If you are a person who strives to avoid spending time with your closest family members at all costs in order to avoid family fights and stress, news about extreme weather events like large-scale flooding, hurricanes, and snowstorms on the horizon are likely to give you pause that requires a physical heebie-jeebie style shudder to shake the horror feelings physically out of your body.
In a world where it’s easy to excuse yourself from time with the family by making excuses like you have to run errands or that you are needed at work, being on extreme weather warnings or martial law lockdown trapped in a home or hotel room or at a shelter with people who you struggle to tolerate can produce serious physical stress.
Imagine the scenario for a Narcissistic Abuse victim — especially for one targeted for the most pervasive abuse as the family scapegoat for being the most emotionally healthy and a People Pleaser.
First, you are likely to be relied upon to ensure everyone else’s needs are met at the direct expense of your own. Then you are likely to be ridiculed and openly insulted for not doing a good enough job to please unpleasable people.
Locked in a house with someone prone to violent physical — rather than simple verbal outbursts — is worse. Especially when their routines are disturbed by things like power outages.
Remember how angry they get when someone dares to touch the remote control on the television — even if they are not watching whatever is on or paying any attention to the program? Imagine how triggered and prone to rage they are when they cannot have access to literally any of their favorite or preferred programming.
If you have never been present when someone ASPD is not allowed to watch sports, for instance, or when Mommy Dearest grandma is unable to watch “her shows”.
No Monday Night football or Sunday afternoon game for Bad Grandpa or Wheel of Fortune and NCIS for Grouchie Granny, no peace or emotional security for anyone else psychologically exposed to them or physically present to witness their obnoxious and utterly childish, ranting and deplorable egocentric and utterly irrational tantrum behaviors.
No heat? God forbid the family unit bundle up, get creative, and keep warm in stride.
No air conditioning during a weather event like a Tropical Storm or Hurricane? Sitting around beaching and keeping the focus of the conversation on misery at all times makes time spent during the tragedy seeming like endless hours of nothing more than a predatory posse ungrateful for whatever safety and shelter they have sitting around insulting God for allowing them so thoughtfully to have the physical opportunity to remain somehow magically alive.
As people with short tempers are forced to face stress… including fears about income lost due to missing work because of an event… those who are prone to violence or teetering on the edge tend to get hyper obnoxious towards the people who are (at least on paper) their closest blood relatives, people they consider family (like love interests), and with their best friends.
A wife abandoned during a storm physically by a man who absolutely hates being home with her and the kids is likely to experience enormous duress. Expect her to lash out against everyone — including him — if he fails to appear home to pretend to be her knight in shining armor if all he has to wear is tin foil.
If mama ain’t happy… and she happens to be Cluster B… there will be nothing anyone in the family can do or say to entice the unexpectedly storm caged animal to use her words to do anything but to manufacture social and emotional chaos while she harms everyone verbally.
If Passive-Aggressive Dad does not want to be home to listen to an Alpha female social predator’s non-stop endless attention-demanding running mouth… understand the Enabling Henchman will either find an excuse to justify why he’s not bothering to come home (without ending the romantic and social obligation) or he will show up there, do her bidding in silence, and the minute roads are cleared expect him to beat feet out of the house whether his assistance is still needed with clean up at the home from the storm or not.
Serial Cheaters love weather events they can intentionally manage to stay away from home to avoid. “Why didn’t I call when I was out of town? I tried honey — but the phones were down.”
Or, “Sheesh — I am so sorry… my battery was dead or I lost my phone and did not realize it. I was waiting for you to call me first!”
Yeah… about that.
Insert appropriate facial expression of narrowing eyes into a squint.
But don’t worry “Wifey” — Serial Cheater man knows that every time he drops his end of responsibility with the house, marriage, and lets down the kids that she will not only do her share of the emotional heavy lifting but also his. And all of the manual labor involved. Because people who are groomed to enable Serial Cheater males like pretending that they are Wonder Moms and trophy wives… not realizing how much of an insult it is when he brags to family and friends that it’s “cheaper to keep her” than to actually show her enough respect to divorce her.
