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.

Thank you, MrsLupo, yes it was volatile and we were both very vulnerable. Despite it not being our choice (certainly not timing-wise), we did both know there was a strong likelihood she would go ballistic and threaten NC if we did try to set this boundary, so In a way we did choose it too. I think MIL is probably amazed that her behaviour backfired so spectacularly and we (well DH) hadn't come back to beg for forgiveness!

Mind you, another part of me thinks she's probably a lot happier without us than if she'd had to accept our request. She simply couldn't live with it, almost a pathological or allergic reaction to other people's boundaries. I wonder how common this is with EPs. The links posted here have seemed to suggest this too.

Poting and running in response to a question upthread, sort of - a friend of mine has a sister who regularly goes no contact with various members of her family, but never all of them at once. She swaps between them, and her ex partner - she can't seem to stay friends with everyo e, she always has to be at outs with someone. BUT it's likely she has bipolar, or similar, as she has manic episodes and black episodes; but she won't go to the GP either because she doesn't recognise any of her situation to be her "fault", it's always everyone else who is wrong. Rest of the family is "normal".

I saw the Gransnet thread. It's very difficult to read, though it has been interesting to look at the deeply toxic nature of perspective taking in all of this, and the idea that some people "cut off" parents because of trivialities. I don't think the research would support that.

I have spent nearly my whole adult life trying desperately NOT to be NC with my father and I am not "technically", I just don't respond to his drunken phonecalls or go to visit anymore except at Christmas. I had to make that decision because of his treatment of my children.

It strikes me it must be a very desperately lonely place, to be so cut off from having perspective on your own actions that you can't understand why a child is not making contact because you can't look at the reality of your treatment of them. To view your child's anger as evidence they have no love in their lives, but your anger as justified and coming from a place of love. To view your hurt as real and arising in the relationship between you and theirs as entitled as arising from cultural expectations that have nothing to do with your relationship. To view their pain as irrelevant to anything you have done or failed to do, but your pain as a product of their abuse of you. To view your "rights" as important and obvious, but the very idea they have "rights" as some weird product of a fucked up society. To believe you have rebuilt your life to have healthier relationships without them, but this couldn't be possibly true for them if you are not in their lives.

In the kindest way, it is such a deeply infantile perspective , a tantrum about the nature of reality - a sense that the world for others falls away when you are absent from it, that others are not whole without you as you are the missing piece.

I feel deeply the sadness that there are parents who genuinely never learned that they cannot be the centre of their children's lives, that what children most deserve is sovereignty and to be let go to live their own lives as they see fit without any reference to you. And where parents can and do allow children that freedom, relationships can be wonderful. I certainly have that with my mother, and yet my father still has this notion I will "end up alone and unwhole" without HIM - because all the other people who are and have been constant and supportive in my life (my mother, stepfather, grandparents, inlaws, siblings and wider family) are pale sad shadows of the wonderfulness of him.

Ah, Daddy. You poor man. That's just not true, as much as you so desperately wish it were and have this abiding need to convince yourself you are more special than everyone else in the world.

I actually have a lot of compassion for that "toddler mind" perspective, and I can see it is arrested emotional development on the part of very deeply wounded individuals, and yes, there is sadness that this is part of life.

Of course it would be better to also have a father in this mix of life, but life doesn't allow that to many people for a variety of reasons and in my case it happens to relate to him being deeply damaged and broken in ways that are beyond my human capacity to accommodate. I don't hate my father but I do find it very hard to accommodate that he could have chosen to be as abusive as he was to both me and my mother.

I also find it very sad that the justification that is used by many is the idea that people seeking happiness is the problem, that there's an unhealthy individualism to it. The sad part is that pain in life IS inevitable. People will die, bodies will age and deteriorate, all relationships change in intensity over the lifespan. But THESE are normal things and it is the failure to allow them that creates the situation where estrangement is inevitable - where they can't let go in healthy ways and continue to abuse us as adults.

We can't turn away from the pain and longing of loss but we can stand firm and say I will not allow myself to be treated as an extension of you instead of an autonomous person in my own right, with an innate right to have relationships with other people who value my autonomy and do not seek to destroy or abuse it.

