was outspoken and brash, providing a running commentary on what I saw as my families wrong choices and bad behaviours.
There was truly no malice in my observations. I was deeply anxious and worried about them. I naively believed I could help them, by changing them. In fact I tried to force my help upon them, thinking I could take control and solve all their ills. Looking back I must have irritated the hell out of them, but all I wanted was to fix our family. Instead I was seen as a do-gooder, a trouble maker, for holding up a mirror that they refused to look in.
For 45 years I lived in a thankless cycle of trying to please them, to ingratiate myself; prove my worth. I loved them fiercely because my brain told me I must. I jumped through hoops of fire trying to please them. I spent hour after hour, listening and advising though my advice was usually ignored. I gave them gifts, not just on special occasions but simply to make them feel good. I loaned them money and took out loans on their behalf. I created cvs, helped with job applications. I brokered truces with their partners and took them on holidays with my husband and our children. I hosted family gatherings, organised milestone birthday parties. I was a shoulder to cry on, a constant.
Does any of this sound familiar?
Some things I did gladly and some I made myself do out of guilt and obligation. Some things I really resented, I’d say no to, before quickly apologising and doing exactly what they wanted because I couldn’t bear to be a disappointment.
Once, I spent hours and hours over several days making a photo story book for my youngest brother. My mother had told me he was having negative thoughts about his life and I desperately wanted him to know how loved he was by me and the whole family. So I made this book, and it was a labour of love. I had it professionally printed. It covered everything I knew and could remember about his life from the day he was born until the present day.
I was so excited to gift him this book, I imagined him being thrilled, as thrilled as I’d be if someone cared enough to document my life in this way. But he opened it, gave it a cursory glance then placed it down on the coffee table. I said ‘Aren’t you going to open it? Read it?! I think you’re going to love it.’
He replied, ‘I’m not self indulgent like some people are, sorry’.
The hurt I felt, the disappointment, the rejection, the failure…his words felt like a sharp slap in my face. Maybe he was embarrassed, I don’t know. But what he said, how he said it, it encapsulated everything that was wrong about the way my birth family viewed me, treated me.
I was disposable. My feelings didn’t matter. I’d got it wrong (again). I was one big bad joke of a human being. I was wasting my time…
So I garbled this story and many others to my therapist and she said to me,
‘I don’t think you’re a bad person or a worthless person. I think you have been investing your time in the wrong people. Your family didn’t love or respect you. They leaned on you. Every time they had a need you tried to meet it, to prove your worth. Of course they were probably glad to accept your help at the time. But when push came to shove, when you needed them to be honest, to tell the truth, to accept you needed to end your relationship with your mother, they were FURIOUS. I imagine they thought, ‘how dare she speak of unspeakable things, drag up what we’ve tried to bury. How dare she try to shirk her responsibilities. Why should she escape when we can’t?!’
And the heavy fog in my brain started to lift.
My therapist asked me to describe what happens when I invest my time and love in people who don’t need me, but who simply like spending time with me. Who enjoy being with me.
I thought immediately of my husband. 20 years of sharing our lives. He had never needed me but he chose to be with me despite my heavy dose of crazy. He loves me for me. He’s seen the best and worst of me. And I realised that whilst I am capable of healthy relationships that are not based on need, I have very few. Because it takes me years and years to fully trust someone, to show my whole self, when someone doesn’t need me. If they don’t need me, what’s the point of me? There’s nothing to keep them with me. They could leave me at any minute.
Then I thought of all the times over the years that I’ve met good people, through work or social events or parenting. Good people who showed they enjoy my company and who’d invite me to spend time with them. Who wanted to get to know me and my little family. Who wanted to be my friend. And 9 times out of 10 I’d freeze. Panic. Convinced they wouldn’t like me if they got to know me better. I’d make excuses, or agree to plans then cancel them. Especially in the last 4 years of sobriety when I haven’t had my Vodka jacket to help me brave social situations.
These people didn’t need anything from me, so they inadvertently made me feel redundant. Helping people is how I gain self worth. The rawness of just being me in front of others is unbearable. It’s like I’m on tenterhooks waiting for them to turn around and discard me.
