The Crones Have a Tea Party

Two women are sitting at the table in the breakfast nook sipping their cups of Earl Grey, pinkies in the air, chatting. They've been there since they awakened a couple hours earlier, so they are still in their robes and slippers.

It is a mother and her grown daughter. The two of them imagine that drinking Earl Grey tea is evidence of how civilized and urbane they are. If they only knew of its existence they would apply for membership in the Tiara Tea Society. Basking in their contrived sophistication they pretend their way through the morning.

They've been enjoying talking at length about themselves to each other; a close observer would pick up a bit of a competition between the women. Little games of one-up-man-ship are being played, but nothing too intense. Today, they are relaxed and in a good humor.

Most of their topics, when not totally self-focused, center on gossip about other family members. If you wore special reality-revealing glasses while taking in this scene, instead of two women sitting at a breakfast table, you would see two vultures sitting on a big warm rock enjoying that stuffed feeling after having picked several carcasses clean to the bone.


They preparing to move in on dessert. Dessert d'jour is succulent and sweet. The best for last.

Anna is being served up. The gleam of anticipation in the vultures' eyes is discernible from across the room. As full and fat as they are, their appetites are in no way diminished for the last course. There is always room for a big plate of Anna.

Young vulture has been excitedly sharing her newest fad interest. She's found a brand of Christianized psychology that has given her a new lease on life, she claims. She is secretly cherishing the idea of being able to sell Old Vulture on taking a course in this particular brand of psychobabble for her own ulterior reasons. "Healing the Broken-Hearted" (name changed to protect the guilty) has provided a slick package which allows Young Vulture to blame all her character flaws on Old Vulture. The older woman is being set up by the younger.

The hook needs to be set first. How to do this? The Younger sets up her sister on the autopsy table. She is going to slice and dice her to the wonderment of The Older to show her just how incisive this "Healing the Broken-hearted" program really is.

The classic "Y" incision is made slicing up sister stem to stern. "Did you know that the trauma of a difficult birth can cause that person to have rage issues later in life?" states The Younger authoritatively.

The Older looks interested in the theory so The Younger continues.

"Didn't Anna have a difficult birth?" A light dawns in the The Older's eyes, the answer obviously being "yes". Anna was in a breach position when the birth pangs began. Her mother was in labor for hours and hours. The final delivery was with forceps. The difficulty of the birth left its marks on the baby as well as the mother. The baby's head came to a discernible point, Conehead style, along with the scratches and bruises from the forceps.

The Younger continues by pointing out Anna's "anger issues", particularly as a teen, still sometimes glimpsed into adulthood. The Older swallows the hook whole. Of course. This makes perfect sense. Anna had a difficult birth and now we understand her anger issues. They cluck their tongues and nod their heads knowingly. They have cut to the core of Anna's soul. They have discerned the "pain" that moves her.

They are so full of shit.

This interpretation which is presented by my sister as fact, because she is relying on what she is calling an "authoritative" source, offers up something very important to both of these women: absolution. This lame-assed theory completely absolves them for any responsibility for their behaviors which frustrated the holy, living crap out of me.

My sister, while trying to sell me on her psychobabble blather, told me about this theory one day during a phone conversation. She then told me that she and mom had talked about it together on my sister's last visit to Mom's house, and they both now understood why I was such an angry "child". She sounded so sympathetic; like she was offering up to me complete absolution for my sin of being angry. She was shameless in admitting that she and Mom had sat there discussing what they considered to be my emotional "issues" and had both agreed on the root cause. I was supposed to be impressed...and thankful.

I laid some truth on top of this history revisionism for my sister, and she never brought this up to me again.

"D, that theory is unprovable and runs against the facts." I told my sister. "First of all, both you and mom seem to be forgetting that I was an almost unnaturally calm baby, I rarely cried, could be ignored for hours (and was) as I lay in my crib (by my mother's own admission to me). As a young child, my sweet and submissive nature continued. No tantrums. No displays of fits or rages. Compliant to a fault. If your memory was actually working properly, you would know that I didn't display my anger until I reached my middle teen years. Do you think there might have been a reason for my anger? Do you think that perhaps I might have been reacting to the complete frustration of my life with Mom? Do you think it possible that my anger was understandable and the cause and effect discernible if one considered my life at that time; the time when the anger began to be shown by me? This theory, sister, is complete bull-shit."

She actually yielded my point. The facts were not refutable once I proved that I remembered the facts. She knew them too, but had chosen to forget them because the glitter of her new theory was so much more appealing than the truth.

