Flying monkeys

[thegreenlight]

Struggling with my mum still, please feel free to read previous threads. I thought I was in a much stronger place.

So, after a brief ‘woe is me’ set of messages late at night that I responded calmly and kindly but briefly to my mum sent a very long, very hurtful message about how awful and selfish I am. How my brothers resent me (they are my step brothers) I was not to call her with excuses (which, to be fair I totally would have done before sobbing and crying and begging for forgiveness)

I have maintained radio silence. I now have my dad acting as flying monkey demanding that I forget that my mum can be ‘difficult’. I simply say that she said some very unkind things and I need some time as I am hurt (under the guidance of DH - trust me every fibre of my being wanted to apologise and just make the situation go away but my husband reminded me doing what was easiest hasn’t worked for 30 years) he replied that I have blocked him like I’ve blocked my mum and that he hope I sit and think about what I’m doing. Please help, this is so hard and I’m doing so well but I just want the guilt to go away.

There is no sign of an apology or even any acknowledgment that I’ve been hurt. It’s like they pay no attention to anything I say! Am I doing the right thing? I really don’t want to go no contact and hope that me creating boundaries will actually lead to a better relationship in the long run but it goes against everything I’ve ever known!

I ping pong between feeling proud of myself that I’ve stood up to her and told her how I feel and feeling like a 7 year old girl who’s being disobedient.

You mention guilt a few times. Are you sure it’s guilt you are feeling? Do you really think you’ve done anything wrong here by failing to respond as you normally do and go by their script?

I think more like that you are feeling anger and sadness.

have a read OP

BEST BIT from Harriet Lerner

''The people who do the greatest harm to us are the least able to apologise, because they stand on such a small platform of self-worth and they're not able to see the bad things they've done as a part of the complexity of being human. The non-apologizer walks on a tightrope of defensiveness above a huge canon of low self-esteem.''

also

''If you confront somebody with no self-worth, they will desperately justify, minimise and reverse the blame, and even say you brought it upon yourself, or that it didn't happen, so it's very important that if you speak your truth to somebody who's done serious harm to you, it has to be because you want to stand on your own ground because it's very unlikely that the non-apologiser can hear you, they're too filled with shame.''

@monkeyonthetable interesting that it was a battle of two realities. Isn't it always. It's like a desperation for their own dissonance to be propped up by their adult children.

I need to interact with my Mum like she is a client. I realise now that I was pushing water uphill trying to get her accept that I wasn't paranoid and sensitive and dramatic and bitchy all those years ago when I said a relative was bullying me. I was right. But she hasn't done anything with her life. Same house, same husband who always agrees with her (My dad). She doesn't work and was quite contemptuous of women who said that they needed more than being a mother. Like in a ''who do they think they are? possessing such extraordinary brains that they had to work''. It was snide. She felt better than the working mums because she hadn't needed to work. She knew who she was. Her sense of herself didn't need the identity of a job.

Except that it was all clearly bollix because she wasn't a good parent, her one job, she crushed me as a child growing up, and although my brother was the golden child, he has never managed to have a long term relationship either. We disappoint her by being single.

@HannaYeah on my part, I feel a lot of guilt. I think this is normal in this type of family dynamic. Can't answer on behalf of the OP but yes, I think GUILT is the feeling.

I have been conditioned to feel guilt if I displease my mother. I'm working my way through it and the guilt is dissipating argument by argument, or rather, standoff after standoff. But yeh, the root feeling is guilt.

It's still early days for you OP. It sounds like you're still hoping she'll change. You're still hoping for a relatively close relationship. But she won't have a close relationship that isn't on her narcissistic terms, so you'll probably be forced to adjust your expectations and distance yourself for your own wellbeing.

I think Grey Rock is a good next step for you. Google it and learn a few phrases like lines in a play. Don't delete them off Facebook (that's provocative, and you don't want to participate in her theatrics) just change your settings so you don't see it.

Grey rock for a while so you can work on yourself and decide what you want to do next.

Thankyou all - lots to think about as always. I definitely feel guilt. I feel guilty that I am making her suffer, guilty for not being a ‘better’ daughter, guilty because I can’t help feeling that this is my fault. I really don’t want an apology from her, it’s so hard because I know reaching out myself will make all this pointless, I may as well have not stood up for myself in the first place.

If I’m honest I’m surprised that she hasn’t contacted me. I would have thought she would because of her grandchildren. I’m worried now what to tell them if lockdown ends and this still isn’t resolved. Will it ever even be resolved? I really thought it might make her think about what she is doing. If I loved someone I wouldn’t let it drop and would do anything to reconcile. In fact that is usually me in this situation, but she said awful things and I need to love myself more than that. I don’t, but I need to.

