The Danger of Overthinking Trauma

Yesterday was a pretty rough day with Joe. I had a hard time not letting it get under my skin. I felt singled out and attacked by many of his jabs, and his accusing me of fault, when I had done nothing wrong.

Towards the end of the day, I realized that he is probably stressed about something else – I think we have landed a major contract, but with a pandemic, how can he find workers? – and he was taking his stress out on me.

This morning, he was a little better, but he also was a little bit unreasonable to Royce this morning. It helped me see that it is not me: Joe just has something on his mind.

It also helped me to see how Royce deals with it. He just throws up his hands and says, “well, OK then!” And laughs it all off. Or he comes back with a quick reply, and shrugs. He doesn’t let it get to him. You might say, he doesn’t take Joe too seriously.

I now realize part of my problem yesterday was obsessing about Joe’s behavior – and this has happened before – so that I could write a blog post after work. These posts have been extremely helpful for me to understand myself and narcissistic dynamics. However, there is a danger.

For myself, as a recovering codependent and empathetic person, I have been trained to “pay attention,“ to the dominant narcissist in my life. Growing up, this was my father. Now, when I have a narcissistic boss. I have been conditioned to focus like a hawk on his emotions, and be willing to do absolutely everything to make him happy. To be scared and devastated if he is not happy. And sometimes, to resent the whole thing, and try to push him away – but being too involved in it all to really push him away, causing passive aggressiveness, anger, and deep frustration.

Welcome to my mess.

The very best thing I can do is just not pay too much attention. To ignore his subtle jabs, ignore his emotional state, to be blissfully ignorant of his manipulation tactics. To just float above it.

In other words, to be a normal person.

After all, it is not as though a narcissist can say, “look, can’t you see I’m in a bad mood? Can’t you see how aggressively I walked up the stairs? Can’t you see how quickly I put my coffee mug down on the table? You should be able to note that I am in a bad mood, and that means that you should take responsibility for things that are not your fault, work three times as hard, and cover for my mistakes, and you should give me grace for losing my temper. Because I just can’t help it! I’m in a bad mood, can’t you see?“ All these non-verbal messages sound ridiculous if verbalize. And I think it makes a narcissist feel somewhat ridiculous when they are ignored.

Well, that didn’t work. He thinks subconsciously, I guess I need to try a different strategy on him… And narcissists do try different strategies. With normal, reasonable people, they tend to be more normal and reasonable. It is only with the codependence and victims of abuse like myself that they pull out their covert, narcissistic strategies.

And in noticing these things, and even in blogging about them, there is a double edged sword.

A few months ago, I had a dream about a very complex system installed under my kitchen sink. There was a very bright Brazilian woman who was excitedly explaining how it worked. The inventor stayed off to the side, slowly smiling. It was explained to me that the system was not exactly necessary, but it was helpful. It would take waste water, purify it, then pump it back into the tapwater.

I sent a dream to someone to interpret it, since I was a bit stumped about what the symbology could mean. The person wrote back that the subconscious is somewhat, “lazy,” but in a good way. It hates to waste energy on anything. It always strives to be at rest, and this is important for health. You do not want your mind running in circles.

And so I may be getting kind of a mixed message from my subconscious about my blog. Yes, it is good. It takes wastewater, and cycles it back into pure tapwater. There is a part of me that is very excited about this. That part of me is like a bright young international university student, like many of the students in my former student ministry. However, “this system is not strictly necessary…”… And precious resources are going here that could go elsewhere. There is always a danger of the system failing, and bad water being comes back in through the tapwater.

This has become a helpful metaphor for me. Blogging is good. It is important. It has been tremendously life-giving for me. However, there is a danger. I can obsess and ruminate about things that I should let slide.

This is especially the case at work, where I cannot blog. I need to keep the things in my mind, then spill them all out when I get home. Maybe it is best to let a lot of these workplace dynamics just slide. There is a lot of repetition, and not a lot of new insights. Perhaps this is another part of the journey that I will close off here. Unless there is a tremendous new insight, I think I will leave the workplace narcissist part of the blog here.

If thine eye be single, then all thy body shall be full of light. (Mat. 6:22)

Next, what I really want to research is the concept of my dad as a psychopath. What does it mean to be raised by a psychopath?

That is… What does it mean to be raised by someone who basically most of the time behave like a normal person, but who never felt any empathy for other people? He never had the experience of feeling pain through empathy, when others were in pain. In fact, he seems to have felt pleasure when causing other people pain (“sadism”). So what of what he taught me was wrong? What of what I have internalized from him was wrong?

And who is he exactly? Do I need to be afraid right now? If I simply cut off contact, or slowly drift away, do I need to fear him? If I were to publish this blog as a book, and he found out, would I have cause to fear him? Legally? Socially? Perhaps physically? 

Could such a person have a, “psychotic break,” (am I using that term correctly?) and get in the car and come try to harm myself or my children, if he is denied access to them? “If I can’t have them, no one will!” These thoughts seem too dark for him. However, so far, the deeper I have gone into darkness, the more illumination I have found regarding him.

These are questions I need to explore next.