Support thread for those who want to stop being hurt by their parents spiteful words in 2012

[myhandslooksoold]

Following on from this thread this is a support thread for those who are sick of being hurt by nasty and spiteful things that are said to them by their parents or parents-in-law.

If we can all vent on here and then work out some tactics to either stop these comments or at least stop the effect on ourselves then that would be great.

I've been hurt for years by my mother who puts me down, rewrites my happy childhood memories, creates divisions between me and my siblings and generally damages my self esteem. This Boxing Day was a turn around point for me as she made me cry after just a 5 minute phone conversation. She hadn't done anything new or particularly vicious but I was so upset. I then realised I had to change my reaction to what she says and have to find a way to stop it from affecting me so much.

I turned to mumsnet to start a post about it and then found myself engrossed in all the similar stories out there.

So please, join in and resolve to make 2012 a year to change! (Cringe that sounds a bit like a politician doesn't it?)

Annakin you belong here - you and your loved ones are suffering at the hands/words/behaviour of a 'loved' one.

The reason I asked about the suicide/physical harm thing is because this is a major part of my memories of my aunt as a child/teen. There would be no precursor to it; she would return home from walking the dog, and very calmly tell me that I was lucky she had come home - if it hadn't been for the dog, she would have thrown herself under a bus/train/killed herself.

Other times, she would be angry at everything/anything, and literally beat herself up. She used to rip handfuls of hair out, hit herself so hard that she left massive bruises, demolish the contents of whatever room she was in.

The rages came and went - and I learned that they did wear off, but the suicide talk was more scary. I just wondered if anyone had experienced this.

I finally realsed what passive aggression was yesterday had a lovely letter of dear mother detailing her falling 3 weeks before xmas and how bad it was she had always phoned me if she fell badly was a case of poor me that's why I didn't send xmas card funny my aunts and sisters got theirs no mention of PFB's arrest for being a P**PHILE.

Tapir - wow. She sounds unbelievably sick. How well have you done to come through that as balanced and sane as you evidently are!

dotty - so sorry to hear about all this. But how brave you are for reporting him. I really hope you get the outcome you deserve. And re your mother.

re your mother's total betrayal of you, that is, not her fall!!! just in case there was any confusion!!!

Thanks I'm just feeling hurt all over again ATM

Please may I join?

I am currently living in the aftermath of a very heated conversation with my mum on the phone a couple of days ago where something inside me just let rip and said a lot of the things that I have held on to for years. It feels incredibly liberating and a hugely brave thing for me to have done but I am not sure I feel ready to cope with what may follow.

What has really struck me since having dc two years ago is how different I am as a parent. I really cannot get my head around having no emotional attachment with/support for your own children when I would move heaven and earth for my dc.

Got to go will be back at some point!

Larev thats a fantastic summary- my family similiarly has great values re compassion for everyone else; nothing left for me. Although they have taught me that as a value so I have to take that positive away.
Like you, my wedding day/weekend was a complete mind-shredder....but it took me a lot longer to realise that NO I was not being selfish/unreasonable in my expectations/drama queen/ill. Its only recently that I have been able to look back and see my sister's jealousy, my father's discomfort, my mother's need for attention and my then husband's manipulations.
I had taken on the role of being wrong in my family; so its very liberating to realise that I wasn't odd, and that the people who castigated me actually had major issues of their own which were projected on to me.

dotty of course you are feeling hurt- its like the initial betrayal is now the foundation for a house of betrayal....you live there.......but you can move out if you want. Its a very slow and painful process to see what is really going on in one's family; but one becomes much stronger for seeing the truth.

Justone Welcome aboard - there'll be or handed round shortly

LaRev It has been one of my biggest fears, that I would turn out like her. We have similar voices, and sometimes I swear I can hear her voice/phrases coming out of my mouth. This is the first time I've ever told anyone exactly what she was like; my dh knows she's mentally unwell but not the details IYSWIM.

Thank you for your kind words - they mean more than you know.

Hi hope you've all been having a good week.