She didn't want me to go further. Because she knew, deep in her selfish soul, that my mother was not the only source of my youthful anger. She knows that she used me and took advantage of me up until I ran away from home at age 17. She was lazy and selfish and looked out completely for herself. I was her shield from momster. Because the rule was laid down that when Momma made a command-- it was law -- and it better damn well get done now. If it did not get done, I, as the eldest, was held responsible. My sister took full and complete advantage of this arrangement. She exploited it shamelessly. I know she has not forgotten this.

Let's look for a moment at what displays of anger these two bitches were talking about. You may think that I was picking fights in school, or screaming at my family and knocking them around, or joining up with a local gang and beating up homeless guys, if you were to judge by their bringing up my "rage issues" pretending like it negatively impacted their lives. Here's the truth.

First off, I was not allowed to express my frustration or anger verbally. Neither of my parents allowed negative emotions to be spoken because they were not to be inconvenienced by my emotions. There was no mouthing back. I would have been knocked into the next week if I had dared shoot off at the mouth snottily, let alone with overt anger. If I slammed a door, my mother would come running from where ever she was and belt me. I remember the few times when a door would accidentally slam and I would quickly run to re-open it and say, "Oops! Sorry!! That was an accident!" smiling as sweetly as I could as I watched to see the cloud pass off of my mother's face. So door-slamming was usually not an option. What outlet did I have then?

I would occasionally vent on inanimate objects outside the house. I have a clear memory of being so angry once that I went out to the garage and pounded on a wall with my fists for about 10 seconds just to vent onto something. Wow. What a sinner I was.

The anger these two women were gabbing about that day was primarily demonstrated by me with a quiet seething. A lid was kept clamped down on it by me...but the look in my eye would occasionally intimidate them. I remember seeing their intimidation a time or two. They were intimidated because their own consciences condemned them as they saw my quiet condemnation of them. Knowing they had completely and totally crossed a line over into unfairness that could not be justified even by them, they were intimidated by my anger. They knew my anger was justified.

My self-control even while enraged actually scared them a bit. Perhaps they were afraid I would finally unleash and split their skulls open like they deserved. I never, not once, behaved violently toward a person. During these rare occasions when they knew I was angry, perhaps I would slam a door or lash out at an inanimate object. No one would say a peep. My rage was known by them at that moment to be linked to their unreasonable and grossly unfair treatment of me. I think I only slammed a door in anger like that a couple of times. Neither time did my mother come at me with her rage. She was laying low like the simpering coward she really is because she knew she was in the wrong. She would not have let me get away with a slammed door except that her conscience was burning, and she seemed unsure of what I would do with my anger...probably because she was judging me by her own poor self-control when angry.

Get what I'm saying here? If there was not an obvious reason, i.e. cause and effect, for my anger, even these extremely rare displays would not have been allowed. My anger would have been met with an escalation of rage coming from my mother to me. So my sister's pretending that my "anger issues" as a teen were heretofore of mysterious etiology was just another bit of history revisionism by these two narcissists. They were absolving themselves of all responsibility for their actions toward me...while pretending to me that she was offering me some jewel of insight about my unexplored psyche.

I think in my next post I'll allow my cousin to describe her very first impressions of my family as she gazed in wonderment at this strange and new (to her) family. She was six years old...I was thirteen. It is a very focused snapshot of my life with my family from an outside witness. If one takes that snapshot and replicates it a few thousand times it will give at least some sense of the system of unfairness and servitude that was my life at home. The tea-sipping crones were the two most responsible for foisting this unfairness and slavery onto my life. Now they would chalk up my anger to forces beyond any of our control in order to clear their consciences. They were pathologizing the victim in order to purify themselves.

Now, as then, my anger does not dictate my behavior. I have self-control. I am allowed to have a feeling as long as I don't use a feeling to justify doing something immoral.

Where those two are concerned, I still have "anger issues", but there is no shame in that for me any more. In the spirit of the subject of my anger...

May they eat shit and die.

[Icon by gryphonsmith]

[Cartoon used with permission. Cartoonstock.com]

Treating Childishness as a Crime

All memories are subject to degradation over time. This is an established scientific fact. What science has also discovered is that the memories we have of negative experiences last much longer and degrade much less so than memories not associated with a strong emotional reaction.

My first memory dates back to age two. I know that this event happened before the birth of my sister who was born shortly after I turned three which is why I know I was two years old. I have extremely clear memories of where we lived at the time. I was able to prove that to my uncle recently. He seemed surprised and impressed at all the details I could remember about the area I lived in from age zero to about age three and a half. I can clearly describe the layout of the apartment complex as well as the surrounding properties. Point is, I have clear memories starting from a very young age.

