"But we took you to Stately Homes" January 2020 onwards

[toomuchtooold]

It's January 2020, 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
December 2017 - November 2018
November 2018-May 2019
May-August 2019
August-October 2019
November-December 2019

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."

You can feel sorry for a rabid dog you don't have to pet it
That is 🥇Dacqoise😎
Congratulations on recognising the opportunity to 'get the hell out of Dodge'🤠

I have never explained my position to any of them
Nice work Sicario😊
You are not accountable to them so why would you explain! Plus, whatever you say they'll use it as a stick to beat you with🙄

I now refer to them as my "birth family". The one I never asked to be born into.

I have my OWN family - grown up, lovely, great people. My childhood experiences taught me how NOT to raise kids. I did the exact opposite, and it worked out ok thank god.

With hindsight, I don't even know why I bothered trying to "fix" my relationship with my mother. FOG and all that.

I very much like that song, "you're gonna miss me when I'm gone".

I don't miss any of them. Not for one single second. And I am very open with people about being NC with my birth family. It's amazing the things people tell me - sometimes complete strangers - whenever it has come out.

I admire anyone who has found the strength and courage to go NC.

Whenever I think of my birth family the word 'pointless' pops into my head. Completely empty vessels devoid of any compassion or warmth. They add absolutely zero to my life and took so much from me when I was in contact. Emotional vampires is a fitting term.

Hello everyone, I'm needing a bit of advice on how to respond to my Mother.
At Christmas there was a bizarre evening where she shouted at a waiter and made my ds scared. She did other bizarre things too as she obviously wasn't happy about being there. It upset my kids and was really unpleasant. She kept trying to act like it was normal but it obviously wasn't.

I dared to raise it and set boundaries and she has now sent bizarre gifts and sent a card not really saying sorry but not explaining anything.

What do I do now?!

SoStarry, sounds like classic narc refusal to acknowledge any fault on their part, what direction do you want to go in with your mother over the long term?

SoStarry

Do not respond to your mother; she is likely trying to hoover you back into her life. Dispose of both the card and gifts and do not give these any more power (also such gifts are loaded with obligation).

Keep your boundaries intact and keep both yourself and your children well away from her going forward. It is really not possible to have a relationship with someone as disordered of thinking.

Hi again everyone. Just had a bit of a surreal text chat with my sister. I think she's beginning to realise and acknowledge our mum's behaviour. She's not long has a DS and this was my point when I had my DS I began questioning things. She isn't in a good place atm as she's exhausted and DS has health issues. It was the exact same with me. Anyway I told her that most of my counselling was to do with our mum which I had never mentioned before and she told me that most of her counselling was for her too. She said she felt like she had it bad with our mum compared to other people. And she's never told anyone before. Felt strange because she's the only other person who went through what I did and for her to acknowledge it too felt odd. Very odd actually. Did anyone else feel odd discussing their parents behaviour with siblings?

Hi @Crafty11

Be enormously cautious with your sister. Be wary of your mother hoovering her back and undermining you. It’s very hard to let go of old patterns, especially when someone is vulnerable. Just tread carefully, listen to her by all means but don’t betray yourself.

Just think of it as early days.

By all means don’t lose hope that you can get to a point where you are in a better relationship with her, my sister and I are definitely getting closer to that point, but mainly because she’s been incredibly open-hearted to me while taking a hammering from my parents. I wish she’d protected herself more from my atrociously ignorant efforts to fix things.

And @Dacquoise I think you are amazing 💐

You’ve been incredibly helpful on other threads and you write with such truth and wisdom.

Thank you very much @Herocomplex, that means a lot to me, it really does. I am just so grateful to have escaped and survived my experiences. I just want to pay it forward to others.

Hello
As my username suggests I’m wondering is this where I need to be. I’m totally and utterly desperate.
I was raised in an emotionally/physically abusive way probably 90/10 so vast majority was emotional
I have fought to be some kind of functioning adult and get away from my narcissistic mother and her sidekick my sister who is her favourite and absolute darling who can do no wrong
I have fought to not repeat any mistakes with my own children yet still to this day dm and dsis seek to sabotage my life and it is horrific I can’t cope

I have NC with dsis and v minimal with dm via text v infrequently but they keep doing things - reporting us for things we haven’t done, telling friends that I have done things I haven’t or lying to reduce my support network.
Dm lately has been telling everyone she is ill and I’m getting calls asking why I’m not going to help etc and I want to say all she has done but it won’t come out I feel like people will think I’m mad as dm and dsis have carefully cultivated public personas and everyone thinks they are wonderful and it’s so far from the truth

I’m desperate and I’m upset I’ve accepted a long time ago I am not lived my my own mother but I want to be able to walk away yet they can’t let me go it’s like they wmat me to suffer and they spend their time engineering this why can’t they just forget me ?

Hello isThisthe😊
That does sound extremely unpleasant and distressing, as to why, the answer is probably mixture of because they can and they want to punish you for not complying with them.
is it possible to get yourself in a position where nothing they do can affect you, where your life is completely separate from theirs?
I haven't personally experienced much in the way of harassment from my family of origin so I can't give advice from my own experience but there are many on here who will be able to.
I suspect that the best way to go is to find a way to completely drop off of their radar, talk to us, we will do our best to help and support you 😊

Hi everyone!

I hope it’s okay to pick your brains for some advice!

How do you balance protecting yourself with your empathy/sympathy for your parent’s own messed up childhood? My mum is messed up by her own parents and the result has affected my entire life. I desperately want to pull back and get some space but at the same time, her childhood was shit and I can see how it has affected and still affects her own behaviour and I just want to look after her.

