"But we took you to Stately Homes!" - Dysfunctional parents?

[ItsGraceAgain]

It's October 2010, and the Stately Home is still open to visitors.

Forerunning threads:
December 2007
March 2008
August 2008
February 2009
May 2009
January 2010
April 2010
August 2010

Please check later posts in this thread for links & quotes. The main thing is: "they did do it to you" - and you can recover.

, Briar ...thank you for delurking .And for being brave enough to post your story. Loving the confused faces , Am i right in guessing your toxic`s are so messed up themselves that they dont know their arses from their elbows ?.
It happens , then you get a situation no one knows who did what or why ...but it would all be "the scapegoats" fault.
Anyway , hope it helped to "get it out".Glad youve got that safe space.

Peppermint ...dont worry about rambeling...or even making sense to others (iykwim?).Just get it out... unload even.
I so understand the mother "holding court".

Its shocking and depressing ,how many of them do this. .

Yes, droves, my toxics are so messed up they defo' do not know their arses from their elbows and absolutely can not keep up with their fantasy delusions of who said/did what any more!

If I had to guess at my toxics official status it would go something like this...

I would say one is pure NPD, one is whatever the name is for someone who needs and actively seeks to be with an NPD, (the correct name escapes me at the minute), one I would class as HPD and the last is a 40 year old manchild.

I've been "getting it out" for the past 5 years...I have none of their skeletons rattling in my closet any more. x

Reading the posts on here makes me feel that I don't know anything about my family. I'm not as self-aware as I thought.

God, talk about self-absorbed. Sorry everyone :(

Erm Bookcase...all this family knowledge took me over 30 years to gather into some sort of order!!

Nought wrong with being self absorbed sometimes...it's how we learn who we are and what we want.

thanks thanks, already that bit of recognition helps!

one question-do you ever think a relationship with someone toxic, or npd, can be mended, or can move on. not without therapy on both sides i suppose and ha, well one side just wouldn't wear it, in my case she of course thinks everything she does is normal, and everything i do is unreasonable. so i answered my own question there.

i think what i am wanting to find out is whether i cut all ties, insofar as i can. contact, for me, involves visits about 4 times a yr inc xmas, about a week each time, plus about 3-4 tc's a week.she never comes here, of course(but i wouldn't want her to!)

or do i just grit my teeth (for what reason i don't know) and bear it?

i'm not sure i can do the latter as this visit my 3 yo said grandma was "cross" and was "busy", meaning she couldn't be arsed to spend much one on one time with him. he was confused and unhappy about the visit sometimes, and happy at other times during it. but it's bound to have a detrimental effect i think, if the abuse carries on. she does it in front of him too, it takes the form here of effectively telling me in very aggressive tones that i am indulging him about food(and loads of other criticisms) and i shouldn't give him choice(he's captain slow about eating like a lot of 3 yo's!),

and if i object she turns nasty and says loudly to everyone how she only had 3 children, so she clearly knows nothing etc etc. and of course i'm disrespecting her blah blah.

can somebody tell me a bit about scapegoating too? i think my brother(eldest, responsible, relied on heavily by mother) was and is golden child, poor devil, and that i and maybe my sister were scapegoats.

i only include my sister as she was the massive rebel as far as drugs and staying out late was concerned. i was the "good" girl, or so i thought(what a joke) and tried to be the opposite of "bad". but nothing i did was ever good enough for mum, she would go into moods with me for days which at the time i never questioned. i think she thought i was my dad's favourite, but i don't believe he ever played favourites.

i also think she felt guilt(?) about having me 6 yrs after my sister-the "family story" ie from mum, goes that my sis hated me as she was jealous about mother's attention going from her to me. that's actually my mother's guilt, right?

come to think of it, and i've never thought of this before! but maybe, 6 yrs after her last child, she didn't want another. maybe that's why she acted/acts like she can't stand me?? oh blimey, i'm going to stop again.

www.joy2meu.com/DysfunctionalFamilies.htm

Scapegoat info' ^

Keep going Peppermint you can work this out you know. :)

As regards contact, this is totally up to you as to how much or if any...whatever you decide YOU need to be comfortable with. x

Sorry Briar. I don't really remember much about my past, so it's difficult to analyse. It's all a bit of a confused mess.
I feel that I don't fit in anywhere. Even on an anonymous forum! Perhaps I'm too needy. Maybe I'm the toxic one.

Too tired to post, but want to mark this spot.

thanks Briar, i will have a good look into all of this. i want to work it out to reach that wonderful state where i don't actually give a f**k any more! nirvana eh?! i want her madness to wash right over me and off my back. and i don't ever ever want to inflict it on my dc's. thank you

I am absolutely furious about another thread on here.

