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."

Yes - just a cash transaction. That's a very good way of putting it.

I try so hard to be kind & not to have mean thoughts about my mother. I feel sad for her, sorry for her. Shes old & unhappy. How do I know whether my thoughts about her being rude, impatient, manipulative, emotionally abusive are true? She says she's always been kind and put others first. I don't know if I misremember things that say the opposite is true. The person I remember was impatient, controlling, assumed anything that came out of my mouth was a lie, could make decisions that were so unkind - made my 18 yo sister give up baby for adoption, put my brothers GF who'd a short time previous (hours, not days) took overdose, on a train because she was bringing trouble to DMs door. Those aren't kind things to do, are they? But how do I know those aren't my horrible twisted thoughts making things up? I was 12/13 yo, I had breasts & pubic hair and I had to share a bath with my 8 yo brother. Is that abusive? I'm so mixed up I don't know anything anymore. I hate myself so much for my thoughts I find it hard not to think about how much easier it would be if I wasn't alive anymore. No thought, just peace.

@ieatmarmite i understand this 100%
I sometimes think, if i could just be stronger and not care about all the labels she has projected on to me with full support of her foot soldier (my dad) then everything would be ok. And for a few minutes i tune in to this higher version of myself who can float above all the painful labels, this version of myself that just accepts that she is unable to understand that im not an extension of her, a version of myself at peace with her stonewalling. After alk, if only one perspective exists, hers, then an attempt to discuss that is going to seem like an aggression. For a minute or two I feel the presence of this better breezier less reactive version of myself inside me. But then i lose her and im back to me. Hurt, unseen, misunderstood, silenced and hurt by the injustice of it all as well as the original hurts.

And this is me after 18 months of therapy !! 😂🙈🍷

Ieatmarmite

You still appear to be very much in a state of FOG when it comes to your mother.

Do you think she feels sorry for you, no not a bit of it. Such toxic women also see kindness as weakness to be exploited further. Has she ever apologised or even accepted any responsibility for her actions, likely not. She was once young and abusive; her advanced years do not give her a hall pass. She is now old and abusive.

And yes what she did to you and the other people you write of in your post is abusive. And no you should not have been as a teenager made to share a bath with your at that time 8 year old brother Its all abusive behaviour from her towards people deemed weaker than her own self. She let your brother and you down abjectly as a parent to you both.

You will need to grieve for the relationship you should have had rather than the one you actually got.

On the subject of birthday cards. I sent my father a card on father's day, signed from me & all my animals. He called me when he had had a drink and told me not to send him a card if I couldn't not put my animals names in there.

Why the fuck does it bother you so much. They are my family and I'll sign a card from me in any way I want!

It was his birthday last week so I didn't send a card. Sent a text "happy birthday" he replied cheers. My mum text the day after and asked if I'd sent him a card, I told her no and told her why.

I've not actually given it another thought and I won't ever send him another one!

As someone said on a post I wrote a while back, he doesn't deserve anything off me after the way I was treated as a kid. So fuck you!!

@MonkeyfromManchester - HAG is a fucking horrible bitch and I hope you get a break away. And MM sees the light and signs up for counselling.

I wish I had a rubber stamp and an old fashioned pad of ink. Like with my surname and the date on it.

UserBot2022 try Stampfactory.co.uk

wow! good to know! Thanks.

it's a bit late now, but it would be a representation of what I feel.

@Ieatmarmite the disbelief of ourselves is a common outcome of abuse, I think. The abuse erodes your sense of self and self-worth and we minimise abuse - ‘it wasn’t that bad’, ‘it was only a slap’, ‘I’d provoked’, ‘they were very stressed’. We end up gaslighting ourselves. I’m so sorry that you had an abusive mother. You are worth it. She’s not. Keep talking here, we have your back.

The other trope the abusers trot out is “my appalling childhood”. I think they use their experiences as the get out of jail card or as part of ‘I’ve made your childhood so much better than mine’. A wise friend said: it’s not a child’s job to congratulate their parent on giving them a better childhood than they had. I think their bad childhoods might, in part, explain the abuse but it NEVER excuses it.

Many of us will have aunts and uncles who are completely normal and our parent is the toxic nasty one. I know Mr Monkey used to long to be with his cousins’ families as they were happy and non-abusive compared to family life with The Hag (toxic MIL)

Felt better during the rest of the week. I think the therapy session really brought up how VILE Xmas was. I explained to Mr Monkey that, basically, our toxic Xmas ran this year from September to January with her campaign to make OUR Xmas the total opposite of comfort and joy because she’s jealous of me and my normal family where we spend it. .
He totally agreed and we’d agreed anyway that never again.

We talked tactics for Xmas 2022. We’ve already plotted out: two hour Beefeater lunch with Hag and my mum on Xmas Day and then we flee to my mum’s (countryside, NORMAL family) for a week and Hag not spending anytime away with us which is what she tries to muscle her way into.