I do also have relationships that start out with me as the ‘helper’, the mentor, the fixer upper. But these people are gracious and respectful. They value and appreciate me. They don’t use me like my family did. They are mindful of being a burden on me.
When I am confident to show vulnerability they try to help me in return. These are relationships I can feel safe in. Where I feel like I have proved my worth and I trust they won’t hurt me. These relationships feel balanced. Yet I still struggle to make room for these people in my life.
This is where my being Autistic has a big influence. You see, to do something well, I have to hyperfocus. It’s like an intense form of concentration where I direct all my energy and resources to one thing. I live and breathe that thing and it flourishes. My relationship hyperfocus is my husband and sons, I channel all my love and loyalty into them. My reward, is feeling them loving me back every day. I would choose them EVERY TIME.
Yet hyperfocus in relationships is tricky because it leaves little room for anyone else. Over the years, I have spread myself so thin trying to juggle the needs of many with my limited resources. I’ve wasted so much of my life trying to split my hyperfocus across multiple members of my birth family and their partners, when they didn’t actually give a damn about me. I was literally stretching my energy and emotions to capacity, to the point where they became thin and translucent like an overfilled balloon. They were never going to repay my efforts, to have my back, to support me in my most painful times. My asking them for support and understanding was intolerable. Inconvenient. Shameful.
My therapist has helped me realise that I have invested so much in unhealthy, one sided relationships over the years, because I need to feel useful, I validate my existence by helping others. But when those people have no intention of giving back, of prioritising me, loving me, then I am putting myself at real risk of harm.
What she also made me realise is that I am capable of positive reciprocal relationships, but it takes a hell of a lot for me to trust in them. And that’s because I’m hardwired to expect others to hurt me. That’s why I shy away from new friendships, because there’s always that nagging doubt that they won’t really like me or they’ll expect too much of me and I’ll let them down. Some of this relationship dysfunction is down to my past, but some of it is just about me being a socially anxious Autistic person.
Finally, she helped me see that wanting to be needed, wanting to help, can be positive and fulfilling as long as you establish safe boundaries. It’s ok to support others, to care, to contribute, but it should be on your terms. Not because you’re emotionally blackmailed into it, guilt tripped or pressured. But because you enjoy helping others and there is mutual respect and benefit.
If you’re reading this and you’re nodding your head, you can relate, then my job is done. I hope sharing my experience and learning will help other people who have lived through difficult and destructive relationships. Who, like me, need to be needed. Who measure their value on how useful they can be to others, even if those others treat them horribly.
Please be clear though that there are some narcissists for whom being needed and making themselves invaluable to others is a core trait. The difference between the narcissist and a person like me (or you) is our MOTIVATION for helping others. I want to help because I have an abundance of empathy, because I genuinely care and yes, because I want people to like me, because I have very low self esteem.
The narcissist will help others because they believe they deserve adulation. They want validation that they are important, they want to build their social status and influence over others. They may or may not care for the person they are helping, but they definitely care about their self image and the ‘points’ they will score by helping others. They are careful to choose the right people to help – people who will fall under their control easily and who will be beholden to them. The narcissist likes to feel superior to others so giving their time or resources to others feeds this need. Most importantly, when it suits them they will remind you of how indebted you are to them. How much you ‘owe’ then. They will make you feel guilty and unworthy of their help. And so continues their powerful and manipulative hold over others.
Finally, I wanted to address the bad dreams I’ve been having. My therapist said they are the result of my brain trying to process what we discuss in our sessions.
A lady in one of the estrangement groups I belong to, described it as the poison leaking out of me, like a cleansing process as I try and rid myself of the trauma and bad memories.
Both descriptions make sense and have helped me. But I don’t want to give these dreams my headspace. And whilst I want the poison out of me I can’t bear the broken sleep and fear that accompanies these dreams.
So for now, I’ve pressed pause on my therapy. Life is good and I’m going to embrace that. In the short time we worked together my therapist has given me real insight into the way I build relationships and I now understand why my relationships with my birth family were doomed to fail.
I am all the more grateful for my husband and children.
I am mindful to be open to good people with a genuine desire for reciprocal friendship.
And I am soooo ready for a good nights sleep.
Nothing But The Truth 