Husbands married to abusive women are in for a real treat any time a weather event keeps them tethered to the home and to the edge of her extreme weather clothes. While she bellows and fails to show any appreciation for his efforts striving to save the home and her personal property at his own physical and psychological expense, you see him hang his head down and self-esteem roll in at the shoulders. He keeps working through the storm on things like property care outside whenever possible so he does not have to be INSIDE the house, trapped indoors, and forced to listen to her endless prattling nonsensical crap.
Children who are egocentric and under the age of six are normally a challenge to deal with under the best of circumstances. But when they are exposed to a shift in routine and they are not properly trained socially and emotionally how to cope or they are experiencing extreme weather events for the first time in their life are a toss-up for behavior.
But whatever the case, parent stressors like fear about being injured or loss of home and finances are likely to make even the best adulting adult in charge of little one’s care a bit more on edge than normal (if not openly testy). As such children often end up annoying adults who are already under stress the kids cannot understand because they lack social insight into real-world emotional and social problems faced by adults.
That means more trauma exposures in closed space environments with parents over the top disciplining just to get antagonists to behave in a socially cooperative manner and to hush.
Hard to call a domestic violence advocate for assistance or comfort when phone lines are down, the Abuser is in the house, and roads in and out of the town or area where you happen to live are closed for safety and civil law enforcement purposes. Harder knowing that if you need to call anyone or to plan an escape that there’s no one to call and even if you were able to reach a support person that there’s no physical way to get out or to assist.
If you are dreading being forced to sit and wait out a storm trapped in the same social vicinity of people who you can tolerate in small doses only… know you are not alone in the realization that Mother Nature is likely unaware of your predicament.
Remember — every time one of these big storms blow through life it’s an opportunity to self-reflect and to mindfully shift lifestyle patterns.
If you are stuck in your life right now, groomed to believe that in order to be a good person and to “get into heaven” or to be “rewarded in the afterlife” that you must tolerate shoddy treatment and enable Social Predators with Cluster B personality types… but you are aware of the problem and have come across this article feel comfortable seeing it as a sign that life is going to improve for you whenever you are ready.
Most people who stay socially enmeshed with toxic family units but are not the type of people to dish out abuse have never been educated about how to groom Stockholm Syndrome in targeted marks on purpose. Once they do a little reading about the types of words and phrases used to get people to by free will choice enable Abusers and those Enablers who intentionally abuse by proxy and neglect targeted individuals or peer groups by stereotype to win the social favor and approval of Alpha predators like Beta support professionals, it is hard to unsee or unhear when problem people start spinning alternative facts and striving to control other people’s thoughts and emotional decisions by gaslighting them into private and public submission.
This storm — ride it out. Keep your head down and do whatever is necessary aside from committing suicide to survive the extreme weather event with grace and ease.
Best advice packing and preparing to ride out a storm?
Headphones and something to plug them into. Preferably with batteries.
But if the batteries run out, don’t let on that they have.
That way you can at least keep earbuds in your ears or a set of headphones on to force anyone antagonistic either to have to repeat themselves exactly if they say something ugly or provocative. And then there will be no question in your mind whether or not they meant what they said and understood the words they were choosing.
Avoid any form of argument or debate when you cannot get physically away.
If they provoke, rather than reacting feeling compelled to interact… go gray rock, make mental note of the symptom, name the abuse tactic or tactics used as a provocation or the triggering event or old hurt used to aggress you with bait, document the event in your abuse journal on paper in whatever code talk you devise to keep your information and thoughts private (only understood by yourself first for safety) until you have access to electricity and to the internet in order to be able to safely save life notes online, and do whatever is necessary to stay busy doing something that is physically observable relieving THEIR stress.
