"But we took you to Statley Homes" Dysfunctional Families Thread

[Snowdropfairy]

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

Yes, that did terrible damage to my maternal grandmother. Also to my mother, though she was already pretty fucked-up by then as far as I can tell.
Poor old Grandma tried to improve her horrible life by changing to another religion. It comforted her in different ways, but nothing improved for real :(

Blurgh. My parents phoned me tonight. I haven't been in touch with them for almost three weeks, and those 3 weeks have been the happiest time of my life (not only because of lack of parental contact, it must be said: I am turning the corner in recovery from an abusive marriage, and have been spending the past 3 weeks with my closest friends on holiday).

I felt such revulsion when they called. They were fine, and true to themselves: Dad under Mom's thumb, Mom demanding praise, and both failing to hear anything I said and talking over me for 45 minutes. They also asked when we could see each other, so I agreed to a visit.

I know, I know: 'No is a complete sentence' and all that. But they sure as hell aren't going to take no for an answer without being offended and requiring an explanation, so what does one do then?

Oh well. At least the visit will be on my terms. The fact that it's happening at all is on theirs, of course.

God. I wish I didn't want them out of my life so badly.

Shit. This has really made me plunge back into depressed introspective rumination, which I had been free of for 3 weeks and feeling light as air.

I really need to find a way to emotionally detach pronto, or bite the bullet and go no contact to the consternation of everyone I know.

...or I could just accept that these things take time, and although I don't know how to handle my emotions wrt my parents now, someday I probably will.

I am seriously thinking of not buying tickets to go visit them on the agreed date and phoning with some made-up excuse about me or my dog breaking a leg or something on the day of departure as a reason for not showing up.

There's nowt wrong with a white lie

Do put your needs before theirs, Puppy. It's about time.
I feel for you, going through all those waves of introspection. It's crap. It also seems to be a necessary factor in recovery ... a sign that your mind is now willing to process the bad stuff! All I can offer is a reminder to be very, very kind to yourself - rest if you can, have treats and do something creative. You will work it through, honest!

Hugs.

Thanks garlicnutter.

I just wish I knew what to do. There are so many things at play here. Allow me to think aloud:

• I feel like all our interactions are fake, since I am on the surface behaving towards them as I always have been, but inside I have changed: I now view them as inadequate parents whose self-absorption and selfish actions damaged me. Our interactions now either make me angry, or just make me cringe.

• I hate being fake, so I need to either a) get it all out in the open, and send them the letters I am drafting about how I was hurt as a child and continue to be affected as an adult by their words and actions, or b) just quietly come to terms with it and keep on acting as before, but with emotional detachment, so that I no longer get angry or cringe at our interactions, but just mentally shrug my shoulders at them.

• I can see the many advantages of b) (no conflict! no fallout!), but I don't know how to "do" emotional detachment yet.

• The disadvantage of b) is that I will be keeping people who I don't like in my life because of social expectations only. Yet we do this all the time, for example at work. Is it therefore ok to deal with families in the same way, by pretending that everything is OK and just coping?

-...but why should I praise a woman who demands it of me, but never compliments me herself, and listen to her interrupt and ignore me for 45 minutes every Sunday, and watch her brow-beat my father at Christmas in silence, simply because society expects it of me? I have better things to do with my time and my self-respect!

-...yes, but I also have better things to do with my time than put up with my narc colleague at work, but I do that because I want to be able to pay my mortgage. Arrgh! I am so confused about what the "right" course of action is!

• The advantage of course of action a) is that it would achieve either honesty in relations, or no contact. No more fakery, and the boil of anger lanced.

• The disadvantage is that it would be confrontational, dramatic, and have a lot of negative fallout, namely the opprobrium of my friends and other family members (and of course a hissy fit by my mother and a panicked campaign to get me to recant by my father, but I'm ready to stand firm against that). I'm not so ready to face the incomprehension and displeasure of my friends and family, though, none of whom will understand my rejecting a parent.

• My parents have recently put their lives on hold to stay with me for 3 months while I was heavily depressed and in fear for my life (threat to kill me made by abusive stbxh). There is therefore recent, tangible proof that they care for my well-being, and put me first before their own needs in a big way. My friends bring this up when I talk about my view of my parents as inadequate. And it will be all the proof my Mom needs to show that I am vindictive and ungrateful, and that she is self-sacrificing, if I go for option a). I will be condemned by people I love for being unreasonable and a bad daughter.

