Difficult relationship - 6.4->59

[Mira72]

Dear All,

This is a very difficult, completely mixed-up painful situation (narcissistic, unfeeling, controlling, dominant mother who might be near death...) The issues are not important...except I have tried very hard in the past to do the right thing, but never could get through...she always finds a way to compromise my integrity...invade my internal space, and before i know I am playing her version of me...which is not me...(i am highly empathic...pleasing her by entering into her victimhood fantasy by somehow becoming the oppressor...)

sorry this is very hard. I have held myself back, but I really want to do the right thing...I asked the yi, what do I need to do?
(after trying to talk to her on the phone a few times today after a long break)

6.4


'Cannot master this argument,
Returning and taking up the mandate.
With a change of heart, peaceful constancy is good fortune.'

True enough. I call her wanting to not argue, but find myself in argument, and my energy depleting. It feels like trying to save a drowning person, but not having enough strength, and drowning with them...

I want to be able to support her, but I don't think I have the strength enough, to not get caught up in the arguing modality. It would be so nice to simply let go, in gratitude and peace...forgiveness.

Can anyone please help shed some light?

I know she has come a long way forward, but I feel I might have gone a long way back, from when I was able to be more strong in my genuine capacity to be of help (in loving kindness)...

Thank you. Please do be gentle.

 

[rosada]

6.4
In this position the I Ching says you are actually "in the right" but arguing with your mother goes against your conscience. Perhaps this reassurance from the I Ching that you are not the crazy one here can be a comfort. Whatever, the bottom line is that though you may feel you are sucked back into arguments against your intention, you are not powerless and you have the ability to turn away from arguing and...

59. Dissolve the obstacles to unity.

Some suggestions - Music has a wonderful ability to set the tone. Perhaps before or during your phone calls you could listen to some cheerful upbeat flowing music like Waltz of The Flowers that would quietly guide you past the rough spots. Also it might be useful to prepare yourself with a few good lines like, when you feel the need to defend yourself, simply repeat back her accusations adding, "[You say I ruined your life and made a mess of my own] Gosh, I had no idea you felt that way!" or "Wow, well, thank you for sharing." The point is you don't try to defend yourself as that would mean making her wrong. Just focus on how good it is that now the two of you are talking. And you don't have to stay on the phone when she starts in on you. "This is hard for me to take, Mom. I'm going to hang up now but I'll call again after I've thought about it for a bit. Take care..."
I had a visitation from my father shortly after he died in which he actually apologized to me for a bunch stuff he'd blamed me for that was in no way my fault. He was so shocked and dismayed about how he'd misjudged me! Naturally I forgave him and we've been pals ever since. Weird, I know but I'm just letting you know they will have to face the truth in this lifetime or the next so you don't have worry about setting the record straight!

 

[moss elk]

hi Mira,

You have my sympathy.
We could be siblings...

She is creating the hostility and conflict.
She is spewing the venom.
and it is a way she tries to control you.
(and she sometimes succeeds)
You can't 'win' here by engagement.
You win by making the best decisions for you, distancing yourself when necessary, letting her make you into a 'pincushion' or 'chewtoy' does no one any good. Not her, not you.

You have to learn to say No firmly, without malice, but with resolve.
When she begins to attack, you need to immediately remove yourself. (either from her proximity or by hanging up the phone.)

Does it make you uncaring to protect yourself and do what is good for you?
No, it makes you wise.

Bradfords 6.4:
Not capable of contending.
(me: You cannot win this fight)
Returning to take up a higher purpose
Withdrawing to secure the certain
Promising

I have a friend at work aged 65.
He confided in me that he was near
suicidal five years ago from his narcisistic mothers verbal abuse. He broke off all contact with her.
(as two counselors advised him to)
Doing so caused him to most likely miss out on a sizeable inheritance. But he has gained some peace of mind in his life.
You cannot change her.

 

[diamanda]

Narcissistic disorder seems to be the plat du jour on this forum today!

Just to add to what others have said:

I've struggled for many years to get away from the poisonous grip of my narcissistic mother.
I rarely speak with her. One of my sisters rarely speaks with her too, and the other sister never anymore.
I have a few close friends who also have a narcissistic parent.

Any type of positive relationship with such parents is 100% impossible.
Especially when you give loving kindness to such people, they take it as a permission to crush you.
Mira, the advice of 6.4 is as you said to escape arguing and accept that such is the situation.
Really sorry you're going through this...

@Moss Elk - about your friend's inheritance:
I have never witnessed a narcissistic parent benefitting their children via inheritance.