Nothing much to report here for me except I still keep churning things over and over in my mind. I haven't seen her or spoken to her except for a very superficial chat. I don't tell her what I am thinking about or doing except the bare minimum as I can hear her judging me from what I say (she doesn't have to say anything specific it is just from her tone of voice or 'hmmm' and that gets me going itself).

I've decided to stop sharing my inner self with her and then she can't wound me. It's just a bit lonely though because I used to share everything with her. I guess that will take a bit of getting used to and hopefully by the end of the year I'll be out of the habit.

All your stories and observations resonate so much with me thank you to everyone who has posted.

Annakin, I felt like you were describing my own mother. Your aunt sounds similar - low self-esteem, lonely, depressed, and she's taking it out on those closest to her and ruining her relationships. Depressed people often lash out at those closest to them, because those people care about them and are more likely to stick around regardless. Of course, depression is only part of it. Your aunt must be somewhat self-aware and realise how badly she is treating people. She really needs to get some help - antidepressants, therapy etc, and needs to see how her actions are affecting others. If she doesn't, then your cousin, your parents and yourself should do what you need to protect yourselves - if that means distancing yourselves/breaking contact or whatever.

myhands you are on the right road once you recognise that you have to make some space between her and you. And once you recognise that her 'voice' isn't yours, either her voice in reality or the one that echos in your heada.

I recognise what you say about no longer sharing the 'inner you'. I have recently started doing this with my family and it has worked well for me.
I do slip sometimes and talk about things I want support on; but I regret it every time. It gives them back power over me. When I dont share that stuff, i walk away from seeing them feeling much more together and calmer.
I hope it works for you too.

Please don't take this offensive- genuine question from someone who doesn't understand. I'm not trolling, promise.

Why don't you cut your abusive parents out of your life? You wouldn't take it from an abusive partner or friend, so why let your mum emotionally screw you over you? Parents have enormous power to screw you up, because they're your parents, but they only have that power if you're talking to them. If you're not talking to them, then they can't hurt you. It's not like she's the school bully and you have to go to school. She's the school bully, and you're an adult now who doesn't go to school.

"Mum, I don't appreciate how you talk to me. I feel like you always judge me or try to cut me down. I've decided I don't want that sort of negative influence in my life any more. Feel free to phone me when you're ready to be my friend- I'd really love you to be my friend, but I won't put up with you constantly judging and emotionally damaging me any more"

Seriously, why not?

p.s My parents are lovely and genuinely want me to succeed at life. My OH has a spiteful mum who tries to destroy her emotionally- her ultimate aim would be for her to move back into the family home where she can make her daughter have no self esteem and become totally dependent on her mum, thus justifying her existence. Every now and then she'll phone her mum and feel really crap afterwards, as if she's forgotten that her mum's a bitch. I ask her why, but the answer I get is always "I thought she might have got better".

I have done were finished as far as I'm concerned.

I'm presuming the mums described here had similar traits when you were children. How did they manifest themselves then? Or did the mums turn nasty later on in life?

21yroldman that really is the crux, you would like to believe they will change, or something you will do will make them be nice.

When you are young you don't have a choice and you think its normal, when you get older its hard to acknowledge that they are not a proper parent as it is so ingrained into society that you should not abandon your parent, so you try to manage the relationship. When I tell people I don't talk to my mum I really feel judged, like what kind of person rejects their own mother ??!

My mum is incredibly manipulative with emotional blackmail, when you are a nice normal person its hard not to fall for it, time and time again.

Having said that becoming a parent helped me see that shes not normal and her becoming worse with age has given me the motive to stop contact with her. Also having my brother as support really helps.

21yearoldman, do you really want to know why people (I'm thinking that this post has more to do with your OH than anyone on here, btw) can't just shut the door on abusive parents, just like that? Because if you really want to know I suggest you try reading up on pyschology, or ask people who've been there from a perspective of "I am ignorant of this and would really like you to educate me". And accept that it is a very complex subject which can take a lifetime's experience to properly understand.

As it is, you have asked from a perspective of "there is a simple and easy solution to this, and I have it - even though I have no direct personal experience of what any of you are talking about! If you would just listen to me, and do as I say, all your problems would be solved!" I'm afraid that comes across to me as disrespectful and unhelpful, tbh, as well as emotionally very naive.

