NC with sister, mum turning on me

[slithytove]

I would really appreciate some advice.

I had a situation with my sister which lead me to taking a step back from any contact with her until she had sorted herself out. Have a thread on it will try and link.

Anyway I made it clear that when her faulty thinking changed, I would be ready and waiting to talk to her, but until then, I didn't want to hear from her.

Since then, she has been quite verbally abusive (over messages and voicemails) several times, and it's been very upsetting.

Throughout all of this, my mum has been upset with me for not seeing or speaking to my sister, and for not allowing her to see my kids.

Today my sister did it again, and my mum told me how much it was upsetting HER that her kids weren't getting along, and that family should be in touch no matter what, and I should make it up with my sister.

I'm really upset by this. I've explained to my mum that my sisters abuse really triggers my anxiety and thoughts of self harm, but she doesn't care.

I've been in counselling for a few months now and really want to be allowed to protect myself by taking a step back if I need to. I don't understand why my mum firstly doesn't understand what damage my sister is doing, but also why she is so against me? Any insights or advice would be good.

That is really interesting, HoneyBadger.

Slightly different situation but I don't get on with my brother and he is constantly needling me for conversations that invariable end badly, and he then goes off to tell everyone how unreasonable I am being.

I keep wondering why he can't just leave me alone but this might be it.

Honey, I didn't want to tell her, it sort of came out when I was trying explain why being in touch with my sister is so damaging.

I have seen my counsellor today who has pretty much validated all you are saying, and given me strength that I do not have a personality disorder, that my anger is justified, and that stepping away from dysfunction is a valid coping strategy.

I know now I am not seeing my sister. That I am not sharing anything important or secret with my mum, and taking a step back there too. Going to carry on seeing the counsellor as we have a lot going on elsewhere.

I hope my dad steps in and tells mum she has been out of order.

Well done!

I agree - stepping back is a perfectly valid coping strategy.

I have to see my brother next week and I'm already in a mess. I spent the night dreaming about horrible car crashes and my anxiety is sky high. Unfortunately I can't avoid this meeting but I am going into it thinking very hard about how he needles and provokes me and trying to think of ways to address this.

Yes - the only way is to change the dynamic yourself, which can be really difficult when things are really entrenched.

My tip is to keep visits meaningful (ie I'm here to pick up X or to say hi to Y), then once that is accomplished feel free to just leave.

Also don't get drawn into conversations about personal stuff - have a change of subject to hand which is more neutral.

I think when one child is favoured it is to do with how the parent was brought up/ what their childhood was like. There can be any amount of reasons for that. They were/weren't the favoured DC and one of the DDs reminds her of the sibling they were envious of, or the sibling that was cruel to them or is unaware that they were the favoured DC so feel how they were treated over their sister is normal parental behaviour etc etc etc.

If you can work out what might be the cause it, imo, makes it less hurtful. She doesn't pick on you because of any failings in you but because of failings in her own upbringing.

Are there any aunts /uncles you can talk to to find out how their childhood went?

I think that with my mum broken and then feel so stupid after.

When I told her about my feelings of self harm, she said she completely understood why I had to step back. That lasted all of a fortnight before she was saying sisters should be in touch no matter what and I shouldn't threaten them with self harm (I didn't).

My mum is NC with one aunt and the other is a bit flappy. Grandad is lovely though. I know it wasn't an easy upbringing; eldest sister died, not much money, huge issues with the youngest (one I'm NC with) and her mother.

Dad isn't NC with his brother but they don't stay in touch. Their parents have been dead since dad was a teenager.

I think my mum gets at me because it's easier than facing the fact that she might have failed as a parent. To acknowledge my sisters terrible behaviour is to try and find out the reason behind it. To acknowledge that I am stepping away, is to accept I have a reason to do so.

Far far easier to blame me and make out I'm doing the wrong thing.

Your mother is never going to support you Slithy. She will constantly let you down and betray you because it's the only way she knows how to be. You can't change her behaviour, you can only adapt yours to avoid these situations by not telling her anything like that and shutting down any conversation about resolving things with your sister.

