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.

What strikes me about the FB page and some of the Grandnet posts is the way in which, on the one hand, they are apparently devastated and hurt by the rejection, but on the other, they refer to their estranged children with such bitterness and hatred.

Surely, if you dislike someone, and are unhappy with their behaviour towards you, you wouldn't want to have contact with them?

The commonality between most of the posters is that they are wearing their victim t-shirts with pride - they seem to have lost sight of the reasons they are a victim.
Who did what to whom surely becomes irrelevant after a few years?

I sometimes wonder whether the police and medics have to deal with many calls for a MH section where the supposed crazy person was just stopping supply to a narc

One of my sisters was sectioned at the behest of my mother. The talk at the time was of bipolar disorder with my mother (apparently) making a convincing case for manic-phase hypersexuality based on the fact that my sister had Run Off With A Man (aka had met someone who offered her an exit pass from the madhouse). Later, the diagnosis was changed to Borderline Personality Disorder apparently on the strength of my mother's insistence that 'she tells such terrible lies'. Not a great stretch to imagine the likely content of those 'lies'.

This was decades ago, though. Nowadays, the discourse around abuse is much more mature (and somewhat less misogynous) and a parent would have no role in the diagnostic process.

That is actually my worst nightmare MrsLupo. I feel sick just thinking of it. Your poor sister.

Surely, if you dislike someone, and are unhappy with their behaviour towards you, you wouldn't want to have contact with them?

Yes, a normal person would.... it's plain from the posting parent on the Issendai link that his son is a possession, owned, (is it just me noticing the continual references to wanting to hug him, kiss him, it's even physical ownership) and his outrage is that this possession has no right whatever to go wandering off by itself (and removing his narc supply). I would think constant disapproval is a normal state of the relationship to this parent. The friction between them meets the parent's needs. How many ECs here would say no matter what you did, no matter how you tried, there was never going to be a way in which you could make and keep that EP happy? Even if you did exactly as they wanted 24/7 without resistance?

This particular EP even makes it clear his adult son may only be permitted to be 'independent' while making the decisions his father intends him to and approves of, and has no idea what light this shows him in. He's continuing to argue I see that his son never experienced one moment of anything but utter familial bliss throughout his entire childhood and just abandoned his family one day out of the blue for no reason whatever. It's as bizarre as the insistence that his son screamed (apparently ahhhhhhh! as he denies there was any communication involved) at his mother, who reacted to this by curling up on the floor and threatening suicide.

Perfectly normal family.

Time Surely, if you dislike someone, and are unhappy with their behaviour towards you, you wouldn't want to have contact with them?

What about paradoxical attachment? The reason people stay with abusers because they "love" them. It's something to do with getting more strongly attached to someone if they treat you intermittently nice and nasty than if they are just nice... (to paraphrase wildly.)

Your comment struck me because people have said the same to me when others have hurt me and I just want to understand why - because I've found their behaviour unpredictable, which frightens me (due to various interpersonal traumas over the years), and obviously if somethings happened that hurts you, you sort of want to understand to avoid it happening again. Also, in the same way with abusive ex I just wanted him to be the nice person I'd originally fallen for, you sort of keep hoping for ages, fixated on how it was and wanting to know how to "mend" the situation. I think this may be worse wih ASD traits (awaiting assesment myself).

Although, now I've written all that, I suppose the difference is you're not slagging the person off, although you may be vocally critical and obviously upset by their actions, you'd be sort of saying "it was so nice, I dont understand what happened" plus analysing your own actions.

Although people can even interpret that differently - in my own experience mental health professionals judged my hurt and confusion at absuive boyfriend's behaviour, whilst still staying with him/"loving" him, to be "extremes of idealization and devaluation" fitting in nicely with the "hysteria", sorry, "BPD" label. (Years ago.)

I'm sorry, I hope that doesn't come across as argumentative, more explorative. I guess I get concerned about the few who may be affected and actully be the victims, in any given situation. Especilly when it comes to power structures and psychiatric labels, as MrsLupo's situation demonstrates. So easily the sister was announced to be crazy, with an incredibly stigmatised diagnosis - how much worse if she was actually exhibiting "symptoms" of her (presumably damaging) childhood, so she was actually diagnosable with BPD?