Will it ever even be resolved? I really thought it might make her think about what she is doing. If I loved someone I wouldn’t let it drop and would do anything to reconcile. In fact that is usually me in this situation, but she said awful things and I need to love myself more than that. I don’t, but I need to

Yes it will be resolved, if you do as you always do. You know that, that’s why you are torn. You can make this short term guilty feeling go away by capitulating. But at what cost to your mental health and your marriage, your poor husband supporting you though these endless rounds of drama.

And at what cost to your children, being exposed to this toxic and abusive person ? She is not going to bring happiemess into their lives.

The good thing is that you have worked out that you will feel guilty whatever you do. So you are free to do what you feel is best for you, your husband , your children and your mother.

You get to decide whose welfare you will prioritise.

Please know that nothing you do will make your mother think about what she is doing. Well not if you mean “ think about the effect it’s having on you “ . She is utterly incapable of thinking of anyone except herself. I think you know this.

And no, she almost certainly won’t back down because of the children. She will get far more pleasure and attention from telling everyone how awful you to not let her see them than she will from actually seeing them.

If I loved someone I wouldn’t let it drop and would do anything to reconcile

Yes but that’s you. And that’s most emotionally healthy people. You prioritise love and relationship more than control and being right.

You are expecting her to act reasonably and rationally. It’s the triumph of hope over experience.

I’m sorry, I know how hard this is. The fear, obligation and guilt are immense.

Please go over and read the stately homes threads on MN. You will find you are not alone .

@thegreenlight the resolution will come in the form of you accepting her limitations and finding peace with it.

You're an emotionally healthy person who understands what most of us learn in the sandbox- basic empathy and insight- other people have feelings too and our actions have consequences. Your mother is too old to catch up, stop expecting her to.

In her own way she loves and cares about you. But- She would rather be right. She would rather be in control. She doesn't have enough self esteem or trust in the world to believe that she can have a relationship in which she is neither of these things.

She is limited. For my relative I've learned to see it as a physical condition like being colour blind- he just can't see the colour blue. Stop expecting him to see the colour blue. Or he's diabetic- stop expecting him to produce insulin. Accept her limitations, lower your expectations and try to find a way to have a relationship with her that makes the most of her good qualities and protects you from her limitations. Having some time away from her is a good start.

Youve told your dad- I'm hurt, and so I am having some time away. I'll let you know when I am ready to discuss it. That's completely valid, you don't need their permission or participation.

just want to add- your dad married your mum for a reason. He's stuck with her for a reason.

It can sometimes be just as hurtful when the 'normal' parent stands by normalising toxic behaviour and abuse, because we expect more from them.

But you have to accept your dad's limitations as well. There is a reason that out of the millions of people in the world- your parents married each other and stayed married. There would be something about your dad that meant he was drawn to a person like your mum, who is controlling and forces her reality on everyone. He's survived in that marriage by adapting and accomodating her. It is his way of life as well.

If your dad was an emotionally healthy and strong person he would have stood up to her ages ago. He would have left her. He would have said 'don't speak to our child like that' he would have said 'everyone's feelings matter, not just yours'. But he didn't, because he has his own limitations.

You feel guilt because you have been trained to make her happy from birth.

Her happiness depends on your obedience.

It’s hard to undo that 20 plus years of training in a short time.

I have had two dc and my mother couldn’t be bothered to even send a card or ring to find out how I’m doing because I wouldn’t pander to her anymore. Why should she come to me, when it is my job to go to her.

I think she thinks she is punishing me, but really, the silence is awesome.

As for your dc. Just say something about the virus and her being old and you don’t know when etc. Eventually, they will forget.

@thegreenlight - very normal for them to go silent for months - it's a power trip. Once they realise that you really don't intend to grovel forgiveness when they bullied you, they go silent in the hope that you will break first or that it can be 'forgotten' after a period of time of their choice. Like @Aussiebean, I find my father's silence blissful. Life is so much less anxious with him at a distance.

Take this time to adjust and strengthen yourself. Don't feel guilty. Grey rock is, as others have said, such a helpful tactic, but make sure you find a good reliable site on how it works as I have seen some sites purporting to teach it with some really bad examples which in themselves are antagonistic and petty.