There are very many, very real and very, very deep psychological reasons why it is so very, very hard for people to shut the door on abusive family members - far too many to encapsulate in one post. And for the record, many people (usually ones that have been groomed to accept and expect abuse from childhood) do take a lot of emotional abuse from partners and friends in their adult lives as well, there are any amount of threads on here that are testament to that.

I am someone who has shut the door and walked away, and that is precisely why I know how difficult and painful it is to do, and why I would never, ever judge anyone who doesn't feel either able or willing to do that. And contrary to what you think, while it can minimise future damage, shutting the door doesn't actually stop the hurt, anyway.

Living with the knowledge that your parents don't actually love you is incredibly painful no matter what your relationship or non relationship with them is. We are human beings, programmed from birth to love our parents, and to want and need their love. Especially our mothers. It is a primal, visceral thing. Think about it. One's mother is supposed to be the source of all safety, all love. Do you have any idea how it feels to formally relinquish the fantasy of one day actually having your mother's love, especially when the myth that all mothers naturally love their children more than life itself, that maternal love is an inevitable consequence of physcial motherhood, is plastered all over the world we live in and reinforced culturally in every conceivable way?

Your OH hasn't reached that point yet, and maybe never will. Maybe it's not the way she's going to deal with it. Who knows? I can understand how it's hard for you to see her being hurt over and over again and apparently just not getting it, not getting that it's never going to change. But if you really love her and really want to support her, you would do better to show her some real respect and understanding and allow her to come to her own decsion in her own time. It's not for you to force the agenda of when or if she should cut off from her mother.

You can talk to her about your feelings - tell her how frustrated and impotent and unhappy it makes you to see letting herself in for this repeated hurt, if that's the truth for you. Tell her you're frightened her mother's power over her will one day force you apart, if that's the truth for you. Tell her you're scared for her, you love her and she doesn't deserve to be treated this way, tell her she's worth more than that - she probably needs to hear that. If you think you would one day have DC together then obviously there are a lot of issues to be discussed around that, too, from how this would affect her parenting, to what relationship any DCs would have with your MIL.

But please don't assume that you can just wave the magic wand of your apparent "insights" (I'm sorry to tell you, but they're not really insights - but if you are really a 21 year old man, you can easily be forgiven that) and make it all go away, just like that. Life unfortunately isn't that simple. Tbh, it's a big fucking mess a lot of the time. What you're actually doing is undermining her and telling her she's doing it all wrong - hey, and that's just what her mother's been doing for all these years! Do you really think that's going to help?

One last thing - it's interesting that you've chosen someone whose family dynamics are so screwed up. Perhaps there's something your unconscious is trying to tell you?

Larev...there's years of wisdom, experience, self searching and learning condensed into that post. If I could I would stand and applaud.

I can add nothing.......

thank you very much Wannabe! What a lovely compliment and one I will try to receive and savour [girn] or even - seriously, those words mean a lot to me.

I have realised I still have more to say though (can you tell this one really got me going...?!)

Never underestimate the power and reality of denial.

Denial is the biggest, most reliable, and often only coping/survival mechanism that children who are abused/bullied/scapegoated in their own homes have to protect them. If you are a child and you sense your mother isn't really fair to you, doesn't do the right thing by you, is not really protecting you, then in most cases the only sane thing you can do is block it out in whatever way possible, because it just wouldn't be safe to acknowledge the truth.

You lie to yourself that of course she loves you, etc etc, because it's the only way you can get through your childhood without becoming a complete basket case. And usually she and the rest of your family and the rest of the world in general will eagerly collude in and reinforce this lie.

So by the time you get to adulthood this denial is your truth. It has become part of who you are, your personal identity. You are not someone whose mother didn't love her; that's an awful thing that happens to other people. And it can take such a huge amount of hard work and persistence and courage and willingness to face real pain to actually undo that brainwashing, to turn that denial around; it's very hard for someone who hasn't actually been through the process to really grasp what it entails, IMO.

