How hideous is going no contact?

[NumptyNameChange]

not sure how much to write but after my sister had a hissy fit over nothing and threw me and my son out of her house in the rain without our coats (and with my keys in my coat pocket) in front of her own children (her daughter was really upset by it all) i have refused to go 'back to normal' re: forget anything ever happened yet again.

as a result i've ceased to be invited to family gatherings for over a month and no one wished me luck for an interview or asked how it went and basically i'm being punished for not playing the game/the role/etc that i am meant to.

another posters thread on here has really brought the dysfunctional dynamics of my family to life for me - they were anyway but you know how when you read it in someone else's life it's so much clearer?

anyway my role was always scapegoat and whipping boy (i'm female btw). no matter what successes i have it won't change a thing. things going well or that in any way disprove the role i've been assigned are just ignored.

i have never in my life been asked by my mother how i am or how things are going. i've never had an apology even when she has been absolutely monstrous. i'm pretty sure she is a narcissist - ticks all the boxes etc.

i have built pretty good boundaries over the years and laughingly refer to my teflon coating that lets the abuse slide off but i find myself wondering why on earth i put up with it at all or allow these people who are so keen to destroy me in my life.

could say lots more but not sure if i'll regret putting this out there. my parents are due to go away for a long spell soon, i haven't seen them for about a month despite living close by and i would actually rather not see them before they go away and rather not have my son go there as at the minute it feels really important to me for us to be together and not polluted by all the extended family madness. i suspect the pressure will come on soon or the 'you're such a bad person' trip.

i massively miss my sister's children but i no longer feel i can put up with all the shit i have to take to be in their lives. i'm tired of being painted as someone i genuinely don't even recognise and never did even as a child and having motives and intentions and actions attributed to me that bear no relation to reality. i'm sick of the crazy making of people behaving monstrously and then just lying or pretending it never happened or that i'm the crazy one and it was all my fault somehow. i'm also sick of allowing my son to be around people who don't have the most basic respect for me.

not sure what the point of this post is - maybe just to put it out there.

Numpty you sound like a wonderful mum! Carry on giving your son all the love and positive attention you missed out on xxx

Praise and encouragement was something i never got and my siblings didn't get much of it either growing up. I always give tbem that. When my bro was struggling as a single parent to three under 5's,i would send him fb messages telling him how proud i was of him and not to give up during the tough times,pass on little pearls of wisdom i had been given by the good people in my life-and NC-sis would immediately try to 'hijack' my posts by either trying to point out 'flaws' in my message or turning them into 'this is how/what i would do'....so i blocked her from my fb so she couldn't see what i was writing! [Grin]

It bothers her that i have succeeded in not just having a relationship with my other siblings but a GOOD one and that they actually have love n respect for me. She did nothing to help me with that when my parents had stopped letting them have contact with me,i had to 'wait in the wings' until they were old enough to use social media and speak for themselves.

Some people eh!

i'm not a wonderful mum and that's ok. i'm a 'good enough' mum.

there's a lot of trimmings i'm not good at - but i love him and he knows that and i don't blame him for anything that's 'mine'. i don't project onto him - i've always been really wary of saying he IS x, y or z and have resisted when others try to pigeon hole him. i can admit to mistakes, i can sorry when i do something wrong or overreact or something. he's allowed to 'live' in this house - to have stuff, to make mess (but he does need to tidy it up mind - i'm not going the other way and creating a brat). he's allowed to have feelings and thoughts and i work hard not to negate them. i acknowledge he has an internal world of his own and show interest in it and when he shares things from it i listen and validate or explain or just mirror and acknowledge.

basically he's getting the 'basics' that i never got which are therefore the most important bits to me (my bias). there'll be plenty of other stuff i'm getting wrong or not doing well enough and probably he'll end up with plenty of his own baggage and resentments as most people do from their childhoods. BUT hopefully he'll have those fundamentals i missed out on - a sense that the world is basically a safe place, that he is fundamentally loveable and worthy without having to earn, prove, fight for that basic solid ground of self and other acceptance. he will not have to grow up alone inside his head with no one to talk to or share that internal world with and he won't have the confusion of being told he is something tat he fundamentally is NOT. he won't have the muddle of a lifetime of gaslighting to work through.

but yes i get plenty wrong and i'm allowed to! and he'll be allowed to tell me what i got wrong and i'll argue if i disagree and acknowledge and apologise if i agree. i will allow him to see me as a human being who is flawed and can acknowledge it and hold her hands up to being a mere human being who can be questioned and found wanting.

i guess that's all the stuff i think is important - funny how what you didn't get can be such a guide to what you need to give for some of us whereas others just feel the need to repeat the cycle.

honestly i'm not a 'wonderful mum' - i'm just a normal human being muddling through, sometimes very, very messily in more ways than one and having to make it up as i go along - entirely! a) because i know the template i got shown for family and parenting is totally fucked so i can't follow that one and b) i'm a single mum - right from the start and no dad on the scene so it's just me and him and how we do it - no templates out there in popular discourse/media etc and c) i have never been a very 'conventional' type of person and didn't have a child till i was 31 after travelling, mad assortment of lifestyles, mental health issues and all sorts and i have to try and work out where the lines between conformity to respectability and performance of what motherhood is meant to look like and being myself and authentic and letting us be the family we are are - itms??

it's all just wobbly balancing act and i reckon that is probably how it is for most of us who are open to the messy, uncertain, up and down, fallible, happy, sad, mad, reality of trying to be an adult and trying to raise a child and just trying to survive in what is really actually a pretty fucked up world full of lots of fairly fucked up people but all in all still well worth being in.

jesus - talk about carthesis!

