But we took you to Stately Homes - May 2020 onwards thread

[AttilaTheMeerkat]

It's May 2020, and the Stately Home is still open to visitors.

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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."

I would urge you to take heed of both Fanthorpe and Ulterego's words here.

re your comment:-
"I'm not going to send her home as I know I just can't deal with the fall out".

So in that case then, you will spend the next month or so feeling utterly shit and otherwise wretched. Do not do this to yourself!!!.

Please deal with your fear, obligation and guilt here through counselling as all this hardwired into you by her is really preventing you now from making good decisions.

Will the sky really fall in if she went home?. No, but you've been conditioned so much to think that it will if you did send her home (the still preferable course of action). She has also made you believe that you are nothing without her, she instilled all those buttons and still can push them at will. She made you absolutely terrified of her.

What is worse to you - she moaning at you from her house or she being there annoying your partner as well as you whilst you walk on eggshells whilst trying to bond with your child?. A bond that will surely make her feel insanely jealous of too.

Your early days with your child here are very much at risk here of being ruined because of her abuse and overt interference. Cowering in the face of her abuse as you are doing only plays further into her hands. You cannot protect your own self, let alone your own family unit, from your mother's abuses of you and particularly whilst she is under your roof ruling your roost. She will almost certainly harm your child in not too dissimilar ways as to how you have been harmed here.

It is not possible to have a relationship with someone as disordered of thinking as your mother is. Its not your fault she is like this, nor did you make her that way. Her mother did that lot of damage and instead of your mother seeking the necessary help, she continues to actively abuse you as her daughter. The "nice mum" image that she presents to you is an act and one she cannot ever maintain.

I’d be making sure there WAS a clash tbh...

What’s the deal with the DSD by the way? Is she piling on pressure too? If so, perhaps she needs to spend time with her mother ...

You sound like you’re trapped by the malicious wishes of others

Your h will back you, she needs to go

Your marriage will be damaged by this

She’s not worth that. Nobody is.

Sometimes @sleepymeadow, we have to see what needs to be done and do it. Don’t think about it, don’t worry about it, just do the best thing for you, your h, your family.

I completely identify with the “nice mum” act, it’s is done just when needed and is enough to reel you in and give you enough hope that she can change or make you doubt your own experiences “maybe things weren’t that bad”. It speaks to the child in you who wants their approval and affection and it’s just enough to give you hope as they have it in them, maybe they can change. But they can’t, the sting is always in the tail and the mask will slip again, usually quickly enough to make you feel foolish for believing the performance.

After over a decade of putting on a show in front of my husband and keeping her barbs for when there is no one else around she let the mask slip around a family celebration so he got to see the true extent of her behaviour as did his DF. She had been holding in various things and completely spiralled, re-writing history and blaming me for not including her in things she had openly said she didn’t want to be involved in. My DH always knew we had a difficult relationship and I’ve told him about her behaviour but this is the first time he has fully witnessed it. She likes to play to other people that I’m “sensitive” and “overreact/am a drama queen” so keeps these interactions witness free to feed into this storyline. Ultimately it is not possible for her to change who she is, so much is so ingrained in her.

I get frustrated with the situation as the way she treats me is how her mother treated her and she didn’t like it. I now have my own DD and I cannot imagine ever treating her this way or wishing to hurt her the way she does to me. Her mother treating her that was is not an excuse, I know how it feels for my mother to treat me that way and I never want my daughter to feel anything even close to that, I don’t understand why you would put someone through that.

I'm not going to send her home as I know I just can't deal with the fall out
adding to Attilla's words, here your mother is holding you to ransom, she knows that the way to get her own way is to keep that ever present threat that there will be hell to pay if you don't bow down to her.
I use that phrase deliberately because it's about maintaining the status quo where she is the high ranking person and you are subordinate, she will work to maintain that using any and all means at her disposal, there's no one to hold her to account, no one is overseeing her, she feels as if she can do exactly as she pleases.

I don’t understand why you would put someone through that
my guess Gredd is that she has internalized the belief that one's parents are entitled to unconditional loyalty, by extension parents are superior to their offspring and therefore if she had it hard so should you, or to put it another way, you should not have a better life than she did because you are the subordinate.
Not trying to justify her, more speculating about how these things are structured in the mind, mostly the unconscious mind, some people rarely introspect or reflect on their behaviour they just assume that they are right and never question that assumption.

@Ulterego that’s probably pretty accurate. She has made comments before that infer her mother was far worse to her, than anything I have complained about in her treatment of me. Therefore I am sure in her mind she feels I am not treated “as badly” as she was so I have no room for complaint. I just find it so odd, to pass on behaviour that you found hurtful yourself. She doesn’t see it that way though.

