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I have noticed in the past that one can practically set ones clock by the regular outbursts of drama from disordered, wounded, traumatized people. The cycle is not hard to see, but it's likely very hard to spot if you're in the middle of it, and it's certainly hard to stop once you've started being triggered/triggering yourself. I have compassion. At some point in my past I might have tried to interfere, intervene, egg-on, pile-on, or otherwise contribute to the chaos and misery.
This year I'm just watching.
Person J has something that person A wants; success, a nice website, a good business, the respect of their community, an online presence that people read and enjoy. An assortment of people and property that is desirable and enviable.
Person A sucks up, flatters, emulates, mimics, and mirrors, doing their best to coax and flatter person J so that some of their qualities will reflect positively on Person A, or in hopes that some of J's success and reputation will magically rub off or be absorbed by A. I mean, it's not an entire recipe for failure; one of the steps from the 12 step programs I've been involved with in the past mentions this specifically: Stick with Winners in order to grow. NLP has a similar approach to modeling success--observe people who are successfully achieving things that you yourself aspire to, watch what they do, and use their successful actions as models for building your own success. It's a good strategy.
But then you get the disordered person's inability to self reflect, inability to truly look within and be honest with themselves. They are so fragile, wounded, and traumatized that acknowledging shortcomings or failures would be devastating to them; so they may be able to model some or all of the 'successful' behaviors, but they are not able to see their own self sabotaging, unsuccessful, unproductive behaviors. And without seeing them, they can't even start to try to change them. The good things that happen to them are because they successfully modeled successful adulting, the bad things that happen to them are in the blind spot about their own behavior, so they become 'someone else' doing 'something' to harm them.
I've noticed that in situations where the damaged, traumatized, broken person is having frustration and not experiencing success, they are quick to blame the mentors, or the people they were trying to fit in with, for their failure. All of the blind spots they have about their own behavior, they project on to the people they were admiring and emulating. Their failure cannot be their own fault, it must be because the people they chose to admire are flawed in the exact same way they cannot/will not/refuse to see in themselves.
Every. single. thing. they say at this point to slander and abuse their former idol is true of themselves and their relationshps:
Person A claims that their partner M. hates J because J is the one who yells at him in front of others, harasses him 24/7, and mistreat other people, animals, and property, because A and M are so trauma-bonded, that A cannot see that what A is saying about J is actually true about A. M's existence, relationship, and grasp on sanity is dependent on NOT seeing or recognizing that the behavior attributed to J is actually coming from A, first and worst and for a longer duration than anything J might have ever said or done to M.
At the same time, A is contending with a harsh and cruel inner voice (probably echoes of a parent during their upbringing) chastising them for their behavior. Again, A's ego and trauma do not allow A to perceive this inner voice as a harsh echo from childhood, directed at behaviors that were and are problematic in A. So A flings these harsh inner critic's words at J, the person A admired, then envied, then projected against, and now wants to destroy. "You're not the boss, the world doesn't revolve around you, fits and tantrums aren't going to get you what you want, suck it up, respect is earned," and various other hateful things on endless loop in their own heads, directed from their inner abusive parent against their inner traumatized child.
it's really sad. Honestly.
This year I'm just watching.
Person J has something that person A wants; success, a nice website, a good business, the respect of their community, an online presence that people read and enjoy. An assortment of people and property that is desirable and enviable.
Person A sucks up, flatters, emulates, mimics, and mirrors, doing their best to coax and flatter person J so that some of their qualities will reflect positively on Person A, or in hopes that some of J's success and reputation will magically rub off or be absorbed by A. I mean, it's not an entire recipe for failure; one of the steps from the 12 step programs I've been involved with in the past mentions this specifically: Stick with Winners in order to grow. NLP has a similar approach to modeling success--observe people who are successfully achieving things that you yourself aspire to, watch what they do, and use their successful actions as models for building your own success. It's a good strategy.
But then you get the disordered person's inability to self reflect, inability to truly look within and be honest with themselves. They are so fragile, wounded, and traumatized that acknowledging shortcomings or failures would be devastating to them; so they may be able to model some or all of the 'successful' behaviors, but they are not able to see their own self sabotaging, unsuccessful, unproductive behaviors. And without seeing them, they can't even start to try to change them. The good things that happen to them are because they successfully modeled successful adulting, the bad things that happen to them are in the blind spot about their own behavior, so they become 'someone else' doing 'something' to harm them.
I've noticed that in situations where the damaged, traumatized, broken person is having frustration and not experiencing success, they are quick to blame the mentors, or the people they were trying to fit in with, for their failure. All of the blind spots they have about their own behavior, they project on to the people they were admiring and emulating. Their failure cannot be their own fault, it must be because the people they chose to admire are flawed in the exact same way they cannot/will not/refuse to see in themselves.
Every. single. thing. they say at this point to slander and abuse their former idol is true of themselves and their relationshps:
Person A claims that their partner M. hates J because J is the one who yells at him in front of others, harasses him 24/7, and mistreat other people, animals, and property, because A and M are so trauma-bonded, that A cannot see that what A is saying about J is actually true about A. M's existence, relationship, and grasp on sanity is dependent on NOT seeing or recognizing that the behavior attributed to J is actually coming from A, first and worst and for a longer duration than anything J might have ever said or done to M.
At the same time, A is contending with a harsh and cruel inner voice (probably echoes of a parent during their upbringing) chastising them for their behavior. Again, A's ego and trauma do not allow A to perceive this inner voice as a harsh echo from childhood, directed at behaviors that were and are problematic in A. So A flings these harsh inner critic's words at J, the person A admired, then envied, then projected against, and now wants to destroy. "You're not the boss, the world doesn't revolve around you, fits and tantrums aren't going to get you what you want, suck it up, respect is earned," and various other hateful things on endless loop in their own heads, directed from their inner abusive parent against their inner traumatized child.
it's really sad. Honestly.