Why I Don’t Answer the Phone

In my defense, I used to throw it.  Now I just silence the ring and turn the phone over so I can’t see it flashing. 
This, we’re calling personal growth.  Hey, I graduated from therapy, I’m stamped!  The doctor says this is as normal as I’m gonna get.

The meme that started the discussion

After a year of quarantine, people have started to understand my pathological level of introversion. We’ve lost the knack for interacting, or lost the energy for pretending.  We’re drifting away from our friends because reconnecting is so simultaneously taxing and boring - shall we talk about the plague?  The news?  The walls we’ve stared at lately?

Having exhausted those fun topics, I got into a conversation today about why abuse survivors feel like burdens on others.  This feeling was part of the cocktail that made me suicidal, because it dovetails neatly with my other neuroses, but most people with trauma feel this way to some extent.

Some of it is projection - we assume that people think like we do, unless we actively work to look beyond that.  If we're unhappy with ourselves, we assume that dissatisfaction is universal.  The bad qualities we perceive in ourselves feel tattooed on our foreheads, and the fact that other people tolerate us just shows how amazing they are by comparison.

I think there's a larger factor here, though, and it's that people raised by narcissists learn an adversarial game of love.  I believe until you unlearn this game, you can't gain energy from loving company, can't be fully soothed by the company of the people you love - interactions will always be taxing to some degree.

An Adversarial Game

Part of being a kid is getting saddled with your parents' values.  This just comes with the package - your parents can't avoid expressing what they believe subconsciously, even if they're careful about what they say and do in your presence.  This is how our species learns - by mimicking. Children learn from what their parents do, not what they say.  Until you're at a point where you can begin to question - and remember that trauma stunts emotional development, pushing that point further away with every blow - these things are just part of the world as presented to you.  These are your "received values."

People raised by narcissists receive the values through a megaphone, because a narcissist makes the outside world responsible for their self-worth.  What does a narcissist value?  Only one thing: supply, or emotional sustenance.  It's not the same as being energized by the company of friends - that, hopefully, is a symbiotic thing, each of you supporting one another and giving one another energy in different ways that aren't deleterious to either of you.

Narcissistic supply doesn't have to be positive.  Supply is provided any time the narcissist can feel that they are central to others' lives.  Their centrality, the extent to which they feel important and focused on, is the measure of their self-worth.  If they feel neglected, they act out to increase the flow of attention and emotional energy their way, whether this means asserting dominance, provoking others, or demanding their love and devotion.

you are valuable to the extent that you forget who you are

So the narcissist values supply.  Their emotional state, their relationships, their worldview and view of themselves as a person are all dependent on that supply gauge.  Which means that if you're a narcissist's child, what your parent taught you is that you are valuable to the extent you provide supply.  To the extent you make your parent feel central to your life and identity, you’re loved.  In a very literal way, you are valuable to the extent that you forget yourself.

The problem with this - besides all of it - is narcissistic supply isn't the same thing as emotional support.  It's like living on popcorn.  It fills you up, but it's mostly air - you'll need more in ten minutes.  So you might learn to supply your abuser with what they need, but as soon as it becomes routine, the demands will change.

This makes every interaction an adversarial game: can you divine what they’ll require next, and assume the appropriate position in time, or will you make a mistake?  In a way, it doesn't matter - either provides supply.  Either you scramble and attend to their needs, or you’re in trouble for not scrambling.  Either one reinforces their starring role in your life.

manipulate me for my comfort, but don't you care let me catch you at it

On my last day with her, my therapist told me something that made me cry (she’s good at that).  She said, “Even before we’re born, we are promised that we will be loved.  Our bodies know we can’t survive without help.  We’re born expecting our parents will love us, but we’re not told what that love will look like when it comes.  So we take what our family gives us, and we call that love.  When we grow up and go looking for love out in the world, that’s what we look for - more of what we recognize.”

If you grow up being told that narcissism or abuse is what love looks like, how is interacting going to feel to you?  Interaction isn't a source of solace, or support - it's like being in the room with a hungry animal, something unpredictable that you must nonetheless predict in order to be safe.  And when you try out the dubious skills you've learned on people outside the family, they call you passive-aggressive and manipulative.  That's how it works.  That's the narcissist's edict: Manipulate me for my comfort, but don't you dare let me catch you at it.

You learn a lot from this, growing up.  A lot of untrue things that later you'll have to unlearn, things like:

• All interactions involve layer upon layer of emotional sparring that you will be punished for winning or losing.

• All interactions are one person trying to get supply from the other, trying to drain their emotional energy. At best, every conversation is a zero-sum negotiation.

• Your value to others is the amount of selfless energy you can provide them.

• No one is ever being dishonest or emotionally manipulative except you. We have no idea where you learned that.

• No one is interested in anything but themselves.

• As a result, every second you spend expressing yourself in another person's presence, rather than reflecting on and attending to them, is a drain on them that you must repay.

• Your inability to manage this situation with eagerness and enthusiasm is a disease that we need to cure for you to be normal and therefore loved.

Here we are.  If this is what a conversation feels like to you, even with people you care about, why would you want to interact at all?  Why wouldn't you count the cost of it every second?  Why wouldn't you be certain everyone else is doing the same, and why wouldn't you, each and every time, come up short in that calculation?  You always have before.

Do What the Narcissist Can't

To get out of this life-sucking trap, where every notification makes you twitch and every phone call gives you a sick feeling of misery and shame as you stare at the phone, still not answering...  To get out of this state, you have to do what the narcissist can't: find self-worth that doesn't rely on another person to survive.  

I think self-worth, strangely enough, is a thing you build from the edges in, like a puzzle.  It's going to be a very long time before you can envision the face of the person you'd like to be, who doesn't live in this trap, who can love and be loved without counting the cost.

But you don't have to envision their face.  Start with the edges.  Learn who that person is by watching their effect on the world.  You can't help acting out your values, any more than your parents could, and I think you'll find that yours are not just the ones you were given, no matter how much effort was spent indoctrinating you.  I think you'll find that when you felt supported, when you felt safe, when you were able to choose instead of react... your choices reflected the person you want to be.  What does that person seem to value?  How do they treat people?  Do they make others responsible for their pain, or do they strive to give more than they take, even if they don't always succeed?

I'm going to bet that person is worthy of love.  I bet if you saw another person making the choices you've made, you wouldn't even question whether that person was worthy.  Start from that value - you are worthy of love.  No one can diminish your value, and no one can increase it.  You are not required to bleed for those you love.  That's not what we preach here.

love isn't something you give or take... it's something you do

Love can be painful, it can be stressful, but it is not adversarial.  They say all relationships are work, and they kick that one around the internet arguing whether it should or shouldn't be so.  I'm gonna clarify it by generalizing like hell: everything in the world is work.  Only a tree gets to just sit and soak up nutrients.  All the rest of us have to get off our butts.  When the person next to you has the same goal in mind and is helping, work goes fast and doesn't feel like work.  When the person next to you isn't helping, or is working in a different direction, it will feel like every slogging, unproductive step is on you.

It's not, though.  Love isn't something you give or take - it's something you do.  Do it for yourself first, and then if someone ain't doing it for you, don't do it back.