It’s time for the weekly episode of The Baggage Reclaim Sessions podcast.
Remember in episode 7 when I faced my fear of confrontation and told my mama that we’re doing our own thing for Christmas? I’ve been getting the cold freeze ever since! I chuckled away to myself as I put together the image for this post because it’s what all sides of my family are like, and a family that never wants to talk about or own up to anything can leave you feeling as if your options are very limited – this is one of the topics in this week’s show.
Here’s what I cover in episode 10:
What’s the craic with Future Faking?: Does the person who uses talk of the future to get what they want in the present, do it intentionally? I talk about the intentional Future Fakers and the ones who lack self-awareness but still need to take responsibility, plus I explain why experiencing someone like this needn’t cost you your faith in people. | More posts on Future Faking.
Feeling as if we have limited options with tricky family members: When we don’t get on with our family member, we can feel as if we’re stuck in a bad situation with only three unpalatable options available to us. I talk about these and explain why there are options beyond this once you bring healthy boundaries into the mix. | The 30-Day Project I mention is Dealing With Tricky Family Members.
Me again? Dealing with that certain someone who keeps asking you for favours: Most of us don’t mind helping out a friend in need but what do we do when it becomes apparent that they’re taking liberties? I explain what a favour is, where it can be misconstrued on one or both sides, and what to do if you’re feeling taken advantage of but struggling to find your no.
Listener Question – I’m not sure if I’m jealous or envious: This week’s listener wants to know the difference between the two after encountering issues with a friend.
What Nat Learned This Week: Helping my two daughters navigate and deal with their feelings about learning and making mistakes has given me some fresh reminders about being vulnerable enough to be open to finding out what I don’t know.
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I’ve found some employers future fake too. They get an idea what motivates you, then dangle that out in front of you. Had an experience of what appears to be future faking from an employer the other day. I work contract and they requested me for a long term contract. I confirmed that it was a firm commitment for a specific time frame and was assured yes, it is firm. I cleared the smaller jobs that I could to open my schedule. They knew I was clearing the schedule so they could block out the time. As soon as I had cleared my schedule, they told me they gave the contract to someone else! The person who gave me the commitment said it was out of her hands. Then they offered me a different contract. No thanks. Fool me once…
The aftermath with family member who recently stayed with me and was expecting me to do things for them has been very eye opening for me. I knew how it was going to go but didn’t want to face the reality. Same pattern. They demand my time/attention/resources and I feel guilty and obligated. Then I feel resentful. They pretend nothing is wrong and act as if the thing never happened. I tell them how I feel and they get really loud and aggressive and talk over me-won’t let me get a word in for their telling me how wrong I am; that I am not seeing things from their perspective. Bulldoze me. *silence me* I feel worse than before. I feel small, confused, weak, guilty, ashamed, angry (at myself and them).
That’s how it went this time too, except I stopped it. I told them to stop attacking me and to listen. I let them know that I kept running into their defenses so we weren’t getting anywhere and I didn’t feel heard. What came out of it is they viewed my talking to them about it – the confrontation – even though I was very calm and used the when you do X, I feel Y, as a “knife fight” and that they were “expected to show up without a knife.” I was shocked that that is how they viewed the interaction. I guess I shouldn’t have been by the way they were attacking me when I expressed my feelings.
The conversation ended with me letting them know I won’t be agreeing to last minute calls for help and they said they understood. We also talked about them examining why they viewed confrontation as a knife fight. Their father is very aggressive, so I imagine that has something to do with it.
We haven’t talked since, over a week, except I got an email request for help yesterday…needed answer by last night. I deleted it. Sigh.
They ask like it’s an option, but they fully expect me to comply, because in the past I have. It has become demands over time and if there’s resistance, they manipulate to push past my limits and I have allowed it.
I’m enjoying the space. I didn’t realize how much energy I have devoted to this person and they do not value it or me.
That’s very true Veracity. I experienced this in a big way about ten years ago and even handed in my resignation! Thankfully, I realised what was happening very quickly when suddenly they had gone dark, so I turned it to my advantage and got a payrise and stayed on! I think it’s an appalling abuse of power and at the point where it becomes apparent, frustrating as it is, it ends up being a sign of a very lucky escape.
Always remember that criticism, which is a form of feedback, tells you a lot about that person’s position, perspective etc. They have an issue with conflict and criticism which results in a fear of confrontation which is then projected on to you. It is unfair of them to expect you to neglect your wellbeing just so that they never have to deal with issues. Because you act a certain way, on some level, which is what all humans do to varying degrees, you want and expect them to come from the same position, but they are coming from a different level of awareness.
What they cannot do though is pull that sh-t with you and then ask you for help. I had a friend do similar and have had to draw my line. They cannot have it both ways.
You are doing the right thing by stepping back. In episode 11, I talk about the difference between confrontation and confronting issues.