The reason my first memory became my first memory is because it was accompanied by fear and sense of abandonment. It has to do with how a narcissistic mother sees personal affront, defiance, and bad motives when her children disobey her. Childishness is punished as a crime. A child of a narcissist is not allowed to be a child. The strong message is conveyed a thousand ways: if you don't do things perfectly you are a bad person with bad motives and a desire to hurt your mother. Most of us strove to prove to our mothers differently. We over-performed in a desperate attempt to avoid the "bad person" label so easily earned at the slightest offense, the smallest let-down, without even the tiniest bad intention on our part. Over-achieving did not result in banking good will for the future. Oh no, it only allowed you to tread water. Fail in one particular by her subjective and shifting standards and you found your head below water in a moment.

Before I describe my memory I want to ruminate a bit on my mother's extremely consistent view of all children and what it stems from. What I didn't understand at age two, but have much experience and observation on now in my mid-40s, is that my mother's baseline with all children is that they are, each and every one, little criminals. The narcissist mother can never take into account the immature little brains which take many years and much experience to develop. The higher centers of the brain where reasoning and judgment take place are not fully developed until age 25. (This explains a lot of things including car insurance rates!) Yup, science has confirmed this for us. The narcissist mother has no appreciation for the responsibility before her to deal with young and developing minds with wisdom and sensitivity. No, from their earliest moments the children of narcissists are taught that all wisdom and sensitivity are to flow from them to mother dearest. I believe my mother projects onto all children the kind of child she was. Those who study psychopathy have come to recognize that as early as age three the signs of a budding sociopath can be clearly discerned. There are a small percentage of children who seem to be born criminals. My mother assumes the percentage is large...and I now believe it is because she is projecting her own character as a child onto every other child.

My mother told this little story enough times that it stuck. I think it provides a glimpse into how young she was when she was already thinking like a narcissist. The first time I remember hearing it, she was driving with my younger sister and me in the car. She reaches into her purse for a stick of gum. "Oh, look here. I only have one stick of gum. All mine!" And she popped it into her mouth. Then, looking all significant, she proceeds to tell her story. She explains that she could have split that piece of gum into three pieces, but she learned a lesson when she was young...so she recounts a time when she and her five other siblings were traveling with her mother. Her mother reached into her purse and found one stick of gum. Everyone starts clamoring for it. Her mother proceeds to divide that one stick of gum into six pieces and hands out a tiny piece for each of the children...with nothing for herself. My mother could not tell this story without curling her lip in disgust. My mother tells us how she despised her mother's weakness. An actual quote, "I hated my mother for being so weak." Her mother divvied up a piece of gum into so many pieces that it rendered it essentially useless to anyone, she told us. And she deprived herself. For what? So a bunch of whiny kids could be placated? It seemed that the part that most disgusted my mother was the sacrifice her mother was willing to make. Her mother denied her own desire for a piece a gum in an attempt to please her children...and my mother hated her for it. It was perceived by her as weakness. Most would see it as generous. My mother chose to see it as weakness. My mother was still in single digits in age when this happened. This kind of thinking never left her. If resources are limited...mother gets first and best. Period. The criminal mind perceives kindness and generosity as weakness. My mother betrays an aspect of her young criminal mindset. She sets it up before her own children as a virtue. She will never be that weak with us. If she has one piece of gum ... it is all hers. We never dared to complain.

This may not seem like a big deal revelation to you. But it surely was to her. And she made sure it was to my sister and me. Now that I am much older and wiser I see a lot more in this story than she intended to reveal. My mother forever despised her mother's sacrifices...yet that didn't stop my mother from taking advantage of her mother's generosity. She hated her mother's generosity, but depended on it.

Remember those Fisher-Price xylophones? They probably still make them. Here's a pic of the way they looked when I was a kid.


My mother called me to her holding my xylophone in her hands with a look of scary rage bubbling under the surface. I knew I must have really messed up...but what did I do? "Why did you do this??" She is pointing to the side of the xylophone's side label. I was confused at first. She taps her finger on the side impatiently and I can see where I had applied some watercolor paints on the side. "I told you that you are not to paint or draw on anything other than paper. Why did you do this!" I was speechless. It was obvious to me now that I had committed a great sin. I had no excuse for myself. "I didn't know". "I'm sorry". Nothing I could say would save me now. It was assumed that my bit of artwork on the side of my xylophone was an overt sign of defiance by my mother. It was an egregious disregard of her authority and rules that I had dared to veer my watercolors off of approved surfaces. Perhaps I had felt like it was okay to do it since I had restricted my painting to the paper label on the side of the xylophone. I may have understood that by permitting crayons and painting to paper that I was not doing something wrong by using the label for coloring. I don't remember. But I do remember that I had not done it feeling like I was breaking the rules. It was not an act of defiance. It was a childish moment from a childish understanding being given the significance of a criminal act.

