October 2021 - well we took you to Stately Homes

[AttilaTheMeerkat]

Its late October 2021 now, 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."

Hi everyone I'm new to this thread. Is it possible for someone to turn toxic as they age? My dm is 62 and is fast becoming a nightmare, always kicking off over the slightest thing, can never agree to disagree has to always be right and has even started being rude to taxi drivers in my presence and staff in shops. Its very exhausting and if i try taking to her she just goes into to argument mode. She also belittles me ie if I'm ill she's iller than me. She's also become very negative always dwelling on negative situations or past situations and if i try to talk about something positive or fun i get shot down as living in cloud cuckoo land. She's been slowly getting worse with this behaviour throughout the last 5 years and every year it gets worse. We always had a great relationship before then. I've tried to look up online about this but typically mentions only the elderly for example 80+. Is she a narc?

I work in a memory clinic. While most of our clients are elderly, and the risk is higher the older you are, we do see people in the 50s with early onset, so her age doesn't exclude such a diagnosis

Thanks everyone and sorry to moan, again. I know full well it's ridiculous and my dad actually said the same thing when I quietly asked him to check they had transferred the amount to the right account, as I had been told it was transferred but hadn't seen it. He also said they had transferred me money since I changed accounts, which I did a couple of years ago, which was also the case. They did not check with me before sending the money, which I always, always do - if I am sending anything like £100 even I will do a small transaction first to ensure I've got it right! It is totally bizarre, and the rationales for everything are so odd. For example, my mother said she wasn't allowed to put a lock on my door (not that it would make any difference because they've got keys to the other door, I know because I had them cut) because it was the only route out of the house if it was burning. There are three other doors that lead directly outside by my count. She also has a new technique of sending an email after an interaction, to my therapist while I was hospitalised but now to me and my dad, and she gets on the phone to my grandmother and sister to get her version of the story across straight away. It's like the government's spin machine or Trump taking to Twitter to spread more lies. She misrepresents statements from earlier in the same conversation.

I suppose I find the reactions of others a LOT more scary than I do her. I can see the inconsistencies in her behaviour and words very easily. It's just the way that people accept her truth as gospel, and I see my dad siding with her automatically, even though he's ostensibly reasonable and very intelligent. But if I come back to them with anything that could possibly be interpreted as a challenge, they react with extreme hostility and more gaslighting. It sounds terrible, it IS terrible, but I've been physically assaulted and raped before and found it a lot easier to cope with than this neverending assault on my reality.

@Wannabangbang I don't know enough to give an answer on the apparent personality change, but her behaviour sounds destructive and exhausting, whether or not she has a personality disorder. Some of the websites in the OP are really great for figuring these things out, as well - I personally found Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers really helpful and cathartic. Has anything changed recently that might have triggered this different behaviour?

Just by the way, the NDV helpline called me back and said a place in refuge might be available early next week. I feel very torn about whether I should even be seeking a refuge place, though.

Thankyou Maxiedog30 i will bare that in mind as a possibility and look into it.

Cecile

You need that refuge place. Do take it if it’s offered to you next week.

Nobody who needs help 3ver thinks they deserve a place. That's the nature of having been trained to ignore your needs.

Please take the place @cecilederetour xx

@CecileDeRetour I’m so sorry you are in this situation. I’ve tried to look back to your previous posts and I notice how much you apologise for having needs. Your needs are important and you have every right to get them met.
I also realised how young you are . It must be so hard because I thought about being in the current climate of pandemic and if I were alone and fell upon difficult times just how hard it would be.
We are all in an unusual place on this board where our family of origin would likely use that against us, manipulate and continue to control and abuse.
People like our parents make us feel shame for needing anything and that makes it hard to be vulnerable.
Please take the place , please don’t apologise for needing anything. Keep writing on here if you can. Feel free to pm me if you want to xx
It can and it does get better ❤️‍🩹

@therealsmithfield I get told off for apologising too much all the time! It's like I'm apologising for existing apparently (one of my first bosses actually put it that way).

I don't feel young, I feel really old but also completely immature. I think I've actually regressed a lot in the past decade. I've internalised the idea that I can't do anything for myself and I actually find it difficult even to imagine breaking out of these circumstances. I self-sabotage all the time, which doesn't help matters. It's very miserable and honestly I need some people consistently on my side. My mother has done a great job of a smear campaign, as well, so not only I but everyone else in my family believes I'm a terrible person.