Lol - you have life experience and a plethora of tales to tell. Much better than ironed napkins. That's what makes a wonderful mum. Silly.

You may not think you're an amazing mum but I have to tell you you are coming across as quite an insightful and aware person with her head screwed on ok and that will be a great role model for your son as he grows older, whatever your other faults might be.

thanks - i suppose i'm the kind of mum that i would've liked but having doubt in my own likes/dislikes/wants/judgments means that that doesn't mean that much to me maybe?

i'm in the process of deciding my own standards and learning to judge myself by those. obviously not going to be an instant fix.

fair bit of weeping out of nowhere today. felt a bit like reconnecting with old hurt and pain that i had to stuff down and trying to just 'allow' myself to cry through it.

bit of a horrible panicked stage of a sort of... black spot - like something you can't remember or quite see but it looms at you itms. don't want to jump to conclusions and my research about this kind of stuff over the years when it's happened has led me to sort of avoid trying to 'see' what's there for fear of false memories or constructing something rather than just letting stuff be and if i need to remember i will organically. am i making any sense at all?

i had a counsellor when i was about 17 who went way too far with suggestions to account for some half memories and current responses to stuff i was having and that has made me very wary of the power of suggestion into those black spots.

sorry if i'm being cryptic or sound like i'm trying to be a drama lamma - kind of the whole point that i'm not. but fear myself when i feel like that that i might remember something that's not real.

kind of wish i'd never seen that counsellor.

oh and then i fear that that fear of myself is the product of a lifetime of gaslighting and round and round it can go.

i can learn can't i? to trust myself? to know what's up and what's down? does that TOLD what it is you think or feel or remember fucks that up for life?

Numpty I've just found this thread - and I think I recognize myself in your OP?

Haven't read through it yet - but wanted to lend my support, we're going through similar situations, and you have been so supportive to me.

for now

Numpty - if ever a name was a wrong'un yours is! just wanted to say that you sound absolutely amazing in every way, and so emotionally insightful. I wish we were RL friends and I would be your back up against the toxic family.

could definitely do with more of those kind of friends boschy - and thank you but honestly i'm fairly fucked up. i have a really sorted self but never quite sure whether to believe in it itms.

plastic hi, worried i was a bit too blunt with you on your thread tbh. hope i haven't 'projected' too much. reading the ins and outs of your situation really helped me in how it's so easy to see from outside you know? and what i wanted to tell you was the medicine i needed to take - you know that saying about why can't we take our own medicine? anyway. rambling and being badgered by the boy to watch the second half of the simpsons.

been a really emotional roller coaster type day but it has been survived and i've tried not to beat myself up over stuff. as twee as it sounds there's a little girl in there with a lot of hurt and whilst i can't let her take over because i have to keep hold of the plot i also can't shut her up and stuff her down and collude in her abuse.

blah blah.

Hey Numpty. Sorry today has been hard, but I agree that sometimes we just need space to grieve about the fact that it wasn't okay.

I think I understand about the gaps in memory. Sometimes I wonder if something really sinister fills those gaps but I don't think it does in my case. I think to myself, 'If xyz happened, then it would have been likely that I'd have reacted in a totally different way to abc in later life. Since in fact I didn't react that way, xyz probably didn't happen.'

That might not be helpful, I don't know.

Numpty Hi again - I still haven't sat down and read your whole thread, but I will, and will comment properly soon.

Just wanted to say that I didn't think you were too blunt at all, I found your advice really useful. Don't worry about projecting - I'm glad the thread helped you gain some insight into your own situation.

And I know what you mean about 'medicine' - I think when reading about someone else's problems, and coming up with really good sound advice, you realize that actually you are wise and sensible and able to apply the same advice to yourself. Sometimes it's just really hard to see it when it's happening to you.

Sorry you had a hard day yesterday - I hope today is better for you. Look after that little girl inside you, give her a hug and tell her it's ok

Hello again, NNameChange,
I posted on the first page here and have read your posts. You do not sound waffling or whinging at all. What came to my mind, is that you are growing, maturing, and evolving. I do not think the narcs can evolve or mature, in an emotional sense anyway. Revisiting the events is important to process them, and to process them accurately; imho, only then can we recover from the damage done and heal, and leave it behind/move on.

Writing it down is a physical way to get it out in a real sense. I appreciate that you have shared your experience here. I continue to need/find validation about this twisted and distorted thinking dynamic and how damaging it really is for the people on the receiving end of it.

The "good enough" mom is the gold standard, imho.
Kids are welcome in every room of the house.
Corrections are given with appropriate explanations, and with options for what is ok to do.
Apologies, yes!
I can identify with so much of what you have written.

