"But we took you to Stately Homes" - survivors of dysfunctional and toxic families

[toomuchtooold]

It's December 2017, and the Stately Home is still open to visitors.

Forerunning threads:
December 2007
March 2008
August 2008
February 2009
May 2009
January 2010
April 2010
August 2010
March 2011
November 2011
January 2012
November 2012
January 2013
March 2013
August 2013
December 2013
February 2014
April 2014
July 2014
Oct 14 – Dec 14
Dec 14 – March 15
March 2015 - Nov 2015
Nov 2015 - Feb 2016
Feb 2016 - Oct 2016
Oct 2016 - Feb 2017
Feb 2017 - May 2017
May 2017 - August 2017
August 2017 - December 2017
Welcome to the Stately Homes Thread.

This is a long running thread which was originally started up by 'pages' see original thread here (December 2007)

So this thread originates from that thread and has become a safe haven for Adult children of abusive families.

The title refers to an original poster's family who claimed they could not have been abusive as they had taken her to plenty of Stately Homes during her childhood!

One thing you will never hear on this thread is that your abuse or experience was not that bad. You will never have your feelings minimised the way they were when you were a child, or now that you are an adult. To coin the phrase of a much respected past poster Ally90;

'Nobody can judge how sad your childhood made you, even if you wrote a novel on it, only you know that. I can well imagine any of us saying some of the seemingly trivial things our parents/ siblings did to us to many of our real life acquaintances and them not understanding why we were upset/ angry/ hurt etc. And that is why this thread is here. It's a safe place to vent our true feelings, validate our childhood/ lifetime experiences of being hurt/ angry etc by our parents behaviour and to get support for dealing with family in the here and now.'

Most new posters generally start off their posts by saying; but it wasn't that bad for me or my experience wasn't as awful as x,y or z's.

Some on here have been emotionally abused and/ or physically abused. Some are not sure what category (there doesn't have to be any) they fall into.

NONE of that matters. What matters is how 'YOU' felt growing up, how 'YOU' feel now and a chance to talk about how and why those childhood experiences and/ or current parental contact, has left you feeling damaged, falling apart from the inside out and stumbling around trying to find your sense of self-worth.

You might also find the following links and information useful, if you have come this far and are still not sure whether you belong here or not.

'Toxic Parents' by Susan Forward.

I started with this book and found it really useful.

Here are some excerpts:

"Once you get going, most toxic parents will counterattack. After all, if they had the capacity to listen, to hear, to be reasonable, to respect your feelings, and to promote your independence, they wouldn't be toxic parents. They will probably perceive your words as treacherous personal assaults. They will tend to fall back on the same tactics and defences that they have always used, only more so.

Remember, the important thing is not their reaction but your response. If you can stand fast in the face of your parents' fury, accusations, threats and guilt-peddling, you will experience your finest hour.

Here are some typical parental reactions to confrontation:

"It never happened". Parents who have used denial to avoid their own feelings of inadequacy or anxiety, will undoubtedly use it during confrontation, to promote their version of reality. They'll insist that your allegations never happened, or that you're exaggerating. They won't remember, or they will accuse you of lying.

YOUR RESPONSE: Just because you don't remember, doesn't mean it didn't happen".

"It was your fault." Toxic parents are almost never willing to accept responsibility for their destructive behaviour. Instead, they will blame you. They will say that you were bad, or that you were difficult. They will claim that they did the best that they could but that you always created problems for them. They will say that you drove them crazy. They will offer as proof, the fact that everybody in the family knew what a problem you were. They will offer up a laundry list of your alleged offences against them.

YOUR RESPONSE: "You can keep trying to make this my fault, but I'm not going to accept the responsibility for what you did to me, when I was a child".

"I said I was sorry what more do you want?" Some parents may acknowledge a few of the things that you say but be unwilling to do anything about it.

YOUR RESPONSE: "I appreciate your apology, but that is just a beginning. If you're truly sorry, you'll work through this with me, to make a better relationship."