• I have no similar single, dramatic action to weigh up against that: I was never sexually not physically abused. I have a list of statements and actions by my parents that to me are a demonstration of the fact that I was neglected, put down, and competed with by my own parents, but all of them are individually pretty small and can be played down by anyone who is not a member of this thread.

• I wish that didn't matter: what should matter is that I felt neglected, competed with, and put down as a child, and that I am sad and angry about it now. I just want those feelings to be acknowledged. Sadly, I think only the most enlightened of therapists, or adult child of abuse, is able to see it that way. The majority of society, including my friends and family, believe that 'parents are sacred', 'forgive and forget', 'blaming your parents is self-indulgent yuppie twaddle, just grow up'.

• Am I paralysed because I am desperately waiting for an option c) that doesn't exist, like I did all those years with my stbxh?

• The only resolution I have reached is how to deal with my Mom insulting my Dad in my presence. If it happens, I have decided that I will use the magic 3-sentence statements learned in my assertiveness class, and say: "Mom, you just called Dad XXX. It upsets me to have to hear that. Don't do it.", and repeat like a broken record when she turns on me for reacting. However, I don't have a course of action I feel comfortable with to deal with her demands for praise, or to deal with her demands for visits and phone calls. Any ideas from the crew? (for those who managed to get this far...)

Oh pupppy, whilst reading your post there were bells ringing all over the place for me! I could have written that. Do people just pretend in these relationships? My sister is unfailingly polite until Mum says something she doesn't agree with, and then she will leave the room or if it's bad enough, leave the house with the limp but apparently effective excuse "got to go now, bye" without going into detail or any confrontation. It seems to work. But then she also doesn't call Mum unless she needs to.

Emotionally detaching. When you have some tips, let me know.

Actually my brother did a little diagram for me before I left the country to go back to the UK - he outlined a square on one side (your business), then another separate square on the other (their business). When they don't intersect, all is good. When they do, it goes horribly wrong. I actually filmed him acting it on my phone to look at it when I feel the guilt

I think puppy is more appropriate. Clearly am tired. And rambling.

teacup have you asked your sister about how she does it, and how it makes her feel?

And what about your brother -- how does he handle the times that his 'business' and theirs intersect? Or is his trick to make sure it never does (and how?)

My sister is the hated one of my narc mother. She said when she was younger she went through a period of having to intensely tell herself that she was good enough etc. She now has no emotional connection to Mum, neither does my brother. He said Mum (and Dad) lost his respect when he was a teenager. I am just working it out now

From what I can gather they see my parents with their faults, know it was theirs to fix and didn't, so their life is their problem now. My brother goes to the same church as my parents, but other than that they never see each other except at family do's, when he is polite and hospitable but generally ignores them. So he keeps them far apart.

My sister calls my Dad (she has set him up as the infallible one put those rose tinted glasses away but is only polite to Mum for Dad's sake. She said if Dad wasn't around she wouldn't bother visiting or calling Mum.

So I guess they just get on with their own stuff and only talk to my parents politely, when they need to. Don't know if that helps

Well done to them for having found a workable solution.

Your Oliver James comment on the other thread certainly helped.

And the teenager comment is also apt: I know that neither me nor my sister ever went through a teenage rebellion phase, nor did several members of my family who are now the spouses of abusers/narcs. They remain small children in adults' bodies.

There is a point to teenage rebellion, though: you need to knock your parents off their pedestal, even the good ones, in order to forge yourself as your own person. I often compare the process I am going through now as me going through adolescence, just 18 years later than scheduled.

In short, no genuine relationship is possible. So they stay away mostly, and I guess they are "patronisingly polite"when they need to interact.

Hello all
have been aware for some years of my mothers weird idea of parenting. Since having my own kids it occurred to me that being a mother, loving your children no matter what the circumstances is not an effort. It is normal. Your kids love you unconditionally and you them. This is not something to be sneered at which my mother would do. She sneers at anything or anybody who shows any kind of gentleness, humanity.

She has a path beaten up to the door of the church. Can't imagine what she says to God. Yet, anything like christian behaviour is beyond her.

My father died when I was young. But, in typical mother fashion, she truly believed that she was the only one effected by this. Her constant threats to send us to boarding school, put us in care, become an alcoholic so we would understand true suffering, were very unsettling.

