Some thoughts about "toxic" people

[flippinada]

I've read and contributed to a couple of threads where people are having to deal with what I would describe as toxic friends and family and the distress that it cause. I've had issues in the past with people this myself and it's really got me thinking.

Once thing that struck me from these threads, plus my own experience of toxic types is that there seems to be common "themes" - the one that immediately comes to mind is that the toxic person needs an enabler - usually a husband or wife who panders to their awful behaviour and colludes with them.

I know there's already a wonderful support thread (stately homes) but I thought it might be helpful to have a general discussion about how to identify these people and cope with them, plus a kind of support thing so folk know they aren't alone in having to deal with it alone?

Double - sorry I tried to post earlier but my computer crashed. It really does sound like your parents put the doctors off. Normal parents would have been begging for a diagnosis.

Double what an absolutely heartbreaking story. I'm so sorry that happened, for you and for your sister.

I can understand that must be terribly painful to think about, let alone write.

Oh, double... so brave of you to say all this. Full of admiration for your courage.

ohmygosh My mum has done quite a few turns with other people's situations being all about her. I really feel for you.

My fiance died suddenly when I was 6 months pregnant. She went on holiday the night he first collapsed, which was OK, she did ask me if I wanted her to stay and I said no. But, he died 8 days later without ever gaining consciousness. She didn't come home. She didn't really want to speak to me for the next 10 days she was on holiday, either. When she did get home, she texted me to let me know she was home. I asked if she wanted to come round for a coffee (mid-afternoon, this was) and she said that she was "too tired and would see me tomorrow".

Now, I'm not a perfect mum by any means, but if either my son or daughter's partner had died, I'd have been on the first plane back home, no questions asked.

Now, onto when DD was born. My mum looked after my son for the week I was in hospital with DD. After she dropped me off home, she literally ran out of the house. I stood there in the kitchen for 20 minutes cooking dinner for DS and I. I'd not long had an emergency CS. Then she used to complain that she was tired because she was doing the school run for me. I ended up back behind the wheel (after clearing it with the doctor and with the insurance company) 2.5 weeks after having DD doing the school run. We didn't see much of my mum until my DD was about 8 months old and I was due to go back to work.

I know I should be the bigger person, but I find it very hard to come to terms with what she did.

I think I've also posted that my sister is at her wits' end about my mum's behaviour at the moment - but then, my sister is the golden child and is finding the battle of wits with my mum quite hard.

Double your story and your lovely sister's story is so, so sad..... {HUG}

Lemony - thats bloody awful too. I wish we could just give them one bloody big shake - I wish they had some empathy so they could understand the dreadfulness of what they have done. Sadly that will never happen.

I had an emergency c section. I remember resting after it and my mum rang about 3 weeks in asking if I was driving yet. I said no. She went "its not as if you've had major surgery".
My face was like this
and I had to say actually mum, yes I have had major surgery!
I know that is a direct result of having to fob off my toxic nan's "illnesses", but I wish she'd thought before opening her mouth!

Lemon, my story is nowhere near as bad as yours. I'm sorry your mum doesn't seem to have time for you.

And Double, your story is heartbreaking. You have so much of my sympathy.

Lemony :(

How can somebody be so bloody self centred!

I've come across this behaviour myself. A"friend" from uni. One of her housemates had to go and identify her fathers body after he died in an accident. My "friend" turned it it a big whiny drama about how stressful it was for her.

She also dropped out of her course claiming to have ME (not disputing it exists at all, just that she had it) yet could manage endless trips/nights out and holidays.

flippin - its really truely shit. They have no empathy - it makes my blood boil.

No they don't.

I suspectthat a lot of toxic people come from very dysfunctional backgrounds, but that begs the question, why some people turn out toxic and not others, when they have the same background?

Exactly - but I don't know why

I once rang my mum to ask if she'd watch my children for two hours while I went to hospital in an ambulance for a morphine injection and to pass a kidney stone .... No, apparently I should be more thoughtful about her job as I KNEW she was supposed to be at work the next day. I offered to pay her a days work and she could take the day off .... No, I should have KNOWN how tired she already was.

All she had to do was get in a taxi and doze on the sofa, the kids were in bed, then I'd have taxied her back. She lives less than a mile away.

What I ended up doing was pissing grit and blood into a bowl in the kitchen whilst sobbing down the phone to nhs direct nurse who could not have been more kind.

And I haven't ever really forgiven her for that. I've forgiven her for a lot of things, but not that.