Completely agree on the comments about bowing down in relation to the threat @sleepymeadow my mother likes to dish these out from time to time. Trying to make other people responsible for her behaviour “I told you if this happened I would leave/wouldn’t come” etc.

Just catching up on replies, had a grizzly baby today!

I'm listening about her going home and you're all right, if there is a clash and she buggers off home then so be it! I've slept today so feeling a little bit more myself than I did this morning and I'm less intimidated.

And by DSD...I mean my step-dad :) absolutely lovely bloke, but very rarely pulls Mum up for her behaviour as tbh he just can't be arsed. Again, big backstory here but in short if Mum has had a breakdown - she has bipolar - it's always been down to me to try and sort her out. This is when a lot of abuse has come my way.

@Gredd I could have written this myself...it's the awareness that's astounding! So your mum is aware she has behaviours of her own mother that are not very pleasant but not as bad so it's still ok?! I don't know about you but every time I say something or react in a way that's remotely similar to my M, I pull myself up immediately and apologise to whoever was in the firing line...I'm actively working at unwinding all these shitty learnt behaviours I've picked up from her as I don't want to subject my DC and DP to them.

it's always been down to me to try and sort her out
she will work to make sure that you are available to her as and when she wants to 'fall' on you
this is not fair on you and I would say also not the best thing for her, she'd be better with professional help, but of course they resist this as professionals are less easy to manipulate.
I'm sorry to hear that you mum has MH issues, I hope you can swerve her and point her towards more appropriate treatment and help, please dont make yourself her sole source of support.
Your step dad might seem lovely but it's not very lovely of him to let her land on you when things get difficult, he's her partner 'in sickness and in health', not you, dont let him pick out the nice bits and offload the bad times onto you.

I think in my mother’s mind, my experience and hers are entirely different. Though she has admitted to treating me in ways she didn’t like being treated, I’m not sure she makes the direct link.

For example she was the oldest of her siblings and made to be responsible for them & she would be punished if the siblings misbehaved. She also resented having to be responsible for them. I am also the oldest and was made responsible for my brother and was regularly punished if he misbehaved (I shouldn’t have “let” him do this or that) I also resented being responsible for him, particularly given he actually enjoyed getting me into trouble into the bargain. If I make the comparison I am told “it’s different” as she was responsible for more than one person. To my mind it’s exactly the same. You didn’t like that experience, why would you put that same experience onto someone else? There are countless other examples but you get the gist.

Yes @sleepymeadow I also stop myself if I hear anything coming out of my mouth even remotely close to something she would say, it doesn’t happen often but it does happen. I’m also trying hard to break out of the role I was given. I don’t feel I grew up being my own person, I feel I’ve spent my whole life being something for someone else. It’s not about what Gredd wants, it’s about what Gredd can do for everyone else. I have been saying no, a lot, it hasn’t been going down well but they are going to have to get used to it. Up until I had my own DD I would probably just do what was asked as that was what was expected and it was easier than saying no. Now I have other priorities and I’m not willing to bend over backwards for people who wouldn’t consider putting themselves out to help me. I also don’t want my DD growing up thinking that’s ok.

Sadly that is what abusers of all kinds do, they reenact the situations and the trauma because it is bound up with such complicated emotions. Children are beaten and emotionally abused and told it is for their own good, families keep the secret, it becomes a form of relationship. It so often repeats through generations.

sleepy your stepfather is your mothers enabler, he no doubt relieved he’s not in the firing line for a while. I’m really sorry to hear that you cope with her mental health issues, does she have other support, is she good with medication and regulating herself?

Narcissists only really care about their own feelings, they can see what they’re doing, but as long as they’re getting supplied with what they need no one else matters.

Fanthorpe that makes me feel very uneasy :S I have quite severe PTSD and do dissociate and re-enact trauma but it’s always putting myself back in the situation where I’m the victim, which is also destructive but in a different way. A lot of the emotional and verbal abuse I’ve had has been, not calculated, but definitely cool-headed. When I’m in possession of myself I would never be manipulative as I’ve been manipulated. I think there must be an extra element of thoughtlessness there because there are things like crossing boundaries which I do sometimes when in a really extreme emotional state but 99% of the time go out of my way to avoid even the tiniest risk of doing!

My mum has never managed her mental health...only when she has reached crisis point would she take medication but would refuse all referrals/support/further help. She has been on a pretty even keel for the last few years after going through the menopause and retiring...although where she has less to distract her now her bitterness is more obvious than ever.

