You cannot communicate with batshit

[Pingpang]

Following on from a recent thread regarding those who are NC/LC with family members.

Welcome to the good ship Narcymcnarcface! The bar is stocked and there's a seat for everyone. Shuffleboard starts in 20 mins.

Hey Misc I would join you up in the bar... but I too am pinned down under a sleeping DC. I can really relate to your thinking around your DC sleeping with you/independently and the emotional side of dealing that, given your own childhood experience. ( to you and your DS).

I have some of the same issues with my DD's sleep and struggle a lot with feeling more generally that I am using appropriate kinds of discipline with my DD and keeping her in good routines, which rationally I understand she should have and which will make her feel safe.

I just feel that I have absolutely nothing in the back of my mind to draw on from being parented myself. Generally there was either an absence of whatever it was, or that thing wasn't done in any way I'd want to repeat with my own DC .

So I have tried to find alternative models to call on (leading me to MN!- thank fuck). A saving grace has been remembering my occasional visits to my grandparents, who were an oasis of kindness and order in my small life, if that doesn't sound too melodramatic. Those visits made a huge impression on me, just the feeling of being cared for, my needs and preferences asked about and thought about, being always well fed, warm and dry and clean. Very clear roles of them being the (benevolent) adults and me being the (cared for) child. Relief! IRL I try to adapt bits of what I recall.

Anyway- I'm still feeling my way on sleeping, routines and discipline, is what I am trying to say, and I feel this is directly related to my past parenting, which I am trying to process and move forward on. (What's that saying about building the plane while you're going down the runway?)

For eg I'm consciously NOT trying to be 'friends' with my DD, because my parents required us to 'parent' them in various ways (which of course we could never do to their satisfaction) and didn't allow us to have our own childish feelings. we had to fit in with them emotionally at all times IYSWIM. (And then we had to adapt that model back again when we went to stay with the other parent...)

If my DD seems a bit anxious about eg baddies coming to get her, I quite often try to address her and my 'role' in the resolution of the (real or imaginary) problem eg [paraphrase] 'don't worry about that x thing because I'm your mummy and I'm the grown up and you don't need to worry about it or sort it out, that's for grown ups to do and children don't need to.' Seems to reassure but who knows. I like your approach of giving your DS tools to manage as I know the approach I am currently taking isn't building her resilience and can't be used as she grows up.

Anyway not sure if any of this is useful as I have fuck all practical advice. I just wanted to say that I really recognise the feeling of not wanting to repeat the mistakes of the past but not being sure what 'the right way' (or just the 'good enough' way!) actually looks like.

Misc would you be interested in gentle sleep training methods? If so I would recommend Teach Your Child To Sleep - they have a whole lot of scenarios and solutions and some of the methods are very gentle. We actually had a consultation with the Millpond Clinic when our girls were babies - they were very good.

MrsLupo that was me with the covert narcissist link - I think don't worry that you have the traits - I think what happens is that children of covert narcs sometimes have that "I have to do everything perfectly and earn my place in this world" feeling, but we really internalised it, like we think we don't really measure up and we have to work hard to deserve our place in the world. Covert narcs don't think that - they think not only that they deserve their place in the world first and foremost, they are Special and Chosen - and if they're not very good at anything, then they're special because they're so bad, or so sad, or because although they may not be perfect they are the only person who understands what true excellence is (so they don't ever try to do anything because they can never meet the superior standards they have that are the thing that make them special). The behaviour is sometimes the same, but it's coming from almost the opposite motivation.
Also as is often said on here, if you question whether you might be a narcissist, you're almost definitely not!

On hair... I had Rapunzel-long hair which was not allowed to be cut and had to be brushed and washed the way she said, and no other way. I had sensory issues around water on my face but the worst was the combing - she would wash it, dry it roughly with a towel which made it really tangled, then she would take a comb and comb straight from the top of my head to about the back of my neck, which is how far the comb would go before all the tangles bunched together into a massive knot. She'd then spend the best part of an hour working out her anger on my head as she combed out all the tangles. When I was about 10 I worked out that, if you hold the hair tightly in your hand, you can comb from the bottom and it doesn't tug on your scalp. I remember her face (dog licking piss off a nettle) as I described this amazing discovery to her.