For example, the parents of my friend K left everything they own to her brother (their "golden child") while they're still alive, and made sure they told her, so as to hurt her even further. My NPD mother left a house to me and one of my sisters, but first she made sure she secretly placed a huge loan on it, and left it deteriorate to the point it is now pretty much derelict. My other friends with NPD parents got zero, despite placating with their parents for a lifetime. The narcissist always seeks ways to hurt others, especially their own family.

 

[Mira72]

Thank you to all who responded.

It is a confounding situation, because it is not, and has not obvious...she is the psychopath, to my empath (understanding that triad: psychopath, path, empath, was what finally helped see things a bit clearer)...

she has sacrificed everything to the altar of appearing to be good, rather than putting her indomitable energy in being good...where as since an innocent child, i was somehow hardwired to be vocal about goodness and truth...since my nature has been in such contrast to hers, i have been vilified and scpaegotated very very terribly throughout my childhood.

It was in my teenage years, i finally learnt to see her clearly and realised i had actually needed to go under the radar to survive her manipulations...she does berate or scold...she will be quiet like a dark rock, and graded or prodded in some desperate case to step up and be the adult/mother, she was lash out so violently that would be soul curdling...her violence was always not even obviously emotional, but psychic...so in the outer world, i was the difficult child...so much so that my father would physically beat me, and my adult brother still maintains, i was at fault (as a very young child)...

infact she was doing the same thing to my father who resorted to alchohol and addiction, where he was blamed for all her failings, when she could not possibly put the blame on the little child's head (mine)...my younger brother she had somehow claimed as hers and thus was 'protected'...

the problem is i got out of it all, but when my father passed away 11 years ago, she had no one else to focus on , and has settled upon me...slowly draining out of my independence and life energy...from a very successful, intact quite self-actualised being, i was sucked back into the pit...

it is like that spider in LOTR, but also the balrog...i am being asked to be the sage and the innocent roled into one...i suppose this is the integration that is asked...

anyway, i am writing because, I am not the prototypical victim, but in the past ten years found myself in very many bullied situations...is as though my sense of justice and my idea of compassion are at odds with each other....

sense of justice wants her to see herself for who she is, and compassion wants to help her, and selflessly love her...and i know they are not mutually exclusive...just this little worm of an ego somewhere, that interferes...somehow, somewhere, i am letting her into my subconscious, and it grabs you into the darkness...

" Any type of positive relationship with such parents is 100% impossible.
Especially when you give loving kindness to such people, they take it as a permission to crush you.
Mira, the advice of 6.4 is as you said to escape arguing and accept that such is the situation.
Really sorry you're going through this..."

sorry i am not responding individually to your comments and kind advice...

i am not sure i managed the escape - there was an opening yesterday, very big one, but I did not manage to extricate myself from the situation...

we will see what happens.

 

[Mira72]

I tried to edit, but my browser crashes...she does NOT scold or berate, but casts herself as the victim...very sneaky...

sorry there are a few other typos and autocorrect misses up there, but i am not able to clean it up. Isn't that the story.

In terms of the casting...first how appropriate, i thought.

Second, some interpretations, seem to say, that I might have been the one in the wrong....as she was weak...i can see the truth of that too...but she takes the energy and instead of using it to for the soul, grows strong in the ego instead...i think that is the dilemma...any energy given to the soul, is interfered and gets directed to the ego.

but other readings seem to suggest that i am merely weak and not in the wrong..this unclearness of who is who, is the essence of the problem. nevertheless, drop contact, seems to have been the suggestion. as at the moment the contact does not have much of chance to go beyond the level of struggle, for which I am not strong enough. right enough there.

it was the second injunction that i was looking further for perspective...the mandate stuff...which always freezes me a up a bit. trusting the mandate...dropping the conflict...

could the reading itself be magnified a bit more?

 

[diamanda]

sense of justice wants her to see herself for who she is, and compassion wants to help her, and selflessly love her.

Sorry to say, but she will never "see herself for who she is", she will never admit it.
And also sorry to say you can't help her. She won't ever change.
As about loving her, I believe it is totally wrong to love someone who deliberately abuses us.

Mira, the answer is clear: conflict (6) - abandon conflict (6.4) - disperse it (59).
She creates the conflict, you need to get away.

It's not your fault. And she playing the role of the "weak" is a common NPD game.
Try to go no-contact for a while: don't meet her, don't answer the phone.
Till you regain strength and clarity.