To grey rock, you just need to be as interesting as a grey rock. Don't rise to any bait, don't role play as cast by her (bad daughter, selfish drama queen etc) don't react at all to any of the accusations hurled at you. Ride out any storms like a grey rock on the beach. I find it incredibly liberating to do this after years of guilt and anxiety. Wish I;d learned it years ago.

Women like your mother cannot do relationships so the men in their lives are either discarded or are as narcissistic as they are. These women too always need a willing enabler to help them; that person here in your family of origin is your dad. Now he's on at you too unsurprisingly because he is indeed copping it from her at home. He wants to revert to his default position of self preservation and want of a quiet life so will readily chuck you under the bus here and try and bring you to heel. He won't protect you here from her and never has either. He is a weak bystander of a man.

Your parents, (your dad also being her willing enabler and secondary abuser), will never apologise nor accept any responsibility for their actions. Your role here to them is that of scapegoat for all their inherent ills and that will not change.

You need to remove yourself from their lives; they will never accept you trying to assert what are your own healthy based boundaries here. Narcissists hate boundaries and will actively rail against them. Your conditioning here at their hands is probably at the heart of why you state you do not want to go no contact (you perhaps think that the sky will really fall in if it does). Your H is your ally here; go team Greenlight indeed!.

hi
Just thought i would add mt 2 cents worth to this, i have a similar situation with my mother, except it is my brother who is the flying monkey. For the past 4 years or so i have been slowly distancing myself and going low contact with my mother, who would be considered a narcisst.
Over the last few weeks it has all come to head in the sense i am no longer prepared to but myself through this rubbish over and over again. My mother will never become the caring, loving mother i have always wished for. She is not that person and no matter how hard i have tried for the last 40 years. There is a cycle with this type of abuse and a hieracrhy within these types of family. I personally do not want to be a part of this any longer. Im not like them, thankfully.
the fear guilt obligation is part of how we conditioned. When that lightbulb goes off for you, there is no going back.

Im pretty low contact now, i sometimes answer when she rings, she is 86 years old with alzihimers. And i do not feel guilty, yes i have slip ups over the last 4 years, but ive always reset.

The mother you are thinking about abandoning and feeling guilty about does not exist. You need to come to terms with that for your own sake, and it is a really tough road. But it is so worth it.
wishing you all the best.

As PP have said - the flying monkey / enabler - doesn’t do it for you, or for them, or for “principles” - they do it solely to absolve their own personal distress because they are either being stressed out by the narc or are anxious that they are building up to an eruption. So don’t fall for any of their fake “concern” for you, the narc, principles - they are v v selfish people.

I often think they are more disordered and accountable - they present as the normal one, the emotionally healthy one - but are unable to protect their own child from abuse because they put their own panic above their child.

So look at your own small children and ask yourself if some twisted ogre was treating them badly - could you stand by, turn a blind eye? How low do you need to be to not defend/protect your own child? Not only that but the beg and plead that you turn yourself inside out and actively submit to the narc.

OP don’t think of yourself now as an adult. Look at your own child and ask this Q.

Then you will see how toxic your fake DF is.

Sadly, I completely agree with @Cailindeas35. The sooner you realise a narcissist parent can't love you, the quicker you can heal.

That sounds quite melodramatic, but it is so painful to realise that what has been off, wrong, hard to put into words, not noticed by others but so deeply noticed by you that it feels like it attacks your blood, is that you are not loved and never have been. You have never felt safe or noticed. You have never been nurtured or accepted for being yourself. You have never ever been allowed to express any emotion other than cheerfulness to the world or extreme pity towards the narcissist parent. You have spent years parenting them - from as young as three years old, you will have been propping up their damaged ego, apologising for not being caring enough, admirable enough, biddable enough etc.

I once caught my father screaming at my nephew to 'Stop behaving like a child!' My nephew was four at the time but there were only two of them in the room at the time and woe betide the child who demanded attention when the screaming adult child needed it.

It takes time to realise that so many things that have gone wrong in your life stem from this lack of love, this lack of awareness that you exist as a person in your own right, with emotions and needs, weaknesses and differences. Ultimately, what we want is to move into a state where we don't feel any blame towards the narcissistic parent. That our lives are not stunted by how we were raised. To do that, though, you need to be hyper aware of what has happened and resolute in preventing it happening again.

I normally get an attack of severe depression for about a week after speaking (listening) to my fathe ron the phone. So I try not to speak more often than once a month, so 75% of the time I can function. It sounds mad unless you were raised to it. The hypervigilance, the excess cortisone pumping through you, the abject fear that you will say the wrong thing, set off the ticking bomb of fury or loathing or self-pitying threats.

