This is really chilling, I think

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Namechanged for this, as potentially too identifiable to FOO stalkers.

I am NC with FOO, for a variety of reasons, none of which I particularly want to rehash here. Occasionally I lurk on a FB forum for parents of estranged adult children, because I find it morbidly fascinating and actually quite validating to observe just HOW bonkers the mindset is.

Today I found this post on there, which sent shivers down my back because it is SO similar to the kind of thing my NMother has sent to me:

The last time I wrote my daughter...a few years ago, I stated the following: "When a person is charged with a crime, the accused is presented with a list of grievances. As your mother, I feel I am entitled to no less a list of grievances in support of your claims of hatred towards me." I've never received a reply, because she has none. We as parents shouldn't accept responsibility for our adult children's short-sightedness and bad behavior.

As ever, it's much easier to see the crazy when it's not your own personal situation being hashed out, but OMG at the demand that the adult child justifies her emotions with a bullet-pointed list of grievances before there can be any question of her being permitted to feel her own feelings. And these people wonder why they are estranged. You'd think round about the time you wrote about your entitlement to a list of grievances to support your child's claims of hatred towards you, you might get a glimmer of realisation about why your adult dc didn't want to be around you. But apparently not.

Wow, I went offline for a few days and have only just managed to catch up with the whole of this thread. You guys have been busy!

I have really related a lot to the recollections and insights of Screenshotting and LizKeen in particular. I think our childhood experiences must have been very similar. For me also, the decision to go, and stay, NC has been fuelled very much (albeit not directly precipitated) by the experience of seeing history repeating itself in the way my mother treated my children. My DC1 is a complete GC, wonderful in every way, immeasurably talented and can do no wrong, despite being largely indifferent to her, in response to which she would fawn over him and badger him for attention in a quite nauseating manner. DC2, on the other hand was once summarily dismissed - in front of me - as 'a horrid little troublemaker'!! It was so much easier to see what she was doing this generation around, and so much easier to put my foot down and refuse to allow it to continue. It has simultaneously shed light on what happened to us as children and also has given me solid reasons for maintaining a hardline NC stance. The kids have been really cool about us going NC. I explained everything as honestly as I could, both recent and ancient history, and they know they are always free to ask more.

One thing that seems to have been different for me than for many (most?) here is that my father was not a classic enabler. He was not a great buffer from the madness when we were little, as he suffered from depression (unsurprisingly!) and was very emotionally absent. But he did stand up to her on key occasions and - crucially - they divorced eventually (guess whose fault that was characterised as being...). He's long dead now, but I had the benefit of a critical eye on my mother and on childhood events from conversations with him once I was an adult and I think that gave me some much needed perspective, so I feel lucky for that.

Anyway, I am feeling a sight less fragile this week than last (there was a key anniversary happening for me when this thread took off), so I am off over to the uncharted waters of Gransnet now to see what I think.

And now reinforcements being requested on gn against notanan

Yes, it's turned into a sharks' feeding frenzy, hasn't it?

I'm still stunned by how neatly they have illustrated the dysfunctional dynamics outlined in the OP though - the obdurate insistence that they were not given any explanation, that there were no reasons for their child to leave, and the complete lack of curiosity or interest in understanding their child's feelings and perceptions. They really want to believe that adult children cut their parents off for no reasons other than some modern epidemic of selfishness, presumably because that narrative spares them from any need to examine their own actions or motivations.

Although it's horrible to watch (and I feel for the two posters who are still plugging away, but kind of also wish they'd step away before they risk damaging themselves emotionally), it's actually also incredibly validating, to see all the horrible circular arguments, the painful process of doing your best to explain, over and over and over, and just systematically, deliberately not being heard, and the gradual ebbing away of any hope that things can change.

It's horrible that they can't and don't want to see that, but it does confirm that removing yourself from the situation can be the right thing to do when you don't see any possibility of change.

Oh, and another thing I think is interesting is how many people have commented that their EP was great with their GC when the GCs were teeny. I had this experience too and it has occasionally made me feel guilty to be NC, how much she seemed to adore them as babies. Instructive to realise now that their teeniness was probably their main attraction - too small to answer back, to argue, disagree, challenge or generally fall outwith her complete control. Makes you realise that EGPs who engage in massive legal battles to see their GC are probably much more interested in the battle than the GCs...

Sorry 404, talking across you.

I asked my mother why? She said she was who she was. I don't think people can change who they are. Honestly, really honestly, can you?

MrsLupo, yes, exactly.

And the number of people who think it is reasonable to expect to have a relationship with the grandchildren while bypassing the parents of those grandchildren. As if it wasn't going to be damaging to the children to see their parents being put down, ignored, overridden and generally treated as if their feelings don't matter.

My mother is incredibly active on one of those my D went NC with me depriving me of my GC's threads they have.

She always makes a big deal about how wonderful my childhood was and how she's a totally innocent party.

Thing is its a big fat lie, she knows exactly why I don't really bother with her and has even had it explained to her very clearly by a court.

Mrslupo yy as soon as my dd developed an opinion of her own she was no longer adored/accepted

LizKeen - I was taught the mind trick by a hypnotherapist, but I think it's more of an NLP thing myself (I've done that too, as a practitioner).