 

[rosada]

"Taking up the mandate" means accepting your fate, as in you-have-a-crazy-mother-and-that-isn't-going-to-change. Once you are able to accept that you will be able to "change your attitude" - which in this case I think refers to your thinking you ought to keep engaging or that she will change or that her behavior is somehow your responsibility - "and find peace in perseverance. Good fortune."
When I typed that last bit, "Perseverance. Good fortune," I thought of the phrase, "Living well is the best revenge."

 

[rosada]

Mira,
The fourth position is what I call the Free Will line. If you go back to 1.4 you'll see that this i the point where the creative spirit begins to awaken, take charge of his life and realize he can do things "differently" (If that is possible!) than he's ever done them before. Now you are at the "Free-Will" line of 6.Conflict. You have a choice at this point to continue arguing or to discontinue arguing. Some people will advise you that the only way to discontinue arguing in this situation is to disconnect from the entire situation. Others will say this line doesn't tell you how far you have to go in disconnecting, only that the arguing must stop and it's up to you how you choose to go about doing that.

6.4 No judgement. However you choose to navigate this next stage of your awakening is up to you.

 

[rosada]

Further thoughts. I hope you are still around, Mira, and don't mind my continuing to discuss your question.
Although certainly a moment may come where one realizes they are in a no-win situation and they must exit the job or the relationship or whatever the connection is, still I can't help but think about the advice giving in 6.4 does not necessarily mean you have to. "Accept the mandate and find peace in perseverance." Couldn't that also be taken to mean, "Accept that this is how she is, she's never going to change, and find peace in just keeping on doing the best you can with her"? Now I don't think "find peace" means keep still and do nothing. I think in genuinely means to find peace. So the next step is for you to do things that strengthen your sense of peace. I recommend listening to classical music. It lifts my spirits and feels somehow "wholesome" and "nourishing". When I have pleasant music running through my mind I am not easily lured into gossip and drama or stirred up by the latest thing Trump did. It's like I need to really know what peace feels like - I need to find it - and then I can persevere without getting pulled off my path by the temptations of emotional turmoil. But that's just one idea of how to handle things. Another could be to send her a cheery postcard every single day. You could set a specific time for your phone calls, like Sundays at 6:00 p.m. Have one amusing incident prepared to share. Give her something to look forward to.
You are probably thinking, "Rosada, this is crazy, you don't know my Mother and none of that will work!" But you know, Edison tried 1,000 experiments before he finally invented the light bulb. And when people had tried to discourage him saying there was no pay off for his efforts he would reply, "Sure there is - now I know 1,000 things that wont work!"
I just want to encourage you that detaching from your mother or going insane are not your only options. It's interesting to me that you say you had an opportunity here recently where you could have detached but you didn't do it. That says to me you still think there is something you can do to improve the situation. Maybe there is, maybe there isn't, but I would embrace the idea that you are hanging in there out of choice, not out of weakness, and approach her as a science project!. Whatever she says or does is not about you and maybe it would help if you "change your attitude" and don't think of yourself as a daughter but as a caregiver.
Well I'm starting to ramble. I just wanted you to know that if you do decide to keep connected with this challange but also find you could use some support from the I Ching chat group, we're here to give you encouraging feedback what every you decide is right for you to do.
rosada

 

[butterfly spider]

My sympathies entirely. When we feel as if going back is going to make things better - when we hope against hope that this time things will be different. The choice of simply letting go, saying enough is enough, is, as Rosada says, our own. The fact that we continue to try, to make things better, to heal, is our own journey. If there is a sense that the situation can still be healed, it is like continuing first-aid, breathing, when things are hopeless. I had a friend who worked for canoe rescue. He had a child that had drowned and he had to give resusitation until the emergency services arrived. He knew it was hopeless but continued - there was a chance. After he said that he had to try, even though he knew it was hopeless. He had to try to rekindle life. There is always hope.....

I am in a similar position, and it is possible, as Rosada has said, that the situation will not heal in this lifetime. This does not mean, however that I do not try, and pray that things will not resolve now. I still send cards, phone, send emails about what I am doing with her grandchildren....she does not answer or reply, or even acknowledge that we exist... but I still try. Perhaps that is her journey. Ignoring is worse than insults in a way, and as long as our actions cause no harm, perhaps we should do what we feel is right. It does not matter if our efforts are rebuked, our efforts are out there, circling the universe...

I wish you well with this situation.

 

[butterfly spider]

btw my mother has said so many times that I will not have the drippings of her nose.....no money, nothing....even though she is in a position to really help my children..it seems a pattern.

I think we should ask why we still want to care, to heal and help...perhaps we hope to break the cycle? In my opinion, especially with 6.4 around, doing what we feel is right can cause no harm - indeed it will help our own journey.