Right last thing last thing. On the issendai thing - the estranged parents giving presents to their ungrateful children - "why are they surprised their presents are unwelcome" is the wrong question to ask! They love that script - I was super nice, and all I got was ingratitude - it makes them feel doubly secure in their own virtue.

Misc, I have anxiety and panic attacks sometimes. It's been a revelation teaching myself things like deep breathing and how to calm myself down.

It's a bit like I'm never really sure when I'm hungry; or before TTCing I never knew I had a hormonal cycle (active, normal, depressed, irritable, active etc). Before my mid 20s when a colleague took me shopping, I didn't know about clothes sizes or bra sizes or makeup. I just don't connect well with my body.

In one way that's good - I'm not vain by any means.

But in another I think maybe part of that is not being taught the sort of "think for yourself" stuff that I've read about in books like "how to talk so children will listen".

A really silly example would be me saying: "I'm cold", and my mum replying "no you're not". I begin to learn my views aren't valid and I doubt myself. A healthy response on a regular basis would be "well what's the solution? ... Go find a jumper."

Identifying patterns in our bodies and how to control them is something so alien because someone else was always in control.

And I mean as a parent you must sometimes be so knackered that you can't be ideal or lead by example or teach your child resilience or emotional independence all the time - you must want to snap occasionally "no you're bloody not! Sit down!" ... But if your regular communication counters those outbursts that's different I think.

Screen, yes - my mum found my first love note around that age and was horrified. I'm going red thinking about it, she was so shocked.

Bacony I don't know - she always said things like "I wanted a little girl so I could do your hair / dress up with you". But I wasn't very pretty so maybe I didn't quite match up. She's never generally said anything about wanting me to be a boy - maybe it was a phase I went through, wish I could remember.

One thing I noticed from releasing my post last night is at the time she said she'd mistaken me for my brother, and later that didn't come up as an excuse. I think if I'd done that as a mistake it would be one of "those" stories - "remember when I cut your hair off cause I was so tired?!" But it never was.

DH actually cried when I told him all my primary school stories last night. Wasn't expecting that, I thought he'd laugh. There were another few "fun" ones too and all he can think is that it was some form of jealousy or creepy "stopping you from knowing boys" thing. And she did, totally.

Toomuch - The Rapunzel thing - God the other end of the spectrum eh. poor you and your hair, I'm honestly wincing in sympathy. "Emotional vampire" comes to mind again.

Have any of you seen Tangled btw? I thought it was such an amazing film in showing narcissism and the effects it has on someone? (in a disney-ish way obviously) I love it. The only mistake (?) would be in the glorification of birth parents who can be the abusers, but then that's the fantasy isn't it? "I'm secretly a long lost princess and there are kind people who love me somewhere."

Whoops used other username, will change that. (You're welcome to look it up btw, nothing weird I hope though do tell me if I have multiple personalities - I just use 2/3 to try and switch profiles over time so no one can track me down... This is the longest I've ever used one before!)

Merd Tangled is good around daughters, mothers and hair- 'mother knows best' gives me the creeps.

My DM always hacked mine into a bowl shape which attracted bullies, so then I wanted long hair like other girls and wouldn't let her cut it any more. After that she just let me get on with it. neither parent helped me with it so I was a legendarily, scruffy mess as a child.
She used to laugh at me with my siblings about how i chose to be a mess and wouldn't let anyone near me. Which was mortifying.
There aren't many photos of us as kids but I see neglect with hair, teeth unbrushed etc. I didn't go to a hairdresser till I was earning my own money. Also on 'not letting anyone near me' I ended up having a teenage nervous breakdown episode because of not being touched or hugged or shown affection or care because of her scapegoating. My DM is incredibly vain and poses in every mirror she passes like nobody's watching. I can totally see her crooning over a bloody golden flower!

Oh - hair! My mother didn't use conditioner. Odd really, seeing as how her own mother was a qualified hairdresser - but from the 1940s when conditioner probably didn't exist.
Anyway.
I had longish, very fine, curlyish hair - fucking nightmare when washed as it all tangled up. And I'd sit there for half an hour minimum while she combed the knots out with a fine tooth comb. It never occurred to me that she might have enjoyed inflicting this punishment on me though!
My "party hair" style was to have the top half of my hair scraped back into the tightest ponytail imaginable at the back of my head, the sort that gives you slanty eyes, it's pulling so hard on the facial skin. Hated that. :(
I "found" conditioner at the age of 12, when I visited a friend who used it - and never looked back!

