But we took you to Stately Homes

[AttilaTheMeerkat]

It's March 2015 and the Stately Home is still open to visitors. Unfortunately I have not been able to make the links work; is it possible for one of you lovely people to do that?.

Forerunning threads:
December 2007
March 2008
August 2008
February 2009
May 2009
January 2010
April 2010
August 2010
March 2011
November 2011
January 2012
November 2012
January 2013
March 2013
August 2013
December 2013
February 2014
April 2014
July 2014
October 2014

Welcome to the Stately Homes Thread.

This is a long running thread which was originally started up by 'pages' see original thread here (December 2007)

So this thread originates from that thread and has become a safe haven for Adult children of abusive families.

One thing you will never hear on this thread is that your abuse or experience was not that bad. You will never have your feelings minimised the way they were when you were a child, or now that you are an adult. To coin the phrase of a much respected past poster Ally90;

'Nobody can judge how sad your childhood made you, even if you wrote a novel on it, only you know that. I can well imagine any of us saying some of the seemingly trivial things our parents/ siblings did to us to many of our real life acquaintances and them not understanding why we were upset/ angry/ hurt etc. And that is why this thread is here. It's a safe place to vent our true feelings, validate our childhood/ lifetime experiences of being hurt/ angry etc by our parents behaviour and to get support for dealing with family in the here and now.'

Most new posters generally start off their posts by saying; but it wasn't that bad for me or my experience wasn't as awful as x,y or z's.

Some on here have been emotionally abused and/ or physically abused. Some are not sure what category (there doesn't have to be any) they fall into.

NONE of that matters. What matters is how 'YOU' felt growing up, how 'YOU' feel now and a chance to talk about how and why those childhood experiences and/ or current parental contact, has left you feeling damaged, falling apart from the inside out and stumbling around trying to find your sense of self-worth.

You might also find the following links and information useful, if you have come this far and are still not sure whether you belong here or not.

'Toxic Parents' by Susan Forward.

I started with this book and found it really useful.

Here are some excerpts:

"Once you get going, most toxic parents will counterattack. After all, if they had the capacity to listen, to hear, to be reasonable, to respect your feelings, and to promote your independence, they wouldn't be toxic parents. They will probably perceive your words as treacherous personal assaults. They will tend to fall back on the same tactics and defences that they have always used, only more so.

Remember, the important thing is not their reaction but your response. If you can stand fast in the face of your parents' fury, accusations, threats and guilt-peddling, you will experience your finest hour.

Here are some typical parental reactions to confrontation:

"It never happened". Parents who have used denial to avoid their own feelings of inadequacy or anxiety, will undoubtedly use it during confrontation, to promote their version of reality. They'll insist that your allegations never happened, or that you're exaggerating. They won't remember, or they will accuse you of lying.

YOUR RESPONSE: Just because you don't remember, doesn't mean it didn't happen".

"It was your fault." Toxic parents are almost never willing to accept responsibility for their destructive behaviour. Instead, they will blame you. They will say that you were bad, or that you were difficult. They will claim that they did the best that they could but that you always created problems for them. They will say that you drove them crazy. They will offer as proof, the fact that everybody in the family knew what a problem you were. They will offer up a laundry list of your alleged offences against them.

YOUR RESPONSE: "You can keep trying to make this my fault, but I'm not going to accept the responsibility for what you did to me, when I was a child".

"I said I was sorry what more do you want?" Some parents may acknowledge a few of the things that you say but be unwilling to do anything about it.

YOUR RESPONSE: "I appreciate your apology, but that is just a beginning. If you're truly sorry, you'll work through this with me, to make a better relationship."

"We did the best we could." Some parents will remind you of how tough they had it while you were growing up and how hard they struggled. They will say such things as "You'll never understand what I was going through," or "I did the best I could". This particular style of response will often stir up a lot of sympathy and compassion for your parents. This is understandable, but it makes it difficult for you to remain focused on what you need to say in your confrontation. The temptation is for you once again to put their needs ahead of your own. It is important that you be able to acknowledge their difficulties, without invalidating your own.

YOUR RESPONSE: "I understand that you had a hard time, and I'm sure that you didn't hurt me on purpose, but I need you to understand that the way you dealt with your problems really did hurt me"

"Look what we did for you." Many parents will attempt to counter your assertions by recalling the wonderful times you had as a child and the loving moments you and they shared. By focusing on the good things, they can avoid looking at the darker side of their behaviour. Parents will typically remind you of gifts they gave you, places they took you, sacrifices they made for you, and thoughtful things they did. They will say things like, "this is the thanks we get" or "nothing was ever enough for you."