Thank you for the response/feedback, it was very helpful.
She has since called and said she feels like there is an emotional distance between us that wasn’t there before. I acknowledged it and said that I feel more guarded because of the way she attacked me when I brought up an issue. She then began to sob and say I was wrong and that she didn’t attack me. When I tried to explain calmly that she wouldn’t let me get a word in and she told me how wrong I was, she started, again, talking over me and telling me how wrong I was and that I always had to be right. WTF. I finally just hung up out of anger and frustration. Gaslighting? It is crazymaking.
I’m starting to limit my contact with her and wondering if NC for a period might be what is best for me because there is a long pattern of emotional and verbal abuse. She has modified it a bit as I have gotten stronger/healthier, but it’s still there. It is so hard because she’s my (adult) daughter.
Do you have any suggestions? I’m struggling.
Thanks again.
It’s rarely a joy to be around my father. Just recently, a confluence of events made me look up martyrdom as it pertains to my father, and I discovered he has borderline personality disorder traits. He’s textbook. He recently manipulated people into thinking he may have died, and it was simply a bid for attention.
I have love for him because he was a responsible father, no neglect for my food, clothing and shelter in my history. But I deal with him mostly out of a sense of obligation. He’s a strange man. I’ve met two women in my life who had genuine friendships with their father, and I remember how shocked I was to see that. I remember thinking it was “remarkable” that they had those relationships!
A girlfriend once observed that my father is the reason I never wanted to be married. I do have fear of being trapped by law with a man who makes your life almost joyless.
I have to wrack my brain trying to find a moment when I’ve felt jealous…but I am overflowing with times where I’ve felt envy. None of those envy moments are about “men, love and romance”. They are all about people achieving financially successful lives doing what they want, living in peaceful beautiful surroundings, able to enjoy friends. For some reason, I’ve always thought those achievements were allotted for “other” people, not me. And whatever you “think” becomes your truth. I am only recently questioning my thoughts. Only recently challenging them. Realizing that controlling my “thoughts” may be the road to creating the life I so secretly want.
Your comment here hit a nerve, Elgie, about envy and our thoughts/beliefs: my “learned helplessness” response when I see one of my peers achieve a result that I want and have attempted to varying degrees but with no success and think as you put it, that “… those achievements were allotted for “other” people, not me.” (Cue: “Born Under A Bad Sign”)
It’s been easy over the past 17 years to lay it off on a bad marriage as I sit languishing on the sidelines while my friends’ freelance careers take off and soar. However since I finally succeeded in getting the toxic man and all his chaos and drama and oppressively controlling behaviour out of my life, the spotlight has come to rest on the next layer down — all these ridiculously complicated, maintenance-heavy “things” I burden myself with that not only suck up all of my time and energy and money, but keep me permanently distracted from focusing on the things that *will* in fact give me the life that I want…if I can just manage to stay on task and follow through.
A major part of my post-divorce cleanup and disaster recovery effort involves taking a deep dive into my thoughts and beliefs and giving them a massive overhaul with a view to changing my reality going forward.
Hi Brenda K (and Elgie)
The thing that I’ve had to remind myself of over the years because I’ve very much thought similarly in the past and actually still get poked by these thoughts from time to time, is that there’s more than enough to go around. No one is hogging up your desires. When we get very honest with ourselves about whether we truly are doing things in the way that they are or whether we have put ourselves in alignment with our desires – mind, intentions, actions, that points us on where we need to do the work.
Sometimes when you compare you and then get honest, the answers are hilarious. I once felt bad about somebody having landed an agent and a book deal, questioning my own self-publishing past. Let’s be real – I never even submitted manuscripts to publishing houses so why the hell was I beating me up over a choice I never made?! We are funny us humans.
‘A girlfriend once observed that my father is the reason I never wanted to be married. I do have fear of being trapped by law with a man who makes your life almost joyless.’
Same for me but nobody has ever observed it of me; it’s just something I’ve known for years. I think my controlling and emotionally suffocating father is why I’m relationship avoidant in general – it’s like ‘Get out of my face!’. Even in my teens or before that age I always had an odd feeling that I’d never be married – just not something that has ever appealed.
My brother has a similar aversion to marriage, actually relationships full stop. I think he associates it all with being controlled and he doesn’t want to feel as if he ever has lack of control over him and his circumstances again, like back then. To be honest, I definitely didn’t see myself as marriage. As a child, I refused to dress up as a bride. Used to make me feel odd, almost suffocated. I recognised the feeling when I watched the episode of Sex and the City where Carrie tries on the wedding dress (when she’s engaged to Aidan) and has a complete meltdown. I was like that at 7 haha!
Jaysus, your father is something else Elgie. “May have died” – I did belly laugh but I also felt sorry for him in the sense that you feel sad for anyone who see things in those terms.