Because I was SO angry at The Hag for ruining two days of Xmas this year and doing her best to wreck the rest, I was all set to tell her NOW thar this is the plan. Mr Monkey pointed out that this will give us 12 months of hell so we’re going to be vague and then announce the plan at the 11th hour in December.

She’s now not welcome now in my mum’s house and certainly not in ours.

I might see her for her sackcloth and ashes birthday in early March. I might. Certainly not organising a meal for Mr Monkey’s February birthday. We’re going away for the weekend.

Best hag comment of the week. Mr Monkey limiting phone calls to three a week rather than the three a day (or more) she would like.

You never phone me.
That’s not true.
You never phone me. You’re just like Cunt Son.

Cunt Son is Golden Child - Mr Monkey’s older brother. Hag created GC to be physically abusive - we’re talking HORRIBLE stuff - to Mr Monkey. And to perpetuate her vileness in every relationship GC has.

Cunt Son then went on to abuse countless women before marrying - very calculatedly - a 19 year old woman from another and very traditional culture who he physically, emotionally and sexually abused. Add in female and male prostitutes, coke, forbidding SIL from working etc etc. Cunt Son has now disappeared from everyone’s life including his Creator.

So, Mr Monkey is just like Cunt Son?

Designed to hurt him as EVERYONE knows how vile Cunt Son is.

Even Hag can’t fail to notice thar cunt son dumped his kids and tried to take the family home away from them in the bitter and expensive divorce. Even Hag must have noticed that Cunt Son hasn’t been in touch with her for nearly 10 years. The nice little bungalow for her didn’t materialise and she doesn’t have the adoring son by her side. Hag is often heard saying: ‘I don’t understand why he’s turned out like this’. I think she still longs for him.

I wonder whether Cunt Son will appear at her deathbed. I doubt it. And I doubt he’ll be at her funeral.

Mr Monkey wasn’t hurt by You’re just like Cunt Son remark. He sees it for what it is - pure manipulation.

These people are HORRIBLE.

@MonkeyfromManchester I really wouldn't bother with The Hag's birthday. Whatever you do will be wrong and used for ammunition anyway. The way she behaved from September onwards to ruin your Christmas was utterly spiteful.

The only way to break free from people like her is to cut them out of your life. And if that's not possible, then Grey Rock all the way.

Sadly it sounds like Mr Monkey is still too deeply entrenched in the FOG to break away from her. It puts you in such a difficult situation, but you'd be perfectly within your rights to tell her that she is not welcome in your home or Mummy Monkey's after her last performance.

@Sicario you are absolutely right re her birthday. I don’t know why I’m even contemplating it. TBH the family never did birthday lunches for her until I arrived with normal views of how families operate (when healthy, of course) and I now regret my attempts to heal things. Pointless.

Yeah, she’s truly horrible.

I think MM is caught up in it, but to a far lesser degree. He used to worry about Slave Brother but now he’s much less caught up in that. SS has to take responsibility. MM has backed away to a huge extent - thinking back over the last two years - which is the reason (apart from her normal vileness) for dragging him back. Well, trying to. So many pennies have dropped for him.

It’s very hard for him to get out of the shit show that is his family. I’m very proud of the progress made so far.

2022 stretches out as a Hag free zone.

"We talked tactics for Xmas 2022. We’ve already plotted out: two hour Beefeater lunch with Hag and my mum on Xmas Day and then we flee to my mum’s (countryside, NORMAL family) for a week and Hag not spending anytime away with us which is what she tries to muscle her way into".

This needs some slight tweaking in that it should really be a Beefeater lunch WITHOUT the Hag. Whatever you do for such a woman is not and is never ever enough, its never appreciated and she will moan anyway. Rest of your plan however, sounds dandy. Remind Mr Monkey nicely and often that he surely would not tolerate any of this from a friend and his family of origin are no different.

I would also be wary of the Hag if she starts becoming "nice"; that is a way of setting you two up into she doing something really nasty. The only way you will ever get half decent treatment with someone like her is to keep your distance both mental and physical.

I hope Mr Monkey sees a therapist this year and to my mind he needs a therapist really like yesterday. It could take him many years to further break away from Hag and his family of origin and you need to bear in mind too that he may not be able to break away from this completely.

@AttilaTheMeerkat I’d rather not do Xmas or ANYTHING with her. I think for Mr Monkey and my mum’s sake the two hour Xmas lunch is the best solution. It was MM who said we can never do Xmas sleepover with The Hag ever again and my mum agrees. It’s a compromise and we’re not going to back down. Can’t believe that we’re having to think Xmas in Jan!

Oh, she’ll certainly moan, but two hours is just about bearable. I can’t believe the shit she pulled at Xmas. The fake almost fall rates with her best as does the ‘what will you do if I fell on the tiled floor’ (in my mum’s dining room)

Oh yes, the kindness thing. It doesn’t wash anymore as MM and I have seen so much of the spleen as has my mum. Slave Son is used to it AND puts up with it like the complete dickhead he is. I don’t engage with him anymore, either. He’s enabled her toxicity.

