 Without my OCD stress relief, I knew I'd explode. Dad's rages drove my stress level off the charts. Then he forbade dermatillomania, my only stress relief. It was torturous! And I wasn't the only one in agony...
Like a distressed cockatoo, Mother was pulling out her feathers...I mean, hair. The onset of her trichotillomania, panic attacks, anxiety and agoraphobia coincided with my dermatillomania. But that's another story, for another day. Then came the knock on the bathroom door. The furious demand to “know what you're doing in there.” My parents' horror at the sight of my ravaged complexion. The anger, the rage, the sorrow that their Little Project didn't look perfect anymore. Didn't make 'em proud. Didn't impress the neighbors and relatives. Dad made a solemn vow, “Until you stop picking on your skin, I'll never tell you that you're pretty ever again.” Way to kick a 15-year-old girl when she's down and needs you most, Daddy-O! He kept that vow, even on my wedding day. They couldn't stop me. Oh, I considered stopping. But I knew, just knew, I'd explode inside. Crack. Have some kind of break-down. If I stopped, it wasn't a question of if I'd crack, but when. “Accupicking” was my one and only stress relief. That...and comfort eating... Take from my blog on PsychCentral.com. Click here to read the whole article.
0 Comments
 When did it happen? When did life flip upside-down? When did normalcy flee? When was my last day as a normal human being? Ah, common sense, alas, I never knew thee.
Normal is imperative. It provides guidelines for proper behavior. And that’s why narcissists hate normal. It puts a cramp in their style. Boundaries on their body-mind-and-soul domination. Makes normal people look askance at their abusive ways with a raised, disapproving eyebrow. As the uber-narcissistic self-styled “Patriarch of Perfection” from USA Network’s popular show is famous (or should I say infamous) for stating… “There’s no normal in this house.” Narcissism reeks havoc with normalcy, hence the name of my PsychCentral blog: Narcissism Meets Normalcy To read the whole article, click here! http://blogs.psychcentral.com/narcissism/2016/01/hello-narcissism-goodbye-normalcy/
What an absolutely marvelous idea! Odd that it never occurred to me before. Ya' just never know where inspiration will strike! See what happens when you piss off a writer. They do nasty things. Write inconvenient truths.
And on my blog, I cannot be removed. I cannot be blocked. I cannot be deleted. Genius, sir! Pure genius! Where do I begin? Of course, there are two sides to every story. I can only speak from my own experience at Fourth. Which would you like first? The good news, yes? Scholastically, FBCS was excellent. They also maintained discipline and order, seared much Scripture into your memory and taught you right from wrong. Yep. And now, for the bad news. Grab a cuppa, cause we're gonna be here awhile.  Narcissists have mean, nasty tongues. Duh! Unfortunately, the social convention of “niceness” puts a cramp in their style.
Plan B: Couch the meanness in humor. It’s called teasing. Now they can be as mean as they want, with plausible deniability. They ain’t dun nuthin’. You’re just too sensitive. Click here to read the full article!  Finally, someone is speaking out for the millions of caretakers worldwide.
The ones who vicariously suffer, deep in their hearts, as they watch their loved one's cringe with pain, day after day, year after year. The wives and husbands, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters who silently scream because they just can't handle the stress, the worry, the workload any longer. The long-suffering, smiley caretakers with the perfect bedside manner on the verge of burnout. There was a time when I wanted to scream too. The pain of watching my husband cope with Level 10 physical pain each and every day was emotionally unbearable. Physical pain can be treated with medications and pain killers. But what eases the pain in the heart of the caregiver who witnesses their loved one suffer, day in and day out? It's lonely, traumatizing and totally triggered my codependence. I wrote about this experience in the Huffington Post article entitled, The Secret Pain of Caretakers, in the hopes it will help other caregivers feel less alone, validated and comforted. Click here to subscribe to receive daily updates on new articles! Follow @lenorathewriter on Twitter! Become a fan on HuffPost and check out my new blog on PsychCentral! Click here to read The Secret Pain of Caretakers!  I’ve got the leakiest tear ducts on the planets. Seems like I’m always sniffling about this or weeping about that. If it’s not adorable videos of babies making my eyes well up, it’s videos of ecstatic dogs welcoming their master home from serving overseas. Any sentimental YouTube video can get me hullabalooing into my hankie in no time. It came as quite a shock to my husband when we married in 2012. Now he thinks I’m both hysterical funny and extremely soft-hearted. There’s only one scenario where my tear ducts dry up. My own pain. I simply cannot cry for myself. Tried it. Made all the right noises. Huffed and puffed. Nothin’. Eyes remained dry as a bone. And it’s a huge problem. Tears aren’t just salty water. Their chemical compositions vary depending on the emotion that stimulated them. Even their structure when seen under a microscope is vastly different depending on the scenario. Personally, I can feel my heart aching behind my eyes. It’s a kind of burning, kind of pressurized sensation behind my eyeballs. Only tears release the pain in both my eyes and my heart. It feels like tears purge the toxic chemicals in the tears, but perhaps I’m just being fanciful. Which brings us back to the original problem. I can’t cry. And too often my original pain becomes translated into the secondary emotion of anger. Click here to read the whole article on PsychCentral!   If I had a dollar for every time I heard, “Lenora, you’re SO emotional,” I’d be a rich woman today. Were you subjected to this denigration too? Does it ring any bells? If Grandsire Triples are ringing in your bell tower, my sympathies. Let’s explore this phenomenon together, shall we?
First, the hard truth. At times all humans are overly emotional. We are human and therefore at times we are indeed too emotional. What can I say? Sh*t happens. But that’s not what this article is about. It’s about situations where we felt valid emotions, strong emotions, appropriate emotions. Situations where other people impatiently shamed us not only for feeling these emotions but also angrily shamed us for daring to express them. The legacy and ramifications of this shame is with us still today. I remember back to a particular scenario. Oh, I must have been about twelve. As usual, Dad and Mom were seated at the kitchen table discussing “she.” Not “Lenora.” Just “she.” They always used “she” to discuss me in the third person. I sat at the end of the table, miserably poking down a tuna sandwich, watching mute and powerless as my fate was impersonally discussed and decided without reference to normalcy nor my emotions. Click here to read the whole article on PsychCentral.com!  I’m never alone. Denial is my constant companion. She wakes me in the morning, stays close by my side all the day and sings me to sleep at night. I’m never free of her. Never alone. Never totally at peace.
Click here to read whole article!  After months of driving myself relentlessly, every day and even at night, I'm at last going to take my own advice and take the weekend off.
I'd encourage my visitors to not only peruse this blog, but also my writing on the Huffington Post and Psych Central. No, it's not repeats. Each site has unique content. Don't forget to subscribe to receive daily email updates! Thanks for visiting. More articles coming next week! Have a great weekend!  Maria von Trapp sang, "Let's start at the very beginning. A very good place to start," in The Sound of Music. So I figured, the place is to start is to define what a narcissist is, from my viewpoint and experience.
To read what I came up with, click here! http://blogs.psychcentral.com/narcissism/2016/01/what-is-a-narcissist/ |
