Feeling Trapped

LaShelle Charde

No one can deny you your choice about how you relate to life.  You can, however, lose connection to your choice and thus have the experience of "feeling trapped" or "forced" (physical force notwithstanding).  When you do lose connection to your choice, you begin to perceive a stressful world of demands.  Symptoms that let you know you have lost this connection often look like this:

-complaining that you have to much to do

-feeling deflated or angry

-sudden loss of energy or low energy

-avoiding particular people and situations

-playing small in life so others don't ask too much of you

-not returning messages because you don't want to say no

-doing things you don't really want to do

-asking yourself when you get to live your life

-saying "yes" to please others, gain approval or love, or to avoid guilt and punishment

Particular types of beliefs and thinking can give rise to perceiving demands and losing connection to your choice.  Here are some to watch for:

Guilt & Shame:  If guilt and shame were a part of your life growing up, you may have connected your self worth to what you do and don't do for others.  In other words, a core belief might be operating in you that says something like, "I am only good if . . . "  This kind of belief has you in an exhausting race to continually prove your self worth by doing whatever your mind deems virtuous.  A common one here is related to achievement, "I am only good if I work x number of hours and achieve x things and my life looks like x." One way out of this trap is to clearly identify the standards you have set up for yourself.  Then continually ask the questions;  What are my deepest longings?  What values do I want my life to reflect?  What makes my heart sing?  One of my teachers puts it this way:  "Find what's yours to do and do it."

Don't be Selfish:  Some of you may have been trained by well meaning parents that reprimanded you with the phrase, "Don't be selfish."  You got the message that to deny your feelings and needs is virtuous.  Unfortunately this dictum only serves to disconnect you from yourself which keeps you from responsibly meeting your needs (which is likely what your parents wanted in the first place).

In some spiritual traditions this gets even more confusing when the teaching of letting go of self gets interpreted as the same dictum from their parents.  But let's save that for another connection gem.

Obligation & Duty:  As a dutiful son or daughter you may consider it your duty to take care of your parents when they are old.  But if you do this or anything else just because you think it's your duty, you are likely to create more hurt than love.  Even in the midst of what you think is your duty you can create connection in your heart by asking yourself what needs you would like to meet.  My favorite example of this is a woman who when taking care of her mother asked herself moment by moment the question, "Do I have loving hands?"

Somebody has to Compromise:  There is a rampant belief in our world that some people's needs have to meet at the cost of others.  When you can't see a way for the other 's needs to be met along with your own, you might be tempted to just give in and go along with things that don't work for you or to make demands of others.  

Often all that is missing here is a willingness to dialogue a few minutes and get to the needs up for each person.  Once this true connection and honoring of the needs is established, creative strategies for meeting everyone's needs flows easily.  Or, your heart shifts and you find something that you didn't want to do before is something you want to do in the next moment.

Trauma:  If you grew up in a house where punishment and shame were a part of your life, whether frequently or infrequently, a part of you may still be on alert and trying to protect you. Thus, if anything in the another's manner triggers an association to the trauma, you may react with the survival coping strategies you used at the time:  raging, shutting down, pleasing, avoiding, etc. These instances are an opportunity to start to unwind that old karma.  Watching your reaction arise, naming it for what it is, offering yourself empathy, and staying still with it you can bring clarity to your system and dissolve a pattern of reaction.  Of course this often takes many instances of watching your reaction with mindfulness and compassion.

Practice

If you hear yourself saying that you feel "trapped" or have some of the symptoms described above, take some time with the categories above.  Choose one that seems to most match your experience and find a specific instance.  For example, you might choose to work with guilt and you choose an instance of guilt in which you went into work on your day off.  Clearly identify the thinking and beliefs that were operating for you when you made that decision.  Then identify the feelings and needs that were alive for you.  Ask yourself how you could have met all needs from a place of choice.

Key

Selfishness & Narcissism in Family Relationships

Narcissism as a psychological definition is typically seen as self-involved attitudes and behavior where there is little or no empathy for others. Narcissistic wounding starts early in life to children whose parents are insecure, abusive, addictive or have narcissistic patterns themselves.

Narcissistic injury happens to the child when his or her emotional needs are not met. The narcissistic parent has unresolved needs for attention and caretaking because his or her needs were not met in their early life. Neglect, physical, mental and sexual abuse, being spoiled and not given structure and limits create the wounding. Narcissism can be an inflated ego sub part or the trait can take over the personality. Narcissistic attitudes and behavior come from the ego defenses that function as smoke screens to hide the deep shame and fractures that came from being hurt emotionally or physically as a child.