It's all so terribly confusing. Sorry. Am having a bit of a MH crisis atm trying to work out if I'm evil or just weird...

My mother knows exactly what BPD is. A close family friend, who was lovely, had it (and took their own life during a bad spell).

She uses it as a malicious slur against me disguised as concern.

My mother is diagnosed BPD. I know it is because of fundamental emotional trauma in her own life. I know that. It is not justification for how she behaves towards me. I cannot and will not sacrifice myself and my children on that altar. Sometimes there is no choice but to walk away from the behaviour that destroys both the sufferer and the victim. I don't think my mother, or anyone else with bpd is "evil" (an accusation that those affected throw round like confetti). She needs help but it's help she refuses to have because she cannot acknowledge (like many many others) that there is anything wrong. I am not a sacrificial lamb, I cannot exist just to feed her. It's literally soul destroying being that person.

Yh, it's very sad and frustrating that mental illness is still easily used as a slur.

Once, Borderline PD is an extremely common response to dysfunctional parenting. There's a strong movement to change its label to 'emotional dysregulation', which both describes the condition and moves it out of the B cluster, where it sits rather uneasily at the moment.

This creates a new problem, though, since BPD makes a suitable base diagnosis for the other Cluster B disorders: they are all emotionally dysregulated; all feature a tendency to storify their relationships and result in social malfunctions.

It remains to be seen how this pans out among the MH professions. It is, though, recognised that most if not all PDs - and perhaps even all mental illnesses - are preceded by traumatic childhood experiences. The only thing that makes a personality disorder clinical is its rigidity. BPD is known to be the most treatable one so, again, it's sitting uneasily on the verges of pathological PD descriptors.

... Sorry, I went off on one of my soapboxes there! Regarding your last sentence - well, obviously you are both evil and weird

She needs help but it's help she refuses to have because she cannot acknowledge that there is anything wrong

It's such a pity, isn't it? The pattern arises as a defence mechanism, then becomes so defended in itself that the original problem is completely masked (to the sufferer.)

Of course you can't sacrifice yourself to your mother's pain. If you did that, then you yourself would be displaying maladaptive behaviour.

I grew up in a family whose narrative was that we - and particularly I - had to put up with my father's psychopathic sadism because we understood his pain. That in itself is mentally disturbed!

FlyingElbows that's fascinating, my mil is very similar and may well have bpd. She certainly had enormous emotional trauma in her early life too, flips constantly depending on who she's last spoken to and displays lots of anxiety, ocd and paranoia. But if you say anything it's all "well it's not my fault, I didn't have a proper childhood". She is mostly manageable as we are in much lower contact, and she generally behaves herself around dcs, as she knows dp will not hesitate to withdraw and go nc. We also don't really share anything too personal as then it can't be used against us. You certainly don't need to sacrifice yourself to her mh issues, you need to protect yourself.

GarlicShake

Garlic obviously you are both evil and weird

Thanks.

Im fascinated by BPD, it's context socially and historically and from a feminist perspective, and just... everything. So please feel free to lecture from soapbox and I will take notes, ha. I'd love a thread discussing it but neither feminism or mental health seem suitable!

(And it's such a loose concept in a way, as this thread demonstrates both abusers and survivors can be diagnosed with the same thing, characteristics - or what is assumed to be characteristic - vary wildly... IMO BPD is basically humans who have been fucked up struggling because of their emotions... it covers so much, trying to squeeze it into a diagnostic box and pathologise it seems unhelpful. Plus it makes survivors seem deviant rather than actually displaying a human response to awful circumstances. Formulaic approach seems a much better bet. Not sure if I'm making any sense...!)

In regard to mental illness I've noticed that on the forum I'm on there's a higher proportion of survivors than could be explained by chance. It's discussed often.

In regard to estranged parents discussions, its bewildering how they contradict themselves (even within the one post!) And don't see it (eg I don't know why they've never said/the reasons are lies - how can it be both? This one crops up frequently) and also how EVERYONE else but them is wrong (surely a definition of insanity?) Particularly when they've had not one, not 2 but multiple people go NC with them? My ex Mil her eldest son and daughter are NC, my ex is LC (I know his now wife can't stand her any more than I could as a daughter in law, it's something we totally 'get' each other over). Ex was GC, I agree its harder for them to extricate themselves. So that's her children but also she's fallen out with every friend she's ever managed to make and was even removed from her gp because of her nonsense! Yet it's EVERYONE else that's wrong!

