Closure

Many victims from Toxic Dysfunctional Relationships ask about closure from the abuser. One thing I have learned about those who suffer from a Personality Disorder is that they don't accept responsibility and will project blame onto others for mistakes within that relationship. Also, such as a NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder) you were once a source of supply (Narcissistic Supply) for them and may also have help them and assisted them with money attention or whatever they were looking for in you. So closure isn't something they want plus it's too much like giving and remember they don't share anything. No, sorry but if you want any type of closure. Then you will have to give it to your-self. Closure is within you and due to it being so personal it must come within your own mind body and soul. I like to list a few types of closure I have experience in my own personal healing and self empowerment.

The closure of a relationship born in lies will die a thousand deaths.

Closure for me came in parts. What I mean is whenever I accept a part of my own reality as too what I was dealing with and then accept that new part of reality for myself I gain a portion of a personal closure. One part I would like too share is just how dysfunctional and toxic my life had become due to having an dysfunctional and toxic relationship with someone who will never be able to accept her part and responsibility in a normal and functional relationship. How this person never wanted to change even through on many times she acted as she could. Yes, three times we attended therapy but never once did she see her part and responsibility in this relationship. By giving false hope in a relationship doom to fail is both toxic and dysfunctional. Closure came when I accepted this reality and knew it was time to walk away then once and for all to allow this lie of even being able to have a relationship with my ex to ever becoming a reality for us. 

The closure of what is wrong with me?

Once I accepted the reality that this relationship was doom from the beginning I wonder what's wrong with me. So then closure came in portions of questions. Real soul searching questions. Many of these answers took me back to my own childhood and the relationships I had with those who raised me. Accepting the reality that I was raised in a toxic and dysfunctional family environment since birth. Wondering why my birth mother left me as a child. Why my father was unable to love me due to having an chemical dependency. Sad days as a child that the only thing I wanted for Christmas were parents due to having too live in a foster home with people who nether love me nor care about me. Having lost all contact with my siblings, the very first relationships I had as a new born. It's no wonder why my own personal goal was to have my "own" family even as a young child. Accepting the reality that I was not only psychologically and emotionally abuse but also sexually abused as a child. Yes, dear readers there is much wrong with me and as I started to accept my own reality and responsibility of these types of abuse. Only then did both healing and closure was allow to happen within me. That this child yet still remain inside of me, needed both love too heal and allow to love back with forgiveness and the knowledge of abuse that did happen to him. That this broken child can be heal and allow to become no longer the victim but a survivor. Maybe this is why my lord and savior asked of me to forgive my enemies for only then can real closure and acceptance happen within our souls?

The closure of a cycle of abuse.

I have to be able to see and acknowledge abuse whenever it happen to anyone I love care about or even a stranger in a strange land. I needed to stop the cycle of abuse. My own personal acceptance and acknowledgment of my own abuse on others. I had to understand that if I abuse anyone at anytime during this life, I must go to them and beg for their forgiveness. Pride is a dog that needs a master and training. I came to understand that the only way to stop abusive behavior begins with me and then ends with me. If I don't allow abuse within me do you think I would allow it in others? If I want abuse to end then I must become a example of a person that will never tolerate abuse in my personal life and more importantly in myself, therefore I must lead by example. Words are easy but actions are stronger and longer lasting. If I want abuse to end, then I must understand my own personal responsibility for it's existence. The cycle of abuse ends only when it begins with me and will end with me. A closure of both personal acceptance and responsibility for ending abusive behavior in myself but also in others. Abuse comes in many forms so that one must be open too all types of abuse. So like a small fire if one see abuse, then stamp it out for if not then it came grow just like a forest fire. So I need to lead by example and hope others will follow to end this cycle of abuse.

The closure of self forgiveness and acceptance

While forgiveness comes from both God and people, I came to understand how I needed to forgive myself for wrong done to others and myself. Isn't beating yourself up and not letting go of these wrong a form of self abuse? I believe in is. The acceptance that I am not a perfect person and can and do abuse others is a personal reality and one I must take personal responsibility for. While I desirer to be the best father possible I understand and acknowledge that I not. While I want to be the best possible partner possible at times, the truth is I'm simple am not. So while I must go to those I wrong for forgiveness and how I must understand that I need to try harder, still with the understanding that I have limitation and many personal flaws within me. Self forgiveness and self acceptance is a form of self love. If I can't forgive and accept this limitation in myself, how can I forgive and accept that in others. If one can forgive one self then one can forgive others, if one can accept limitations in one self then on can accept that in others and then and only then if one can love one self then they will be able to love others.

 

Cause and Effect

Whenever we come into contact with anyone, it will always come with the Cause and Effect factors. With Compassionate loving and open people we share this trait with them if we too have these attributes to share. With a co-partner with empathy and love can contribute much to our growth albeit emotionally psychologically and spiritually. Which in part we must give back to them.

But the Cause and Effect from a toxic dysfunctional partner brings about a different beginning and then end...