My punishment was then dished out. My mother seethed, "I can't stand the sight of you. Go outside and don't come back until I call you." I was thrown out of the apartment door and she threw the lock. What to do now. I cried and sobbed at the door. She told me to go away. I wandered around the apartment premises for what had to have been a long time. I was too young to have a clear concept of time...but it seemed like an eternity. Finally, I thought I had a reason to request entrance again...I had to pee. I knocked on the door. "What do you want" she inquired coldly behind the still closed door. "I have to go potty" I plaintively stated. "I don't care. Go away." I can not describe the vast poverty I felt at that moment. I felt so abandoned and lost. Unloved. All I knew was that I had done something very horrible. So horrible that my mother was throwing me away. I was not sure if I would ever be allowed back into her home. That thought was abjectly terrifying to me. The sense of abandonment and loss was overwhelming. Despair.

I remember wandering around with a painfully full bladder unsure of what to do and how long I could hold it. I held out as long as I could. Finally, because I was not going to wet my pants, I went to the neighboring empty lot in the tall weeds in an attempt to gain a measure of privacy and did the deed.

I know I was let back into the apartment before my dad came home from work. She let me into the apartment but it was obvious I was still in the doghouse. I had to earn my way back into her good graces. I think this story is an example of a disproportionate response.

Did I ever scribble on my toys or any other unapproved surface ever again? Hell, no. I learned that lesson quite early on. I learned to draw within the lines my mother set up very, very well.

"A Wicked Man"

I was re-reading the description in Proverbs of God's view of the wicked man. Check this out:

A worthless person, a wicked man,
Walks with a perverse mouth;
He winks with his eyes,
He shuffles his feet,
He points with his fingers;
Perversity is in his heart,
He devises evil continually,
He sows discord.
Proverbs 6:12-14 NKJV

Look at how much of this description includes physical movement. This kinda jumps out at me considering what I recently covered in the post, "Good Liars? Or Just Practiced Diversion Artists?" The first action described in this passage is the "perverse mouth"...i.e...lying. Then the winks (facial expressions), the distracting footwork and hand movements. The narcissist/psychopath has been fully exposed by the Bible. Most of us have missed that fact.

Perhaps because good people are often loathe to assume the worst of someone, the motivations for these behaviors is exposed for us: the wicked man is continually devising evil, he is perverse in the seat of his emotions (the heart, the seat of desire), and his intention is to sow discord. God, who alone claims the ability to read the hearts and minds of men, is taking all the mystery out of the motivations of the evil person. We are being told just how much we should trust the evil man. The answer: not at all. Any person who is continually devising evil plots is never to be trusted.

So whom does God consider wicked? He doesn't leave any doubt on this point.

These six things the LORD hates,
Yes, seven are an abomination to Him:
A proud look,
A lying tongue,
Hands that shed innocent blood,
A heart that devises wicked plans,
Feet that are swift in running to evil,
A false witness who speaks lies,
And one who sows discord among brethren.
Prov. 6:16-19

First, you have to take in just how great the hatred God holds for these things is. The first sentence above uses the word "hates" and then, in the next sentence, uses a similar word which hones in more tightly on the level of emotion that "hates" is intended to portray. The word abomination according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary means, "extreme disgust and hatred: loathing". But, considering this is the Bible, we need to look at a Bible dictionary to get the full flavor. The noun form of the word in the original Hebrew "defines something or someone as essentially unique in the sense of being 'dangerous', 'sinister,' and 'repulsive' to another individual." Vine's Complete Expository Dictionary pg. 1

So we need to look at the descriptors which follow the statement about God's hatred in light of someone God Himself considers to be "dangerous", "sinister", and "repulsive".

• A proud look.
• A lying tongue.
• Hands that shed innocent blood.
• A heart that devises wicked plans.
• Feet that are swift in running to evil.
• A false witness who speaks lies.
• One who sows discord among brethren.

If God considers these things to be repulsive, sinister and dangerous, shouldn't you? How can we invoke God's name to people who are caught in a relationship with a "wicked man" and tell them that God expects them to remain married to, or in some other relationship with, such a person? That is blasphemous. God is not divided against Himself. He doesn't describe the wicked man, and then elsewhere demand that people stay locked in a relationship with such a person.