YOUR RESPONSE: "I appreciate those things very much, but they didn't make up for ...."

"How can you do this to me?" Some parents act like martyrs. They'll collapse into tears, wring their hands, and express shock and disbelief at your "cruelty". They will act as if your confrontation has victimized them. They will accuse you of hurting them, or disappointing them. They will complain that they don't need this, they have enough problems. They will tell you that they are not strong enough or healthy enough to take this, that the heartache will kill them. Some of their sadness will, of course, be genuine. It is sad for parents to face their own shortcomings, to realise that they have caused their children significant pain. But their sadness can also be manipulative and controlling. It is their way of using guilt to try to make you back down from the confrontation.

YOUR RESPONSE: "I'm sorry you're upset. I'm sorry you're hurt. But I'm not willing to give up on this. I've been hurting for a long time, too."

Helpful Websites

Alice Miller

Personality Disorders definition

More helpful links:

Daughters of narcissistic mothers
Out of the FOG
You carry the cure in your own heart
Help for adult children of child abuse
Pete Walker

Some books:

Homecoming
Will I ever be good enough?
If you had controlling parents
When you and your mother can't be friends
Children of the self-absorbed
Recovery of your inner child

This final quote is from smithfield posting as therealsmithfield:

"I'm sure the other posters will be along shortly to add anything they feel I have left out. I personally don't claim to be sorted but I will say my head has become a helluva lot straighter since I started posting here. You will receive a lot of wisdom but above all else the insights and advice given will 'always' be delivered with warmth and support."

Oh jeez, I cannot type today, sorry for all the errors!

I hope everyone else is having a good day today too..

Meerka describes it so much better than me.. sounds just like my mum too, even though our upbringing was different loveheart0 I think a lot of people can identify with a similar type of mother.

"well I can't do anything about that now can I?". this is absolutely what my mother would say. Once she said (when I tried to get her to plan for the future- does she want to end up my father's carer after the way he treated us?) 'I don't focus on the past, I don't focus on the future, I like to live in the present'. Like a goldfish!

(Don't imagine that she is living an exciting, adventurous life with her talk of 'living in the present', that is not the case).

Crazy isn't it.. It's just another way to avoid giving emotional support I feel. Shutting me down has been a constant issue.. When it happens my face burns and I go red, even if it's on the phone (which it usually is).. I feel all hot and like I'm going to burst into tears. I guess it's a deep down issue of mine to be rejected. I feel I was rejected a lot growing up, a nuisance, ignored.

flippinada, thanks for that book recommendation (The Sociopath Next Door) - I just bought it for my kindle.

love hello! Don't apologise for posting, or for the length of your posts, as Meerka says, it's not a small thing, and if it helps you to talk it out here, then that's great. If it helps, hopefully without being too 'me too' about it, I find reading other people's experiences really helpful in not feeling alone, and often their phrasing helps me clarify how I feel, so you're helping me too!

I totally hear what you say about the 'my life is so hard/harder than yours' trope. It's so very hard to counter, or accept. I get a huge amount of this too. The 'training' (such a perfect term!) is very strong and clever. Maybe this will help - something my therapist once said to me:

You have obviously had a difficult set of circumstances to deal with. You've been hurt, and injured physically and emotionally. I (therapist) have too. Let's sit with both of those things for a minute, and accept that we can both feel hurts, and not have to have one set of feelings be negated by the other. Let's accept that I can listen to your hurts and not have to belittle them because of my life experience. Your hurts are not small, they are yours, and they are huge for you. Let's accept that I can listen to your hurts and not have to tell you mine, because that is my choice, and my job. An emotionally literate person like you (me) can entertain others' hurt at the same time as their own. The fact that your mother cannot is her emotional illiteracy, and is not a reason for you to deny or minimise your feelings. It's her issue to work on, not yours.

You have feelings, and memories to deal with. That's your 'work'. If it were your paid employment, you'd be expected to devote 90% of your time to that, and maybe 10% to helping colleagues if necessary. If colleagues are overwhelmed by their work, they have to deal with that, with their support network - boss, partner, whoever. It's not your responsibility to do so. All you have to work on is you.

hilary I can empathise, I get flashes of fear that I'll be recognised. What are you afraid would be the fall out if you were recognised? Again, sorry for all the 'i' posting, but when I get worried, I try to think through why: I'm conditioned to not upset my mother, so the fear is grounded in childhood training. I'm not going to plaster the Internet with defamatory and untrue stuff about her, nor will I ever name her. If she were to find my posts, she would be upset, or angry. And that's fine. That's up to her, and I need to do this, so she will have to deal with being upset if it comes to it. But it won't, because she'd read the first post on a SH thread and start scoffing at the very notion that parents - that she - aren't/isn't perfect.