I am sorry my dad couldn't have been able to just live life in a loving way. That is a source of deep pain. However, suffering is a different prospect. Suffering is thinking things should be other than what they are and thinking the past can be unwritten because it has led you somewhere you wish you weren't. It is what it is. I'm not angry with him, I just wish life had been kinder to us all.

Fusion - thank you for articulating what I just do not have the words to explain.

That's it, in a nutshell- I am my own person deserving of love and respect and not an extension of you.

I don't know how you manage to get past all the hurt to get to this place, but I sure would like to be there.

Such an insightful post fusion. It is indeed sad that the parents who are estranged cannot see the truth of their situation, bound by their own limitations into this continual suffering as they reject all the signs and communication which has led to this moment and beyond. It's also interesting to think about it as an inherently emotionally limited position, an immature emotional world.

I find it fascinating that the tone taken both in 'retaliation' to this thread and to their adult children in general tends to be one of 'stupid erring infant having some kind of inexplicable tantrum'. Projection? Their own emotional state applied to others?

And why do they insist on ignoring the tales on here of deep trauma and abuse in favor of the completely unsubstantiated 'tantrum and estrangement on a whim'?! Sorry, a rhetorical question, I know why but it's so inherently self limiting and self defeating! Infuriating in the context of the thread, and in the context of my mother, I feel deeply sad that she has chosen to live within her stunted limitations, and sad that she is not capable of viewing the damage she has done and therefore the damage I have finally accepted is part and parcel of having a relationship with her. I have chosen after Far Too Long that for my own health I need to protect myself and DS from my mother by stepping away. No vicarious joy, no laughing hysterically at her upset, no doing if to punish, or for 'attention'. I very deep loss for the mother I never had and a deep and abiding sadness that she has chosen to tread this path and put her own ego and selfish needs above her daughter and her grandson. She chose that, she chose herself over us a long long time ago. It's sadness and acceptance we share on these type of threads, not rage and cruelty. :(

To view your child's anger as evidence they have no love in their lives, but your anger as justified and coming from a place of love. To view your hurt as real and arising in the relationship between you and theirs as entitled as arising from cultural expectations that have nothing to do with your relationship. To view their pain as irrelevant to anything you have done or failed to do, but your pain as a product of their abuse of you. To view your "rights" as important and obvious, but the very idea they have "rights" as some weird product of a fucked up society. To believe you have rebuilt your life to have healthier relationships without them, but this couldn't be possibly true for them if you are not in their lives.

Beautifully put, fusion.

And the fact that many posters on the GN threads can read what people have posted here and only see it as nastiness, mocking and attacks illustrates precisely why it is so hard or impossible to bridge this gulf of understanding.

Excellent post, fusion, so well written! And so sadly true for so many.

Stunning post, fusion

Fusion, your post is so perfect. It explains it all! All of it!

Agree, excellent and highly articulate post Fusion.

It became more apparent in Wednesday night's discussion and still more apparent in seeing a participant in that discussion now sharing their experiences of that discussion with EPs on another forum, how much reality and logic were a moving target just as Issendai has evidenced. And objective written evidence apparent in the posts is not seen as an obstacle to asserting something completely different. I think Issendai mentions somewhere about two conflicting viewpoints being seen by the EP as the same thing because they express the same intent, to establish control.

The viewpoint being explained is:

1. I am a parent, you are a child, our relationship is not equal, never will be. When you do not accept my authority and status over you, you are misbehaving. When you misbehave, whatever you say or do should be discounted.

It's part of the 'ignore the tantrum' school of thinking. A participant on Wednesday evening's discussion entered the conversation without reading the posts, saw their purpose as to give the benefit of their wisdom without needing to inform themselves, know anything of what was being said here, or to engage in any way in actual discussion or sharing of view points. Any attempt to discuss was blanked, with insulting, minimising and superiority employed when called upon this.

2. It is entitled and socially corrupt for children to disengage from a relationship that makes them stressed, unhappy and feel abused.