Merd and Screen - obviously they were both lying to you completely. I have absolutely no doubt that they did it for their own reasons, either as punishment for something, or to make you less attractive. I can't imagine anyone would "mistake" one child for another (although I can imagine accidentally shaving someone's head instead of clippering it, as I've done that to my DH, and a friend has done that to his son)

Specialagent - you don't need to stowaway, we've plenty of cabins still available. Pull up a pew and join in.

Misc - while I agree that teaching your DS techniques to manage his fears and anxieties is an excellent long-term plan, can I suggest that a possible short-term plan would maybe be to have him in a separate bed but in your room still? If you can fit one in, that is. Then at least you wouldn't have the discomfort of sharing with him, but he'd still feel closer to you than if he was in a separate room?

I have a lot of love for Tangled. I watched it last September with the kids and I was like "it's my mum! On the television! And she is a bad guy!" I found it incredibly validating, specifically that she doesn't actually hit or humiliate or be angry, very much - the control alone is recognised as being abusive. I think most kids in those sorts of situations become very good at keeping the crazy parent sweet - I certainly did, and so there are relatively few instances of her being violent from my childhood. She had me very well trained.

I'm finding all this hair stuff disturbing but weirdly reassigning ( it's not just me and yes it was a big deal and yes she was doing it to be mean ) .

As I young child I had long blond hair which was much admired by friends and relatives , so my mother used to make me wear it scraped up tight ( as thumb witch describes ) into a bun on top ( not at the back ) of my head . This was a very weird style as all the other little girls at school wore it in pleats , pony tails or pigtails ( no one wore it loose ) .

She also put this smelly lotion on it, like liquid hairspray, which went solid . I hated it all - the odd style and the stinking lotion. She claimed she did it to avoid nits , although I was at a fairly posh school and I can't imagine there were more nits than elsewhere.

Having read all your stories , I see that the common themes are

• jealously of the child being admired by other adults
• desire to make the child an object of ridicule by other kids , an outsider
• hurting the child by pulling hair " legitimately "
• control

All the hair memories are coming back! I had my hair pulled up into one of those DIY facelifts as well. One of my favourite daydreams was that one day I would be able to wear my hair down and everyone would realise I was beautiful. (Poor little Toomuch, I wish I could give her a cuddle). And my mother washed my hair with essoderm nit shampoo every week even though I never actually had nits. She only stopped it after the chemist refused to sell her any more.

Hello everyone, I've been out on deck a bit and feel a bit sunburnt - anyone got some aftersun??

Yes those are some interesting themes to pick out Kr1stina - I'm a bit surprised by how common it is TBH, but somehow comforted (is that close to the right word?) by others having similar stuff. I guess it makes sense. (Sorry for dredging up any other bad memories though for anyone!)

God yes cat, Tangled was so validating and that song gives me the chills too. I remember thinking "Thank god! Someone out there gets it! Someone at Disney gets it!"

toomuch. I wish we could all go back and give out some cuddles and care (well, and extreme counselling and parenting classes to our parents I suppose, but you know what I mean).

Too much - that's another theme I missed , the obsession with " preventing" nits or treating non existent nits . I wonder what that's about?

Yup, hair thing here too. Horrendous pudding bowl and tbh I don't think I went to the hairdressers myself until I was about 14. Can I ask if your own mothers took any pride in their own hair, as in did they go to the hairdressers and get a fab do, or were they a bit meh about their own hair?

Curious to find out as mine gets hers done in a dog groomers and I am not joking. The owner does people as well as dogs......and it's about the same level of finesse

Been reading this thread and the last one and have the classic 'please don't notice me' as a legacy from my DM who might not be a full blown narc but is definitely on the spectrum, so never felt I was 'allowed' to join in.

Anyway I'm being brave and going to step on board and even speak to people and I won't be embarrassed if people notice me...I'm over 50 FGS so really should have got over all that but we are sooo well trained!