She was physically violent. Smacked in the face was her calling card. But, the bullying trickled down through us. My brother behaved like a psychopath, he tried to stab me once, chased me through a neighbours house. The man came home and decked him. My mother said not one word. Asked if she remembers this....you guessed it. Not a single memory of anything.

My mental health has always been in doubt. All these years I was trying to fix myself, with the family cheering on from the side line. Suicide attempts, self harm, depression and so on. According to the family, during one of their interventions, this is being naughty and selfish. I should pull my self to together. As my youngest sister (Golden child) said, "We are not that type of family".....yes, we are so healthy. I disappeard for the remainder of that day, alternating between spending the rest of my life under a convenient bush or getting myself admitted to psych unit. DH took them in hand and there has been truce since then.

My mother lives close by. If she does drop by, she usually annouces she needs a piss and was passing. So, thats nice. She has engulfed my youngest sister and her son. She vies with me and my eldest and is pretty much indifferent to my youngest.

Her indifference is legend. Always being unsure as to whether she can attend/do something that is important to me. To this end she attended the All Ireland debate competition final that I had made, and sat in silence in the car the whole way home. Got an A in honours english, asked if that was good? Day of my graduation, couldn'/t make it. Day of my wedding, never passed comment on anything. AT ALL. Make a big joke out of telling me I was adopted and she had the paperwork upstairs. Name calling, hitting, ignoring. No positive attention. The not remembering of an awful lot of stuff. The constant hints that I am not good enough, for anything. When my first partner left, she said she could understand why he did that as I was really a big fat pain in the arse.

I am bored now by this list of her shittiness. Some here said I am an adult and do not have to take it. So that is what I am going to try and do. But inside I hurt like a child

I really feel for you lola

What kind of reading / therapy are you doing, if any? You mention in your last sentence that inside you hurt like a child. Maybe inner child therapy would be a good fit for you at this time. There are a lot of good books out there, eg.:

• Healing your emotional self

• Recovery of your inner child

lola you sound like you have coped very well with your mother's (and siblings) hideous behaviour ie you can see it clearly for what it is. This is such a good start.

Keep posting here when you want to work through something etc.

puppy we have such similarities. I have also not rebelled as a teenager, apparently this was a sign that I was such a good girl. However, I went crazy in my early 30's instead, when I moved to the UK. When that period ended is when I got depressed and am only facing this stuff now, with the huge help of a counsellor.

I was thinking of you yesterday but now I can't remember what I was going to say! I will post it when I remember.

aaarrgghhh just had a conversation with my sister about Dad. My sister needs to see Dad through rose tinted glasses, because Mum was such a bitch to her.

I tried (stupidly) to suggest that he is an enabler and has not always taken full responsibility ie saying "We married because she seduced me" (she said that women have a lot of sexual power - I said that he had a choice to walk away and seduction is not rape). I said the whole sorry mess was 90% Mum but Dad had about 10% responsibility. I also suggested he was hiding behind his religion, because it was easier to stay than to leave. She didn't buy this at all, got really angry and kept trying to put me down, even accusing me of banging on about Dad even though I said it was a small, but valid point.

She started patronising me "I think you need to work through how you feel about Dad"....which I have, soooooooo much - not only did I spend a month in tears in August but I have been talking to my counsellor for 18 months about my relationship with my father. I am very very clear on Dad's controlling nature and how he still tries to control me.

She then hung up on me.

I'm upset. I know I shouldn't have brought this up with her.

Speak some sense to me please?!

Easier to stay than to leave - for him, I mean, because it did damage us, their children. But her response is that we as children need to take responsibility and not let it affect us...somehow this doesn't also apply to Dad.

I hate being patronised. She has always patronised me, but I thought we'd gotten over this. I thought we could have an adult conversation.

teacup that must have been a frustrating conversation.

You asked for someone to talk sense to you about it, so here's my attempt: you can't make your sister, nor your Mum nor your Dad, nor anyone else on this planet, hear things that they don't want to hear. Sometimes it's a case of chipping away at someone's denial and eventually getting somewhere, and sometimes they will simply never see what you would like them to see.

It's her choice. She feels more comfortable with your Dad as the hero or innocent victim in all this, because that's how she can make sense of things and find balance. She's the only one with the capacity to alter that balance, if she chooses to.

