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.

Liz, when my aunt is staying at my mums house I get "I love you and I miss you" cards.

Then when she's not there it's back to nasty emails and letters.

My aunt still hasn't recovered from her fall out with my mum, she's back in with my mum, but it permanantly damaged her relationship with some other people who my mother got on her side during the fall out.

And she seems to have completely forgotten how my mum would be "lets just put things behind us" to her when she had an audience at family dos (to show how she's the bigger person) followed by a nasty vicious phonecall from my mum the following week when there's no audience. All the while my mum is meekly sighing to everyone "well, I tried, if she's not ready to but it behind her what else can I do?"

I just.. I really don't understand who she's unquestioning about what she's being told about the situation between me and my mum

I wrote a response to that person and totally took the bait but then decided to wait a while before posting it and phew, have put the bait down and kicked it into a dusty corner where it belongs :)

What was that about?!
'Not everyone is out to get us as long as we play fair'
My childhood (childish?) fears are 'illusions, only real in my mind'?
And err, no, this isn't childhood fears coming back to haunt me, or 'test my resolve'!

An emphatic bollocks to that!

Oh and I agree completely with previous posters that anger can be a positive and galvanizing emotion. Perhaps the person who has anger issues with anger is mistaking rage for anger?

Raging is not a positive emotion, it's about fear, impotence and losing control. It's about getting lost in rage and not being able to harness it or use it for good. Rage is a self-limiting emotion.

Anger can fuel action, a positive force to fuel change. I'll add votes for women to that great list above. Also ending apartheid. I don't tell my son NOT to feel anger, I show him how to deal with it instead.

I also wonder if that poster was fixing on anger because it is such an important step towards rejecting negative or abusive relationships? Belittling and embarrassing someone who feels anger would be a great way of shackling an impetus to free oneself wouldn't it?

And then the 'superior' person sadly shaking their head at such infantile and unhealthy emotions.

Whereas I believe that telling people not to feel anger and other 'negative' emotions is a misguided and limiting thing to do (& suspect many others might also?!).

Suppression of emotions and teaching that people must deny the whole range of emotions isn't a terribly healthy or mature way of dealing with life. Helping people from childhood recognize, name and understand their emotions is soooo much better than telling people they are bad for feeling what they feel.

Accepting emotions and learning strategies to deal with them is part of growing as a person, and I am so glad that we are now starting to recognize this as a society - hopefully our children will grow up more emotionally literate :)

Brilliant post about anger, rage, acceptance & suppression, Misc. Totally agree.

*Narcynarcnarcnutternarc

That Nina poster has just posted on the Gransnet thread now about how horrible this thread is, and about how cutting off a parent is a form of abuse.

I can't get my head round that idea. How can it be abusive for someone to decline to continue a relationship with you? Whatever the reason, how can anyone question another adult's rights in that area?

I'm not NC with anyone - most of my birth family are dead or I might be! - but I find some of the posters on that GN thread genuinely quite scary. The rage and lack of self-awareness is staggering.

Loon, I was just coming on here to post the same as you. Parent abuse!!! Jesus wept.

to everyone who agrees with me. And if you don't, you're horrible, cruel, immature etc

I can't get my head round that idea. How can it be abusive for someone to decline to continue a relationship with you? Whatever the reason, how can anyone question another adult's rights in that area?

Loon - I think this is the paradox that made me start the thread, actually. Clearly if, IF, someone were to just walk out of a warm, healthy relationship and cut off all contact without reason, that would be a heartless thing to do.

But the point for all of us who have gone NC is that we have told and explained, and reasoned, and tried to move things on, over and over. And yet still, clearly, the EPs feel they haven't been told, because they don't agree wtih the reasons given, and if they don't agree with them, then they are by definition invalid.

As someone said very succintly (I can't remember if on the GN thread or on here), it's about power - the EP thinks they have and are entitled to, the power to determine and control reality, both for themselves and for their adult offspring. And go nine kinds of apeshit when the adult child refuses to play along with this. I think for those kinds of parents (and clearly not all are like that, there are some people on the GN thread who are being commendably calm and thoughtful), their emotional response is the sole determiner of reality. So if they are upset by their child going LC or NC, or by trying to put boundaries in place, then their upset alone is sufficient justification for judging that the person setting these boundaries is in the wrong.

And to answer the Q posed both on here and on GN as to why estranged adult children look at these forums and pick the answers apart - it's not about mocking, it's a desperate need to understand what has happened to us, and to try and make sense of the inverted relationship dynamics in this crazy looking-glass world that we've grown up in.

It's basically saying that you lose your right to consent (or not) to a relationship if a person percieves themselves to be above you in a hierarchy

why estranged adult children look at these forums and pick the answers apart - it's not about mocking, it's a desperate need to understand what has happened to us

YY. And to the rest of your post, as well.

What's abusive is forcing someone else to be in a relationship that doesn't enhance their lives. Looking through the threads on here, or any on-the-ball relationship advisory, what you see is hundreds of people feeling downtrodden, trapped and confused by their relationship with someone who professes to love the person they've trapped.

Leaving a relationship, even a good one, isn't abuse. It can hurt. But it isn't abuse. Everyone has the right to choose and to change their mind. And no-one has the right to demand a relationship.

"If you love them, let them go."

their emotional response is the sole determiner of reality.

Yes - that's absolutely the impression that comes across in that thread, from some of the posters at least.