My DMs contribution to my self esteem, apart from putting my hair into the tightest possible pig tails as a child, was to tell me that 'no one would ever call you pretty'. I did bring it up once, many years later and obviously she a) never said it and b) didn't mean it 'that way'.

Anyway I am off to check out the cocktails as the sun is way over the yard arm.

strawberry, we've had a sun lounger with your name on for a while

< passes round chilled cava >

My mother went to the hairdressers every Friday morning without fail , she wouldn't miss it for anything . She was very careful about her appearance and always wore smart and expensive clothes .

Thanks for so useful and insightful posts last night re DS sleeping/ fears. I'm going to catch up on those later.

At the mo I've been trying to recreate the hair post I lost last night!

My hair post was sparked by the posts on attitudes to mental health care that one of the lovely posters in here brought up a couple of days ago. I'd been musing on it amongst all the other things I've been dwelling on. Sorry I don't remember the posters names and don't want to scroll back in case I lose this post all over again like I did last night!

Getting into being on the ship :) so I see what happened to my lost post... I was writing it with a fountain pen on great folio size thick cream paper, whilst sitting on the sun soaked beeswax smelling wooden ships deck. I guess it's my contribution to the ships papers! Perhaps we all write our entries when we feel like it in a nautical type of big brother diary room?! But dammit a squall came from nowhere and my papers blew overboard into the sea.

So my second attempt! Paper weighted down by pebbles and possibly a crab (ok now I'm channelling holidays by the sea rather than ships!)

My mother used to use any kind of reference to mental health or help as a threat and a degrading insult.

"I'll get you seen by a psychiatrist and then you'll be sorry" hissed out with venom and disgust.

Or "if you carry on like this* you'll destroy the whole family and I'll get you locked up like you deserve you are disturbed you are and it makes me sick" she used to spit the words at me until I'd feel her breathe and little bits of spittle on my face. Vile. Threatening. Mad. Oh the irony...

Apparently I was being selfish and 'unbalanced' by protesting at having my hair cut short all over for the first 16 yrs of my life. I wasn't allowed long hair as my older sister had long hair and I was a bitch for trying to 'compete' with her beauty and deliberately attempting to 'outshine' her.

It was also a weirdy gender thing like another poster has said - my sister was the girl, and I was the 'boy' so I had short hair, trousers etc and my sister got long hair, prettiness of clothes and toys, and later, interests, hobbies and education.

I never quite 'got' the gender thing as my mother always said my dad wanted a boy, so forcing me into being a boy meant I had more and more in common with my father... But she was also rabidly jealous of my relationship with my father and did everything she could to destroy it. Bat shit. Truly batshit. Actually, she has often implied a sexual element to my relationship with my father (which is a revolting and sick thing for her to say, for her to project the nasty dirt and slug filled brain / soul she has onto me - this was from age 5ish. Vile woman. Sorry, my point was that maybe she turned me into a boy to take out the sexual competition (sick fucking bitch).

I was also banned from taking a-levels in the subjects I could actually do well, as again, unchecked I'd evilly attempt to outshine my sister and make a nonsense of her achievements. I was forced to take subjects my mother had sanctioned, & were science and other boy type of stuff. Which I wasn't actually very good at and by a-level was failing badly, and therefore not be able to escape to uni which was my only escape route at the time. She said she'd stop me going, make it stay at home, and make me get a labouring job on a farm (???!!!!) near the village which id have to walk to and from and give her rent out of the meagre wages is get (& presumably rent would have been fixed so I couldn't find another escape route via driving lessons/ getting to a college/ buying a bike etc).

Actually, proper 'gloves off' cruel now I think about it.

All through this were the hair battles. From looking at photos it started as quite a nice page boy cut at 5ish. Then quite quickly moved on to the punishment style of an inch or two short all over with no style and no way of ever making it look ok, until late teens when I finally just refused to let anyone cut it. So then I had the hideous shaggy no style growing out nightmare for a couple of Years as it had been so short, and I had no idea how to deal with it as it grew!