When you study the word "wrath" in the Bible as it pertains to God's wrath you see that His wrath is most often demonstrated by withdrawing His presence and protection. Did you catch that? God withdraws His presence from wicked people...so should you if you are going to wear His name. How can we possibly pretend that God is impressed with us when we choose to stay in close association with evil people? How can we convince ourselves that God, in whom resides all virtue, would call us righteous for condoning, coddling, making excuses for, and staying in close relation to evil when He won't do those things Himself? We really need to think instead of offering platitudes or condemnations to people suffering in abusive relationships. We need to think before accepting such proffered nonsense. To use the name of God to enforce relationships with evil people is nothing short of blasphemy...i.e. using the name of the Lord in vain. Anything that trashes God's reputation falls under the purview of the third commandment (Exodus 20:7). People who have the good sense God gave them will see those Christians who enforce relationships with evil people as being cruel and heartless. They naturally assume that must mean God is cruel and heartless. God's reputation gets a bad rap because you took His name to support your screwy opinions.

If you've been treated to lectures by other Christians because they don't approve of you leaving a wicked man (or woman) please disregard them as the ignoramus they are. They don't speak for God. God speaks for Himself in Proverbs six.

Fred Phelps Jr. Butt-End of Joke

I've commented a little on the Rev. Fred Phelps because he is such an overt and obvious narcissist that I don't need to know him personally to slap the narcissist label on him. I did read the rather long expose on him that I posted the link to here. There is plenty of evidence there to support the label.

Fred and his "church" have been slapped with a 10.9 million dollar damages judgment for his protest staged at a Marine's funeral. Article here.

Someone had a bit of fun at Freddie Jr.'s expense. Capitalizing on Fred's homophobia ... Fred gets the moves made on him. I found it mildly entertaining. Maybe you will too.

Signs You've Been Hypnotized

The book, "Emotional Vampires: Dealing with People Who Drain you Dry" has some very helpful information on how to recognize when a narcissist (or other disordered character) is hypnotizing you. You look for the signs in your own reactions:

"Make sure you recognize the warning signs of hypnosis: instant rapport, deviating from standard procedure, thinking in superlatives, discounting objective information, and confusion." Emotional Vampires, pg. 48

These are all signs you look for in yourself.

Here is a summary, mostly in my own words, of each of these warning signs. See the book for more details:

Instant rapport -- That wonderful feeling that you are instantly "clicking" with someone you've just met is a clear warning sign. You have likely stumbled into someone who has either done their research before "accidentally" meeting you or before a job interview, or they are quick to assess what it is you think about yourself and are careful to reflect back to you what you want to hear.

Deviating from standard procedure -- Suddenly you find yourself making exceptions and doing things very differently than you normally do for someone you don't know well.

Thinking in superlatives -- You've just met the most wonderful, most incredible, most charming and thoughtful person ever. Big red sign that someone is messing around inside your head. The author says, "distorted perceptions usually involve superlatives". He also points out that the superlatives can be negative too.

Discounting objective information -- You've been swept off your feet in no time flat. You're loving how you feel around this person -- so much so that you are now avoiding objective sources of information about this person. Or, if you do hear things you don't want to hear, you tell yourself it is somehow different for you. He's different with you. He was different back then. When you find yourself avoiding getting objective information about this person you have a clear sign in yourself that you're very happy in this little fantasy that's been created for you and don't want the bubble popped. You're in trouble if you keep this up. Remember, this doesn't just apply to romantic partners. It can happen with a fellow church or club member, a co-worker, boss, employee, etc.

Confusion -- "Hazy understanding of the reasons for your own reactions, coupled with unusual certainty, is a pretty clear sign that somebody has been messing with your mind." pg. 29

If you find any of these signs in yourself, most particularly when dealing with someone you don't know very well, it is imperative that you stop whatever you're doing and analyze the situation. Don't be afraid to ask yourself why you are reacting the way you are. Be honest with yourself. Don't discount your answers.

Some additional observations about someone who makes you feel confused. Don't assume you're an idiot. See it as a warning sign and stop to figure out what is really happening. I have learned that when someone is making me feel confused and pressured at the same time then I know that I must put them off. "I'll call you with my answer tomorrow." If they say that it'll be too late tomorrow then I now know my answer must be a firm "no thanks". When someone is trying to baffle you with bull-shit and then, in your confused state, try to force you to come up with an immediate response you are dealing with a high-pressure salesman or an emotional vampire.