I think my mum gets at me because it's easier than facing the fact that she might have failed as a parent. To acknowledge my sisters terrible behaviour is to try and find out the reason behind it. To acknowledge that I am stepping away, is to accept I have a reason to do so.Far far easier to blame me and make out I'm doing the wrong thing.

I think you are right, which is another reason why she won't ever change. You shouldn't have to, you should be able to have her support and confidence but you can't. You just can't. There's no ifs and buts, she's proven herself there.

All you can do is either go NC, which you won't, or shut down any conversation about your sister or getting in contact with her the moment it starts. If you have to hang up or walk away then you have to. If she can't suggest, she can't coerce or pressure.

What did your counsellor help you decide on with your mum? Did s/hegive you any techniques on coping with her like this?

She hasn't yet actually, and I'm only seeing her monthly so will have to save it up.

Mum lives abroad so I'll see her mid October, then not again until Christmas so there is a couple of months relief.

Dad wants to know what has been happening, so I'll tell him, and then step away from it all and shut my mum down.

Counsellor did suggest how to respond to mum if she asks personal questions. "I don't want to discuss it / I'm not going to say as I don't want it repeating / I don't trust you not to gossip about me so I won't be sharing" which I'm looking forward to!

Such a shame. I know I'm never going to parent like this. And I won't be encouraging my children to have a relationship like this either.

Such a shame. I know I'm never going to parent like this. And I won't be encouraging my children to have a relationship like this either.

That's the only positive you can take from this but it's a massive positive given how much shit you've been through and your mum/sister keep trying to put you through.

Sounds like a good plan to protect you and your family. Hopefully if you keep on repeating she may accept the boundaries.

not saying this is ideal or healthy or anything but just sharing how i tried to 'cope' in the latter years of contact with my family. i stopped thinking of them in terms of their roles - re: i did not think of them as my parents or my sister - they were just people or my son's grandparents or whatever. i ceased to have any expectation that they would behave like a 'mother' or a 'sister' and stopped thinking of them as being that. having never enacted those roles really i stopped thinking of them as being those things itms.

they were people i (felt) i had to deal with in my life but of course this woman wasn't my 'mother'. it happened semi-organically and then i latched onto it as a bit of a coping mechanism as a way of remembering not to expect the enactment of such a role or go looking for it from them.

as i said i'm totally non contact now but this way part of the journey for me and a way of coping with the abuse/disappointment/failures/whatever along the way.

don't know if that is of use to at all but to continue looking for a person to behave 'like' a mother when they haven't and don't is a) like trying to get blood from a stone and b) setting yourself up for so much pain and disappointment over and over again. i got hurt so many times, usually at very vulnerable points in my life, by doing this. accepting that despite having given birth to me and technically being my mother this person wasn't a mother for me and wasn't going to fulfil that role and i shouldn't look to her AS that role helped.

have slight alarm bells ringing btw that you're now looking to your dad to save the day.

i'd love to be wrong but i think you're setting yourself up for hurt and disappointment again but from another direction. YOU are the hero in this story, YOU are the one who saves yourself.

"I hope my dad steps in and tells mum she has been out of order".

You wrote the above about your Dad, I smiled wryly to myself when I read that.

People from dysfunctional families end up playing roles. It is likely that your dad is really her hatchet man and cannot be at all relied upon either. He has also failed here to protect you from all this overall dysfunction in your family of origin. He has been a bystander and has acted out of self preservation and want of a quiet life. For all the above reasons therefore, what you wish of him will likely not happen.

Its far easier for them to blame the scapegoat in this case you for their inherent ills rather than cast a critical spotlight on themselves.

"i'd love to be wrong but i think you're setting yourself up for hurt and disappointment again but from another direction. YOU are the hero in this story, YOU are the one who saves yourself".

I would certainly concur with all that TheHoneyBadger has written in the above.

You cannot change them but you can certainly change how you react to them.

What are your feelings about going no contact with all of your family of origin?.

honestly there was this revelation point finally in my life where i realised that i was allowing myself to be a victim of mistreatment - that i'd been powerless over that through my whole childhood and there had been no one who stepped in and rescued that child. i suddenly realised it was MY responsibility to step in and rescue that child, that if i didn't step in rescue her and say you don't deserve this, this is not right and i am taking you far far away from it, then i was just another crap adult letting down that child and no one was ever going to stick up for her and save her.

may sound dramatic but it still brings me to tears to type that even. i did not want to be another adult turning their back and pretending not to see that little girl being abused and mistreated and hurt and damaged and put down and being made to feel shit about herself and second guess her every thought and feeling at the hands of a dysfunctional fucked up family.

i hope you find the self love to save yourself.