"We did the best we could." Some parents will remind you of how tough they had it while you were growing up and how hard they struggled. They will say such things as "You'll never understand what I was going through," or "I did the best I could". This particular style of response will often stir up a lot of sympathy and compassion for your parents. This is understandable, but it makes it difficult for you to remain focused on what you need to say in your confrontation. The temptation is for you once again to put their needs ahead of your own. It is important that you be able to acknowledge their difficulties, without invalidating your own.

YOUR RESPONSE: "I understand that you had a hard time, and I'm sure that you didn't hurt me on purpose, but I need you to understand that the way you dealt with your problems really did hurt me"

"Look what we did for you." Many parents will attempt to counter your assertions by recalling the wonderful times you had as a child and the loving moments you and they shared. By focusing on the good things, they can avoid looking at the darker side of their behaviour. Parents will typically remind you of gifts they gave you, places they took you, sacrifices they made for you, and thoughtful things they did. They will say things like, "this is the thanks we get" or "nothing was ever enough for you."

YOUR RESPONSE: "I appreciate those things very much, but they didn't make up for ...."

"How can you do this to me?" Some parents act like martyrs. They'll collapse into tears, wring their hands, and express shock and disbelief at your "cruelty". They will act as if your confrontation has victimized them. They will accuse you of hurting them, or disappointing them. They will complain that they don't need this, they have enough problems. They will tell you that they are not strong enough or healthy enough to take this, that the heartache will kill them. Some of their sadness will, of course, be genuine. It is sad for parents to face their own shortcomings, to realise that they have caused their children significant pain. But their sadness can also be manipulative and controlling. It is their way of using guilt to try to make you back down from the confrontation.

YOUR RESPONSE: "I'm sorry you're upset. I'm sorry you're hurt. But I'm not willing to give up on this. I've been hurting for a long time, too."

Helpful Websites

Alice Miller
Personality Disorders definition
Daughters of narcissistic mothers
Out of the FOG
You carry the cure in your own heart
Help for adult children of child abuse
Pete Walker
The Echo Society
There are also one or two less public offshoots of Stately Homes, PM AttilaTheMeerkat or toomuchtooold for details.

Some books:

Toxic Parents by Susan Forward
Homecoming by John Bradshaw
Will I ever be good enough? by Karyl McBride
If you had controlling parents by Dan Neuharth
When you and your mother can't be friends by Victoria Segunda
Children of the self-absorbed by Nina Brown - check reviews on this, I didn't find it useful myself.
Recovery of your inner child by Lucia Capacchione
Childhood Disrupted by Donna Jackson Nazakawa

This final quote is from smithfield posting as therealsmithfield:

"I'm sure the other posters will be along shortly to add anything they feel I have left out. I personally don't claim to be sorted but I will say my head has become a helluva lot straighter since I started posting here. You will receive a lot of wisdom but above all else the insights and advice given will 'always' be delivered with warmth and support."

Really need some advice. Nc with parents (I suppose eight weeks) and my father called my dh new years day to ask why I hadn't called and dh told him I hadn't heard from them so my father asked us to call. We did this weekend and my mother (who is hard / I think has some kind of personality issue and diagnosed with depression. My father got quite angry / blamed me for her being ill and shamed the family. He kept screaming at me that I only got the best in life. I have constantly been put down my whole life. Long history of it. To the point of having low confidence.

Anyway he repeatedly said I was a disgrace as DM is sick and I don't care. She was in hotel with friends and never contacts me.

She has now asked to see the grandchildren - I have to visit. How do I avoid more confrontation? I wish I just kept up the silent nodding / let her belittle me and not land into this total mess? What do I answer when he questions me as to my reasons ?

I'm not the best one to chat to, I'm still trying to go nc with my dad, but didn't want to read and go.

You don't have to take the children to her. Or if you really can't get out of it, could you go to a neutral place, where they are less likely to kick off and you have a get away sorted?

