June 2021 - Well we took you to Stately Homes...

[Sicario]

June 2021, and the Stately Home is still open to visitors.

Picking up from previous thread
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/relationships/4182916-March-2021-Well-we-took-you-to-Stately-Homes-thread?pg=39

Forerunning threads since December 2007 are linked on the previous threads if you want to click back and have a look.

This thread 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."

@TirisfalPumpkin it may be you haven’t enough space in your life to form other healthy relationships. Lets be honest these guys ( a very gracious ref! ) suck the life out of us.
They truly are living vampires. So there isn’t any space left for healthy connections. Our focus is solely on them and that’s how they like it.
They are like full grown teens but their behaviour is much more insidious because when we were helpless infants we relied these nasty blood suckers to survive.

They haven’t learnt to connect with anyone in an adult way either so could never model healthy relationships to us .
Going forward just think how you will be able to fill your life with all the good stuff. Friendships , meaningful adult relationships, laughter, love. It will take time and so you must be kind and patient to yourself.
I’ve been NC then very LC for 13 years and DM still tries to reel me in. The more I resist the more she will up the anti. I’ve grown resilient and have no guilt whatsoever. That has taken years ! I still have flashes of anger though and that anger is, I am realising, still keeping me enmeshed. My self esteem fluctuates because of that but I will keep working on it. I have to.
Friends come in many different forms and even via the tinternet 😉 so who cares as long as someone is listening xx

So glad I've found this thread. I've been reading through the posts and am so sorry that so many of us have such awful family relationships.

I've been NC with my family (mum and sister) for 2 years and very LC for a further almost 2 years. It's hard, as my dad is very ill so I need to know how he's doing, and he can't communicate himself. Also, I have a young child and was determined he would not be prevented from forming relationships with extended family like I was.

I'm trying so hard to not let history repeat itself.

Anyway, i need a bit of a handhold at the moment, as my DS6 has now finally said he wants to speak to his grandparents, so they had their first video call the other day. I was very proud of myself as I didn't get hugely anxious about it, and just set them up and left them to it. But it was HARD. My mum sounded like my mum. The mum I thought she was.

But I KNOW that's not the truth. Just having a wobble.

Hi laalaaland

Do call a halt now to any further video calls.

If parents or relatives are too toxic/difficult/batshit for YOU to deal with its the SAME deal for your child too. I would urge you to keep him well away from your family of origin going forward. You are the parent and he is relying on your good judgment going forward; he is too young to realise what manipulation is and who is emotionally safe or not to be around even via the medium of video calls. If the other set of grandparents are nice I would concentrate your efforts on them going forward too.

I am so very sorry to read that your dad is ill but you also need to bear in mind that he was and still is very much still a part of the overall familial dynamic you grew up in. People from dysfunctional families end up playing roles; what are the roles here that have been assigned to you all?. He failed to protect you from his wife's malign influences and enabled her in this behaviour by acting out of self preservation and want of a quiet life. You were never really able to rely on him.

@laalaaland It’s so difficult to navigate this stuff and I feel for you. The LC I currently have was a decision I made for my own future mental health 🤔. I felt that should there be a death/ I’ll health, I would reproach myself if I was NC.
My advice though is to beware because death and illness are a favourite weapon and bait in toxic relations and I have fallen foul of this myself recently.
I am lucky in some respects that my dc’s are older and show absolutely no interest in any of my family.
DM main still desire however is to utilise info ‘about’ me or ‘about’ my children. She feeds off this. She uses it to try and gain control.
I therefore have to consciously withhold information and have to continuously dodge and ignore her requests for it to be forthcoming.
Those are my boundaries. She gets zero info from me other than inane stuff. I’ve slipped up many times of course.
I guess what I’m saying is if you are going to navigate contact be certain about how it will be look for you and DS and have a plan.
Be clear about what you will and won’t accept. What type of contact , how often . What are your boundaries for you and your ds. How will you navigate them being broken?
Take each interaction one at a time but be absolutely sure the impact on you each time is worthwhile. The extra energy of being on high alert and extra vigilant (which you will need to be) and the power tousles that will invariably occur vs contact with your ailing father and contact for your DS. What I’m saying is you will have to weigh up as you go if the balance between benefit vs risks is tipping in the right direction.
Stay close to this thread to work through that, it will definitely help you xx

@Laalaaland, well done for maintaining a sanity-preserving arrangement for so long.

I don't want to weigh in on the parenting side of things as I'm not a parent, but I wonder if a 6 yo is mature enough to understand when they're being information-mined or interrogated via zoom. Not saying kid can't have relationship with GPs, but I would keep an eye on them & make sure they're not behaving inappropriately, i.e. using the contact to criticise you to your child or wangle their way back into your life.