Ergh.. messages from my sister along the lines of "We only have one mother" etc etc blah blah..

No understanding, no support, no sympathy.

Same old stuff then!

roland

Emotional blackmail sucks. I can't really try to recommend anything as I usually fall for it and end up absorbing the hurt for myself but I do understand how much is sucks to be on the receiving end. Hope your day gets better.

Thanks Hippy I usually fall for it too, but this time I'm standing my ground. I have so much work to do and this is all so distracting.

I just got a voicemail from Grandma, apparently mum asked her to call and ask me to call her this afternoon.

Just cannot believe the cheek of my mum, why can't she leave me alone for a bit? It's obvious I don't want to talk!

roland hold strong. I post this regularly because it sums it up so beautifully:

from perfectstorm

I will never fathom why blood alone should mean you're forced to let people hurt you over and over again, as long as they aren't physically or sexually abusive. It makes no sense. Life is too short to let bad/damaged people screw with you, no matter who they are, unless they are your own kids. You don't owe anyone else your unconditional love and time.

roland Ergh.. messages from my sister along the lines of "We only have one mother" etc etc blah blah..

Reply: Thank god for small mercies.

loveheart and Hilary, welcome. It can feel very frightening and exposing to post about the truth of your childhood when you have been conditioned by adults that "what happens in the home stays in the home", "don't go making out to strangers that you have it hard, they won't believe you", and other such charming instructions.

This was a massive wall for me to climb when I first started talking about how my dad had molested me. I sometimes physically struggled to speak and would cough and choke and felt that I couldn't breathe.

But every time I did speak about it and tell the truth, that wall had another brick knocked out of it. It is important to realise that we do not owe anyone our silence about their abusive behaviour. Our truths trump their lies.

Thank you Meerka that helps enormously!

It's so hard not to feel bad, not to think you are in the wrong somehow when so many people are on at you about it.

I think of it like a child having a tantrum, if you give in then they will tantrum every time they want something and you say no.

I feel sad and guilty of course, but I also feel quite angry too! I feel my feelings are being disrespected and what I want doesn't matter as long as mum is happy. My grandma and sister are both still in the FOG as far as I can see.. neither one has thought about telling mum to back off and leave me alone for a bit.

I also don't think she's told her husband about our recent falling out's... He's the type to get straight on Facebook ranting it anyone upsets mum, and she said in one phone call in the beginning.. "I won't tell as he will go absolutely mental about this". I remember then thinking, who gives a sh1t, he's not my dad and I can't stand the guy. Ironically, his own daughter doesn't even speak to him and hasn't for years now.

Reply: Thank god for small mercies.

Haha, that did make me scoff...

Don't get me wrong, in some ways my mum has been like a best friend sometimes, and I know she see's me as that, but it's all one sided. As soon as I disagree she gets on her high horse and starts acting like this..

I know she's trying to regain control of the situation, but for what purpose? If it was me and someone was avoiding me, I would be hurt, but I would back off and let them know to contact me when they felt they could.

roland

Ignore trite crap from sister, now there is truly someone who does not get it at all.

Also I am of the opinion that mothers should never act as their daughter's best friend. They are not their DDs best friend and such is highly damaging to the DD in particular.

Your mother is upset because you are not playing her game. She basically wants to draw you back into her web of dysfunction so you can resume the role she assigned to you.

Detach and disengage!.

Yes, yes and yes! Thank you, I'm so glad you all understand!

All this is for her benefit, something to moan about, something to get sympathy about, and then when she has me again she will use me to vent about her life and her worries, share the burden with me.

Attila She always says how I'm her best friend. Well, I have a best friend, and a long term boyfriend, and both are more supportive and praise me highly.. which is probably how I've started to see how odd it is that my family don't praise me, never have.

marking.

Did anyone see PumpkinSweetie's post. I just noticed it was the last on the last thread before it went pop, and i've just had a quick look here and not seen her posting again, or any replies to her?

I am literally just doing very brief tidy round before heading off and didn't want her to get dropped along the way.