Its about a pastor (american christian fundementalist) who is promoting child abuse. He has written books on how to smack children ,including an 8 month baby for being defiant.
These books are on sale in amazon and at the church , which has a branch in Bristol.

Just the thing for an abusive nutjob to get their hands on. They "justify" abuse by saying the bible tells us so.
Another religious nutjob who bastardises religious text to suit their own psycotic views. Of course its for the child own benefit , and he talks off the experience being "tactile".
...bastard.

His name is Tripp and he is planning a seminar/visit to the uk soon.

Other thread is trying to work out how to get his books banned ect.

My ex-mother would have loved him. (But then again she thought having little kids sit with their noses touching a wall was a "kind" punishment.)

Hi again Bookcase...I don't fit in anywhere either, never have done...square peg round hole, but now I quite like this about myself.

Perhaps you just need a bit more help than is possible via a forum...you will be Ok you know. x

I've seen that thread droves. It sent a wave of rage, fear and despair through me, in equal measure.

I read that thread to droves...recognised my oh so religious Father...thought...TWAT..and went and read some jokes.

What Tripp preaches is how I was brought up...

Oh Briar ... ((huggs)). I have no words ...

The rage i feel towards this man is unbelievable.Obviously this has touched a raw nerve.

.Ive had enough of this....

IM GOING TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS.
I dont know how , but i will....

Thanks for the hugs droves, ya don't need any words the hugs say it all. x

I have now 'gathered' my thoughts and have just emailed the local paper...dunno if it will do any good but feel better for 'taking action'.

Crikey, I've worn me self out with all this posting!

I'm off to the land of nod...night guys, sweet dreams one and all. ((x))

Morning all! Just caught up on the posts from last night. Such interesting thoughts. Peppermint, something you said is exactly what I could write:

"i only include my sister as she was the massive rebel as far as drugs and staying out late was concerned. i was the "good" girl, or so i thought(what a joke) and tried to be the opposite of "bad". but nothing i did was ever good enough for mum, she would go into moods with me for days which at the time i never questioned. i think she thought i was my dad's favourite, but i don't believe he ever played favourites."

I was the good girl and tried to be perfect for my mum, but of course this was never good enough either. It hit me very hard at the age of 16 that neither parent or my sister had any regard for me (no love for me) when I discovered a family "secret". I crashed. That's when I stopped eating.

I wonder how to deal with my mother. How much contact? How to protect my dc? How much contact should my dc have? etc etc. Don't know the answers yet.

Relationships: I wonder how any of us managed to have and keep a relationship? For me, it was almost unbearable to have a boyfriend because the fear was crippling. The fear of letting someone in to discover the real me. It took a huge amount of patience and love from my (now) dh to help me open up and be me. And since starting therapy a year ago, I am emotionally closed to my dh again. It is quite damaging and worrying for our marriage.

Bookcase, you sound so sad atm. Please keep talking. Do you have stragegies for helping yourself feel nurtured? You know, hot bath, going for a walk, nice music, that kind of thing? To do these things means you are being kind and loving towards yourself. I have a special (tatty) cardigan I wear when feeling bad, and it's cuddly and fluffy! I wrap myself up in it to feel cosy. Apologies if you know these things already, but let us know how you are.

Morning..

Midnight,
''Relationships: I wonder how any of us managed to have and keep a relationship? For me, it was almost unbearable to have a boyfriend because the fear was crippling. The fear of letting someone in to discover the real me. It took a huge amount of patience and love from my (now) dh to help me open up and be me. And since starting therapy a year ago, I am emotionally closed to my dh again. It is quite damaging and worrying for our marriage.''

this resonates so much, perhaps somehow I married a man that was like my Father not just because it is 'scripted' to do so, but because the only me I knew how to be could exist if the conditions were the same.
Anything else, and this is a huge screaming fear inside me, is that if I met someone who was in the general sense, a normal functioning human being, and I screwed it up, then I would have to accept that I am actually all the things that are bad inside and I don't 'deserve' anything different. To have a decent man and wind up enduring the emotional rejection I think would crush me.
It is a choking, suffocating fear.

I also was the 'good' girl trying harder and harder to please .

Thank you Midnight. I get so consumed by hating myself that I don't think to nurture myself. I've been thinking that I need to look at my inner child more when I feel like this, and do things to take care of her. I might start writing from her perspective.

I have a DH who is so patient and loving towards me and I don't know how I managed it. I test him alot and goad him to hit me, just to prove that he's wrong about the way he feels about me and that I am all the horrible things I feel about myself.

Tried to have a sensible talk with my mother about the past last week, as I mentioned previously. I told her I didn't want to see her until she had raised some of the things I had talked about with half brother.

She just called and the first thing she said is "I want to give you some money for dd's Xmas present. Buying things has always been her way of making everything alright. I never know whether I should just accept because tbh I want the money, or whether I am cheapening myself by accepting.