You don't need anyone to give you your greenhouse/spacesuit/spacebubble - what you do is find a quiet time, quiet space, get comfy, lie back and design it yourself. I used to use it for my clients while I was doing their treatment, so they were already lying down and fairly relaxed - and using a hypnotherapist style of voice, to allow them to access their unconscious mind. It's quite amazing what your brain will produce for you when it's relaxed!
So it does help if someone else can suggest what you need to do while you're lying/reclining in a relaxed state, but it's not essential - you just lie there and let it come to you - size, colour, materials, shape, content etc. If you read my post again on the technique, I deliberately wrote it in the style of how I used to say it to my clients, so it helps to bring out the "mind picture".

It can be surprising what happens - one of my clients was a huge fan of flowers but in her greenhouse she had only foliage plants, not a flower among them. Didn't matter how hard she consciously thought about it, when she "saw" her greenhouse in her mind, there were no flowers.

Whew, am I the only one who had flashbacks reading the GN thread? So patronising, so minimising. It was like being six again and everything you said was dismissed and put down and mocked, and every time you tried to explain yourself again (because you thought the problem was one of not expressing yourself adequately), it would happen again, round and round in circles, until the frustration was just too much and you ended up shouting and bursting into tears and running out of the room (or being sent out). Awful. Kudos to notanan, who I presume is on this thread also, for doing her best with an unashamedly hostile audience. Time for bed, I think, and a bit of a weep.

YY garlicshake, the general "young people these days" tone is a bit (Although again, #notallgransnetters )

I totally agree UnderTheGreenwoodTree - you put it better than I could. Mumsnet facilitates incredibly nuanced discussions by a huge number of intelligent posters, which is easy to forget sometimes when you glance at AIBU or something. The general attitudes you find elsewhere are so complacent in their stereotyping and woman-hating, and you don't always realise that until you venture out there. MN is therefore a bubble of its own too but one I'm glad to have found.

I don't think that other thread is going anyway helpful, no. Both it and the long running one gave me massive flashbacks and the rage for a while there MrsLupo.

There's a jaw-dropping parallel thread on Issendai's blog issendai.com/wp/estrangement/a-parent-responds-to-unwanted-contact-is-not-stalking/ in which she deconstructs a response she received from an estranged parent about something she'd written. She describes the debate she had with him, but then the same parent turns up on the comments section arguing with other readers.

Other posters have been trying repeatedly to get him to outline what was actually said in the final conversation with his estranged son, rather than describing it as 'screaming and berating' that left him and his wife crushed and weeping. His response has been mainly to criticise and insult the posters for asking for that information, with minor digressions into weirdly specific detail like his son needing info from the father's tax return. He seems to have now flounced altogether, having steadfastly refused to engage with the people asking perfectly measured, appropriate questions - apparently asking for detail makes them "seriously fucked-up, vile, disgusting human beings".

It's pretty much a mirror image of the MO in the car-crash thread on GN, and again shows how totally futile it is to try and get people who are so invested in their worldview to try and engage in alternative ways of looking at the world. Someone has said pretty much word-for-word the same thing I repeatedly said to my EP before going NC: "Do you want us to have an understanding of the situation and to come to informed conclusions about it that are true, or do you just want us to agree with you?" It appears that however calm and reasoned the discussion, anything that doesn't conform with their own narrative cannot be heard in terms of its content, but just generates increasingly hysterical denials and counter-attacks.

Its really interesting Thumb. Thanks for explaining further.

I am going to give it a go if I can find some quiet time. I think it would really help.

Mumsnet facilitates incredibly nuanced discussions by a huge number of intelligent posters

Few serious threads on MN go by without someone mentioning or alluding to their post-graduate education, and I'd be surprised if any long thread discussing something abstract goes by without someone with a PhD, or at least an MA/MSc, in a relevant field rocking up.

On GN, quite a lot of those threads about estranged grandparents struggle with basic sentence construction. Nuance is not on the agenda.

I asked my mother why? She said she was who she was. I don't think people can change who they are. Honestly, really honestly, can you?

Very occasionally, yes they do. Seen it, and it's genuine. Usually it comes from either the person getting one hell of a shock / wake up call in some fashion, or else the person realising that they're going down a bad route and they take huge efforts to change that.

It's rare though. Most people are pretty content to just carry on the way they are. Fundamental change is hard and takes a lot of effort and brutal self-honesty.

By the time people are getting older though, their thought patterns and ways of interacting are set and it's harder and harder to change (though you do hear of it occasionally).

When you're dealing with someone who's toxic, you can't really actively hope for change. you just have to deal with them as they are.

It's rare though. Most people are pretty content to just carry on the way they are. Fundamental change is hard and takes a lot of effort and brutal self-honesty.

By the time people are getting older though, their thought patterns and ways of interacting are set and it's harder and harder to change (though you do hear of it occasionally).

When you're dealing with someone who's toxic, you can't really actively hope for change. you just have to deal with them as they are.