So from me, just to say Hi pumpkin and welcome back although sorry you have need to be back, and I haven't had chance to think around your issue to come up with clever ways of resolving the issue you have with possible contact going on again now, but sending you strength to do whatever you feel necessary to save yourself and your DC from this. I can only say that if he's doing something like you suspect then thats not something you can actually stop if he feels that he's right to do that. You can tell him, but i think you're saying you have already, longtime since? I hear you want to salvage things, but he doesn't look worth salvaging from what you are saying as he's reverting ? or choosing to be instructed and led by those he chooses to follow beliefs in?

hi and good wishes to everyone else

A lot of people

1. have no idea of what goes on behind some other families' closed front doors. They have a good and loving family and cannot imagine what it's like not to be in one.
2. there's a huge societal pressure to love your family no matter what ... even if they grind you to dust. Also, we still have a strong hangover from the old days when there were no benefits and you could literally go hungry without your family. The pressures sort of coincided.

And yes, a lot of the time it is tantrumming and you -have- to stay calm and firm.

I replied smother but not sure if it got missed by everyone else.

If you are about pumpkin I hope you are okay.

roland your poor Gran getting dragged in to your mum's drama too! I'm off the opinion that the only reason your mum asked your Gran to call you is so that if you don't call her back she has a witness to your 'hurtful' behaviour and can use them for both sympathy and to get support from other family members and friends who she usually sucks in.

It'll be all... "I tried to contact her... She just won't speak to me... I don't know what I've done - she's so difficult sometimes but I'm get mother... I love her" etc etc. (add tears as appropriate).

I have a sibling who does this to deflect and avoid the consequences of their own behaviour. It's very wearing isn't it?

Stick to your guns - you are entitled to your space. Hope you are feeling OK.

I wrote a thread already about my father using his illness to control us, some of you on this thread made some great comments and said his behaviour is narcissistic.

Can I ask your opinion on something else that I find odd?
He was PA towards me when I was a child. Usually it was provoked by something small I did when he was in a tense mood. He would hit me and my mother would pull him off. He was stronger than her yet let her pull him away, so I think it was about control rather than actually wanting to physically harm me.

The last time he tried to hit me I was at secondary school, I think year 10 or 11. He got angry at me for something ludicrously petty and backed me into a corner with his fists up threatening me verbally. My mother dragged him out. I was pretty shaken, although I hadn't been hit. The next day he came and said he was sorry, no explanation just 'I am sorry', which he had never done before. I was absolutely sick of his drama so I blanked his apology. After that he didn't speak to me or acknowledge my presence for years, although we lived in the same house. If he wanted me to pass him something he would ask my mother to get it, so she asked me, I passed it to her, then he took it from her. If someone telephoned for me and he answered he would wordlessly pass the phone to my mother who would speak to the caller (confusing for the caller). If we passed each other in the corridor he would (and I kid you not) step into a room and close the door until I had gone past. If I followed him into the room he would stand there silently until I left. He never threatened me during this time, or said anything bad about me that I know of, or acknowledged me at all. It was like a child ignoring you. I can't remember how long it lasted as it became normal, but it was at least two years, although towards the end he was a bit laxer e.g. my mother might tell him to ask me to pass the salt and under duress he would. Also when my friends came round he would sometimes speak to them but not to me. It ended when I left college and went backpacking and I said goodbye to him and he replied. When I came back he pretended that period had never happened.

I can scarcely believe this happened now. Can anyone shed some light on this bizarre behaviour?

I'm no expert Hilary but it sounds to me that he projected his bad behaviour on to you and made himself the aggrieved party when you didn't immediately accept his apology and forgive everything that had happened... He was then 'punishing' you for years and dragging your mum into it too for the additional weight of emotional blackmail that could bring to his cause.

My DM did something very similar - we didn't speak for years and it was all my fault apparently... She was completely blameless and the victim of her difficult and hateful child...

Sounds like you stood your ground and in the end he chose to change his behaviour so good for you for that... Although it must have been very hurtful at the time...

that sounds extraordinary hilary. I can't explain it. To be like that not for 2 days but for 2 years, in and around the same house, is incredible.

Hilary if you read through some of the EA threads in Relationships, you'll see that ignoring or "the silent treatment" is a common tactic used by abusers of all stripes.

It's a shame that your mother chose to enable his ridiculous behaviour rather than insist that he treat you with respect, like, you know, an actual human being. I think I remember from your thread about his illness that your mother is very co-dependent with him? It's very sad, but she has chosen to put his (ridiculous and made-up) needs before her children.

If you have a look for a thread called "Abuser Profiles", look up one for "victim" - you'll probably find a lot of similarities to your dad's personality.

I do wonder if my saying goodbye to him was interpreted as me giving in though, maybe he took that as a sign that he had won. I was delighted to be leaving home and my mother asked me to say goodbye to him.