Clearly if, IF, someone were to just walk out of a warm, healthy relationship and cut off all contact without reason, that would be a heartless thing to do. But the point for all of us who have gone NC is that we have told and explained, and reasoned, and tried to move things on, over and over.

Quite. And even if we hadn't told/explained/reasoned, the fact that we did feel the need to walk away is surely proof absolute that the relationship was not as warm as the aggrieved party believes (or says they believe). In that situation, the first thing a psychologically healthy person (or anyone who aspires to be psychologically healthy) would do is to ask themselves why and in what respects the relationship cannot in fact have been as warm and happy as they had believed it to be.

This is the point where I realise how much work - and it's been bloody hard work - I and most people here have done on ourselves to overcome the past. And it's also where I lose patience with the EPs - because doing that work was a choice. My mother couldn't help her difficult past any more than I could help mine, but I made the choice to grow beyond it and she - and all the EPs on the forum - have made the choice not to bother. Blame, anger, faux bewilderment, self-pity... it's all easier than painful self-scrutiny and change.

Narcynarcnarcnutternarc oh dear. We stopped responding to her so she's gone over there to get our attention. Not one apology from her for her behaviour here, so I can see why her relationships could be strained.

I'm a bit at anyone who can't understand why we would react crossly the suggestion to just cosy up to our abusers again.

On that note if "abandoning" our parents did count as abuse (!) then why on earth would they want contact again? What could that achieve? Why would anyone want contact with or subjugation from an abuser?

Just for those GN'ers reading who are so "concerned" about anger - first, the posts above explain very lucidly that anger can be a very good thing. Second, and perhaps most importantly, after reduced contact I am no living every day incandescent with rage. I was back then mind you, and that was unhealthy. I'm actually extremely happy, calm and generally merry with life, and have been since I cut my unpleasant mother off, though that probably isn't something you'd like to hear. All my suicidal thoughts just vanished when I left.

I have wobbles (as seen on this sodding thread) but luckily they're few and far between now (I hope). And that's not anger, just sadness.

Serious big question: are there REALLY normal people who have normal parents who just shrug them off one day? I'm not being rhetorical, I'm honestly thinking of starting a thread to ask. Do you think that's a good idea anyone?

I guess anything's possible but I can't think why anyone would unless they're addicted/mentally unwell or under someone's abuse (all of which are reasons in themselves). Is there another reason? I can't think of anyone I've ever known who's done this.

My mother couldn't help her difficult past any more than I could help mine, but I made the choice to grow beyond it and she - and all the EPs on the forum - have made the choice not to bother. Blame, anger, faux bewilderment, self-pity... it's all easier than painful self-scrutiny and change. yes, 100%. She absolutely didn't have to just take it all out on me.

(Hope you're ok there btw rumbling?)

Fine thanks Merd. Something of a rant got away from me, having read the newly updated GN thread. All of it true, but not civil, or helpful.

Serious big question: are there REALLY normal people who have normal parents who just shrug them off one day? I'm not being rhetorical, I'm honestly thinking of starting a thread to ask. Do you think that's a good idea anyone?

I'm sure there's lots of people who end up LOW contact with nice parents just because they're rubbish at keeping in touch. My DH loves his mother, she's a nice normal parent. He's absoultely crap at ringing unless there's a reason. I'm always reminding him that it's nice to ring "just because" even if there's no event and nobody's ill.

Low contact due to one side being rubbish at ringing could end up with the one doing all the contact pulling back.. and I suppose Low contact could become even lower contact that way.

Ah I see, that's interesting. A sort of "time flies and you don't know what you've got till it's gone" thing rather than "oh I can't be bothered with you anymore"?

Yeah, I can understand that someone could get fed up of making all the effort, and just stop, but not in a NC kinda way, just in a "I feel a bit silly sending all these cards when I get none back, but if they invite me over for dinner I'ld happily go" kinda way

My other message didn't post there - glad to hear it rumbling and perfectly understandable!

That one is a shame then Screenshotting, and genuinely sad. Still "one of those things" rather than outright abuse I think but sad nonetheless.

I think it's probably something that happens more with friendships or cousins and maybe siblings though? and less likely with AC/parent? I don't know? I only know of that happening with friendships and extended family but I suppose it could happen between two adults who are AC&parent?

issendai.com/wp/estrangement/224/

This makes for an interesting read in the light of yesterday's discussion.

I'm sure there's lots of people who end up LOW contact with nice parents just because they're rubbish at keeping in touch.

Sure! Did you see the story of Charles Frank, who just basically took his Mum a bit for granted until he didn't - then made a little film about it? Very sweet www.upworthy.com/a-man-made-a-tear-jerking-video-about-all-the-unopened-voicemails-from-his-mom

But his mum didn't feel abandoned. I guess there has to be some sort of overt rejection before it's an estrangement. At least - if somebody decides their AC has cut them off because they didn't answer 30 phone calls, it probably means the parent has a very fragile attachment style so the relationship would've been somewhat out of whack anyway.

It's a sweet story, even though Charles has clearly been a bit of a crap son :)

yeah, or, you don't reply straight away and "you're a shit daughter because you don't meet my emotional needs and I expect you to be my companion even though I'm also saying you're a shit person and I don't see any reason why the two should be mutually exclusive"

Rumbling - yes, Issendai is very good. I was reading her stuff, and that drama in particular, alongside this thread and the GN thread. It's like they're all talking about the same people.

This is a very good analysis by her also.