Quote:
Originally Posted by Open Eyes
I am not so sure we are hyjacking Azul's thread tbh. All we are doing is presenting our own examples that affected us. We have this in our history and because of that certain interactions can affect us based on that. Truth is, everyone has something toxic they experienced. So few of us are handed a map to navigate with either, we are pretty much reliant on a parent/caregiver figure and our piers and different teachers and some of them are not so great either.
DechanDawa, I am glad what I wrote makes sense to you, may even provide some much needed comfort for you too. Yes, one most definitely can literally spend years in therapy trying to unravel and make sense of how others affected them in ways that hurt and even crippled them. I believe you, I am sure you grieve about your sister and how she clung to negative things to her last breath even. Any caring person can experience cognitive disonence from that. Truth is, what most want is the "hurt feeling" to go away. And some victims of abuse try to do so by becoming abusers themselves.
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Yes. The guy that had a heart attack - my sister's second husband - was a narcissist. I didn't know it then because I didn't know that sickness and how it manifested. But now I see he did the classic thing of turning my sister away from family...like...me. And she internalized a lot. So she became like a covert narcissist.
Okay, here's the thing. And I think this ties in with Azul's thread.
Some people do not want to grow. They fear growth and letting go of old patterns of behavior. They are afraid they will not know themselves. Probably they won't right?
But I would say the majority of people who come to this site - not all but most - are interested in growth. And that is so refreshing, so hopeful, and so beautiful.
But I don't see this played out in the world. And I think you will agree with me that family systems can be toxic and stuck and that is how it is with my family. For some reason my one brother and myself managed to escape and have been lifelong friends as well as siblings. But that leaves four (now three) stuck siblings behind.
I had a wise mentor once who always said to me, "Don't push the river." Meaning you can't change people if they don't want to change.
I still have a lot of pain around my sister. Toxic people leave behind a lot of bad memories.