@CecileDeRetour they love to keep you in a position of weakness because that makes it easier to control.
How much contact do you have with your family now?
I honestly believe not having had love from a mother is the deepest darkest wound of all. It’s also hardest to recover from . Self sabotage can end up being a way of having some kind of attachment/ connection still. It’s very hard to let go of the hope one day things will change.
Are you still able to access counselling/ therapy currently?

@therealsmithfield I've just come back from a stay in hospital. I transferred my savings to my parents to help them pay for that so I'm not currently in a position to move out even if I thought I could do it successfully. I feel very complicatedly about this as I am technically dependent on them.

I almost think my self-sabotage is the opposite. I can't have an achievement or a nice object or something, even a friendship or relationship, without my mother inserting herself into it, getting jealous and competitive and claiming responsibility. My sister actually does this as well, she's taken up the same hobbies as I have, went to the same university. My mother has gone to the extent of applying to study an almost identical subject at the same time and place as me, after I decided I wanted to take my studies further. I can't pay for it but my dad is funding her - she claims she was forced to doing a PhD and hates it but she literally cannot find any job at all (this is a lie, she just doesn't like less well-paid and menial jobs.) Most people have a lot of difficulty understanding why this makes me feel so violated and upset. It's a bit ridiculous but I don't even like it when she compliments me. In fact, the degree to which I'm jealous and just want something of my own, and really don't want people touching my belongings and borrowing them without permission, is really one of my least attractive characteristics.

My mother did a lot of not-very-subtle emphasis on how only my family will ever love me, only they will never leave me and I need them, etc, when I returned home initially. They say how much everyone loves me a lot of the time, but I suppose it's just words. I know I don't want to turn the people I love into slightly-less-perfect copies of myself, force my company on them all the time and invade their lives, I feel remorse when I do or say hurtful things and I try to be honest. To my mind, love is more like that.

I didn't answer about the therapy - I haven't had any since I was discharged, and my parents can hear everything I say here and would definitely be listening in, which I am not particularly keen on as an idea. I have had quite a lot of skills-based therapy such as CBT and DBT (I was reminding the therapist what all the DBT acronyms stood for in hospital) but at this stage it's not that I don't have any coping mechanisms, but that I have plenty and they are just insufficient to deal with this situation. I admit I'm also resistant to learn lots of ways that everything can stay the same but I just cope with the abuse better.

@CecileDeRetour I’m really glad that refuge place has come up for you. Take it as you need it. Do not feel guilty. Your parents are abusive.

@CecileDeRetour Getting a spot at the refuge is something you can do to get some space away from the situation. It will help you I’m sure no end to get the distance you need.
Narcs are often relentlessly jealous of their offspring. My TM was always telling me how intelligent she was, what she had achieved in terms of education. How beautiful she was and how she’d had this man after and that man after her. She would openly flirt with boyfriends and ex boyfriends in front of me. So I do relate to this .
I do think I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to be invisible because being in any way more than her would invoke her anger and disdain. Unwritten rule ‘don’t outshine me!’. So I rarely stuck my head above the parapet.
I really hope you find some respite from your parents. It’s particularly awful that they have taken your savings and you can’t get access. 😡

@therealsmithfield thanks. They haven't taken but have manipulated until I've freely given. The rule of invisibility rings so many bells though. My mother has stalked me through every social media I've ever had and has got to some - Snapchat and Tiktok - ahead of me.

I do want to go but I'm scared at the same time.

I think my mother hasn't ever come on to my boyfriends - they've both got her. But I've picked up enough traits to have really hurt the serious ones both, and I adored them and wouldn't have wanted to cause them pain. My parents and sister also treated them both very badly. My sister referred to them in such derogatory terms, I was appalled. I'm scared because I think I know what love is but I'm not capable of loving well, but the rest of my family don't know what love is really.

@CecileDeRetour think about yourself, your potential, your life. The refuge is a scary concept but it’s scarier still to be trapped in your abusive family.

The thing is, after all this time and failed attempts to get away from it, I don't really believe I have any potential and there is nothing good about me. Sometimes I don't feel like a real person, even, but like some mutated failure who doesn't really belong to the species.