You are of course free to keep pressing your point if you think it's important for her to realise it. If what you need is validation, well then you may not get it from her. Or maybe later, but not now. You can obtain validation here and in your therapy sessions. It's a shame your sister isn't part of that group, but that's the way it is, because (for now) she doesn't want to subscribe to your view. Your choice is how much you let it upset you.

Your experience with your father is also very different to your sister's. You are aware that he attempts to control you. Perhaps he does not do the same to her (or he does but she does not see it as control). It's a shame that she is unable to empathise with how you feel about your father, simply because her emotional experience is different. But again, that can't be forced. Hopefully you can continue to find comfort among those who are able to empathise with you, even though they are less emotionally important to you than a sibling.

Does that help?

thanks puppy. You are really lovely. I was so upset after this conversation.

I think I need my anger against my father to keep my perspective for the moment. My sister is over the anger - I don't think she had as much to start with anyway, for the reasons you outlined - but nevertheless I still don't think she allocates enough responsibility onto Dad. But then I don't think she ever will without a lot of trauma, and that's not my place to push. We've had some good emails and I think we can work through it.

It's been really shitty for all of us kids. I'm really glad though that 3 of us (out of 5) at least can now talk freely about how its affected us and can support each other. We don't agree on every aspect but we do agree that it was abusive and we deserved better.

Hi yellowteacup,

I can see why you were upset but you are you and you have far more insight that your sister will ever have. Some people would rather shoot the messenger than hear the message because they just don't want to hear it

Well I am absolutely NOT looking at all forward to the ILs big celebration on Saturday afternoon. I have no get out clause to use otherwise I would use it. Narc BIL will be there too taking the photos (probably the only reason why he has agreed to attend). FIL will be on sparkly form no doubt as if he has been plugged into the mains!.

Feel like I am going to be taking part in a bad film.

I have harmed myself again. It hasn't happened for a while, but I have been feeling soooo bad lately. It is an expression of how I feel about myself and there are times when I feel so rotten it in a weird way helps. When I see the scars they explain me to myself. This is the first place that I feel understood, don't have to neutralize the details or work out if it is safe to say what I feel. Or other people saying, it wasn't that bad, or how a hero she was and what an ungrateful sod I am. I don't need it made nicer or more palatable. It was and still is fucking horrendous at times and I don't know if I will ever feel better. Today is one of those stuck in the cupboard days, when it is even too hard to speak

Oh lola. I have no experience of cutting, but your description of your actions here: " It is an expression of how I feel about myself and there are times when I feel so rotten it in a weird way helps. When I see the scars they explain me to myself. " sounds very familiar to me.

I harm myself with words. I used to say "I hate myself" out loud 20+ times a day and feel a horrible stab of self-hatred while doing so that, weirdly, would make the whatever had triggered it go away. This occurs much, much less often now that I've been going to see a counsellor and doing a lot of reading, writing and thinking about the causes and effects of my self-hatred. Maybe only 3-4 times a week, which is a massive reduction. And I feel a lot stronger and better about myself.

So I just wanted to tell you that it is possible to feel better. I understand your feeling of hopelessness that it never might. But it can. Promise.

What kind of support do you have?

" When I see the scars they explain me to myself. "

I wanted to pick up on this again because it is so very expressive. Of course your self-harm explains you to yourself. But it explains you to yourself in the way a very small child did to find a reason why her mother was hurting her: 'Since mother cannot be wrong, then I must be bad.'

You (and all of us on this thread) can replace the reasoning of that child who was trying to make sense of her world with different reasoning now: that mother was wrong to act the way she did, and you are not inherently bad and deserving of harm. You do not deserve harm, either from yourself or from others.

That "I deserve harm" thought pattern is a well-oiled machine and won't go away quickly -- possibly will never go away completely. But plant the thought that you deserve good treatment, and over time it may grow to choke the self-hatred machine.

I'm so sorry you cut, lola :( You must have been feeling pretty bad.
You are worth so much more than pain or numbness. I can't really add to Puppy's posts, but wanted to send you some comforting thoughts. If you do one thing today, please do something really nice for yourself and relish it.

Anything that feels good to you - a posh bath? A long snuggle with a soft blanket? Walk in the rain? ... Something for you, that you can feel :)
Take care. x

For those of us who have been in romantic relationships with abusers/narcs and feel our childhood has damaged us beyond hope of healthy romance:

Part 1

Part 2