Remember all this, and happily step away.

@DuchessOfSofa those Harriet Lerner quotes are awesome. I always wondered why my DM could never apologise. Aha, that makes a LOT of sense now. Amazing!

If you think about it you wouldnt treat your own children like that, so why would you allow your own mother to treat you like that. The reason we allow it is we know no different. We were conditioned from a very young to take this abuse. It is so normal for us, to live in fear, stress and uncertainty, because that is the way we were brought up. The constant hypervigilance, waiting, watching and trying fruitlessly to prevent the angry crazy outbursts. We as a society are brought up to always respect, love and honour your mother, but unfortunately in our case that is not possible without destorying ourselves in the process. Our parents are not good parents, and they never will be.

I have done counselling on and off for 7 years now, it has been invaluable. I think in order to recover from this, therapy of some description is necessary, also working on your self esteem.

Do you know what the laughable thing is now that my mother has dementia, she likes me. And it is simply because she does'nt recognise me all of the time. That was so hard to get my head around, she had to lose her memory and mind in order to like me.
But it is too late now, i don't want her love and approval anymore. I want to be left in peace to get on with my life. I operate on a day to day basis at the moment in regard to my family of origin, i ask myself everyday, do i want to be in contact today, the answer is always no. You cannot change somebody else, i would suggest reading up on co-dependancy. It is often a factor in families like this too.

How are you managing now OP?

Soon2BeMumof3 Thankyou so much for your concern. I was doing really well but just posted a new thread last night ‘right, so I’ve been an idiot!’ Basically spoke to my therapist about wanting to make contact due to lockdown ending and not being able to live with myself if I didn’t try. She suggested a very neutral message which I did send, saying I loved her along with a funny pic of DSs. Got cryptic messages back about her being ‘away’ I respond and then my bother posts on a pic of DS that ‘sorry would be nice’ I really can’t imagine how she has managed to twist this into something I need to apologise for. I feel stupid for going against the wonderful advice I have received here. Now I’m done, I tried to make peace. My conscious is now clear. She can carry this on for as long as she likes and I will just continue to get stronger.

Don’t feel silly. We all want to give them that one chance. It’s normal and we have all done it.

That’s perfect - maybe you just needed that “last” slap in the face to move on. Don’t feel stupid - there’s a rational psychological and biological survival reason that you did that.

Children always have hope.

They will always go back to their abusive parent hoping they will change - because they always need them for food and shelter - basic needs survival which out- weighs the abuse. The brain is tricked with unrealistic hope for change because the body needs food and shelter.

When you have been abused by a parent you carry that same childish mindset of hope on into adulthood where it isn’t relevant and is counterproductive. You now don’t need her for basic survival - food and protection - so you are just getting the abuse which is not out weighed by anything.

So work on reparenting the childish mindset - which was left emotionally stunted and immature by the deficient job of abuse and neglect that the parent did.

Block all of them on everything. Concentrate on your DC. Any interactions with your toxic family will directly impact on your ability to do your best for your DC

Gutterton that is very helpful! I think I am already a much better parent to DS1 - he’s very much like me and I hated myself so found him difficult to deal with. With therapy, Mumsnet and self help audibles I am already a better and much stronger, happier person.

I gave it one more chance and it was totally a ‘slap in the face’ it even the fact that she whipped my brother up to do it like she did my dad earlier while she remains aloof. I don’t need her. Another thread recently made me think about her ‘help’ and how excited she was in a crisis. It proved I wasn’t capable of looking after myself and that confirmed her suspicions. I imagine she will get very invested in my brother now and will leave me alone. I’m ok with that.

Don't be so hard on yourself, you tried with the best intentions. Focus on yourself, put yourself first, very hard to do when you come from a family like that. We are conditioned not to be worthy of being treated well.
All the very best

You're not an idiot, you're an emotionally healthy person who naturally wishes your family was capable of a healthy relationship.

I'm so sorry she's roped your brother into her theatrics. Has this at least given you some closure or certainty?

You deserve better. Well done for distancing yourself.

Just wanted to send you my best wishes thegreenlight, it’s a difficult thing to go from where you were to where you are now. The more you know about the dynamic between your family the better you’ll be equipped to deal with it, the behaviours and responses are set to a pattern and once you see them they lose some of their power.
There will be difficult times, be very careful with friends and acquaintances, they can try to convince you that family ties are binding and you should try and repair the damage. Many people are lucky enough to not understand. So be cautious about who you confide in and what you say.

It’s a hard path to choose, but you’re not alone.