We go through periods where we really get on and stuff but then some of the narc in her will show or she will be horrible for no reason. Or horrible on purpose it seems sometimes. And then I just think: why am I bothering with this person?!

Sometimes I think maybe I should forget my childhood issues and the insults into adulthood and let her start fresh and go from there but then other times the anger and rage builds in me and I absolutely hate her and could quite happily never see her again.

Should I be trying to let go of my childhood bad memories?

I don’t know. I’m rambling now 😂

Hi there Heists 😊
The phrase posted a little while back comes to mind
you can feel sorry for rabid dog but you don't have to pet it
you can have compassion for them but that doesn't mean to say you're the person who is best placed to help them, quite the opposite in fact, for your own mental health you should stay away.
I say let go of the idea that you are the person who should be fixing her, distance yourself and have strong boundaries, recognise the cycle of reeling you in then putting you down, it's a kind of make up break up cycle with destabilizing highs and lows, take control of the situation and keep it at a steady level that you can cope with.

I had tried to do as much as I could to be off their radar but there were a few what you could consider shared friends who I think they wanted to turn against me and have successfully done so

Shared friends are not people that you can trust anyway, you need friends who are completely 'clean' uncontaminated by them, under these circumstances 'shared friend' is a euphemism for 'spy/flying monkey'
these people are actually undercover agents they are working for the other side

Thank you @Ulterego that rabid dog analogy does make sense!

Heists

I came to the conclusion fairly recently that my DM's crap childhood isnt my problem and that lots of people have rubbish childhoods and this doesn't turn them into shit parents. She could have taken steps to address the issues caused by her upbringing, but instead has decided to bury her head in the sand and pretend that it never happened.

Like you I can get a long with my DM just fine as long as I agree with her, never challenge her on anything and don accidentally bruise her ego (far easier said than done).

@ManonBlackbeak your post really struck a chord with me! Like yours my mum acknowledges she had a bad childhood but also buries her head in the sand. When I’ve confronted her about stuff she’s done, she even blames it on her mum like “I never had a good example did I”.

And you’ve just made me realise that the times we get on are the times where I’m on best behaviour and agree agree agree with her. If I step out of line, it kicks off.

It’s a lot to think about this stuff!

heist My DM will acknowledge some of it but gets very defensive when anyone else points out that it wasn't right, and the usual excuse is that its just how things were then. I think its far too painful for her to confront and she has poor coping skills and low emotional intelligence, so prefers to pretend that it never happened.

DM's side of the family like to present themselves as this huge, close tight knit clan. But scratch the surface and there is resentment and bad feeling going back decades. An under current of toxicity, people cast in 'roles' so the funny one, the quirky one, the pretty one etc and there is lots of resistance against people changing. Lots of scapegoating, a cousin is the current scapegoat because he got into trouble with the police about fifteen years ago no one has surpassed him yet. He's since turned his life around has a home, partner, child, good job etc but no, he is still a 'bad un'. Very enmeshed and huge clan like gatherings which everyone has to attend, and anyone who doesnt has forgotten where they came from etc. Im sure you get the picture.

It really is all very exhausting.

My mother probably had a shit childhood. I vaguely remember my father mentioning something about her being indulged as a child and one of my cousins said my grandfather was an alcoholic (does anyone know any other reason why a 65 year old man would have his leg amputated?).

When I asked my mother if he was an alcoholic she flew into a 'how dare you' rage.

Anyway. I know loads of people who had really shit childhoods and they're not nasty adults. Because they grew up and realised that the world didn't revolve around them and whatever happened to them when they were younger didn't mean they had to take it out on the small vulnerable people they were supposed to look after.

She flew into a 'how dare you' rage
I would say that this is because she has internalized the message that you must at all costs protect the reputation of the family, in particular the head of the family
it's so strong and so deeply internalized that the instant you challenge it her anger leaps up and she is unable to think rationally (or maybe she is constitutionally unable to rationalise 🙈)
I say this in an attempt to explain rather than exonerate.
it seems to me that something needs to happen to make you break your sense of loyalty if you want to cut ties with a parent?

Yes, protecting the family's image at all costs. I recognise that one all too well.

Don't upset the applecart. Don't say this or that because you'll upset so and so, don't do this or that because you might offend Auntie or Uncle whoever.

Even now DM will say to me if I air an opinion about something 'yes but don't say it to Auntie Jane because she might get upset'. When Auntie Jane isn't even there and ive not intention of seeing her.

Its exhausting and relentless and like treading on eggshells.

Hello-- have lurked on this thread and thought I should finally join in.
I've always had a tricky relationship with my Mum as she has the emotional age of a toddler and I've ended up partly parenting her... after a particularly difficult phone call today I did a bit of research and think she probably has reactive attachment disorder... she was abused by her mother and in and out of care as a young child...

I've always felt incredibly guilty about going LC with her as she has had such a hard life- in fact I recently realised that I can't ever enjoy myself without feeling guilty.

I know I have to build up boundaries and if I'm gong to have a relationship with her it has to been on my terms. So- how do you keep contact light and shut down attacks before they begin? (Of course she is lonely and vulnerable so am loathe to go NC)

Heists and Manon your posts really resonated with me!

@yoshimi Hello and welcome.

I went LC for years before I even realised it was a thing, Minimal visits, grey rocking in phone calls (I could make and eat dinner, and wash up during a phone call and she wouldn't even notice as she rambled on). Things were a lot better this way but for me it still wasn't enough and I never felt truly free.

I went NC about 2 months ago and finally I am starting to move on.

About your mother being lonely and vulnerable. You were vulnerable (and perhaps lonely) when you were a child.