Thank You lou. I feel I want to. It isnt about the grandchildren but due to her crying / depression she won't want to meet in a neutral place.

little same as Lou as I'm new to this but I wanted to ask why you feel your children have to see them?
Im a little similar to you in that my parents do not make effort to contact my DC. Ironically my anger is that they didn't bother over Christmas which DC noticed. I'm using this as a genie out of the bottle situation. I refuse to lie to cover my parents behaviour though I would sugar coat it.
Their request is not a legal summons.

Also, my parents aren't particularly able to meet neutrally. I do understand that. I gave hit the wall of our house our rules. That's fine but...
How old are your DC? Are they old enough to understand that depressed people may act in odd ways? Btw i say that as someone who summers from depression but am trying to state it as they may view it. If not, then its not in their interest. Your DC need to come before your DM as sad as it is.
Remember there are ways you can help your DM without putting your DC in the firing line.

Hi I'm new. I can't post much right now as need to sleep and my fingers hurt from typing on my other thread but I just want to know if anyone else had a Father who wrote "Miss Piggy" on their bedroom door because they'd put on a little bit of weight - at 8 years old?

My Dad is now dead but my Mums' response to any questions about why she let him beat and belt us and say "BREATHED" when we asked what we'd done wrong is that "it wasn't done in them days" (I was born in 1984 and the abuse started towards her 15 years before I was born and towards me at about 4).

I can't forgive her for this can I? For not leaving?

I'm a single parent at 33 because I don't trust men not to be abusive. I simply cannot shake it either

Little

You do not have to see either of your parents any longer. Your time would be better employed instead dealing with your own FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) re them through seeing a therapist. If they (parents) are too toxic/difficult/disordered for you to deal with it is the same deal for your children as well. These people are toxic as parents and as grandparents; they have not changed at all since your own childhood and think they can still order you around. Your mother cannot be all that ill in any physical sense if she is living it up in a hotel with "friends" (BTW the quote marks are deliberate because people like your parents do not really have friends at all). Your mother likely has some untreated and untreatable personality disorder, again its not your fault she is like this (what if anything do you know about their family backgrounds?). These people never apologise nor accept any responsibility for their actions either, you will not receive either from your parents. They have and continue to fail you abjectly.

Do not subject them, let alone yourself and your DH, to their emotional manipulations from now on. She can ask to see them all she likes; its a request not a summons and you do not have to go to see her. No is a complete sentence.

Your father simply enables his wife; they get what they want out of their dysfunctional codependent relationship. Its not your fault that she is the ways she is; you did not make her this way and unfortunately your father is never going to realise that. He is just happy making you the scapegoat for all his and her inherent ills.

NC is precisely that however, there should be no communication of any kind.

Hi MotherofaSurvivor,

Make your 34th year on Planet Earth the start of your recovery from childhood abuse at the hands of both parents.

Your mother chose to stay with her late abusive partner and unfortunately (an understatement) by doing that she put and kept you in his firing line as well. Women did leave in the 80s but she stayed with him for her own myriad of reasons. Those reasons though are just that, they cannot be used by her as choices for her actions.

I would walk away from her as well and reduce all contact levels further, she is not a safe person to be around either you or your child. I am not surprised that you do not trust men at all but that is a lesson that your child must not learn and or otherwise absorb from you going forward because it will not help her, or for that matter you. You need support and I would suggest you contact NAPAC napac.org.uk/ as they are very helpful to adult survivors of childhood abuse.

Thankyou Atilla.

She is a good Grandmother to my Daughter. They have a very close bond. I need her help as I'm Disabled and have no friends! There is literally nobody else to help me, I'm a single parent.

I agree with what you've said though. I will Contact that organisation too, thanks again x

Mother, you have literally switched a lightbulb on in my head. My dad used to sing Nelly the elephant to me, all the time. I hated it. I was also called camel footed, for being clumsy. I look back on photos of myself, and I wasn't remotely chubby, but I have had a history of eating disorders, and feeling shit about myself. He still does it, called me a beached whale last summer, now I am a little over weight. Constant jibes about weight and imperfections, like he's some kind of Greek God!