Yes, I agree. And also I think they don't want to change, because their way was working for them just fine until their adult child started challenging the status quo. Much easier to paint the adult child, with his/her non-conforming emotions, as the deranged or deluded aggressor than to undertake the hard, hard work of looking inwards to question your own motivations and actions.

I would bet that most people on this thread have done some hard core changing though. My experience is that as a child of a dysfunctional, abusive, especially narcissist-led, family, you enter the wider world as a pretty fucked-up individual. Your worldview is warped, your benchmarks are all in the wrong place, and the way you interpret and react to 'normal' people and situations is very much shaped by the individual pathologies of your abusive parent. They are our role models, however miserable we may have been at their hands, and, even more than most people's role models, they trapped us into a slavish adherence to their way of doing and liking things.

I was a car crash in my late teens and early twenties. I was very messed up, and also not a very nice person. It took years to wake up to what had happened to make me the way I was, but even before that I was actively engaged in a process of deciding what kind of person I did and didn't want to be, and methodically setting about making that a reality. The ability to conceptualise A, visualise B, and methodically build a bridge between the two is powerful magic. I have used it for all sorts of things since - career changes, weight loss, relationship renegotiation. I reckon most people on this thread have been through a similar, ongoing process.

So yes, I believe that people most definitely can change. But they have to really want to, and the problem with all these EPs is that they can't even see what the problem is, still less their role in it, still less-less-less what might be needed in the way of change to restructure the family dynamic. I wish so much that my mother had had some therapy herself as a child or young adult (her circumstances most definitely warranted it). Instead she just married the first person who came along, created a brand new family who were expected to conform to her requirements more than her FOO had done, and blamed us when it didn't quite work out that way. I think such pitiful lack of self-awareness is a common denominator among the EPs we are discussing, and without it change is impossible.

I wonder if the EPs on the Gransnet thread have ever truly asked themselves 'could I be part of the problem?'
'Is being right more important than love and a relationship?'
'Do adults really just turn round one day and decide to be estranged even if there has been no problem?'

It also comes down to a very simple but essential component to any relationship. Trust.

I don't trust my family. Without trust what is there?

I asked my mother why? She said she was who she was. I don't think people can change who they are. Honestly, really honestly, can you?

"I am what I am. I can't change" is a common refrain of abusers, Amanddon. It means "This is what I do. Suck it up." In adult relationships, the victim can walk away when they've had enough. Children can't walk away from their parents.

Mumsnet has many members who, due to their neurology, really don't 'get' emotional stuff. Sometimes, when they're feeling brave or very sad, they post about watching affectionate family interactions and being scared of failing their children emotionally. Aware of their differences, they make the effort to learn what healthy emotional development looks like and give their own DC the appropriate input - even when it's uncomfortable for them personally.

Parents with glitchy neurology who choose not to make this effort are, I would think, being selfish at best. They're saving themselves from discomfort at the child's expense.

There's a probably much bigger pool of people who, following some painful events in their past, choose to withhold emotions. Some withhold from everyone and more (I think) withhold only from certain people, often those they should be closest to. This is a choice, even if not a fully conscious choice. And saying "I can't change" is the same as saying "I don't care enough about you to make the effort."

It might be more painful to be a child of someone who withholds selectively than of a uniformly cold or flat personality. Either way, though, it's harmful and confusing to a child. Did you get affectionate input from other adults in your life?

Thank you to everyone here.
Reading this thread , and the link , has been the most validating experience I have ever had in my life.
I am almost 50.

That 'I am who I am' attitude smacks of arrogance and unteachability. It is a total unwillingness to examine their own role or behaviour and positions them as right and everyone else as wrong.

Toxic people will always shift the blame onto others and avoid taking any responsibility for their own actions. Trying to reason with unreasonable is like banging your head on a brick wall. Sometimes it's necessary to walk away, for the sake of your sanity.

I think such pitiful lack of self-awareness is a common denominator among the EPs we are discussing, and without it change is impossible.

YY. Sorry, I hadn't seen that PPs had already replied to Amanddon. I guess I've just picked it apart in a different way :)

So glad it's proving validating for you, PysgodMawr :) It's prompted one of my "had a lightbulb moment" journal entries today! Huge thanks to everyone on the thread from me, too

Pysgod and all.

It's amazing isn't it? That realisation that YOU ARE NOT CRAZY. It's like breathing again.

Great post from MrsLupo - yes. Being honest I wasn't a nice person deep down at all in my teens and early 20s, and I still react bizarrely to things. I've internalised so much from my mum and DH still calls me on things (nicely) every so often.

For example - I wasn't allowed to talk to boys and didn't know any till I went to uni. We were talking the other day about what if we had a daughter, and I said somethings like how I wouldn't want them to have boys over of course, that would be weird, when he stared and me and said (as any other normal person would) why? After a few seconds I realised what bollocks that thought is. I'm so glad he's here to keep me questioning the inbuilt idiocy and if we do have a daughter one day I hope he'll help me be better with her too.

I really do put a genuine amount of hardcore effort into it and hope one day I might be One Of The Normals - or at least able to help my kids become them fingers crossed eh. Mumsnet is a huge help here, even the "mundane" threads are eye openers into normal families.

Pysgod