I feel for you, it must be difficult not only trying to maintain boundaries for yourself but not putting barriers in front of others, while still trying to protect them.

Morning ! Woke up feeling anxious and angry this morning. I’m still hesitant about writing in detail on here as I worry someone in my family will identify me. Highly unlikely I know but that’s where my head is at. So I’m sorry if this is lacking detail.
The issue is currently TM ( I’m going to use toxic mother as she is dear nothing to me) wanted a piece of info from me. I have felt hounded over it and the information pertains to one of my dc . It was information that I wanted just us as a family to soak in and enjoy or configure in our own heads before sharing. I should have just established / verbalised that I know but we were so relaxed about it all as a family ( for dc’s sake) that she took me by surprise. So I went radio silent.
There are a lot of complexities around this situation because the information she wanted was regarding attainment. This has always been a massive thing for me.
I was compared and often belittled by her with regards to the above and I refuse to give her access to my dc to do the same.
I feel angry that she’s yet again inserted herself into my psyche for yet another moment in time where I didn’t want her to belong.
As we know so well these are the moments they love to make about them. The wedding, the big birthday, births , deaths .
I wished I’d handled it differently as now I’ve inadvertently given her power by not addressing and ignoring it instead. I’m not sure how to take that power back and is making me very anxious.

@therealsmithfield don’t reproach yourself or beat yourself up. Toxic people get under your skin. I found writing it down - here and in a journal - made it concrete and real. I couldn’t doubt the letters on the page in front of me.

It’s great that you recognise the toxic impact on your MH and the threat to your children - keep going, it does get easier.

I am doing so well on Operation Avoid Hag - it looks like I’m working every weekend in
Sept and/or going away so no time to have her over for a miserable Sunday lunch. Won’t have been in her miserable company since 22 April. This gives me HUGE comfort. It’s all about preserving my mental health. Makes me feel really good.

therealsmithfield

Radio silence is in itself powerful.

I suppose your toxic mother wanted to know about this attainment to make her own self feel good and dine out for ever more on the proceeds of someone else's efforts. Don't forget such people can and do make this all about them. How have you given her power apart from she now being in your headspace again if you have not told her anything?.

How can you be further helped to stop giving your mother rent free space in your head?.

Monkey

Glad to read Operation Avoid Hag is going well. How is Mr Monkey bearing up?.

@MonkeyfromManchester - thanks for identifying something for me I hadn’t even recognised fully or acknowledged in myself. I am beating myself up over this. After all I made decisions of being LC instead of NC as well as being not vigilant enough.
The not ‘good enough’ as a mother stream of consciousness has elevated. I’m sure we all struggle with it with or without the added baggage of toxic family. Teendom requires buns if steel!😩
I have accepted I never will be good enough for her that I am often used as bait to make them all feel better about themselves. More to do with their own flailing and egos than facts. My deep fear is the impact on my DC. They have and do still try to apply the same to my DC. My DC vs GB’s ( golden brothers) DC. It makes my blood boil! it happens between GBs own DC now also 😢
I love love the operation hag! I need to come up with a line like this to use. To take the air out of it!
I have generally done the same as you have and been incredibly ‘busy’ . On the whole it works but it becomes exhausting when she ups the anti, especially when I am vulnerable . Thanks for listening xx

"My deep fear is the impact on my DC. They have and do still try to apply the same to my DC".

This is sadly of no real surprise; narcissistic grandparents often have a golden child and scapegoat sibling dynamic going on when it comes to their grandchildren too. This also has the effect of damaging the sibling relationship. Low contact as well often leads to no contact; you've tried low contact and it looks like its not working out all that well if at all now for you. Your mother is still taking up rent free space in your head, kick her out!!!.

Drop the rope your mother holds out to you.

@therealsmithfield someone very wise on here pointed out that abusers up the ante when they sense that you are putting up barriers / escaping. It’s called extinction outburst - it’s what toddlers do FGS.

Do lots of positive affirmations to restore your confidence. Remember you are a great parent and that counters your mum’s BS.

Also, the kids of narcs who become the GC often can’t cope with the real world. Your kids benefit from your sanity.

