Mumsnet FWR Guide to De-Programming Yourself From Self-Harming Kindness

Beryl manifests differently in all of us.

Hi keepers of Beryl.

Could I ask a question please?

I have a Beryl but she doesn't come out for my husband or dc.

She comes out for other females and sometimes, though more rarely, men who are alpha types like fil.

I am not meek or shy. But i am absolutely not able to represent my interests in a group of women or with individual women e.g female relatives or friends.

I have made the experience that when I make suggestions or state my preferences, women turn away, seem cross or put out and I basically sense rejection.

As a consequence, I agree to things I don't want to do or agree to doing them in a way that doesn't work for me. Is this something a Beryl might do or do we need a new name and thread for this behaviour?.

Are Breyls sensitive to female group mentality and the perils of being ostracised if we don't go ahead with what the group 'influencers' want?

I don't think it is helpful captainproton to be prescriptive of how labour should be divided. The word 'should' is kryptonite to people trying to overcome Beryl.

I agree with captainproton. There is a huge difference bewteen the healthy behaviour described in that post and the "pro-Beryl" posts.

"Beryl" is not a good thing either for Beryl or Beryl's children. Beryl is like an addiction and needs to be recognised as such.

Angel yey to bringing back Beryl to her roots and teaching her to stand up for herself and Dust same for me tbh and it hating Beryl is looking like mysogony to me too.

Today I sat near the river and started to think about my relationship with Beryl over the years.

She used to make me happy. I used to feel like kindness is a driving force in the world, in relationships and so on. So Beryl was my inspiration.

But the resentment grew over the years only when Life forced me to have to choose between Beryl and myself. And I resented that I chose Beryl.

It’s not Beryl I should resent. It’s the fact I needed to make a choice in the first place.

I was trying to think hard about how self centred entitlement emerges.

I’m of the believe that ancient patriarchy harmed men with rediculous expectations as well as women.

I believe when a child is told they’re expected to “man up” in situations beyond their control, or when their emotions aren’t tended to as they should because we should “let him be a man”. I think that tends to let the child rely on their survival instincts earlier than they should ...

And when someone is in survival mode, they can hardly be thinkng about anyone but themselves. They had to put themselves first.

I’m not a male apologist. But I have a baby boy, and to me he looks like an innocent angel. He is tiny yet looks out for me and is happy when I’m happy and sad when I’m sad.

One day he will be a man in a relationship. One day he will be an entitled toddler.

Perhaps self-centred entitlement is a phenomena of a child that didn’t have the chance to be nurtured and matured in a loving environment.

Why would I want to trade my loving Beryl for that?

I’d rather just teach my Beryl, that if she wanted to survive and not get burnt out, she should realise that she has limits to how much she can give and that letting an entitled brat be the centre of her focus will just wear her out from those that truly deserve her.

There is nothing wrong for caring and doing things for others because you want to, because you love them. Likewise if you are a sahm and you don’t have little babies anymore you should really be the one doing the lions share of housework/finances/shopping etc. I try to look at it like a contract of employment. Everyone is allowed a lunch break, to go to the toilet when they need to (in peace), a holiday, a weekend or sometime each week doing something for themselves (a weekend). If none of those things are possible due to lack of funds/time/someone to watch the kids, You don’t give up your free time to enable everyone else in the household to enjoy theirs.

You want to take pride in your house and be the best mother you can. But being a Beryl makes you ratty, snappy, likely to binge on food/wine, fester with resentment, more prone to illness because you can’t rest and when you’re ill you can’t rest either, more likely to get depressed. There is also a danger you bottle it all up and it explodes one day and before you know your relationship is on a wobble or maybe even over.

We should be watching our new mum friends and family for any Beryl like behaviours. Taking time out for yourself and putting yourself on an equal footing will make you a better mum as you will be happier and kids can tell when there parents are happy.

We should start calling out Beryl behaviour. If someone starts criticising another mums housework standard, say something like, “I can’t get worked up about how clean my skirting boards are, I’d rather be doing x, y, or z.”

I agree. Straightforwardly hating Beryl looks like misogyny to me and I don't think she responds well to tough love.

But this thread is actually having an impact in my life. It is subtle, but I am questioning my smaller decisions and slowly groping my way forwards. I can feel a small stream of fresh air through the cracks and it's giving me hope.

It's taken me a full day to read this. It's absolutely fascinating and very eye opening.

I think there is a place for Beryl-lite. The first Beryl if you like. She's there to make sure you keep your baby alive, she's the momma bear that keeps younglings safe. But she's been abused and she's become a monster as a result. She's scared and worn out from years of having more and more work put on her.

Maybe we need to radicalise Beryl. Take her back to her roots and nurture her, therefore nurturing ourselves.

I’ve been giving this thread a lot of thought.

I keep changing my attitude towards Beryl. Me and her have an unstable love hate relationship .

I don’t know why it feels a bit wrong to just hate her.

Silent a lot of that resonates including ”refusing” to have PND just because I was high risk. Hmmmm. It took me a long time to admit to myself that counselling was something I needed to do, but even belatedly it was hugely helpful.

