Negative Introject dynamics
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tweeter Offline
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#1
May trigger  Negative Introject dynamics
This follows on the heels of my response to Mosaic in "Today could be a beaut."
I've been working on this all month as it came to me. I'm not done yet. It has been hard to do, but the results are increased relaxation.
To make sure we're on the same page, when I say "inner child" I mean:
an emotional foundation composed of what is inborn and imposed by the environment, good and bad. In a monomind, this is not experienced as a little, or separate person within.
A mistreated child can have anger and sadness (which can also arise from anger) in that foundation. This can be chronically expressed, or triggered by situations, into the adulthood of the person.
In the adult, these and like emotions arise from this unconscious foundation, but in the form they were felt as a child, such that the feelings might not be recognized for what they are in totality at all, or only after a delay. The results can be catastrophic to a relationship. A symptom that this is going on can be looking at something you wrote, and feeling it's off somehow, and mailing the thing anyhow. It's not only that I did this. It's that I became aware, and am stopping it. I've explained this to the person who was the brunt of it. Only good can come of my efforts, even if I don't have the result I had hoped for, to begin again with that person.

As fm has developed in his life, there are aspects of his relationship to me that amplify the original negative introject based on the m*th*r. I became aware of it this month, because my true self-identity as a woman has been emerging and can't co-exist with this cr*p, unless I become something that was, and is, being imposed on me. I have a choice, an informed choice this time, and I've made it. I vote for me, flaws and all, but not with someone else's anger based on their problems that had/have nothing to do with me. I'm not defined by that. I make it sound very simple. It's not. I can trace how the relationship with fm changed, as his definition of himself did. With the m*th*r, it's not so easy because going into the preverbal is another ball game. Different from the nonverbal-semi-verbal unconscious layers that I do well with. I never had many clues re my m*th*r's relationship with herself. So, I'm better off approaching things differently, as I am. I know why I'm reacting as I am to a difficult health situation, which also affects my appearance, and that this connects back to an earlier time and I'm letting things come together as they will and then making decisions. I think there are some good changes coming up.

I'm beginning to think that the hurt and anger of an ignored inner child (my emotions and inability to act on the train), along with fm's behavior (which put me in an old bad place), led to an eruption in which the negative introject + fm combined with the intensity of this inner child emotional layer, to bring about a state of personal chaos which has probably ruined something very important to me. At the same time, it made me aware of something that has messed me up in other ways.

I have experienced betrayal by the m*th*r and by fm, though neither of them saw it that way. Some of that accounts for failure on my part, but there's another component.
In my letter to trainman, I expressed something I've never said before, and I'm working on this:
Via my awareness of the role the emotions of childhood in my psyche, I had promised in 2006 that I wouldn't permit myself to be mistreated that way again. Without realizing it, I broke that promise on the train, and that's part of what hurt me so. I'm healing from this now. It will take time.
I had realized that accepting ab*s*v* behavior and saying "it's okay," unleashed a kind of melancholy (turning anger towards myself that I couldn't express otherwise, or feeling an abuser's anger towards me internally). In the next paragraph I said that breaking this promise might show as my pulling the rug out from under myself as a person who was unkind to me would have done. Actually, there's more to this. I don't think that this self-sabotage is due to the breaking of that promise so simplistically. It can be purely the reaction to the negative introject, an expectation of failure which was instilled in me, and the continuation of the m*th*r's d*str*ct*ve influence. In this case, angry and grief-stricken feelings of myself encompassing the entire emotional entity that is me, went haywire. I don't think this is all that rare in the human experience, though I don't know how common it is for the person to figure it out.

I'm far from done with this, but I'm doing a lot better. Some of what is coming thru on the boards is that I'm feeling ill physically, and there is little or no regard for someone like myself who is not willing to follow the current medical directive.

Even though returning to a previous teacher will not fix my ills, it might help. He's also interested in what sticks or does not stick to a person. There's a lot that didn't stick from my background.
There's a parallel between what has become fm (which he was all along but couldn't express) and what was my m*th*r. I think there's self-h*tr*d in these people, which has been directed towards me. I've seen pictures of me as a child. I was terrific and adventurous and didn't seem to internalize mother's nature. That changed when I got my adult teeth, which didn't come in so good, and I was ridiculed at home and outside as well, and then I got angry. Now I'm ill and am older in a crisis-ridden society, where the ill and elderly (especially when taken as a combo) are at risk in a lot of ways. There's a parallel there, in emotional experience.

I think I have determined how another's h*tr*d for me got internalized to begin with. Of course, there are things I am not saying here. I could. But I don't need to.
I'm having some really nice feelings towards me and am thinking of how I wish to present myself to the world. I've stopped knee-jerk emotional responses before, and I can do this. It takes patience, and avoidance of relationships in which I exist for the convenience of someone who is incapable of loving and respecting self and others, to the point that another person (me) is h*rm*ed.
"Even the very emptiest of the emptiest
Has a false bottom, a false bottom."
(This post was last modified: 09-01-2012, 04:13 AM by tweeter.)
09-01-2012, 03:55 AM
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MakersDozn Offline
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#2
May trigger  RE: Negative Introject dynamics
tweeter,

We want you to know that we've read your post. Though you've shared some aspects of this situation with us previously, we know that its complexity is such that we can't do it justice by attempting a more thorough response than this.