My mum is dead, but having recalled a lot of buried abuse that he did to me, I too have started seeing her in a different light. I would not allow my children to be subjected to any shit, why on earth did she allow the beatings, manipulation and verbal abuse to go on?

Lou It beggars belief doesn't it?

Every time I try to raise the subject with her I get "Ohhhhhhh for God's sake! I don't need this etc etc" 🤷‍♀️

I wish there was some kind of mediation but for adults and their parent/s..... My Mum and I definitely need a mediator to sort a LOT of things out between yuan! X

*us

Mother

A mediator would not work because your mother would not want to listen. Such people like this really do not apologise nor accept any responsibility for their actions therefore it would be a complete waste of time, money and effort.

There must be someone else surely who can assist your rather than just your mother. Such dependency on this one person is not doing you or your DD any favours.

Hi, iv been pointed towards this thread.

Iv read bits of it before, but kinda feel like i dont belong here as my parents werent abusive to me growing up and we were all really close up until 18months ago (when my sister had her soon removed by ss due to allegation of physical abuse)

Not sure how to link threads, and too much info to retype, but im pretty much NC now for 7 months and finding it really hard. Is anyone here in a similar place where they had a loving childhood but are now NC for different reasons?

Sorry to read of others stuggles with their families x

Well, I still haven't rung my mother. I feel both relieved not to have rung and guilty for not having rung.

Meanwhile, my sister appears to have gone NC with me. She lives 10mins away from mother, so bears the brunt of the caring responsibility (there's a detailed backstory there). I live a 4 hour drive away. My view is that I am not responsible for any of mother's choices that have led her to where she is now. My sister clearly disagrees.

DP doesn't understand why I'm struggling with this, but then his upbringing was much less dysfunctional and he can't imagine wanting to distance himself from his family.

I hope it's ok to post here. I am interested in your views after a discussion I had with DH the other day.

My SIL (my brother's wife)was raised in an emotionally abusive family. Mainly her father. On the surface they were a perfect family. Rich, Dad with a very successful career, mum, the perfect SAMH, volunteering, etc, all the kids are high achievers, musical, all did very well at school and now have good careers.

I've only met my SIL's parents a couple of times and I was taken in by all the perfectness.

It's all come to a head in the last year because her mum died and it came to light that her dad had been doing something totally appalling so all her siblings are NC with him now and she has told me some of the things he did when she was growing up and has shared a little bit about the effects this has had on her and her siblings.

Anyway I was talking to DH about this and he said that it can't have been that bad because until this year they were all in contact with the parents and got together regularly for family events, Christmas etc. He said that if the emotional abuse was really as bad as all that then they some of the siblings would have gone NC long before now. (They're all in their 30s and 40s now).

I disagreed. I feel that they were all still playing the perfect family game.

What do you think?I'm sorry if this is not the right place and feel free to tell me to Feck off.

You're absolutely right, gabsdot. It does sound very emotionally abusive. But it's very hard to see it when you've grown up with it and it's all you know. I grieved when my abusive father died 20 years ago, because I'd buried all the memories of the SA my DSis and I had gone through as children (as she had done). And my DM kept going on repeating to us that he had been a wonderful, hands-on father.

Now DSis and I are suffering from PTSD as a result of everything we've been through and have so much to process.

I think your SIL's siblings may have been holding it together for their DM's sake. FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) are often repeated on here. They're very difficult to see and keep a lot of us inside toxic families a lot longer than they should.

It could well help your SIL to come on here to talk through her experiences. You're being a very caring SIL to her.

gabs you're right. It's something to do with conditioning. In my own case, though I've begun to realise more and more about my DPs and my childhood it's not me that's stopped the contact, but them. I'm not sure now how I would feel if they change their mind or send a flying monkey. Which they will at some point because someone will point out how bad it looks that they don't have their gc about and that matters more to them than having a functioning relationship.