I also had a somewhat demanding Health Visitor, something that seems to be a regular feature of the MN boards. My reaction was to internalise her comments and see them as cricism of me.

DH took DS to be weighed one day when I was at work and declared he was never going again because of the HV’s attitude. How I wish I’d done the same instead of feeling compelled to attend. Beryl the peril again.

Alice terror of failing was definitely an issue, but it was about pleasing authority figures rather than husband/family. The health visitors just about drove me batshit with her slow weight gain and I definitely overcompensated by making sure I looked completely "together". Always made up, clean clothes on us both, shiny pram, every piece of documentation ever, always early for appointments. I was so scared of going back into hospital and failing at breastfeeding. In my head I COULD NOT show weakness to authority in any way, no hint of PND, anxiety, difficulty coping. I really could have done with counselling, tbh as there was a lot unresolved when I came to have my second. Even driving past the hospital terrified me for years. I was very lucky to have a good BF support group that was independent, though. I'd show up and just fall apart; no "face" needed. Beryl was not allowed through the door!

Re making mistakes, my DD1's science teacher told her outright that he wants her to make mistakes. She's really good at the subject, but doesn't speak up much - he's pushing her to try out her theories out loud so she can see how the scientific process works and develop her critical thinking, and has assured her she doesn't need to fear getting things wrong. I wanted to high five him in the middle of parents' evening

Finding this thread fascinating. My marriage 20 years ago was short lived on discovering that my handsome husband seemed to have transformed into Frank Spencer, and my previously dormant Beryl started to come to the fore. Until the rage building up inside me couldn’t be contained any more and I ended the marriage. Since then I have a DP but no real desire to marry and certainly none to have children. I know women manage to have both without necessarily being possessed by Beryl the Peril but it just always seemed a pathway to putting yourself last, all the time. I have been described in the past as arrogant, bossy and unfeminine, which seems to be the price you pay for not being very Berylly. I still feel bad if the house is a midden and there’s no food in the kitchen, I know nobody is judging but somewhere that mini Beryl is still peeping away.

I can really see this "placate the big man before they get violent" tactic in play when you've got adolescent boys all over the place with their emotions. I find it kind of chilling, tbh

I wonder if Beryl originally evolved as a strategy to avoid male violence.

Interesting that you picked that up Silent I’d had an “interesting” up bringing and no living close family so I can believe that I overcompensated with PFB in an attempt to build my perfect family.

This leads me to think that failing, and being seen to fail when the circumstances are against us is something we need to do, especially when we wouldn’t have the same expectations of men in a similar situation. There was a headteacher a while back I seem to remember saying that she thought girls should fail more in order to be successful.

I had some very useful counselling a couple of years ago with my take homes focused on recognising that my personal history wasn’t my fault and becoming less of a people pleaser. I’m still practicing the not people pleasing part, but so far, the sky hasn’t fallen in when I’ve said no to anything.

I am imagining melting my Beryl, like the wicked witch in the wizard of oz.

So many interesting thoughts coming up in this thread!

Alice, I wonder if that "baby MUST come first" drive is common to a) all first borns or b) only first borns where the mother is isolated (ie Western society nuclear family) rather than when there's a live-in support network of female relative? My experience with my eldest was all kinds of messed up - bereavement, hospitalization on high dependency, feeding issues, then virtually no support network. I have no frame of reference for what the care of a first baby under normal circumstances looks like and I spent a good six months watching her every breath for convulsions and feeding her at the first squeak as she was so tiny (surprisingly she is neither spoilt nor horrible! ). I think I went through martyr and spent time as shrivelled corpse.

On feeding the hungry man - no experience as both father and husband are mild-mannered chaps, but there was a great thread in the Teenagers section the other day about how to discipline boys when they're still young but much bigger than you. At this distance I can really see this "placate the big man before they get violent" tactic in play when you've got adolescent boys all over the place with their emotions. I find it kind of chilling, tbh.

One last thought that's interested me through this thread is the social pressure to be above reproach - it came to me initially as I've read a fair bit of historical fiction set in Asia - Japanese, Chinese and Indian culture in particular - and there is this concept of "face", mentsu in Japanese. It's where a lot of the excruciating politeness comes from, hierarchies, not challenging elders or seniors, and elaborate customs and so on. We're looser about it here, but only in the last couple of generations - saving face is what led to things like pristine scrubbed doorsteps and packing your daughter off out the back door to have an illegitimate baby in secret. It's a big part of the class system, keeping everyone in their place by having women police women over the slightest dusty mantelpiece. PC Beryl is always on the case.

There’s been some really interesting points on the thread. I grew up in a household where if you didn’t do as you’re told, anticipate the man’s every want and tried to stand up for yourself in any way you either got screamed at or worse. I don’t think this is actually that uncommon when you read about people’s lives. I think if you have an ounce of compassion for anyone else you might see that unhelpful coping mechanisms are learned fairly early on in life, might not be based in logical thought and are very hard to break.

I’m very fortunate as I live with a man who does not expect beryl (though like many of us he’s lazy if someone else is going to do the work without asking for help), so where I do go into that mode it is not exploited. I try my best not to get into situations where my eagerness to please and eagerness to not cause confrontation is not used against me.