Step-dad is lovely by taking me on and never treating me any differently to his own children...he used to try in the past with mum but I think living with her has just worn him down. If I'm like this after two days being under the same roof as her, feck knows how he feels living with her full time!

Update on this evening...I've started to push back on some things that were being said, and chewy wasp face appeared for a little while. She softened back up after 10-15 mins. Place your bets now on when she will be sodding off early!

Also...thank you again for all your replies. I always think she's not that bad but when I start thinking about everything, she really has done a number on me over the years :(

@CeciledeVolanges it is absolutely NOT inevitable that abuse carries on, abusers are responsible for their own actions and many people would rather crawl over broken glass than do to their own children what was done to them. There is always an opportunity to break the cycle. Humans are incredibly good at learning new things, please don’t think it’s inevitable! I grew up being hit by both my parents but didn’t hit my own, terrible terrible thing to do to a child.

You deserve to be free Sleepy🦋

Just want to say a big thanks to everyone on here as, after reading the content on her, I’ve finally plucked up the courage to get myself a therapist and a few sessions in, I’m so glad I did so to everyone on her and reading/lurking THANK YOU

Hello everyone. Sorry to barge in. I was last on here a few years ago after a bust up with my elderly mother. I found the support really helpful. Things improved with my mother. We’re pretty low contact, it’s cordial and it seems to work for both of us.

Anyway to cut to the chase. I have been no contact with my father (parents divorced) for well over 20 years - he never met my dh or my three beautiful children. It was a difficult relationship but there was no dramatic cutting of ties, we just stopped contacting each other. I found my mental health improved immeasurably without him in my life and just got on with it.

He died today. I don’t feel bad for myself, but I feel sad for my siblings who all had varying levels of contact with him. I reconciled myself to the situation a long time ago and there are no regrets. Many of my current friends don’t know about this and I don’t want to bring it into the open now - for many people the idea of losing contact with a parent is unconscionable. So here I am. I just wanted to put it out there. Thanks for reading.

My condolences Privatematter, it’s a huge thing when a parent dies, particularly if they’ve been woefully inadequate. You say you feel bad for the loss your siblings feel, but maybe you’re not feeling the same sadness for yourself. I think it’s hard when people learn you’ve lost a parent, you might not want sympathy, you might just be angry. I think it’s complicated and might take a while to process.

My condolences also Privatematter, I hope you're ok

Thank you fanthorpe. You’re right, it is complicated. But it’s been so long since we had any contact and we both gave up on each other quite easily, I just don't feel anything. Just sadness. He wasn't evil but he could be nasty. And that nastiness and how it made me feel cancels out any good (and there was some) that he did. He could turn on the nastiness without warning and it felt like a terrible betrayal. I didn't deserve it.

Thanks Ulterego

Hello everyone. I’ve been meaning to post on here for a while. I have read some of your stories and I’m sorry we all went through this. I was unwanted and my family never kept this a secret. My parents desperately wanted a boy and I am the youngest so an obvious disappointment. I’ve never felt any love from my mum, I cannot remember her ever hugging or kissing me. I basically raised myself. She left me alone many times. My older male cousin who is 10 years older took advantage of me being alone from the age of 7-10. I never told them till I was in my 20’s and only spoke up in order to protect my niece from the same fate. My mum accused me of lying and told me to apologise to him and my Aunty! The truth finally came out as he confessed. To this day my mum has never asked me if I’m okay.

As a small child My elder sisters would beat me infront of her and she would never get involved. I was bullied at home and then at school, I never felt safe. I stupidly confided in my mum couple of weeks ago about considering antidepressants and her reaction was “you’ve got an easy life, why do u create problems for yourself”.

I just feel so much anger at her, I often wished she gave me up for adoption and I could have gone to a childless couple who really wanted me. I remember sitting in my room being about 9 years old and wishing I was dead.

We often repeat what is familiar and I’m married a very cold and unloving man whose mother constantly puts me down and belittles me. I want to get happier for my kids and I’m doing lots of reading and work on my emotions to help. I want to feel happy and loved and one day I will leave all the toxic people behind and start a new happy life with my kids.

Hi Binny, I'm so sorry for what you've been through 💐
My history is similar in some ways (unwanted child, victim of a paedophile family member)
You deserved a warm and loving childhood, you deserve to feel safe and secure and loved.
I don't have a lot of words in me this evening Binny, someone a bit more functional will be along soon!

@Ulterego thank you! I was having a rough day yesterday so posted but I’m feeling better.

Does anyone know what Jullyria posted and why it was deleted? I really hope nothing about my situation. I know how cruel mumsnet can be at times!