Am currently on my way to something that was always my special place to enjoy myself and have adult time. It's now also the only place I'm likely to run into a family member. My special place now makes my anxiety rocket

Just a whinge really. Toxic family background but for reasons I don't want to go into here (breaking contact would seriously impact on my relationship with my children, as a summary, but its a lot more complicated than that).
Anyway over christmas we were all at my mum and step-dads house. My sister, who has recently moved back in with them, on new years eve, was an appalling brat over the food my mum had cooked. Really whinging and whining and no one challenged her. I wanted to but I really can't becuase if I do, mum and step-dad will leap to her defence.
If I behaved the way she does, I would be torn to shreds.
She also constantly criticizes my mum, which is to a degree fair enough, my mum really struggled with how to be a good parent and has a lot of issues that she has never dealt with. But if that is appaling as my sister makes out, why would you go back to living in that environment?

But if that is appaling as my sister makes out, why would you go back to living in that environment?

Well, a person might not have too many options. I'm not saying this is your sister's situation, but just as an example there are a lot of people on Stately Homes who swapped an abusive family situation for an abusive partner and end up having to manage as lone parents and relying on their abusive parents again for that reason. An abusive childhood makes it harder to assemble the resources you need to live an independent life. I might be wrong here but I wonder if in your frustration with your sister there is also some reluctance yourself to allow yourself the self-compassion to recognise that while you have to have your parents in your life and rely on them, you are still allowed to have a negative judgement of them.

It sounds like in your situation that maybe your sister is the golden child (not without its disadvantages) and you're the scapegoat. I wonder if maybe your sister's behaviour now is similar to the way your mother or father behaved towards you (both, or just you) in your childhood and she's now basically fitting back in to the dysfunctional family system, albeit in a new role. In families where fighting and bullying is the norm, people don't learn how to speak to each other in any other language.

room there's a similar split in attitudes within my family too. If I'd done even a small fraction of what my sister did, they'd go to town on me. Anything negative about me is correct, but no negative about her - unless its in the heat of the moment but then whatever she's done is to be excused whereas anything I do should be held against me for years even if I've never done it, an accusation is enough to be fact. But my sister is very codependent in this relationship, to the point that when she felt I was about to get closer to my mother when DC1 was about to be born, she declared it too hard for her to live away and that she just had to be looked after by my parents. The irony now is that the caring relationship has flipped and she doesn't like that she is now the main carer for them when their health takes a quite regular downturn.

Saw my father yesterday, though not in close enough proximity for a conversation to happen. I could see him searching for me. Its made me exceptionally angry. Irrationally too I suppose. How dare he look for me when he has cut me off? But then it exerts a little bit of control I suppose.

I've posted before a few times last year. But I feel I'm in despair atm. I can't make sense of my past and why I can't have a normal romantic relationship. I've laughed it off in the past but I'm now feeling hopeless. I feel abusive men can sniff me out and know I'm broken inside. I don't know sorry I'm rambling. Just feeling really hopeless atm.

anyone around?

Hugs to you, duskmum. I'm so sorry you feel like that, it's so shit when you can't make sense of your past. I'm in that position though I have a lovely DH and family. My difficulty is that I'm unable to enjoy the good things I do have.

I do think a therapist would be able to help you make sense of your past and to learn to love yourself. Do you have friends who can support you in RL? And come on here as often as you feel you need to; don't worry about rambling, I'm sure I do that a lot.

Today hasn't been good for me. It would have been my abusive father's birthday and my brother rang up to tell us how he still misses him, he was his best friend blah blah. He died 20 years ago this January, another thing he had to mention. I'd forgotten it was his flipping birthday until that telephone call.

I can't cope with his false image of that man. My DH always answers the phone when he calls, he did today, probably shouldn't have told me what was said. Just as well he did take the call today, I'm feeling so angry, I might well have snapped and blurted it out.

Should we just tell my brother the truth and be done with it?? He may well not believe us of course. There is the risk it could really damage his fragile MH. But if we don't, sooner or later one of us will snap.

Sorry for rambling myself. I know I've said some of this before. But I would be interested in your advice on whether the truth would be better than continuing in this current state.