You will probably find that if you strike a balance between what you *want* to do versus what you feel *obliged* to do, that tension will drop rapidly. Remember though that he is once concept of being a father, not the only concept. I relate to having a parent who ticked off the boxes for provisions but left you hanging emotionally and mentally. What you have to recognise is BPD or straight up long-standing issues, his behaviour is about patterns that run back to way before your time. The key is not to judge you for who he isn’t or to expect him to be more than he is. I’ve learned to accept my parents for who they are, which was at first through gritted teeth and now I’m ok with it. Accepting them doesn’t mean liking the things that they do or agreeing with them; I’ve just stopped expecting them to turn into someone they’re not.
One of the things I’ve been saying on the Dealing With Tricky Family Members project is that things really change when how you see each other isn’t about ‘the relationship’, so defining each other by that and instead seeing them as a fully-fledged human instead of ‘just’ dad or mom or sister etc.
It is understandable that you have an underlying fear that marriage represents potentially being saddled to a man like your father but also remember that you are not your mother so you also don’t need to make the same choices as her either.
Unfortunately same here…I run away from the idea despite almost all my friends getting married in the last year or deciding to. I’ve got this feeling it is because of my dad who was an alcoholic and made life a living hell. I know I’m a grownup now but can’t shake the idea that all of my not wanting to be attached stems from that. Plus I had no models of normal life growing up, within a couple I mean, where I’d see love and understanding and compromise and balance and generally healthy habits. So I am just wondering, especially after so many terrible relationships I didn’t get out of in due time-, …how do I learn what normal is? How do I know what a normal relationship is? How do I know what is normal and what isn’t? I know it’s impossible to define normal,but let’s say…healthy? I’ve got nothing to measure it up against, I’ve got no models, no ideas as to what makes the very fabric of life. How do you learn as a grownup something that in human world should’ve really been a learnt behaviour as a child and adolescent. I’ve been raised dysfunctionally, by the wolves in the forest where it was cold and unsafe and no one came to rescue kind of thing. How do I then adapt to life with the others now? In real life I mean.. I grew up with fear instability and rage and depression, how do I learn to trust and be vulnerable and normal and brave? It’s not me feeling like a victim anymore, because lately I’ve not. I am simply noticing my behaviour and remembering things from my childhood. I seem to have forgotten so many things, but the more I question my fear of relationships and how the ones I had were so awful, the more I realise I have never had a compass of any kind guiding me through life, financial, professional, personal… I have no clue what I am doing and so much damage has been done when I was growing up – I managed to get over many things yet still…I feel like I don’t know who I am as if I’ve lost myself there in the past. I am either very happy on my own, or too in love in bad relationships. So much work to do, and so much fear to overcome, even more after realising in the past years the extent of the damage done during the foundation years so to speak. And being a grownup meant I had to confront the past and overcome it. Still there are some hurdles I feel are too much and one of them is allowing myself to be vulnerable and take risks to let a man in. I’m used to being on my own so the challenge lies in doing the other option…
Hi Ro. I have similar issues in my parentage. Your parents were just one concept of being a parent, albeit a dysfunctional one. You’ve taken away messages about you, your prospects, love and relationships. Most of the reasoning habits started at a very young age and have been reinforced time and again. I had no healthy models because even though there were good times, I was living in emotional, mental and sometimes physical chaos. That sh-t messes with you. I still have a bit of a hangover from that to this day but every day is another day further away from that.
It’s not an overnight thing. I first had to learn how to take responsibility for me and to stop looking for my parents or romantic partners to fill voids created by my childhood. In order to take care of you, you need to be vulnerable. You need to be open to the possibility of learning things that will make you uncomfortable which can simply mean recognising where you don’t treat or regard you with respect or recognising where you have been lying to you over the years and blaming you for stuff. You have to learn to be your guide. No parent is born a parent and sadly, our parents were overwhelmed by their own problems so they were not able to be the parent(s) that we wanted. You have to forgive you for him not living up to your hopes and expectations, you need to mourn for that kid that you didn’t get to be and then you have to, through trial and error, learn how to parent that younger part of you while at the same time learning how to take care of the present you. It’s a journey but you’d be surprised what a difference a few months can make and then months build into years.
Wow, that podcast really helped me put some things in perspective.
Thanks to your advice over the last two or three years, it seems like the decisions I’ve been making lately are less about people pleasing and more about setting boundaries, and finally knowing that when I have to choose to advocate for myself or another person, always choose me. You have turned me from a weak codependent into a bad-ass, no-dependent! Yeow!
That’s awesome, Karen!!! 🙂
Thank you Karen. That’s wonderful to hear – I love to hear about the changes people are making. Go you!
So Natalie, I’m laying in bed right now, listening to this podcast episode and laughing so hard at the accuracy of the “Terminator 2” morphing robot. 😀 God yes.
I am now also laughing very hard. We get each others’ experiences 😉