My mother is never wrong. She also changes history to put herself in a good light. She'll say god awful things about family and friends then deny it or turn it round to say someone else said these things.

She gave me a head tilt and told me I needed help after I repeated back to her something she'd said in a drunk rage to my DH.

I thoroughly cannot stand her but she's playing the victim because I don't allow her to see my DDs.

Omg my mother was removed from her GP too

She also falls out with every friend.

My mum has also fallen out with every friend she's ever had.

She's had a serious neighbour dispute with multiple neighbours at every house she's ever lived at.

She's taken every boss she's ever had to an industrial tribunal or they've paid her to just go away.

None of her kids talk to her.

Amazingly she has been totally right in every single one of these situations. It's always someone else's fault.

Just read that issendai article...totally reminds me of conversations with the narcs in my family. Just goes round and round and round until you've know idea what is being said. It's played out on the gransnet thread in a similar fashion too.

Why do you think EPs can't hear or understand what their AC are telling them? What is the block? That's been the toughest thing to get my head around-parents won't change because they fundamentally just don't get it. Almost like two people talking in different languages to each other. I found it totally mentally draining. It's made me quite avoidant of arguments and I know tend to disengage with such people and walk away.

WhoTheFuckIsSimon are you my dsis? your mother sounds exactly like mine. TBH it's only the fact I feel sorry for my DF that I don't go nc.

Moogajoo there were some great posts early on on this thread about why they don't (can't) get it. Essentially they are so badly damaged by their own FOO that every tiny part of their psyche is devoted to protecting their very very fragile image of themselves and protecting them from feeling shame - which they have no way of dealing with.

Acknowledging that they are wrong would put all of that at risk so they can't do it.

Interestingly MIL does sometimes say 'oh, I wasn't a very good mother' but only so that she can be reassured that she was (although this doesn't happen). I once said to her in response 'well it's never too late to change that' and she looked at me incredulously and said 'I think I'm too old to have any more!' When I pointed out that I had meant she could be a better mother to her existing grown up children she looked at me as though I had grown another head. ..

"When I pointed out that I had meant she could be a better mother to her existing grown up children she looked at me as though I had grown another head. .."

The person posting on issendai saying they're from an EP forum and yet ignorant of emotional abuse, the scapegoat/golden child dynamic etc is stunning!

Omg yes the neighbour disputes with every neighbour we ever had (my parents) I know my ex Mil had disputes with at least 2 neighbours including blaming a neighbour for receiving their mail in error (new postman's mistake, poorly numbered road).

I was actually expecting 'how dare their gp remove them' yet instead it appears there are some sensible fed up gp's out there!

Sorry re the grown up children could benefit from a better mother comment - meant to say both my in laws and own parents fail to see that it could possibly be beneficial to anyone involved to you know - be nicer!

My mother is rather sweetly doing her best to make amends - to the extent that she can stand. It was very, very difficult getting to this point and our relationship's different now. There are vast areas on which we 'agree to differ' - important ones like her marriage; effects on me & sibs; her birth family; her more recent hamfisted interventions, which were so awful they led me to make a last-ditch effort. The point, for me, is that we have understood each other's perspective. She doesn't empathise with mine: she can't. But she feels some responsibility. She's old now. I am pleased to allow her to 'make good' within the boundaries that I have set, and within her own limitations.

"I'm pleased to allow her" sounds horrible. It isn't! I mean we've found some levels at which we can trust each other. I want her to feel at peace with the family.

She lives in two parallel worlds, I think. There's one reality in which she had a fantastic marriage and utterly fulfilling family life. And the other I forced her to recognise, with its horrific abuses and other intolerable stresses. This looks like a difficult & tiring way to live, so I try not to trigger dissonance (it makes her have weeping rages, which she doesn't recall afterward.)