Anyway, I asked if she had spoken to half brother and she said, "I wasn't a bad mother Bookcase.". I replied that she wasn't a good one either, then she hung up on me.

I don't know what to make of this. It's like sometimes she removes the mask of her martyr persona and becomes a nasty bitch. She has apologised in the past but when she says things like this, I can't believe she's really sorry.

Bookcase, you are brave to confront your mother. I don't know what nasty comments I would get if I confronted mine. I only said one opinion different to hers recently, and she got up and walked out of my house, and slammed the door. I was glad she had gone, to be honest.

I do things to stick two fingers up at my mother, but in small ways. For example, it was her birthday recently, and so I made a game out of choosing the sloppiest card I could find, with lots of words of love, care, beauty etc etc and chose that. I swore at her when I posted it. She thinks she has a loving daughter and that she is cherised. I know diffently and laughed at the idea that ahe has been fooled.

I have rules around my mother. I never visit her alone. I only visit for a short time. I only keep to superficial conversation like the weather etc. If she starts to be opinionated about anything I change the subject quick. This is much easier said than done, and I am still learning. But as I only visit for a short time, it helps as I can escape.

I never answer the phone to her. I call her back at my convenience and make sure the conversation is short (I have an excuse ready such as dinner being ready or bath is now run etc).

And it all helps to know that I am in control. She is not controlling me. And when she is old and needing help, she can sit lonely in her house or I will shove her in a nursing home at her expense, I will not be the loving daughter as she expects.

From the last paragraph I can see that I am starting to find the anger for my mother. At last.

Hello all,

sorry not posted much but after initially talking about my family I felt quite guilty for it. Always seems to come to a head (currently on day 13 of not speaking after falling out with mother) then I wonder if I've said too much in anger to friends or relatives (or now, MN'ers!).

I have been reading all your posts though and they've made be so and for you all.

Midnight that sounds familiar, how you deal with your mother; not answering the phone, keeping visits short etc..except I wouldn't be able to send a soppy card.
When you say she gets opinionated, do you mean in a bigoted way? My mum does and I can't bear it. Even if I share a tiny bit of some of her views (rarety but still) I won't show it.

I suppose it's to still have a bit of control, show her I'm a kinder person than her, to show that I think differently than the way she tried to brainwash me to be. The way she's brainwashed my dad to be in a way. I really mourn the relationship I could have had with him, but he really is the Smee to her Captain Hook.

Bookcase when your mother says "I wasn't a bad mother" you you think she really believes it? Or is it way to dismiss your claims?

It stuns me the way my mum will make claims about her parenting to compete with things I say, like when I tell her I can't talk because I'm rushing around to get stuff done before the school run, and she'll say, "I don't know how I did it all for you myself, because I worked as well "
I know it's a dig at me currently being a SAHM (or when I'm feeling kinder, maybe it's reassuring herself that she did her best) - but as far as I remember, she a. never cleaned her own house and b. never took me to school.

She was always in bed sleeping it off. And she'd get someone else to collect me or I'd walk. I just can't believe she makes these claims, and genuinely don't know if she's shot her memory to shit so badly that she really believes it?!

She'll always intimate that I'm soft on the children when in fact I know I'm strict. I even said to her the other day "Just because I don't beat them to within an inch of their life, does not make me soft" Which shut her up. Not that I got badly beaten and I know some of you did . But I certainly do remember as a young child hiding the spatula so I couldn't get 10 hits with it. For such minor things like poking out my tongue. I was such a good girl really, had to be, she was such an angry person.
Now if I ever do smack the children, which I try to avoid (opting for explaining until I'm blue in the face instead) I feel so terrible afterwards. I can feel her rage rising in me and it disgusts me.

I wondered if anyone else understands this/feels this?

p.s. I would gladly stand in protest at that vile excuse of a man Tripp.

well Lotser, your last couple of paragraphs could have been written by me. my mum is so ridiculous about the whole"i was a mother before you and all these modern mothers...how did i ever manage without x or without y" and then laughs as if to say "you poor thing, you don't know you're born"...gah! drives me potty.

i never used to notice this, but of course this, and a whole lot of other crap has become glaringly obvious since i became a mum. i worry all the time about the rage, and i totally recognise that in what you say. one of my main fears, if not the fear, is that my children will look at me like i now look at my mum...

...but then, i realise(most of the time) that of course they won't because i do my damnedest to deal with the stuff i don't like(doesn't always work) and i'm so much more of a loving person than my mother ever was or could be.

when she says this stuff to me i want to shout that just because she clothed us and fed us doesn't make her the saint bloody theresa of motherhood!!! there are things she has said and done to me now and in the past that, having become a mum, i know i will never ever say or do to my children, be they 2 or 42!