Operation Hag has been really tiring, but it’s so worthwhile. It takes time, but the result is great. And Mr Monkey now sees what’s going on and sees the patterns. She has no one around her who doesn’t see what she’s up to. The abused BIL does know she’s toxic, but it’s his stupid choice to put up with her abuse. If she was my parent I would have binned her years ago - she’s a witch. But she’s 84 and the clock is ticking…

@AttilaTheMeerkat sorry I missed your post further up. You are right! I am considering this carefully. I’m just not there yet. I know deep down of course that whilst I have any contact at all this shit and dynamic will keep playing itself out.
I have some practicalities to consider first.
I’ve decided on what my response will be for the moment , now I have had time to consider and I will send it tomorrow.
I will let you all know how it goes but basically I will be quite clear that she will only need to know the basics and not enough to go to work undermining dc by comparison to GBs dc.
I can guarantee it will not satisfy her and she will ask for specifics because she won’t be able to feed off what she’s allowed to have. Tough shit 😄
What I don’t want to do is to have her making stuff up out of the air about my lack of contact so I need to nip that in the bud.

"I know deep down of course that whilst I have any contact at all this shit and dynamic will keep playing itself out".

Yep and this is why you need to drop the rope entirely. With you out of the picture they will hopefully then turn on each other.

"I have some practicalities to consider first. I’ve decided on what my response will be for the moment , now I have had time to consider and I will send it tomorrow".

You do realise that any response, no matter how carefully worded, will be used against you here. I would seriously reconsider therefore sending any such thing. People like your family of origin do not and never play by the "normal" rules of familial relations and I fear you're being set up again for something really nasty.

She will also actively rally against any and all boundaries you care to set or set her.

@therealsmithfield good luck with navigating your response tomorrow. Being LC is a minefield! I hope you are feeling a bit less anxious now too.
I really take your point about death/illness being a weapon which is why LC is better for me than NC. It takes the wind out of their sails that I'm an uncaring cold etc etc

Does anyone else get plagued by the condemning voices in their head?! I often here what I imagine my sister and my mum's sneering comments would be if they were more in my life. I often run through the justifications I would make to them. It makes me so angry that they still take up my headspace! I've been really working on this, and it is getting easier but frustratingly slowly.

I really take on board the advice about not letting my son be manipulated by them too. I don't know why, but it just feels right at the moment to let me son make this choice.

They will not be having face to face contact and they will never have unsupervised access. I am just outside the door listening in, ready to swoop in at anything remotely inappropriate. The first sign of them not behaving with complete decency towards him ends the contact. To be honest, with a 6yo, my mum barely gets a word in edgeways and the topic of conversation is VERY random in that glorious way that kids' minds work.

And....Operation Hag sounds fab! Long may it continue to succeed!

@laalaaland it is difficult to navigate however in some respects I’ve enjoyed myself greatly with it.
I think this is only because I have zero guilt towards her now. I don’t play the dutiful daughter, I always have an excuse and ignore texts that I don’t want to respond to. I never answer phone calls anymore either. Cold? Absolutely! She’s reaped what’s she’s sowed.
Not that much fun at the moment however I admit. So when they are able to slide in and hit a raw nerve, that’s when it bites.
You sound very sensible and aware about how your approaching it with ds. Just as long as the contact doesn’t impact on you and your mental health as that can have a knock on effect
Has ds specifically asked to talk to your dm?
Does your sister have dcs?
All you Can do is put one foot in front of the other and see how things go. We will be here to support you if anything tricky emerges.
With the convos ! Yes I used to do this a lot , but not anymore. I don’t need to justify myself anymore although I used to want to. It may have helped me sort through things at the time though and work through the anger.
Could you try minimising the amount of time spent thinking like this ? Maybe give yourself times when to allow the conversations to play out? Other times say no, not now and stop yourself.
After all we all need reprieve from this shit!
What kind of comments do you imagine them making and what do you reply?
It may be you too are trying to work through justifiable anger you have towards them. In which case let’s hear it so we can applaud you 😘

It's great to hear you've managed to get to a place of zero guilt. That must have taken a lot of work. I'm not quite there yet, but have definitely made a lot of progress.

No, my sister doesn't have any kids, or partner. Therefore always on hand for my mum, therefore perfect child.

And yes, my DS specifically said he wanted to speak to them. Asked a couple of times a day for about 4 days before I organised it.

My DS was there the last time I saw my family when my mum launched a tirade of abuse at me, seemingly from nowhere, a lot of it not making any sense. It got VERY emotional, my sister got involved (who I had been NC with for about a year before but my mum insisted she be there when we went to visit). So, although my DP was there and was AMAZING, my son was unfortunately not shielded from all of it, as we had to pack and leave VERY rapidly and I was distraught. He was 3yo, poor boy. So I had to tell him an age appropriate explanation but always emphasised it was nothing to do with him and GPs loved him very much etc etc.

It was the impact on him that made the NC a clear choice for me. It was only a few years after when I heard about an issue with my dad that I got back in touch and have been LC since then.