The child who was not allowed to have boundaries becomes energetically and developmentally arrested at this level with beliefs of not being safe in the world and being unworthy and unlovable. Thus the Shadow is born with the defenses and negative core beliefs becoming set in the child's repertoire. The child carries this primitive, self-defense core of fear even into adulthood. This is called the "Core Script" or Core Identity, which is like a big lens of perception by which the world is viewed. The defenses remain lurking in the unconscious mind ready to be called into action at any resemblance of threat.

The False Self --Narcissism or Codependency


We can be a little bit hurt or a lot hurt by neglect, abuse or trauma. The depth of the wound to the psyche determines the severity of the insult to the child's personality and a loss of the true self for the child. A false self develops along with a fragile self esteem of defining identity as feeling good when being given to or giving to others. The child is stuck in early primitive defenses and cannot go through the stage of normal separation from the parents that is necessary for growth.

Children of a difficult, more stubborn temperament defend against being supportive of others in the house. They observe how the selfish parents get his needs met by others. They learn how manipulation and using guilt gets the parent what he or she wants. They develop a false self and use aggression and intimidation to get their way.

The sensitive, guilt-ridden children in the family learn to meet the parent's needs for gratification and try to get love by accommodating the whims and wishes of the parent. The child's normal feelings are ignored, denied and eventually repressed in attempts to gain the parent's "love." Guilt and shame keep the child locked into this developmental arrest. Their aggressive impulses become split off and are not integrated with normal development. These children grow up learning to give too much and develop a false self of becoming co-dependent in their relationships.

Living on Fantasy Island


People with narcissistic thinking and behavior strive to defend their fragile self esteem through fantasy and have blind spots in their thinking. Living in a fantasy world where all their needs are met and unrealistic expectations take the place of life. They become involved in material things, vanity, and are shallow developing excessive life long interest in things that are not real such as movies, rock stars, soap operas and video games. They fear their feelings, gaining deep friendships and intimacy and cannot develop mature love relationships.

Fantasy can become an attempt to not see what is really there in order to build up a fragile self-esteem. People with narcissistic traits process information, emotions and unresolved pain to make up for what they did not have in childhood. They often place unrealistic demands on others to make them feel better. They cannot tolerate negative emotional distress and turn it on others and blame them instead of looking within to see their own part of the problem. This is the defense of projection -- what the person does not like in him or her self, they get angry at others who may have some of that same trait. Projecting one's anger onto others instead of using it to learn and grow is always limiting.

Self image is distorted with the narcissistic point of view and the person believes that he is superior to others. An inflated self-esteem is a defense to cover up their sense of shame deep within. Grandiosity is an insidious error in thinking that prevents them from blaming themselves and becoming depressed or disintegrated. Creeping narcissism in a person is their succumbing to the gradual demands of selfishness and entitlement by giving in to "I am special" beliefs.

Narcissistic Defenses --the Need to Feel Good at all Costs


Selfish people usually insist on having things their own way at the expense of others. The need to impose getting one's way over others is an unreal attitude and expectation that sets other people off against them. When the person with narcissistic tendencies doesn't get what he or she wanted, he feels devalued. Since they cannot tolerate the feelings of fear, hurt, anxiety, helplessness and despair, they defend against them. They deny and rationalize their own contribution to the problems to preserve their own internal fantasy of being all good and right.

People with narcissistic tendencies have errors in thinking which prevents them from seeing things how they are from both sides of the picture. Not wanting to feel bad inside, they build defenses such as denial, repression and a strong need to be right. When the person has severe traits, they can feel an increase in self-esteem when they get what they want and feel no remorse or justify their using others. John Masterson called this rigid type of thinking a "Swiss Cheese Brain" with holes in the brain and mind where good common sense and conscience should be.

Some even get a sense of feeling superior when they get their way or make others feel bad. This is the dynamic underlying bullying. (See my video, It's not Okay to Feel Good by Making Others Feel Bad at http://www.angriesout.com/ to understand this dynamic.) When hurting others becomes a hook into feelings self-satisfaction, the narcissism takes an ugly turn. There is a cost to this false sense of self-esteem. People who abuse and bully others end up being lonely because others do not want to be around them.

People with narcissistic behavior cannot handle criticism in any way and feel that they are being made wrong. . They are supersensitive to criticism and either attack the other person or they leave the scene. This blaming the person who gives criticism helps the person with narcissistic defenses avoid feeling guilt, shame and depression but it also keeps them from taking responsibility for learning from their mistakes and ultimately from growing up.