I'm really struggling with feeling the need to prove that something is wrong so I don't have to live here any more. So many people and places have implanted in me the idea that I'm the problem and I just need to learn healthy coping strategies and then I can stay in this situation. I can't, I just can't do it. It's really hard to maintain that, though, when I keep being told that I am the problem, I'm selfish, of course it's justified to have no boundaries and carry out a smear campaign behind my back because I'm a problem drinker, etc.

Cecile -you need to stand alone and find yourself -it's scary. Everything I ever do I think -would my father approve so I'm trying to work out what IAAP likes...........

I've had a weird and scary 48 hours here -anxiety is high. I had an extremely terrifying dream that my father brought us an awful house and it had all the bedrooms overlapping and on top of each other open plan and we had to move in and he was making me cry every day. Work ended for me today and I now have 4 weeks off. My youngest goes to my ex saturday for a week -which I'm dreading. I decided a while ago to lock down the phones before christmas and block parents on WA and text etc from now ish to 2022 -and I've done it -blocked my sister /brother and parents -who I don't get on with so none of them can contact me -but all of them can via email and then I'm panicking thinking I've done the wrong thing -as the door was shut for christmas wishes yet they can still phone -and email just phone from withheld number.

The last contact was me to them about 3 weeks ago telling them eldest DD the 'apple of their eye' was seriously ill with covid -they didn't respond to that or wish any of us happy birthday / happy christmas by text.

I contacted my sister 4 weeks ago about Work experience for eldest as she is keen to work in same field -the text said Don't know if you can help X, she's keen to to WE in your field in this week in June -it's fine if you can't help -but if you can -please let us know - totally understand if you can't help but trying to sort out something in the next couple of weeks' . -that was a few weeks ago -text read but no reply -I just thought it was shitty not to reply. Eldest then sorted WE with someone in the same field who is higher up then my sister -and he is delighted to have her -she's really lucky as it's all agreed. So I texted my sister and said 'Look it's fine that you couldn't help X but I said it was ok -but it would have been nice if you replied' then I blocked her.

I'm really down today................

How is everyone else???????????

Argh!!! Bloody families!!

to everyone here. Can I post in a safe space as I don’t have many options IRL. The sympathetic ones have got fed up of hearing the same thing and, as is there right, shut me down now. Last year after far too many examples of bad behaviour, scapegoating I had a blinding realisation that no matter what I did, I would never win, I would always be the outsider with —not so— DM and DS so I decided to draw a line under things and go NC. No drama, just withdrawal. There’s been a couple of attempts to get DP onside but DP is good at bouncing back saying no I won’t pass on a message, call when you know Gin isn’t on shift (which isn’t going to happen). Got a card today on my birthday saying I miss you. My visceral reaction was no, you miss having someone to emotionally dump on, to scapegoat and to behave badly to. Which I think is right as DM is emotionally incontinent . Had some excellent online therapy which got me to a distanced place but this has made me so angry. Only posting to help move past that anger. Thanks for reading.

Do not acknowledge this birthday card, indeed put it through the shredder. Do not give this any more power than it already has.

Anything that she sends you should not be at all acknowledged. These types want a response, to them that is the reward. Do not respond!.

I had to throw it away it made me so mad. Have deleted numbers so can’t contact. Need to get it out of my head now.

So: latest development, my mother has decided that "it is hard to live with two socially withdrawn people" and that she is going to move out.

This is not the first time she's tried to make her marriage problems go back to me, although in reality they originated before I was born. She is obviously going to go back to making everyone else's life hell because sending me to hospital hasn't resulted in her getting the old me back, who took what she said without question and loved her, blaming myself and accepting fault for everything.

I feel really bad because they do give me a lot of stuff and pay for things. However, everything has strings attached and at some point I just want my own stuff, to make my own mistakes, and to pay my own debts etc.

My plan is to try to rent a small storage unit and get some of my stuff out, thin the rest of it out (I have a lot of clothing that could go to charity) and then it will be a lot easier to move out. I think eventually I'm going to have to take it to the point where I change my name and just start over somewhere else.

@CecileDeRetour your mother is a bottomless pit of need . It’s not your job to fill that well up ( not that anyone could). Not your fault she is like she is either and it’s most certainly not your responsibility.
Get as far away as you can and regroup . You can do this Cecile , I know you can!