It's All About You
As children we grow up thinking the every day activities of our family are normal. Normal is a relative word, it can mean so many different things to people. As we become adults, leave home, and start own families I believe the things from our past that we once thought were "normal" become more apparent and we begin to question events of our past.
It is only recently, within the last year, that I have come to understand more the environment in which I grew up. As a result I have also become more perceptive of people in my life and those I meet that also reflect the traits of a narcissist. Also known as emotional vampires, they drain, manipulate, and take advantage of your love in an effort to build their unhealthy ego and make themselves look good. They never admit they are wrong and are rarely self-reflective of their own faults. Growing up in this type of environment is unhealthy and emotionally destructive. As children and adults of narcissists, we live to make them happy and our own self worth is built and torn apart based on their happiness.
I came in contact with one such person yesterday. She has no comprehension of the effect of both her original words and those that followed. She insulted all but three people that belong to our group and she can not understand why anyone would have a negative reaction to her words. I don't normally get upset about stuff like this and I let it go, but I find myself very upset and unsure of how to move forward. I know one reason is because the moderator of the group is a close friend. I feel she is being drawn into the middle of this and I never meant to contribute to any of this drama, but simply state my feelings and where I was coming from. Another issue is that this individual acts as if she owns our group and those that haven't contributed as much have betrayed her. It's not her group! It's my friend's group to moderate. This individual needs to get over herself and understand that this is not about her, it's about the future of the group.
So I will make every effort to let this go today. I refuse to let someone, who I barely know, have such an effect on me. Such is life and I choose to move forward.
1 comment:
I thank you for that. I truly do.
I wanted desperately to jump into the ring and yell "Those are my friends!"
But I didn't.
Should I have? Perhaps I should have and perhaps things would have turned out differently than they had. I've gotten myself into a few scraps on various boards and blogs in the past few years and have had to learn to only exert as much energy as I can truly afford to give, for in the end these are not the people that really matter in my life.
Can they be bothersome? Yes, most certainly? Can some of them even be loathsome at times? Of course. The world is full of ridiculous people.
And I used to spend hours arguing back and forth on Parentdish, my discussion boards etc about situations when I felt right, and when I felt I had been wronged.
But then I came to realize that those individuals are just as you described them...vampires...whether they realize it or not. And with the energy I had exerted into the argument with them I could have written a fantastic blog post of my own, or hell, I could have spent time with REAL people that I could physically reach out and touch...like my kids or my spouse.
That was about the point I decided to really get into my personal blog and stop hanging around so many of those sites anymore. I found them mentally exhausting.
I hope you didn't find P2P the same way and that for our little group it may have been a learning experience.
I'm glad you came to the conclusion you did and I hope you can continue to take all of that raw energy you have and tap it into something positive...like you did in this post. You created your own space and that's fantastic!
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