Even with my somewhat beryl tendencies I get intakes of breath from other women when I say I don’t iron or I use frozen chopped veg instead of chopping my own or I say if their husband cares so much about having a clean house he should do it himself. It’s a very rare woman that does not give a shiny shite about any aspect of being a beryl ime.

If I’d had the confidence in myself that I wasn’t a fat, lazy, selfish bitch and actually saw myself as I was I think my younger years would have been very different. I hope I am getting better at looking after myself and I know I’ll be damned before I become the family martyr. It’s hard work though, for me as I’m sure it is for many.

My advice would be to avoid allowing passive aggressive arseholes into your home

Where I can I do this.

However worst one are my Mother and MIL who incidentally still angry decades later about their female relatives, now deceased, doing the same to them and who I can’t avoid having in the house.

It’s usually after such visits than random others people’s comment, in areas like housework and mothering, that normally I’d ignore tend to trigger Beryl’s appearance.

My Mother I can put under control – what every sate the house it’s the same just as however long I’ve owned an appliance she knows it better than I do.

My MIL it’s more about competing with other females in particular areas, food, weight clothes, housework – I used to think it was directed just at me but overtime I’ve seen her do it with pretty much every other woman.

Since I had PFB MIL had been masking criticism of me under guise of being helpful. It started days after with her “helpfully” fussing about the insides of my cupboards I’m in pain and trying to establish BF but me complaining about this was being ungrateful and petty.

Interesting after years of redirecting, ignoring I’ve perfected being absent even when we guests staying with us which meant DH got all the fussing and “helpfulness” he got angry -and frustrated with MIL – no one not even me who he vented to told him being angry was wrong or that he was imaging things.

Same with MIL pattern of refusing to leave some housework item usually because your busy doing something more urgent – then pestering every minute for something or for bit of help with this bit so in end you end up doing it and she walks off to sit on sofa having “helped” -when I realised I blame myself for being manipulated and thought I was stupid– when I pointed out to DH she’d done it to him -his reaction was anger.

I think half the battle with me in realising what’s going on.

Wonderful thread,

Most of the Beryling I've come across has been a control strategy. It keeps every one dependant on you, keeps them where you can keep an eye on them. while gaining Brownie points from other Beryls.

While both caring for others and caring what others think are in my opinion both useful and constructive, taken to extreme they are quite the opposite. IMO All the CFerthreads have a non-Beryl and big Beryl components. We need a "Beryl light" .

Having said that I've just eaten burnt toast cause it was given to me and I can't work out what the non Beryl stance would be.

As for the Stanley thing, food, the biggest = the most dominant, etc. I remember an MNer citing an example that anthropologists discovered that for millennia bones show that female skeletons show more signs of childhood malnutrition than males in the same group.

In my experience males seem better at doing this slightly angry grunting neanderthal demand for what they want that is hard to ignore/not repond to - it is full of glottal stops and plosives. For example coming the door and going "Urgh! Im ! hUngry!" whilst following their tunnel vision to the fridge. Or "whERE's! mY! kEYs!" from another room while they angrily bash about.

I used to do exactly what my mother does and rush to feed my brother the second he came through the door to humanise the angry, unpleasant prick - it's as though his hunger is everyone else's problem.

I've noticed some babies have also mastered the 'arresting scream that can't be ignored' as default rather than escalating from a gentle grizzle and I bet my brother was like that with my mum.

For me, overcoming Beryl involves not jumping up when a forceful, charged up person starts making demanding noises - even if they seem impatient and distressed. I find it really hard.

Put your own oxygen on before attending to others - you don’t need permission!

Women with a Beryl need this stuck to their mirror (unless they are so busy with Beryling the don't look at the mirror until midday ).

humanity this is interesting about hormones and behaviour
blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2009/04/07/do-testosterone-and-oestrogen-affect-our-attitudes-to-fairness-trust-risk-and-altruism/#.W-FhXzmnydM

tricky interesting. I'm not sure how I would respond if my GP said that. Problem is, if ones partner isn't stepping up and hasn't for years then LTB is also stressful, energy sapping and depressing. And if the woman still loves him it's even worse. There is not an easy answer.
You might find this interesting www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.newscientist.com/article/mg22429941-200-the-lifelong-cost-of-burying-our-traumatic-experiences/amp/

Loving this thread. Lots to reflect on. I need to learn strategies to evict Beryl and Mary the Martyr who are long term tenants.

I’ve ingested a lot of societal tropes over the years about good wives and mothers shoulds. Standards that husbands and fathers aren’t held to.

But let me start with a win. With DC1 I was a total martyr to Ds’s Immediate needs, to the extent that my self care suffered and it would take me to midday to shower, dress & have a drink. With DC 2 I initially felt terribly guilty for neglecting DC1 to feed DC2, but this became something of a turning point. Not only, would DC2 be absolutely fine if I got DC1 a drink and a snack first, but I could have a drink, a snack and a wee too!

It’s obvious isn’t it? Unless you have Beryl Brain that is. Put your own oxygen on before attending to others - you don’t need permission!