Those that suffer from a personality disorder bring little and then nothing more to a relationship. Much as a parasite, they will feed on the co-partner by taking more and more. A PD (personality disorder) like one that suffers from the cluster B has lost the ability to grow and learn from mistakes they made from other relationships. Because much like the NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder), He/She had to learn to survive from a defense stand learned early in life from their parent(s) and/or caretaker. All Children are born with this Narcissistic defense due to it being important to their very mortality and survivor. It's not a learned trait; it is an inherent ability from a long history of mankind.

Soon our children mature and learn that they are not the center of all things. That mother and father too have their own needs emotions both positive and negative. This Narcissistic shield that the child is born with, gets chip away little by little as they grow, until there is but a small amount left to insure a healthy normal self-respect. It's this "chipping" away effect that causes the young person to know and feel empathy for others..

But for those who suffer from a personality disorder, something within that child goes wrong. Having suffers from those who should have protected the child, this effect didn't happen. The person who should have loved that child didn't, so again this effect never happened. Instead of building up the child, it was used and sometimes even abused. Again this had a deep effect on that child.

So this child learned not to open up to that parent(s) or caretaker. So many times it only cause that child pain albeit emotionally and psychologically. This child learned early on to depend only on it self. The child has learned early to be what the parent(s) or caretaker wants for any type of acknowledgment or attention from them. The child learns to pretend lie and manipulate to get what she/he wants. All of this and more have caused this child to remain in a Narcissistic shell, protected from a hostile and unwelcoming environment.

Love it-self has for this child becomes a lie and a weakness. As this child becomes an adult, He/She will build yet more walls due to all of the lies and so many secrets they them self have. The Causes of suffering from a personality disorder is many and we are still learning more and more year by year. It's not sure what percentage is environmental and what is inherent. But the effect(s) on a child born within a dysfunctional toxic family can cause that child to become just as toxic and dysfunctional as their parent(s) or caretaker.

Still most of my concern and attention goes to the many victims. Much like myself, I too must look deep within my self and inner child. Searching for my own "Cause and Effect" of a childhood born into it's own dysfunctional toxic family. We know that a cause and effect from this dysfunctional toxic parent(s) can cause the child to suffer from a personality disorder, but it can also have the ability to have a broken child to become a victim as well. Some of us from these types of dysfunctional homes spend the rest of our life looking for what we didn't get from our parent(s). We have been condition to look for people like our dysfunctional parent(s). That in a way by "helping" them we can somehow correct the mistakes our parent(s) made on us. By loving the unlovable, we will be loved by a parent unable to love us. By fixing them (PD) we can somehow turn back the clock of time with our dysfunctional and unlovable parent(s).

A very good piece on this is from Joanna Ashmun web site Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD): How to recognize a Narcissist.

“If you're reading this because of problems with someone you know now, the chances are excellent that one or both of your parents was a narcissist. Narcissists are so much trouble that only people with special prior training (i.e., who were raised by narcissists) get seriously involved with them. Sometimes narcissists' children become narcissists, too, but this is by no means inevitable, provided stable love was given by someone, such as the non-narcissist parent or grandparents. Beyond that, a happy marriage will heal many old wounds for the narcissist's child. But, even though children of narcissists don't automatically become narcissists themselves and can survive with enough intact psychically to lead happy and productive lives away from their narcissistic parents, because we all love our parents whether they can love us back or not, children of narcissists are kind of bent -- "You can't get blood out of a stone," but children of narcissists keep trying, as if by bonding with new narcissists we could somehow cure our narcissistic parents by finding the key to their heart. Thus, we've been trained to keep loving people who can't love us back, and we will often tolerate or actively work to maintain connections with narcissistic individuals whom others, lacking our special training, find alienating and repellent from first contact, setting ourselves up to be hurt yet again in the same old way.”

Only by learning this flaw within ourselves and correcting it will we begin to understand that we need to love ourselves first, so that then we can give it to others. If we want to stop being the "victim", then we must stop putting ourselves in positions where we can be come victimized. What is needed here is a strong understanding of boundaries and healthy self-esteem. That we acknowledge we are part of the problem but we also can become the solution too this broken dysfunctional record being recycled over and over again within relationships where both love and respect for the other doesn’t exist. That giving and never getting any type of exchange from our effort is wrong on so many levels.

We don’t work on others that we can’t fix; no we start working on ourselves where it can and needs to be fixed. We stop being the victim (broken child) and then begin being the survivor from a broken home and dysfunctional relationship we had with our parent(s) or caretakers. We began to understand the Causes and then the Effects in our personal life, accepting the fact we are part of the problem but also the solution to this cause and effect. One thing that separates all of us from each other is secrets and lies. So that we must rid ourselves of all personal secrets and all the lies we tell ourselves so then lost of those regrets will follow..

If only our counter-parts the abuser can learn this, then and only then will they too rid themselves of all secrets and many personal regrets.

What it Feels like to be Me