I'm all too aware that most of the family members being talked about here are completely locked in their alternate reality. There would be no chance of reaching 'agree to differ' stage, even if you could face the process. I suppose I felt I should attest that it can be done in some cases.

I've witnessed it done in 2 cases, garlic. Sadly I've witnessed many more where the abuser is more intent on being right than being happy (let alone kind).

Yeah, Bacon. And, in general, there's no real reason to put oneself through it. I had nothing more to lose at that time, so it was a case of 'may as well'.

Well, I have finally waded through the 'Hurting Parent' thread on Issendai's blog and have to say I found it tremendously challenging.

In all honesty, I had a lot of sympathy for him. On the face of it (though accepting that we're only hearing his side of the story), I thought he was not unjustified in being extremely worried. I have a son around the same age who's also fond of debating with strangers on internet forums (can't think where he gets that!). Like most teenagers, he spends a lot of time in his room and on his computer, and shares the contents of his head with us less frequently and more selectively than he did when he was small. I would say I know him pretty well, but then so would most of the EPs on the forums say that about their ACs. If my DS were to leave home precipitously with the encouragement of someone he'd 'met' on a forum, and made huge changes in his plans and personal arrangements from what I thought I knew about him, my first thought, even as an EA survivor, would not be, 'omg, have I been parenting him abusively?' but 'omg, he's been groomed!' On or off the internet, grooming does happen obviously. 17/18yo is not the most mature age while technically adulthood. If that was what I suspected, I'm sure I too would be saying things like, 'I will do anything in my power to get him back.'

As it happens, my own teenager does have some issues going on atm. And reading how Hurting Parent oscillates between apparent concern and obvious disregard for how his son has been feeling is making me really question hard whether I've been replicating the enmeshed/manipulative aspects of my own abusive childhood, and whether I'm parenting him atm in a way that will have him running for the hills at the first opportunity. I don't think he will...but then none of these EPs seem to see it coming...

So, as I say, challenging to have to hold my own parenting up to scrutiny, and hard to be so unsure because of knowing that my role models in that department were so screwy.

Hurting Parent is the first EP I've empathised with on these forums, and I have a strong sense that he's the enabling parent rather than the narc. I think that's probably the one prostrate on the kitchen floor threatening suicide because her son 'screamed' down the phone at her. I really hope I would never do that...

Hi all

I haven't read all the responses since my earlier post but thank you for this thread and your engagement. It has taken me my whole life to get to a point of being able to speak about the things that went on in my home because I was told I should be grateful that I wasn't being sexually abused. But recently I have realised I was possessed instead and there was no respect for my boundaries.

Once my father when he was drunk must have done a shit in my room and he spent hours with me in a chair screaming at me that I needed to confess I'd done it for his attention. He used to corner me and scream in my face that I was a fucking narcissist over and over again - because to him "narcissism" meant having a separate thought outside of him. Everything about me was about him. When I hinted at him at 14 that I was questioning my sexuality, he told me that I was locked in Oedipal conflict with him because I wanted to have sex with him. There were constant references to these things. He fought with me like I was his lover and I was a little girl. I suffered so very badly and I just kept my head down and got on with things and always had compassion for him. When he arrived drunk at my wedding and had to be removed, his main complaint? I hadn't thanked him and his role in my life in my speeches, I had erased him, I was abusing him. There was no room for me.

I have lived in absolute terror of him and yet hating myself for not having more compassion for him, because "at least he didn't abuse me".

It took hearing that he had had sex with a client as a psychotherapist to finally pierce through the delusion that this was okay, that it wasn't all in my head.

Everything is so hard because of him. Women who have been taught to view themselves as possessions also often end up being revictimised in later life. I think I was raped because of this, because there were signs early in that night I wasn't safe but I dismissed all my instincts and when it happened I just froze in absolute terror, there was no way on God's earth I could have fought back. And then he tells me that this is my "frigidity".

I got PND after the birth of my second and I cut ties with him that year - and this is also another way I am "abusing" him. It nearly killed me to have him in my life, it destroyed all my faith in my ability to be a loving parent, it stole the happiest moments in life from me...

And he wants to know - but why? Why do you reject me? Why don't you love me?

Well fuck you. Daddy daddy, I'm through.