She would also force me to let her wash my hair bending over a sink, all 2 inches of it. Haranguing me all the time about how disgusting and horrible I was, and ugly and simultaneously trying to take down my sisters beauty?! Then the weirdest bit was she blow dried my hair each time, which is nuts now I think of it! It took hours and she'd burn my neck and head by training the hot air on me in one position for ages, and I wasn't allowed to say ow or cry or squirm or pull away. All the time complaining about how ungrateful I was and how she didn't have time to be doing this etc etc etc. Again like another poster, I had never really thought of her deliberately doing this until now, but she definitely got a kick out of it, yueeeeech.

Merd - I have just had time to read the whole thread, and now realise that haircut was a bit batshit. Although, if my mum had done it to me, I wouldn't have thought she was as she is lovely, just a bit bonkers. Funny how our hair can be so controlling generally, from how I feel when I have had a fab restyle, to how I felt when I lost it after pregnancy. My mum always had a crop, as that's how my dad liked it. It was the only thing she would let him choose about her, looking back.

Anyway, musing along, my fabulous stalking batshitter has not resurfaced, thank god.. I have to see her next Friday and then all weekend for a family wedding. I will be needing some moral support. She is the queen of snide remarks and put downs. I will post some crackers when I get time.

I might do insult bingo on the way to the wedding and see how many I can tick off.

On Friday, I had 'your veins are popping out on your arm', 'oh my god, your skin is so dry', 'your eyelashes look fake' (they are darling, and have been for a month I said), " I don't know how you cope'. etc.. I am just left stunned, with no comeback. Part of me wants to retaliate, as I am no pushover, but I know doing so will feed her, so I grit my teeth..

Please give me some ideas to sock it to her, whilst retaining my dignity.. So far the killing her with kindness is killing me instead.

I wish I could go NC.

Oh, Misc, that's heartbreaking. Really.

I'm having a 'sunny side of the street' day today, so I shall revisit your utterly fantastic imagery of the cream paper, the beeswaxed deck & the squall. Thank you! I hope you write for reasons outside of forum posts :)

I'm mixing gin based cocktails up on the top deck, please come on up strawberry and everyone.
Then I think later on tonight we should set off a load of candle lanterns in homage to Tangled.

Ping pang my DM is obsessed with her own personal appearance and hair, which is a different hair colour and type to mine. Products and styling gizmos and hairdressing trips galore all the time. I used to try to please her 'oh you look so lovely DM with your lovely hair' as I thought this would play well, sometimes it did, but sometimes she'd slap me down with 'yes but you have your fathers dreadful family hair, so curly and coarse textured' etc. She fucking hates him and all his family so I knew what that actually meant, though it sounds true and harmless on the surface.

These days she still randomly points out how much I look like my dads side.
I am [hmmm] about that now, she's not seen any of them for decades and threw away all the photos of them decades ago so how the fuck would she know.
It's just a way of being nasty that I can't call her on. (Actually people often think I look like her despite my frizz).

I now always say DD 'just looks like herself' if people start saying which side of the family she takes after..

Blond - have you tried "How clever of you to notice"?

I did that with my mum for a while. I also transferred the "awfulizing" response from group therapy to those convos with Mum. She catastrophises a lot - does it to herself incessantly, and did to me until I, ahem, trained her. So "Your veins are popping out" would get "Oh, my god, so they are! Popping ... look, they're breaking through the skin, argh! Oh no, this is terrible! Should we call 999? What does it mean?!"

If nothing else, you get a laugh out of it.

Misc that's fucking awful. So sorry. She sounds completely crazy.

I've just realised that this is why I've always let my children wear their hair exactly how they like, they can have any cut or style . According to the hairdresser, this is unusual.

I've never thought of any of this before < head explodes >

< has another gin>

Misc- big hugs to you.. I often wondered if my mum was sometimes jealous of me. It was a big moment of clarity when it first dawned on me, and explained her behaviour sometimes.

It sounds as if she was punishing you for something that was her own issue. I'm so sorry that you have had to suffer for it.

I have an aunt with 2 sons, and my uncle's one wish in life is a daughter. Now her elder son is getting married, she has admitted openly that she is jealous of her daughter in law to be, as she knows my uncle is going to dote on her - the daughter he never had. I am close to him (being the nearest thing he has to a daughter ) so I may have a word, for him to be a little sensitive towards my aunt's feelings.. I'm not jealous though, as she is a dermatologist, and I can't wait for free skin care advice!