You can't just turn around and snap your fingers and eradicate that kind of denial in one fell swoop. It's your support structure; it's often what holds you together. People have to find their own way, go at their own pace, make their own mistakes, do what they can do in the time that they can do it. And people who are trying to deal with this stuff have the right to be gentle with themselves and not expect themselves to do things they aren't really ready for, or that just aren't right for them. We are all different.

And now I shall climb down from my high horse to say a more general hello to all you lovely ladies of this thread, am sending friendly all round and some and for anyone who fancies....

Tapir, glad to hear my words on a previous post were helpful, so brave of you to talk about this stuff.

myhands that sounds like a plan! It's good to try and protect yourself. And talking of being gentle with oneself, I really liked what you said a while back about you and your DH developing that phrase "we're only learning" when you get stuff "wrong" - that's a lovely approach, I think, and I'm going to borrow that myself, if I may! Your DH sounds lovely.

This is why I don't post too often, cos once I start, I can't stop!!! Time for bed, before my face hits the keyboard.... zzzzzzzzzzz....

LaRev Those posts were completely wonderful - so much of what I wanted to say, but had no way to find the words, powerful words at that.

I'm with Meg - massive round of applause.

Yes i will join my mum wont take any interest in me or my son and i have ran to the moon and back for her she has made my life hell.

So pleased I found this thread. I have so much to say about my mum that I don't know where to begin.
She presents herself as the perfect mum. Recently going on about how many birthday cards she got/how popular she is, and it's because those people see a facade not the nasty side she saves for her daughters. She favours my brothers. My sister and I are both not good enough (careerwise we are more successful than our brothers).

She had me in tears on my birthday at the weekend, reminding me that I'd always wanted children by my 30th and I don't have any yet. It doesn't sound so bad written down but it really upset me. When she met DP for the first time she said to both of us that I'm too selfish to be a mother. She's asked previous boyfriends what they see in me. I'm lucky that DP is totally on my side and sees what she is like. Previous boyfriends have always said how lovely she is which makes me question my perceptions/if I am too sensitive like she always says. If I mention comments that have upset me she denies they happened or uses the 'I'm too sensitive' line.

My one big fear is that I'll end up like her with my children. She always tells us how awful her own mother was to her while being totally unaware of how similar her behaviour is towards me and my sister. I'm scared that I won't break the cycle. I really want to become a mother but I have this fear of turning into my own.

It feels so good to get this out. I've been so upset since the comments at the weekend. She never misses an opportunity to make nasty comments (my graduation, the day she met DPs parents have all been spoilt by her digs at me). She never makes comments to my sister in front of me or to me infront of sister, that way she can continue with her denial that she made them if we mention anything. That worked until DP came along and it feels so good to know that he sees what she's like, like it validates everything that happened in the past to have someone on my side.

I'm in tears now, but it feels so good to have a space where I can get all this out.

As it is, you have asked from a perspective of "there is a simple and easy solution to this, and I have it - even though I have no direct personal experience of what any of you are talking about!"

I've seen my brother twice in 3 years. Both times at christmas, when we were both visiting the same relatives at the same time, unfortunately. Admittedly not a mother, but a close member of family, and the news that I make every effort not to talk to him causes gasps and murmurs of "that's horrible" when I tell others.

Apart from the personal digs at me, those were two very useful posts- thank you for taking the time to reply.

AKiss I sympathise...
The 'too sensitive' line gets thrown around a lot doesn't it. Its such a powerful way to undermine your reaction to their nasty stuff. The other one is 'I wasn't serious...can't you take a joke'.
There's no way back from those comments...it totally disables your assertiveness and leaves you wondering about your own judgement and feelings. But there is always a little voice inside that tells you the truth if you listen.
LaRev..your totally welcome... You write so cogently and with great insight that can only have come from having waled through the fire and come out the other end.

waled???? clearly I meant walked

Wannabe: yes you are totally right.

How do other people deal with these comments? Is it worth pulling my mum up over them? What usually happens is I'm shocked she says them at the time, it takes me a day or so to process it, by which time, when I confront her I get back 'I didn't say it', 'I didn't mean it like that' or 'you're too sensitive'.

When I split from my first serious boyfriend she told me I'd never find anyone else who'd love me. I was 22 FFS. She denies that ever happened. I just can't understand why a mother would say that to her child.