I too had to stop seeing my parents as parents, or expecting any support from them. I saw them as my children's grandparents, with whom I was facilitating contact, or as slightly disagreeable strangers. In that time I did all of my grieving for the realtionship with them and when I finally went NC, it wasn't as devastating as previous arguments.

I think it's natural to keep hoping for them to change but there are some similarities in your post to my own situation and there have been so many times where I've thought I've finally got through to my mother and that we could move forward, only to find that she is still going on as before. I can no longer trust the false promises of change and she is so determined to see me negatively. Because when I was younger the effect of the abusive family and toxic dynamics on me became problems that couldn't be ignored (my sister's problems could be glossed over more easily), it's been easy for her to frame me in her mind as someone ill or irrational, and dismiss everything I think and feel. She has equally framed everything my sister does as positive and it's led to total breakdown in our relationship, which is much sadder than the issue with my parents.

Unfortunately the whole family get sucked into these dynamics and the scapegoat does get sacrificed to preserve the family.

sounds really familiar auntyclot. i think sometimes the scapegoat is the scapegoat because they're the one who can't 'hide' or in somehow reveal the dysfunctionalism of the family. it's kind of two birds with one stone really - discredit them quick so it can't be our fault and oh how useful we can also blame all ills and project all negativity onto them.

though equally it can go the other way and the reason you have the problems that are harder to hide is because you were made the scapegoat and the damage is so viscal it shows quicker and more dramatically than the damage done to the golden child.

i too found it harder and sadder to really accept that no matter how we tried my sister and i's relationship was just... fucked! frankly by the weight of both history and it's programming and also the continued triangulation etc of my mother. my sister is still totally enmeshed with my parents.

just recently, via a message on internet, she acknowledged her part as a perpetrator in my abuse as well as being a victim of the situation herself and finally said she understood my decision to go non contact with them and didn't expect or really want a response from me because she knew she was still enmeshed in it all and that she had a lot of work to do (we could do with a crying emoticon at this point because it's all so heartbreaking really). we went in circles for so long where she would really try but inevitably explode in abusive rage and stuff at me out of seemingly nowhere. i think so much of her self esteem was built to rest upon being better than me or able to use me as a whipping boy or??? that she just couldn't break the habit. what the message from her seemed to say was that she could see that but didn't was also able to acknowledge that she didn't know if she ever could break the habit. i feel incredibly sad for her as well you know?

it's incredible the damage 'parents' like this can do.

OP i'm so sorry i've ended up venting on about my own stuff on your thread - i'm so sorry.

Dad doesn't know. Mum spends a lot of time over here while dad is setting up their business in another country.

When I tell him stuff, he does usually support me. He certainly knows what mum can be like. He is a very good peacemaker too. Also not looking for him to save the day, but it would be nice to have one person who didn't criticise my choices!

Funnily enough, mum is fine when my siblings aren't involved, I just don't get it.

I'm not going NC with my brother or parents. I like them, we have a good time. Even my sister it's only for as long as she sustains this campaign of madness.

I will however be behaving differently. I've started so I'll finish I'm not going to be sharing important stuff and I certainly won't be taking any criticism for my independent adult choices. Nor will I be trying to get through to my mum or my sister again.

I'm so sorry what you went through honey, it sounds very damaging. And vent away. Whatever helps

My sister feels she has been made the scapegoat, so I don't know how to deal with that contradiction. In fact your paragraph about your sister honey, is how she would describe our relationship. Sadly every disagreement or difference of opinion, is interpreted by her as abuse and hatred.

The great thing is - I don't feel damaged. I recognise the bad behaviours I have learned and am stopping them. I have a lovely husband (we have many, many problems but are working on them and love each other), wonderful children, have just got a great job which I'm good at, and I have a secure friendship circle. My self worth hasn't been rooted in my family of origin (great term!) for a long time. Apparently they don't like that!

