Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive - relates to thoughts, thinking and figuring things out.

Dissonance - relates to lack of agreement.

The term cognitive dissonance describes having two conflicting thoughts or beliefs.

E.g. I believed my wife’s latest outburst was a result of her not having her morning coffee yet (because she said so).

Thought 1:

She’s horrible, this is wrong.

Thought 2:

She’s not horrible, she just needs coffee.

Which is it? It’s confusing. Both are plausible but they don’t align.

I see that it’s wrong. I see that it’s justified. It’s confusing because both seem like valid thoughts but they conflict with each other.

I never saw this

I now realize that what I’m about to talk about here are clear examples of where “cognitive dissonance” may surface (for both of us). But before I was able to tune into it, I never saw it, I just had no idea. It was all just part of the white noise and sadness.

Vacillating between attacking and seeking sympathy

One of the big ones in this regard for me was where Susan would be attacking me. Slow rumblings, threatening and menacing, hateful, hissing. If somebody could see her but not hear her, her demeanor would suggest that she was being threatening to me. My demeanor might suggest that I was upset by it.
However, if suddenly the person could un-mute they might be surprized to hear that she was toggling back and forth continually between

“I want you gone out of this f***ing house by Friday” (attacking)

to

“you’re so hostile to me” (sympathy/victim)

back to

“you’re not allowed to touch MY kettle” (attacking)

to

“and you wouldn’t even make me a cup of tea” (sympathy/victim)

back to

“you’re a useless father” (attacking)

to

“get Emma out of my sight” (Err… I thought I was a useless father?)

back to

“I hate you” (attack)

to

“Why do you hate me?” (sympathy/victim)

Another example of it is:

“And I wouldn’t be so angry all the time… If you’d just…”

“If you hadn’t … I wouldn’t have…”

With venom and cruel belligerence:

“You never got me the help I needed” This one was particularly confusing because she was being both the victim and the aggressor at the same time.

And another

“I do all the cooking, yea all of it, you do hardly any”. Yet I’m cooking at the time. It’s convincing stuff but it’s not the reality.

One more

Susan phones me (and phones me and phones me). I get up off my knees where I’m participating in a teddy bear tea party, stiff and half crippled taking care not to send plastic cups flying in the process, I answer the phone, Susan rages at me saying…

“I’ll be spending time with Emma today. You have to go, I want you out of the house. Got it? I need to spend some time with her”.

When I ask her what time she’ll be home for the said “spending-time” she informs me it’ll be after her hair appointment and after meeting her friends and blah blah. In other words, pie in the sky stuff, not happening. This must be creating cognitive dissonance for her (and for me if I weren’t so used to this bullshit). She’s saying one thing and doing the complete opposite.

Magical fantasy thinking

She proclaims that she’s a clean freak, yet she creates a mess every morning preparing lunch. I routinely clean the mess. She accuses me of being dirty and messy. Yet she commands that I’m not allowed to use any of “her” cleaning products.
There are many contradictions there that lead to significant cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is extremely confusing because observations conflict with the belief that is being enforced through her controlling crap.

Both thoughts appear valid, credible and correct. When in the throws of it, it’s generally not obvious at all that one of them is often total and utter bullshit.

Done on purpose?

Is it done on purpose by Susan and others like her as part of master plan to confuse the life out of me/you?
Nope, not for a second. It’s just part of the erratic chaos. On reflection it seems completely illogical. But keep in mind, that is the normal perspective. Seen from the narcissistic perspective where you were put on this earth to serve her, it’s quite possibly all perfectly logical.