The 'come back here and stand still while I do what I want to you' line of thinking. Or the 'I had to take it so you should'. Or bottom line ''my feelings and needs take priority always'. It's still basically the 'I am the parent'' argument. The information comes up repeatedly that whatever may have happened to the EC the EC's job is to suck it up. There is outrage at the disobedience of defying that parent's authority to do as they pleased with their child, or that child having the right to no longer feel able to cope with it, or to make objective decisions in their own interest. The rider of 'REAL abuse means EC can leave' they frequently add is pointless as it is said within immediately disqualifying comments that ECs are never 'really' abused and don't have the right to leave anyway. (This relationship is not over until I am done with it - I am the parent!)

3. This is all about anger.

('Ignore the tantrum' is back again. With a side order of deflecting blame, minimising and the 'it's all in the past' thinking.) The EP who discussed this on thread was unable to process any attempt to share information or exchange views on this and just kept knocking out their script. If the EC would just let their anger go and move on the relationship would return to being lovely tomorrow. There is also discussion that EC are wrong to talk about their experiences or try to better understand them, or seek support from others - this is not moving on and reflects holding on to their silly anger, however EPs may do this and it is not silly or failure to move on for them. (Different standards. I'm the parent.) There seems to be a certain paranoia around it too, the EP involved has repeated several times on another forum that our discussion is aimed at our EPs, one seems to suggest this is set out quite intentionally for the EP in question to read (assuming that EP is stalking.. hmm, that's an interesting assumption) and seems to see it as a way of making contact and hitting out at the EP instead of being anonymised with minimal details, entirely focused on sharing support and views with ECs and the whole conversation is about a shared focus on avoiding any engagement with the EP they are related to. Inability to process detachment is I suppose another aspect. They see it all as attack - going towards - when the evidence shows the EC heading away. There is also the whole 'I love him/ her, I miss him/her every day, I just want him/her back in my life' all mixed up with 'how dare he/she, ECs are entitled, self centred, disrespectful failures'..... again logic and reality is a constantly moving target and that's ok. (I am the parent!) And interestingly on this thread Wednesday night we saw in action the 'I may be rude, insulting, refuse to give you the basic courtesy of reading and responding to what you say - but I expect you to listen to and respect me. Oh and the amazing 'tell me your dream' line, the expectation for this to be shared on demand, with no comprehension of inappropriacy or social contract; again an assumption of high overarching authority and no need for reciprocation. Teacher to child, parent to child. (Dare I mention entitlement? )

4. Mention of dissecting comments - discussing, critically thinking about language and calling out disparities, misconceptions and fallacies is unkind. This seems to link back to 'I am the parent' Their version is the accepted truth and questioning it is disrespectful misbehaviour. The evidence is also clear on the thread of polite attempts to discuss, a willingness to listen and engage and debate on the part of ECs, which was at no time reciprocated. Anything said was dismissed as whining, background noise emphasising the naughtiness of this place existing at all.

Basically Issendai Bingo. It's fascinating to see in action, and reinforces the short version I'm increasingly coming to believe - you cannot communicate with batshit. The only thing you can do from someone this lost in their own mess is to walk away and not let it mess you and yours up too.

*o view your child's anger as evidence they have no love in their lives, but your anger as justified and coming from a place of love. To view your hurt as real and arising in the relationship between you and theirs as entitled as arising from cultural expectations that have nothing to do with your relationship. To view their pain as irrelevant to anything you have done or failed to do, but your pain as a product of their abuse of you. To view your "rights" as important and obvious, but the very idea they have "rights" as some weird product of a fucked up society. To believe you have rebuilt your life to have healthier relationships without them, but this couldn't be possibly true for them if you are not in their lives.

In the kindest way, it is such a deeply infantile perspective.*

This is such a perfect summation. It's exact.

Great posts from so many insightful people

Can't believe this thread is at 900 posts. (Or rather, I kind of can because it's something that baffles and pains so many of us. But you know what I mean...)

And again kenneth - I'm glad you've found support here too.

It's always an amazing moment when you realise that no, you're not crazy - they are.

Excellent post, fusion this is my mother: parents who genuinely never learned that they cannot be the centre of their children's lives, that what children most deserve is sovereignty and to be let go to live their own lives as they see fit without any reference to you.

you cannot communicate with batshit

Love that. It's what it all boils down to really, after 900 posts, isn't it? These people are bonkers, there's no getting through to them and it's not worth trying.

