Radio Embed: Golden Uteruses, the Cult of Mommy-hood and Mary Richardson Kennedy
Thank you to everyone who logged in and listened to last night’s program live. Thanks also to the folks in the chat room and, of course, our callers.
We discussed the Mary Richardson Kennedy suicide, Borderline Personality Disorder, high-conflict divorce, domestic violence, child abuse and many other topics.
For those of you who weren’t able to catch the show live, here’s the embed:
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7 Responses to “Radio Embed: Golden Uteruses, the Cult of Mommy-hood and Mary Richardson Kennedy”
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The show went great, my only complaint is that they are not more often. That being said, I would like to hear more about the mutt walks.
Off topic, just a thought….
While I read about certain forms of abusive, destructive and self absorbed patterns here on Tara’s blog and elsewhere, in my quest for a better understanding, I come to think that there is a educational deficit hampering generations.
Allow me to briefly explain in a greater societal context.
We all know about the current so called financial crisis, personally I prefer the term coup d’état, but this would be an entirely different thing to discuss. We all heard about our natural resources declining or perhaps I should say, the way we are exploiting in medium term unsustainable ways, how we treat life stock to provide meat as food, how we manipulate plants to increase yields, all these things have an impact on our societal wellbeing, structures and interactions, and often what I observe is a certain lack of empathy when it comes to all these things.
Empathy you may ask? Empathy with cattle or crop? Not necessarily, but much more so empathy for future generations, what the Iroquois people refer to as seventh generation sustainability, to think and act in ways that consider the wellbeing of the seventh from where we are, to me personally this is a deeply ethical and highly evolved way of thinking and acting.
However, we live in the ME age, the iEverything age, and millions of people follow new age cult celebrities like Doreen Virtue, Louis Hay and others – shaking head in disbelief – in what I would call the church of the narcissists.
Narcissism is a required part of human psychogenesis, child development, and if certain phase mirrored reactions are blocked (Kohut et al.), later in like unhealthy narcissistic traits can develop, and what seems to be a case, is an increasing amount of such self absorbed people to be around us. (Without hard data here!)
Ultimately, I come to think, Tara’s and other work here is really of high importance in a greater context, because only if the next generation of people raises their children to see beyond themselves, only then there is hope for change.
Just a thought…
x x x x
As for victims who suffer from the fall out of abuse and find it difficult to step away from it, here is a thought for you.
Real change is never easy. Defense mechanisms we internalized as patterns are strong. Equally strong can be the pull towards the abusive person, which can be a pattern in itself.
If this was a longer term situation for you, you may want to consider this. Your behavior has been trained and internalized to a certain degree when it comes to the relationship to the abusive person, in some ways I would describe these reactions as symptomatic.
To change them, stop before you make a move, and listen to your inner self, question what you have to loose or what you fear of you would NOT react this way now, and then act different. You will find that by allowing yourself to “listen” to your inner conflict you can get rid of such patterns and change in a positive way for yourself.
Having said that, be aware there are neurological aspects involved, all this is NOT easy. Look at it like a Piano player – I happen to be one – a wrong note you trained has to be retrained. So you go over the same bars over and over again to have the finger hit the right note, and eventually, you need not to think about it anymore, and the finger will hit the right note, you retrained your brain.
The same applies for the changes I wrote about above, you have to retrain yourself, and every time you do it, it is that little but easier.
All my best
Shadow
Hi Shadow, good post. You’re onto something there. IMHO, the lack of empathy and sustainability is do to the emergence of the ‘dominator’ culture, or, social darwinism. The borderlines and other sociopaths are social darwinists; everything is a competition, its a zero-sum game (I win, you lose). Take or be taken. Really a very sad and unsustainable way to live.
I believe this is one of the roots of the problems. I believe many of these folks have genetic predispositions to sociopathology, are/were traumatized in some way in childhood (usually some kind of parental rejection or abandonment), and then grow into the invalidator/sociopath/borderline they are today in adulthood. Then you throw into the equation the wealthiest society in history, a social and legal system that favors dominators, particularly female predatory behavior, and wah-lah! A great environment for bullies and sociopaths to operate in.
Wow!! Isn’t it amazing how we have been quieted by our abusors? I have just discovered this site and I can’t stop reading it. Thank you Dr. T for bringing this to the forefront.
After reading a lot of material here I am still bothered with something. This behavior describes my wife literally to a tee. She fits all of the BPD diagnoses (except for infidelity). But what is strange is that she has since changed. After about two years of marriage I had put my foot down and it really seemed like things were improving. She always knew what to say and apologize if I would bring up divorce but the behavior would just continue asks always more and more irrational. The question is what if someone has mild BPD? Is that possible? She is not nearly as bad as she used to be about three years ago but the control, withholding sex, and incessant nagging is still there. She refused to go to marriage counseling with me until two months ago and now claims that my recent weight gain (10 pounds, while she is pregnant) turns her off sexually.
Is this the classic BPD? Should I run for my life?
Hey 4real. Sorry to hear you are having these issues but I think you have come to a good place for info.
Your story sounds a lot like me. She also fit to a tee and I also thought no infidelity. After the fact… now I am not so sure.
To answer your question about mild BPD. Unfortunately my STBX found out that I had been researching BPD and brought it up in our Marriage Counseling (as well as constantly yelling at me about diagnosing her without a PhD). The counselor was actually pretty fair to me. Much different from what I have heard from a lot of other guys. Anyway, the counselor said something that made sense to me in that yes, there is a continuum as far as severity of the condition. So, your wife could have a mild condition. She could also be aware of it and trying to work on her behavior.
The question I have is if it is bad enough that you are here reading all this stuff she probably has tendencies. Where there is smoke there is fire they say. You should talk to Dr. Tara or another professional about what makes you unhappy and whether you should try to live with it.
So, it seems you have set borders and that works somewhat. I did the same with the same results. However, I did not want to live my life constantly enforcing boundaries. I believe that in a partnership you shouldn’t have to constantly threaten to leave to gain power in decision making – it should be shared. In addition, I was not willing to go along to get along any longer. I truly believe that both options were bad. If I maintained boundaries it would be constant fighting and turbulence eventually leading to divorce. If I was a pushover she would get bored with me and eventually find someone else and I would be even worse off. So I picked the third rail and geared up for divorce.
Either way the kids were in the middle and it sucked for them.
Good luck with what you decide.
4Real, as I’ve said to others here doubting what to do: GTFO (Get The F— Out). If you can’t/won’t do that, then at a very minimum creat a serious exit strategy. Otherwise, you’re probably going to live years or decades in misery and declining physical, mental and financial health. My ex could be the sweetest, most sensual and caring person…when she wanted to…when she wanted something or needed something. So I would always go back for more…and more. Really wish I had paid attention to instinct and bit the bullet early in the relationship. It sucks at first to breakup/escape/exit, but in hindsight you’ll thank yourself. Its just not worth staying.
Any behavior or psychological condition is a multi-dimensional continuum. With this in mind, there are people who exhibit BPD behavior, but aren’t BPD and people who are “mild” borderline (for lack of a better phrase, borderline borderline) such as my ex-wife and many others who have visited here. The difference is that BPDs are sociopaths–you cannot reason with them.
I believe that the most universal behavior of BPDs is adaptability. It’s rarely, if ever, conscious–they just have a scary good ability to mimic normality. They get better, sometimes much better, with age. But they can’t sustain it.
In short, run for your life.