Trapped with a Cluster B person is the only time our staff recommends an abuse target not engage in any form of reaction or impulsive debate with them whatsoever. Under normal circumstances, if a person who has temper issues is confronted, one knows if the situation escalates from them striving to provoke a family fight or a violent incident to actually succeeding that 911 is available and likely neighbors are home nearby to assist or to socially and physically respond to a victim.
But that’s not the case, always, during an extreme weather event.
Neighbors board up their home and head to a hotel or to go stay with others, leaving their homes and the neighborhood Good Samaritan vacant. And police are likely to be responding to people who are having medical crises and to incidents related to traffic and safety issues on the highway.
They don’t have time to show up at your house because some ASPD individual punches a hole in the wall or tries to strangle a love interest who intentionally cared more about trying to provoke an argument in order to net gain a sense of power or control over other people’s time and attention by poking hornet’s nests with sticks to alleviate boredom by hyperadrenalizing.
And yes…
We all have done it — standing up to people dishing out verbal abuse when our emotional body and human dignity cannot take any more stress. But when it comes to riding out storms related to weather… understand — trapped with someone prone to social or physical violence during any tragedy caused by Mother Nature’s upset is the right time for self-protective, survival instincts — not football offense style fight mechanisms — to physically kick in.
Gray Rock. Observe and document rather than personalize and react.
Survive the storm of emotion some other day. This storm… keep your focus on doing whatever it takes to make it through the weather event with as much EXTREME GRACE AND EASE as you can physically present.
And know this…
You WILL more than likely end up with situationally specific PTSD related to weather events if you happen to experience a hurricane, flood incident, or big snowstorm locked in a home or a hotel with anyone Cluster B. Why? Because when they are knocked off their traditional routines and schedules it caused them a physical sensation like when an OCD person does not get their way due to circumstance.
If you are lucky you will end up with at least one member of the family who is ASPD due to trauma exposure who loves storm and the opportunity to play the hero situationally. Those folks tend to be the most fun to stay with during storms — the type who prep all year for being able to go tour the community in vehicles designed to make it through snow, ice, and or high water.
The people who are interested in hyperadrenalizing by heading out during storms to rescue and assist other people tend to be ASPD-Sociopath and groomed Psychopaths or Traumatized Empaths by nature. We are adding a note about this to say thank you to them for not staying home to argue with or to stress out their loved ones who don’t share their same countenance.
Sociopaths who are that way due to trauma exposure — lacking normal EQ or ability to process complex emotion — actually have the opportunity to step up to the plate and to do the right thing during crisis situations. Most are incredibly effective in the community when they do.
The advantage of being emotionally flat-lined in the face of things like physical fear is people are able to get in and to do whatever is necessary to do. Firemen, law enforcement, medical providers, and road warriors who assist — all deserve extra praise and credit for all that they do to ensure during a crisis that emergency personnel who are trained to do things like stabilizing someone medically in the field can get from point A to the patient at point B without getting hurt.
If you are an Empath and CAN physically volunteer at shelters or in the community in ways that don’t create a burden on rescue personnel by getting yourself stranded or hurt trying to assist other people, find a way. If you can’t escape your family because they really do “need” you at home for things like property care and emotional comfort of all involved, strive to keep your focus on pro-social activities like thinking supportive thoughts for all outdoors and involved.
For everything else?
Choose to emotionally as well as to intellectually ski or surf. Ain’t nobody got time during a crisis for egocentrism, for personalization of other people’s angsty behavior, or for jerks.
You can survive the storm — and, with mindful focus, you will be able to minimize or to eliminate all forms of PTSD related to this particular (if not all of your past storm) life experience. Enjoy your time off from work and the change of pace to the best of your ability while Mother Nature cleans house, dusts off buildings, and gives all of the streets and trees a good washing.
And remember…
If your wife tells you something is wrong with the weather, the sky turns a funny yellow, and everything starts to get an eerie calm or a wind that does not draw air in a typical fashion… crack your windows. Seriously. You are likely to be in the path of a tornado.
Guys — help her. Stop ridiculing her intuition and mocking her.