Some incredible insightful and well considered posts here

In direct contradiction to the 'research' referred to which is actually just reading carefully selected articles which support their view. Any of us that have actually conducted research knows that a critical (in all ways) element is to read and evaluate the OPPOSITE view, but then if one can't even be bothered to read the thread one not only comments on but CRITIQUES what does one expect?

In terms of contradiction my own parents generally deny the outright abuse (which according to them never happened), but I was also told (not asked) the night before my first therapy session not to mention it. If I was imagining/exaggerating it and they love me, surely they WANT me to mention it to an objective 3rd party who can debunk my outlandish ideas??

Thanks all. It has been a tremendously helpful thread in terms of being able to step back and see things in a different way. I've been dancing around the edges of it in therapy (which I only have intermittently anyway) and have recently being doing a Mindful Self Compassion course which I think opened up a space to take it in a bit better and let down some of the old familiar threat responses that inevitably arise when I hear an AC is "entitled" or "selfish" or "unfair" for wanting to be or maintain a NC state with a parent... but also because I typed things on this thread I have never ever said to a living soul, and it is good to just put them in the world. I heard someone in a different context recently talking about childhood trauma saying trauma survivors bury their feelings in their bodies - in tension and fear and contraction - but we also bury them alive. They are always moving around and asking us to see them and listen to them and get out - for some of us it comes out in sickness or back ache or pelvic pain or chronic headaches or illnesses, for others in different difficulties of the mind or emotion, for others in substance abuse of one kind or another, or just a pervasive sense of unease in the body or in relationships with other people at home or at work. And that is why this stuff matters. Because I'd love to just "let it go" and not have it as a focus in my life, but that is not my path in life to walk, particularly because of the severity of the things I spent most of my life thinking were "normal" and yet "shameful", so unable to speak about to anyone.

Being able to talk about it in a measured way and to name these awful things as NOT OKAY makes all the difference and it is so much more I possible when you know that you are not the only one who has had this experience. As much as I wish this suffering wasn't enough for 900 posts in a week, it is also a huge relief to think - other people get it! Other people know what this is, it is not small, it is not to be trivialised, it is okay not to like it and it is okay to say ENOUGH. No MORE. To find honour in living in a different way where you are not voiceless or helpless or irrelevant in ways that mean your needs must ALWAYS come last. This thread has given me courage to talk about it for the first time with my therapist. And funnily enough, the fact some posters here assume this is "entitlement", that after 38 years I would find the ability to say NO, it is not okay for you to abuse me because you are wounded too, has been a help - because when it's not YOUR parent saying it to you, you suddenly realise how absolutely toxic and self-serving and deeply fucked up it is, and how crazy making the shifting logic and moves between sounding reasonable/being nasty over and over again can be.

Baconyum - this is a tactic of my father's too. "One day you will realise all of this is just normal". No. It's not. Not even slightly.

I can't read the GN thread any more. It's making me want to gouge my eyes out with a blunt teaspoon.

Pingpang it does make your brain ache trying to get your head around it all doesn't it?

On the offchance I come back to this thread and it's totally full I want to say thank you again to everyone who's posted and shared their thoughts. It's been really helpful I think.

you cannot communicate with batshit

I think that's going to become my go to phrase for dealing with flying monkeys! Delivered with a blank stare....

Or monkey-shit

In the kindest way, it is such a deeply infantile perspective.

This is very true, I think. I was musing earlier that the anger unleashed by the EC attempting to set boundaries has something of the quality of a 3yo having a meltdown because you've cut their toast up wrong, and can't then bend the laws of physics for them in order to put it back together again. It's a really profound, atavistic rage at the fact that the universe cannot be shaped and controlled in the way they want.

In a toddler that rage is amusing and exhausting by turns. In a fully-grown adult, especially one who has/has had power over you, it's fucking terrifying. And the fear of that primitive rage I think explains why so many AC feel genuinely terrorised by the EP's attempts to demand that the relationship be conducted entirely on their terms, and feel they can only escape it by going NC.

Can we start a new thread titled You cannot communicate with batshit?