I do identify with some of the feelings. At least, I believe that I do. Our mother's mother stuck around until the age of nearly 94, which was several decades too long, in my opinion. She was fond of getting suntans, and I hope that she's getting the broiling that she deserves. I do wish, though, that I didn't feel like she brought me with her when she went there.

I give you the blue flower icon here, as the red triangle had to take precedence above. [Image: FF.gif]

Rachel and others
09-02-2012, 05:31 PM
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tweeter Offline
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May trigger  RE: Negative Introject dynamics
(09-02-2012, 05:31 PM)MakersDozn Wrote: tweeter,

We want you to know that we've read your post. Though you've shared some aspects of this situation with us previously, we know that its complexity is such that we can't do it justice by attempting a more thorough response than this.

I do identify with some of the feelings. At least, I believe that I do. Our mother's mother stuck around until the age of nearly 94, which was several decades too long, in my opinion. She was fond of getting suntans, and I hope that she's getting the broiling that she deserves. I do wish, though, that I didn't feel like she brought me with her when she went there.

I give you the blue flower icon here, as the red triangle had to take precedence above. [Image: FF.gif]

Rachel and others


These people do want to bring someone, maybe more than one person, along with them to their personal h*lls. If I look into fm, I get a message even he is unaware of. That is: "If I can't be happy, neither can you." I don't know why they feel that way. I don't. I've always wanted other people to thrive, sometimes to my own detriment. Maybe it was so that I wouldn't turn into the opposite; I honestly don't know.
I guess you feel the baggage for the same reason I do. That is, because of what remains behind in terms of a kind of imprinting that was reinforced by another person's twisted will, sometimes not even realized by that person consciously. Was/is there a level at which the ab*s*r knew? I think so, but that passed out of awareness.


My interest is highly personal, but extends to humanity as a whole. Introjects can be positive or negative. The only thing I can come up with is that it's a developmental process, a planned-for modelling of sorts.
There is a crossover point, and yet the original self remains, to an extent depending on the person, including whatever specific differences and similarities to the model provided exist. The model doesn't always work. The override, either way is similar to some things I know of from another discipline. Same conduit for inner child, introjects, and that.

Why does the modelling, this conduit, exist at all? One might say it's the way necessary knowledge/survival behavior is passed down. If so, what has been changed, corrupted? (Corruption is another way of describing a change from the original, in any direction.) I can't see past this point.

Blue flowers to you also, Rachel and those with you. You comfort my heart and help me to think.

On an up note, I've been allowing the "system restore" that happened when I met trainman, and am intuitively wandering -- interacting with nicer people and having some neat experiences, now that fm is not running interference, and I'm working on allowing what I am to be. Concentrating on coming alive instead of shutting down.

best I can do for now.
tweeter
"Even the very emptiest of the emptiest
Has a false bottom, a false bottom."
(This post was last modified: 09-03-2012, 11:52 AM by tweeter.)
09-03-2012, 11:48 AM
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MakersDozn Offline
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#4
Agree  RE: Negative Introject dynamics
About something being corrupted at some point....Yes, we believe that our dear GM had a difficult life, but that's no excuse for making the choices that she made. Her younger sister was the polar opposite: upbeat, positive, knew how to let go of something when it no longer served a purpose.

Granted, we didn't know Aunt L. very well, but the difference between them was striking, and it only served to emphasize the point that past trauma is no excuse for later choices.

Rachel and others
09-03-2012, 04:57 PM
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tweeter Offline
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May trigger  RE: Negative Introject dynamics
(09-03-2012, 04:57 PM)MakersDozn Wrote: About something being corrupted at some point....Yes, we believe that our dear GM had a difficult life, but that's no excuse for making the choices that she made. Her younger sister was the polar opposite: upbeat, positive, knew how to let go of something when it no longer served a purpose.

Granted, we didn't know Aunt L. very well, but the difference between them was striking, and it only served to emphasize the point that past trauma is no excuse for later choices.

Rachel and others

Exactly! "...past trauma is no excuse for later choices."
But there are reasons specific to the person making those choices. Some have to do with character -- especially the interplay between character and the effects of trauma/ab*s*r(s).
Unfortunate scenarios are those in which there is significant identification with a current emotional ab*s*r (which I've seen happen in an adult monomind as a decision, followed by denial of the whole process), or, compliance with the demands of a negative introject such that the actions of an adult are compromised, with current circumstantial stress as a component. This stress can wear down defenses leading to loss of control to some degree.

There is another component which has to do with my area of study in martial arts, but is not owned by it. I couldn't discuss it here, and am incapable of doing so anyhow. I'm not trained to do these things, but have had them done to me, and unexpectedly became aware, which has made me quite the outcast. I'm not approving of how these abilities are often used.

I have just consciously made the connections noted in this thread and with this last influence, I'm over my head. On a broad basis, it gets into the concept and practice of Free Will, which must include conscious and unconscious control.

I must agree with you that one must take responsibility, or else all is lost for the self and for the totality of selves on this planet. Difficult practical and abstract choices, some of which can be trained to function on autopilot, but I know there's more. Haven't been able to get further than that yet.

tweeter
"Even the very emptiest of the emptiest
Has a false bottom, a false bottom."
09-04-2012, 12:18 AM
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