Flip I think some people turn toxic maybe because of how they were brought by toxic parents themselves, then there are the people like us who recognise the behaviour and who do everything we can to stop the cycle

Colditz how awful for you. Have you got people in your life now that you can rely on?

Bloody hell colditz that's awful! I know how painful kidney stones are too.

I'm not surprised you don't want to forgive your Mum after that.

What kind of mother wouldn't go to their child when they were crying in pain? :( and

Flip that's an important question, isn't it, about all sorts of abuse - why do some people turn out to be 'in the mould' and others don't? What makes the difference?

Some years ago my Dsis and I both decided enough was enough and we would not treat our daughters the way our other treated us. I'm not always sure how successful we've been, though. We both worry a lot about traits we may have 'inherited'. Ironically, my mother's own oddness was partly in response to her rejection of what she saw as her own 'terrible mother'.

I hope Dsis and I have broken the cycle. The fact we tell our daughters, and show them, that we love them, has hopefully been a start.

our mother not 'our other'

Typing from a&e as poor Ds got knocked off climbing frame.
Brings back memories... My mother refused to take me to a&e when I had a broken ankle, was inconvenient & too stressful for her. Ffs. Not as painful as kidney stones though... Ugh how cruel.

On the question of what stops some people from passing down the pain to the next generation...

I wonder if the difference is that the people that break the pattern understand the pattern, enough to break it... My mother would complain about all the instances of favoritism in her family, but couldn't draw a pattern from it... Ie my mother did X and she's a bad mum, VS my mother did X so ALL types of rejecting are bad... Or something like that?

Also perhaps we question everything and will admit when we did something we don't like. Changing only happens if you are brave enough to see what needs changing.

That sounds like a good start to me Linerunner

I'm guessing you're a similar generation to me - I think that our parents generation were bought up with the idea that if you showed too much affection or gave too much praise you would "spoil" your kids. Just musing - I could be talking out of the proverbial!

Also making a show of yourself or airing dirty laundry in public was not done so people wouldn't feel able to talk about things?

Non of that excuses or explains plain old nastiness though.

all of these posts remind me of my mother over the years.
In paticular the treatment of my youngest sister who is turning into her henchman. Sister is "ill". Sister had difficulty conceiving.
When I told my mother I am pregnant with 2nd DD,
"Oh what do I tell Sister"?
My friend has mentioned too that my mother does great PR for me. Everyone loves her, won't hear a word against her, yet I recognise none of that.
No present is acknolwedged.
No resteraunt is good enough, she often sits there dry heaving.
She is always in the mood to strip people apart behind their backs and seems to revel in her isolation and lack of social life, but is a simpering lovely bag of fun to their face. Two minutes later she is taking them apart. All the human race are shit bags, trust no one.
since childhood, all I have ever had from her is sneering contempt, distaste and outright hate.
One day coming home from school, i picked some cherry blossom on the way and gave them to her when I got in. She laughed before tossing them in the garden.
which was nice. Then there was the jolly time she told me I was adopted and that if I wanted she could show me the paper work. I was 10.

However, when I "need" her, she will oblige, before bailing out at the most inconvenient moment, or start a fight or something which means she is heading in the opposite direction like a streak of bad luck.

I have been tested for fucking everything as a child. Sent to remedial classes, hearing tests, painful gynae internal exams that showed nothing (aged 7), and so on. She some how feels villified now that I am diagnosed with bi polar depressive what have you including self harming and suicide attempts, the "wrongness" of me had emerged.
My sister is gay, my mother wishes we all were as The Gays are much less trouble.
She manipulates, lies and generally acts out all over the place and I do not know how to seperate her from me.

My therapist suggested that trying to build a better template of a mother inside me to replace the fucking lunatic I was handed through no fault of my own. The eternal disappointment is becoming unbearable. it really is.

Aw your poor DS Double hope he's ok! Things like that do bring up memories don't they. Make you think "how could you"?

lolaflores, Dsis has had years of therapy and what you describe as 'trying to build a better template of a mother inside me to replace the fucking lunatic I was handed through no fault of my own' is totally what Dsis needs to do to retain her sense of self; especially if she is going to maintain even sporadic contact.

I have cut all contact and my mother hates me. I think I have the easier life, tbh.

My mother also seemed/seems to take a vicarious pleasure in her grandchildren falling ill or having accidents. Often whilst in her company. Not a well woman.

:( Lola

That's terrible. What a vile woman.