And gifts...I will try not to get triggered here ...they are simply to purchase a license to abuse. They won't change and they seem to up the ante every time.

I know your little boy won't understand about the gifts. I have PM you.

If you can cry, that is a great thing. My feelings have been stuffed for so long I have found it difficult to do that. Cry and you cry alone is how I was brought up, so why bother with the feelings at all. I am slowly getting it back, cried twice in couselling about mother's emotional neglect. When I get flooded with frustration about whether or not to trust my own thinking will sometimes bring a few tears too. I find my brain likes to scatter in eight different directions in search of the most best answer that will not be misunderstood by anyone.

Thanks for the thread , and the benefits far out weigh any hideousness in going NC.

i used to get shouted at when i cried as a kid, then later if i was ever upset on the phone with her, as in had hard stuff going on and made the mistake of expressing i was struggling or upset she'd literally hang up on me so i think i can identify with what you say there. it was hard to let myself keep crying yesterday rather than just stuff it down.

totally recognise the brain scattering to every option thing too. do you find it really hard to know genuinely what you want or need? i suspect at some point i decided it was safest NOT to need or want and stuffed that down too itms.

i'm so grateful for you sharing your thoughts here. off to check my pm.

incidentally i found out today that my job is 'at risk' and in all likelihood i'll be redundant before christmas.

in all honesty i mostly feel relieved and i'm wondering if it's because i'm so used to waiting for the other shoe to drop when things go well that it's a relief when it does.

We were never allowed to be ill. I have just been really ill and it has brought a lot of old wounds to the surface. It is a process we have to go through . Accepting ourselves for who we actually are at this moment .

sorry to hear you've been ill spanky. my mother never believed i was ill - well really just didn't care and refused to engage with it i suppose. if i was sick as a small child it was as if i had done it on purpose just to inconvenience her. i was sent to school no matter what.

i starting bunking off school when i was about 15 and had really bad glandular fever and would just be exhausted and feel like death warmed up. a while before that i had a really bad bout of migraines that would nail me to the bathroom floor hugging the toilet because i'd be so violently sick with them and got vertigo if tried to be any higher than the floor or move around. she would be all, 'oh for god's sake' as if i was faking it or doing it to get attention.

god she sounds awful when i write things like this. no one would think it of her.

another couple of similar vein memories - i once fell downstairs and she sat in the living room watching her soaps and ignoring me. later after i started vomiting when my dad came home i had to go to hospital with concussion. another time i trod on a rusty nail - literally into my foot and she refused to even look at it and again had to wait for my dad to get home to get it seen to.

Wow, numpty. That is horrific neglect. I feel for you still having to live down the road and put up with it all so much. No wonder you want shot of it.

is it? see part of me can just hear her saying oh you're such a drama queen, oh you always had such a persecution complex, you have such a vivid imagination etc.

Thank you numpty . I am the drama queen of the family too. Sometimes I feel so tired of it. Why can't our parents be normal ?! Your mum sounds very neglecting . You deserve more .

Forgot , classic narc responses to your complaints.

My therapist told me to ask myself if I would ever do that thing to my child.

Would you? Would you ever let your child tread on a rusty nail and tell her to get over it?

Would you ever ignore the fact that she fell down the stairs and was then vomiting?

As a real, 'good enough' parent, you can see how parents make mistakes and get cross and shout sometimes and get impatient and maybe overlook or brush aside things that are important to children. We all do it and that is normal.

But the things you are talking about need to be taken very seriously as something beyond that.

you're right - and i know rationally i would never do that to ds. but somehow the little human bad things i do as a parent (for example brush him aside when i'm busy/tired etc) end up feeling like evidence that i'm the same when really they're clearly totally different as you say face.

it's totally the crazymaking business that makes it so hard to feel confident and the fact of knowing that everything was done in such a deniable way and she has outright denied so many things and point blank lied with such utter conviction that you do end up doubting your own memories sometimes.

i think if you're sensitised to seeing yourself as bad then even the tiniest bits of being human seem like looming evidence of it. confirmation bias in a way i guess. i do have a rational head and a lot of insight so i can rationalise and see but god it is exhausting sometimes. would be nice to not have to work so hard at it itms.

my mum never hit me that much - i can remember a few hysterical slapping incidents but i think it stopped fairly young as it didn't really serve her and there was no way she'd have wanted to give me evidence. i remember comparing red hand marks on my thighs with a friends lump on her head once at primary - her mum was a thrower, mine a slapper.

but i'm realising there are different ways of physically abusing your children than just hitting them - so refusing to get them medical treatment or to attend to their injuries fits in there i think. these people are sneaky and she knew i'd use bruises or other physical signs to get away or 'show her up' so she had to find deniable ways to hurt me. like how the worst of the emotional abuse would be without witnesses - not all of it mind as she had the family under control enough to tolerate and even enjoy (in the case of my sister) me 'getting it'.

hmm. bloody families! i read something that made me laugh out loud yesterday because it was so resonant of my family - someone wrote something about how if their family was involved in a major car accident no one would call 999, pull people out of burning cars or take any essential action until they'd decided whose fault it was.