I won't let them drag me down. If they can behave, they can be in our lives. If they can't, they can stay on the periphery.

it is really "the gift that keeps on giving"
Slithy, that's a really positive approach

Honeybadger, that is very, very sad. My sister has admitted all the abuse in our family several times over, then gone back into denial. When my grandmother went into a nursing home, she said that our mum should never be responsible for anybody vulnerable and we talked about it all...but she hasn't faced up to it and the fucked up dynamics are still there.

Slithy, that's interesting. I went NC with my sister once and my parents turned on me. Several years later, she stormed off and went NC over something that I and my dh think is pretty minor but my parents turned on me again, made my role into a huge, unforgivable deal and minimised her behaviour, which was sustained over several years and just symptomatic of the way she has been taught to treat me without respect and as less worthy of decent treatment than other people. The "personality disorder" accusation was thrown at me too - like you, a result of the fact that I used to self harm. But so did my sister. Relationship breakups of mine were used as "symptoms", glossing over the fact that I have long standing friends and a happy marriage...and my sister's divorce, friendship breakdowns and jobs she has stormed out of glossed over completely. My parents (well, my mum really) see what they want to see. I realised how deep the denial is when I came across something she has written - that my father "can be grumpy but never raised a hand to anyone" - in reality, he was violent and aggressive towards me throughout my childhood (punching, kicking, spitting in my face) and I witnessed him hit her too on one occasion. Those are facts she can't dispute and it made me realise that the whole "we did our best but made mistakes" is just a story she tells herself to make the whole thing ok.

I've got lost in my own story but I think that when people are still in such strong denial and entrenched in their dysfunctional dynamics, we can't mend relationships because they are still fixed in their way of seeing things. Ironically, I'd never know if my parents really did change because I've heard it too many times before.

same deal really auntyclot with her admitting, then going back into denial ad infinitum (including outright denial of terrible things that happened and she'd previously acknowledged only to revert to me being a fantasist etc) hence i can't 'come out' of non contact just because of an internet message and felt a weird mix of sadness, anger, here we go again and who knows what in response to her message.

good luck with the new strategy and OP and am pleased to hear you have some literal distance between you and your parents which makes it easier to handle. don't forget then, given much of this is going on on the phone i presume, you can always use the 'oh there's someone at the door' or 'must run ds/dd is calling me for help' type hang up option if you can feel yourself getting emotional or not coping or being tempted to slip into old patterns. then you can step away and give yourself the gift of time and thought and space rather than reacting or revealing something because you're emotional or on auto pilot.

'YOU are the hero in this story, YOU are the one who saves yourself.'

Please please hold onto this OP. It doesn't sound like you can rely on anyone in your family to stick up for you and treat you decently. And that hurts - it hurts like hell. And its so fucking unfair. But ultimately, its liberating because you can start to accept how things actually are, instead of desperately wishing they were different.

My family are very similar - snake-in-the-grass, guilt-tripping mother who is never happier than when her children are fighting with each other, yet pretends that it breaks her heart; weak father who I have looked to to be the reasonable one but has let me down every time; brother who is golden child and a hideous bully and who parents are terrified of. Like you, I am NC with the golden child sibling, but am still in contact with my parents. NC just doesn't feel like something I can do either. I am, however, very low contact with my parents and have been steadily detaching emotionally over the last few years. It has been the most painful thing ever, but has saved my sanity. I'm finally starting to feel like an independent, capable, resourceful independent adult, and my depression is lifting. I'm in therapy too.

This is seriously hard stuff OP so please go easy on yourself. I have to agree with other posters - none of your family will change and become the reasonable loving people you want and need them to be. Please start putting yourself first and taking care of yourself, and lean on the people you know you can really trust.

My husband supports me :) I'm lucky.

My mum is majorly in denial. She claimed recently that she didn't know dad used smacking as punishment. She used to do the whole "wait for your father to come home" and then tell him, and we would be punished with her in the house.

She pisses me off.

For a long time I have conducted many conversations over iPad messaging so I have proof of what is said, with all of them.

slithy

I don't want to add to your burden but have you considered that your dad is a victim of your mums behaviour as well?