The past few months have been a whole lot of what I thought I never wanted to do or be. It's involved AA meetings and therapy, two things I am sorely disappointed in myself for having to attend. And most recently, and perhaps most embarrassingly, I have found myself buying and reading self-help books.
Since my counselor said that my mother might be NPD, I have been reading about it voraciously online. It's brought me to a few websites and blogs, where I gained what information I could, but realized that I would need to get books to really understand. From what I could tell, Dr. Karyl McBride's Will I Ever Be Good Enough: Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers was the place to start. So I went to amazon.com to buy that, and ended up getting Dr. Susan Forward's Emotional Blackmail: When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to Manipulate You and Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life as well.
They were delivered today, and I rushed home from work to get them. I'm on page 143 of 219 of Will I Ever Be Good Enough. So much information, I am overwhelmed. Perhaps I should've read it slower.
I'm relieved by the validation. I'm completely irked seeing my personality type laid out plainly in print, and having to think that maybe I'm not who I am because of my own hard work, but because my mom's Crazy pushed me into it. It explains to me why I am overachiever in many ways, yet still feel completely uncomfortable with success. It explains why alcoholism is a part of my life.
As the daughter of a Nmom, there are three steps to recovery, it says.
Step 1: Gather background information, identify problem, diagnose problem, understand problem on cognitive level.
Step 2: Process the feelings related to step one, grieve, feel, reprogram negative messages.
Step 3: Reframe, view differently, make decision to change, change.
So here I am, stuck somewhere between step 1 and 2. I find myself completely frustrated that my cognitive mind can't just snap my emotional mind out of it and get on with Step 2.
Hi - I found your blog through a comment you left at Mulderfan's blog. Those are all great books you listed, although I haven't read them in years, maybe I'll go back and re-read them. I seem to recall I found Toxic Parents good but a bit intense and not hopeful enough.
ReplyDeleteIf you're interested in reading up on NPD, I can recommend two other resources:
- Nina W. Brown's book, "Children of the Self-Absorbed". For some reason her "voice" (style, tone, whatever you want to call it) really clicked with me.
- Joanna Ashmun's website (she passed away recently but her website is kept there)
Thanks, PWC! I totally get that feeling from Toxic Parents! I was originally going to read that first, but it was a little hulking and off-putting and scary for a first-time self-help/psychology book reader. I found Joanna's website when I was first researching Nparents, but I had forgotten about it -- thanks!
ReplyDeleteI'll check out Children of the Self-Absorbed! Thanks for the recommendation! It's funny -- I've been keeping up with your blog, too! Nice to meet you!