Can anyone make sense of this dysfunctional family pattern?

[saltnpepa]

My family is very dysfunctional and today I had a sudden realisation. In my family if you are abused you must pretend it was ok, that it doesn't hurt at all and go out of your way to soothe the abuser and protect them from the truth of their abusive behavior. If you are honest about how you feel, if you confront the abuser (even in a gentle fairly compassionate way) you are told you are a trouble maker and cruel. The abusers are allowed to ruin anything they like but if you make a stand and say you want to have anything kept nice/sacred they say you are heartless not to include everyone. My parents are the biggest abusers but siblings are now following close behind. Does this sound familiar to anyone? I started talking about how I felt, just in really simple terms like that I felt uncomfortable with something and everyone went terrifically nuts. Anyone shed any light?

I am in my fifth year of therapy after disentangling myself from a family like this.

I understand it, I understand my triggers, I understand all kinds of things....I am also grief stricken that I had the misfortune to have been born into such a squalid, writhing bunch of freaks for a family. It isn't/wasn't fair.

I have broken the pattern for my own children. I can see that. I am VERY proud of that.

It does terrify me that now my eldest is away at college, they will hunt him down. They do regularly use people to try and get to me...which sounds paranoid, but it is sadly completely true. It would give them immense satisfaction to suck my eldest back in.

There are LOADS of families like this sadly. Makes me feel a little less of a freak.

As indicated upthread, this is what has happened with my kids. Worst nightmare.

I was thinking last night ... what do you do? Do you mow them down to get them off the face of the earth and go to prison for it but at least your kids will be forever safe? Do you explain to your kids what they're like? I didn't explain to my kids what they were like, thought it was better to keep my kids out of the poison vat of info about my family. I should've told them, I see that now. (I don't think I quite got how bad they were myself. I kept them at arms length but 'didn't want to deprive my kids of relationships with aunts/uncles/g'parents'. I suppose even at that stage I thought I probably had some culpability for the crap relationship between myself and my family.)

Moral: get your kids away from toxic family. Explain to kids how and why family are toxic. Hope it holds (eg teen etc rebellion)

I told my kids recently, when they saw some of the manipulative behaviour for themselves. I'm glad I did, though it is hard for them.

I am NC with my family for various reasons. I have explained to my kids about how some people are good and some are not so good at looking after others. I know it is hard for them to understand but I hope that by keeping them away and telling them the truth whilst raising them in a safe caring environment they will eventually understand why they do not see their grandparents.

I long for the happy family dream but I know that it will never happen. In the meantime I am building my own safe version of it.

I have tried to explain it in terms of -

we all choose how we behave and we should choose to treat others with respect, consideration etc. However, if someone behaves badly towards us we do not have to accept it, even from our own family.

I'm doing the same, deck. I hope it holds. When I think how absolutely unprotected and defenseless children are against manipulative behaviour that can be so bad as to be called 'evil' is, it makes me get a cold sweat at night.

My role was as 'scapegoat' within my family. It took me 40 years to accept that I was not 'bad, mad, evil, crazy, psycho, ugly' and lots of other soul shattering things that have had a profound effect on how I view myself and my life.

When I finally found the courage to stand up to my mother in defence of my DC who were being called similar names, I was thrown out of the family with my mother proclaiming I was 'mentally ill'.

It took me a long time to realise that a 'normal' family would not shun a member in 'mental distress' who was almost singlehandedly bringing up 4 DC (that they apparently loved so much) with a DH away working very long hours no matter how 'unforgivable' and 'hurtful' the (truth) things they may have said had been! They were so concerned about my DC having a mother like me that they have not seen or spoken to them in almost 2 years!

Honestly, to say its a shit situation is an understatement.

I don't think my role is scapegoat, it's almost like I'm the only one who tells the truth.