They can pout and give the silent treatment or hold grudges. This combination of these defenses that distort reality often set them up for failure in partnerships.

When the narcissistic traits are too severe and causes havoc in the lives of others, there is a disorder. Narcissistic Personality Disorder happens when a person's outlook is so distorted to the extent that they do not see reality as it is and cannot see the needs of other people. These people are the takers of the world leaving pain and destruction in their wake. If their behavior is left unchecked, they become con artists, manipulators, sociopaths and dictators.

Without empathy for others, people with narcissistic personality disorders can irrationally justify and rationalize their hurtful and unlawful behaviors and may become sexual predators. Family members who have sex with children always have some element of narcissism seeing others as objects that are available for their own sexual satisfaction. High intelligence coupled with a lack of empathy and remorse for hurting others is a dangerous combination for family members. With extreme narcissistic behaviors, the diagnosis may be a sociopath personality disorder.

The Narcissistic Person in Relationship


The two greatest fears we humans have in relationships are fears of engulfment (smothering, being controlled by someone else) and fears of rejection and abandonment. And to spice up the human drama, our greatest longings are the needs for connection and the opposite need for space and individuality. This is the great Cosmic joke! What a set up for problems! And so the couple dance is set playing out these great, universal themes. People with narcissistic traits have more of this quality than other people. They play both these fears out in the relationships with their significant others, yearning for closeness and fearing it the same time.

When the narcissistic person grows up, they harbor the irrational belief that the person they choose for a partner will give them perfect love and make up for all the hurts and slights of their life. People with severe narcissistic traits long for an ideal love to soothe their fragile sense of self. This yearning for getting unconditional love is an unresolved need left over from childhood. Most adults realize unconditional love would be nice, but understand that it rarely happens as people we love usually hold us accountable for our actions in some way. As we should be --no one should be allowed to impose their neediness and bad behavior on others.

In the narcissistic mind, there is a gap between the idealized love and the actual day-to-day dealings with their partner. They long for symbiosis with the idealized love to stabilize the self, but they fear being traumatized by the partner. They seek refuge in being seen as the good guy and try to gain approval and recognition. When this does not come forth readily, they feel wounded, hurt and attacked. Family members learn to back off from confronting them about their behavior and not "hurt their feelings." Without someone to put the brakes on their unhealthy and abusive behavior, they can become tyrants.

Constantly seeking attention and approval puts them in the precarious position of always needing something from somebody else. As they believe that they are right and others are wrong, they rarely admit to faults in themselves. They can verbally abuse and punish their spouses and children without seeing the pain that they cause as they believe that the person deserves they abuse they dish out. They may try to enlist a child to side with them and turn against the other parent.

People with narcissistic behavior have a sense of entitlement that allows them to break the rules of society. They believe that the laws do not apply to them and they do not feel remorse when they get caught. However they are upset over any inconveniences they suffer as a result of being busted. They believe they have the right to do what ever it takes to get short term gratification without suffering any consequences.

Lying and distortions of reality are considered fair game to shut the other person down. They feel free to cheat on their income tax, take what is not theirs or cheat on their partners. Criticism of their behavior or trying to get them to see what they are doing only causes them to entrench further into defensiveness. When found out in a wrong doing, they get evasive, lie or get angry. They have little or no remorse for the pain they caused the other person, only anger that they did not get away with their behavior.

By Lynne Namka Intimacy Skill Defects


Narcissists have a lack of insight about understanding and processing of feelings. Instead, they deny their uncomfortable feelings and run from them with the exception of anger. The huge core of shame inside must be protected by avoiding the vulnerable feelings. They avoid taking risks to love and never learn to develop true intimacy. They would rather threaten their relationship than face humiliation, embarrassment or injury to their self-esteem. They are slow to learn the all important skills of commitment such as sympathy, understanding the intentions and motives of their partner, compassion and empathy. They may even choose someone to love who is even more narcissistic and selfish than themselves thus mirroring their own problems.

True intimacy and a lasting partnership require the skills of dealing with conflict. After the euphoria of a new relationship wears off, each partner's values and belief systems begin to rub against each other. At this point negotiating conflict is necessary for the relationship to continue effectively. Narcissistic people often discount the issues in the relationship and pull away from their partner. The narcissistic defenses of becoming angry, shutting down, minimizing and distancing keep them feeling safe in the moment.

Intimacy is always affected. When problems are never resolved, the partner becomes highly threatened and angry themselves thus weakening the relationship. Typically children and partners who suffer verbal, physical or sexual abuse become so overwhelmed and threatened that they do not want to continue in relationship.