Yes, I think you're right about the dialogues in my head being about dealing with the anger. For the first year or so I would have waves of rage at the unfairness of it all, and was constantly plagued with dialogues where I could finally get them to see sense. It has got easier and reduced as time has gone on. With a lot of reflection I have come to the painful conclusion that there is no relationship to salvage for me and my family as what I thought we had was a sham. As long as I was the perfect daughter, everything was fine, but when I stopped letting her control me, all hell broke lose.

This post is hugely outing, but it feels so cathartic to get this stuff out and this group seems so supportive....

Things really started coming to a head when I became pregnant, with my mum throwing random strops, that seemed at the time to be out of character. I thought we were super close. Anyway, 4 weeks after a horrendous birth, (which I took months to recover from) I received a TEXT from my mum, full of nastiness, which ended by saying I obviously no longer needed a mum any more so she was severing all contact. It came out of the blue, I felt like I'd been physically punched and spent the rest of the day sobbing uncontrollably. My crime? I hadn't called her often enough.

Good grief @laalaaland that’s horrendous. it knocks me sideways that regardless of how many times I read similar stuff on this thread or have experienced it t first hand, I am still shocked.
That says a lot doesn’t it ! About them. and horrified by the stories that are shared .
Yet on the other hand it makes perfect sense that a narcissist mother would be wildly jealous of an unborn child!
Any normal mother would not be be anything other than joyful , protective , reliant . Fastidious.
I’m so sorry this happened to you when you needed her the most!
I presume your sis would happily have stepped into your shoes? She will not want you stepping back into your previous role !?
What level of guilt do you currently feel ? Maybe explore that a little because none of the above was your fault! You don’t owe them anything 🤗

@laalaaland what was your fathers position when your mother behaved the way she did? Was he poorly at that point? What was your relationship like with Hume growing up?

Me again sorry 😞

So late last night I discovered TM has use another mode of contact . I am so angry 😡
Smithfield really worrying me that you’ve not read texts or WhatsApp for 3 weeks now?
All sorts keep going through my head
A holiday…would that last 3 weeks?
Célébration? Or maybe you’re having that eye rejuvenation
My mind however keeps running as I imagine an illness or an accident.
Ive tried ringing with no response (of course🙄)
Please let me know how you all are and what’s happening ?
Lots of love
Toxic witch 🧙‍♀️

3 weeks - lie number 1
Eye rejuvenation ? Not a scoot do what she’s on about but is this the story she’s bandying about with siblings alongside accident and illness in order to whip up support for her onslaught into bullying me into contact.

We all know sweet FA to do with any care about my well-being everything to do with her needing information.

I have a heavy few days at work and the I’m taking one of my dc away . My last bit of annual leave before things ramp up at work.

I literally can not deal with her bull crap at the moment.

This is what I meant about giving her power because I’m not in a place to be a able to deal with her ramped up activity . I wished I’d fed her a small morsel to at least keep this kind of activity at bay. This actually is reminding me of being chased down the road by her when I was heavily pregnant and my waters had been broken for a week but TM was trying to stop me form going in to be induced because she wanted me to have a natural birth. Don’t know why I thought of it after all these years, hearing @laalaalands story maybe?
Mainly though because they attack more fervently when vulnerable. They are literally like sharks that smell blood in the water.

Sorry to rant again on here. It alleviates my anxiety a little?

After this I’ve no clue what I am going to do.

Even feeding her a small crumb of information would not have kept her at bay; she would be still wanting more from you regardless. Now she is doing the faux concern for your well being.

You have every right to your own perspective and a life of your own free from their abuses of you. You do not need their permission or approval; not that they would ever give this to you anyway. They just want to keep you in the roles to which you were assigned in childhood but now you are an adult with agency.

She won’t just let me go . It will be a fight and I don’t have it in me right now. I have too much else to contend with.currently.
Even when we were NC the packages came every year like a kick in the gut.
Eventually she used her sisters death to get her claws back in.

You are right about the roles. I see that now. There was a whole thing leading up to this where I was forced back into an old role of fixer. It made me open my eyes to playing that role within certain friendship groups. I’ve recently disentangled myself from those friendships.
TM a few weeks back was trying to re-engage me to fixer role and I refused .
How could I have been so blind to all this. It’s as though I’ve been asleep!

@laalaaland I really feel for you, I have a similar experience with my parents. I thought we were close but they became awful when I was pregnant and it really opened my eyes to how manipulative they are and had been my whole life. I always made excuses for them and behaved how they wanted. They were so awful to me when I was pregnant and for the first 6 months of my son's life that I had to stand up for myself and my son and go LC. It's still hard and I struggle every day.
You sound like an amazing mum and lovely human being and you are doing so well navigating this