 

[moss elk]

When you bang your head on a wall,
the wall wins and you lose.

 

[butterfly spider]

Banging heads on a wall can be painful!

However, I have been thinking of what Mira has said and Rosada's comments. Like Eddison, my life-saving friend, Mira and many others who keep on trying, maybe the wall does not always win. Disengaging has many angles to it. Something Rosada said resonated here:

accept this is how she is, shes never going to change - find peace in just keeping on doing the best you can do with her (for example send postcards each day to cheer her up).

A bit like the song - were going on a bear hunt - we cant go over it, we cant go under it, we have to go through it......and maybe the wall is not as strong as it makes out...

My son went to a friend's party yesterday in a very old house and spoke of a secret room behind a bookcase. They had to find the special book that would open the vast wall.....it was, he said, only a small insignificant book that opened the wall .....

Sorry if I am rambling here, Ithink it is one of those posts that many of us have thoughts about - and hopefully these may help you in your present dilemma MIra..

 

[butterfly spider]

another thought here......about banging heads on walls - and going through walls....there are often ways of dealing with things that provide disentaglement....something we cannot see altogether

Once doing some outdoor training, a very experienced leader took us to a very high wall, where there had once been a style. We all clambered up with our heavy sacs. When we had all managed to get to the other side, the leader calmly met us - he had found a gap in the wall about 10m further down....always look for the easy option, he said.

 

[Mira72]

Update:

She showed up at the door...with 'blessings' from a holy person...the last time I accepted something she gave a talisman, although I don't believe these things are for me, I accepted to 'make her happy'...and that night i had such a horrible attack f something...at my lowest spine space...root chakra, which is basically related to issues with sovereignty...

interesting enough, Rosada, as was with your father, she mentioned that as she was returning from this place, she kept thinking what a wonderful person i was, and how she had been mistaken about me all along.

but the shock of her showing up, i could only be calm and present so long...i had dreamt some days before that a white dove was leaving from the top of head...i could not quite ascertain the exact meaning...one that she was coming to peace, two she might die soon (which might have part of her control mechanism...that kept me beholden), the other was the peaceful aspect of my soul that i had worked so hard in my life to further and develop and in times i had achieved the pinnacle of it, which i feel was entrapped by her...was being released.

i know it all sounds very complicated...the problem is that it is that on the side of this mother issue, (with the concomitant brother issuse), there has been the love of my life, from whom i have been separated for a very long time, and in the past two years we keep meeting miraculously, on a global scale, since we are both nomads, probably spending our lives looking for each other...it is a fantastic but terribly sad cosmic drama....my fear and anxiety and regret is that my mother in her neediness and manipulation, is keeping and may be kept from connecting with him, when all my inner work had to be dedicated towards clarifying that..

the yi's assertion to go far away....actually i got that twice in the madness of these past few months...to leave where i am which puts me a lot more under her invisible control, but i am so tired in the bone to keep nomading as god's fool. it seems between being god's fool and man's fool, i have to reclaim my individuality and the power the comes directly from it.

i have had dreams about the love relationship deteriorating, as for whatever reason i have had to be the one in movement towards it...

i asked my mother to leave shortly and politely as she/i fell into the same dynamic, of she literally sucking energy out of me...she has a great deal of hunger for love...but she takes it by sucking the life-force out of me. she is a terribly wounded person with occasional who after all these years might even acknowledge them, but will not quite take the responsibility of acknowledging me, or the harm *she* had done to me...and continues to.

for after she left i felt terrible because i had seen her after along time. and i did actually have dream a little while ago, where i thought my mother was dying and my grandmother woke me up...in writing this it occurs to me (that while i had interpreted that it was a message that she was to die, it might actually have been the other way around, that she was not really dying, only making me believe that, and my grand mother was trying to wake me from the dream)...

it is a mess. my inner life. my outer life. i love him. and i don't know how long before the universe will bring us back together. worse i don't really know how i will go on until then.

 

[rosada]

Dearest Mira,
Thank you for giving us this update. (You are such a good writer!)
Although you didn't ask for advice about you and this man you care for, I just wanted to encourage you to keep sending him loving thoughts and not to despair. Somehow in this lifetime or the next it will all make sense.
Rosada

 

[becalm]

Thankyou for such a great post everyone - so good to be able to get clarity......I just ended a short relationship with a Narcissist man although at the time I didn't realise the behaviours he was displaying. In hindsight and gathering information I realise he's not the first person in my life to have NPD. I learnt so much about MYSELF through this last encounter so will be forever grateful.