The kindness is there now and again. Currently, it’s manifesting itself in paying for MM’s Ubers to work. Pure bribery rather than genuine kindness. I think we’d swop bribery for decency. But she’s incapable of this.

I’m definitely reminding MM of the need for therapy. Like you say, he needs to mourn for the relationship that he never had EVER from his childhood onwards. He’s clocked all the games now and can articulate it. Talking the other evening about the lunch he takes her to after a hair appointment where she laps up the attention like a teenage girl and is as nice as pie. He said he’d eat a steak but it means spending more time with her than he wants. That’s how far he’s come,

I’m proud of him for pulling away. I wonder if he lived on the other side of the country whether he’d have gone NC. At least, it’s LC and greywalling now from him which is a huge step.

She deserves nothing from us. Absolute toxic bitch. I can’t believe anyone can be that horrible. I’ve never encountered anything like this in my life.

Been away for a bit, I think I was fixating on toxic-parent-ology a bit too much and it wasn't good for me. Anyway, hello, and happy 2022.

@MonkeyfromManchester so glad you are looking forward to the year ahead as a hag-free zone. Haven't read all the way back but there are some good insights on how to handle the minefield of gift giving/receiving when NC/LC. (Toxic mum continues to occasionally send gifts or cards, since it's the only comms channel I can't block. My strategy is no acknowledgement, use or donate as best benefits me. I had this idea before that to maintain moral high ground I had to make all effort to return them and not benefit in any way, but that's just giving the giver what they want, isn't it - contact, or a reaction, negative or otherwise)

Things here are mostly pretty good. I have been re-establishing a social life, and a sort-of romantic relationship (remotely, just chatting for now). I've changed the locks on my house and made a few changes to make it more 'me'.

I had a really interesting conversation with my manager at work about it all. She is NC with her mother too. I feel very well supported by someone who gets it.

Enabler dad called today and it threw me a bit. He was unhappy that I seem not to want to talk to him so much. He is right, and I guess I'm less socially skilled at concealing it than I thought. The problem is anything I tell him gets fed back to toxic mum because she's a massive information miner, so I have to moderate what information I give and censoring your speech in real time takes mental effort. Also, as time passes I'm more, not less, pissed off that he minimises and denies how bad my experience of mum's behaviour was. So that does make the relationship more guarded and less close than it used to be.

He asked if I wanted to cut off contact with him, too. I said no to that, and he also asked whether I was avoiding him because I thought he was going to push the mum topic, and he could promise he wouldn't bring that up if that would make me be happier about spending time with him. I said partially, but it's not that the topic is off limits, it's just it tends to be unproductive, because mum's ask is 'contact resumes on my terms only' and mine is 'I don't want to be abused'.

I think he has realised it isn't just going to get swept under the rug and I'll 'crack' and stop being so silly, though, which I guess is progress. I don't know if the end state is ultimately no contact with both of them. I hope it isn't - I don't perceive Dad to be as fundamentally broken as Mum, more browbeaten by years of her abuse, and just after an easy life, even at his children's expense. Not good behaviour, but not irredeemable either. I have really rose-tinted Dadgoggles though, so I do need to keep an eye on that.

@TirisfalPumpkin thank you. It’s my NY Resolution and now it’s one that I feel good about. I went to MY hairdresser yesterday and had a great haircut. Got home and Mr Monkey was on the phone to her. His lookout. Nothing to do with me. He’s taking Hag to get her haircut and to lunch next Saturday. I felt no guilt about not going to lunch or taking her. Leave them to it. Not doing MM’s birthday with her - we’re going away so that can just sink into her nasty head.

Good good for you! I’m so glad you’ve found someone who gets it. It’s hard to explain how horrible the toxics are. My mum now gets it as she’s seen it at first hand and agreed re Xmas. Never again. My friends do, thankfully.

How lovely re a social life and romantic interests. New year, new you.

Your dad is the enabler, but I totally understand wanting some kind of relationship with him. Keep an eye on it and swerve the mum topic. She’s always going to pump him for information, but keeping it neutral is the way forwards. It takes time when you’ve been programmed to spill your guts and/or be vulnerable. Can you do a:

I don’t want to talk about my childhood or my mother. Shut him down. He’s been programmed by your mum not to allow you space to talk about abuse AND to disbelieve you. The Enabler - like my BIL aka Slave Son - are completely cowed and brainwashed by it. Celebrate your life well lived by escaping it and calling it out.

Wishing you all the best for 2022. Like you, I’m determined to have a better year.

I can see why you still want a relationship with your dad but ultimately think, you’re going to have to be in a no contact state with him also. In a straight fight he will still choose his wife over you and he will in his own ways continue to throw you under the bus. As you rightly surmise, he is her enabler but women like your mother always but always need a willing enabler to help them. He is truly a weak bystander of a man and I would not at all let him off the hook here. He would probably say, “don’t criticise my choice of wife” if you further challenged him.

you will need to also remove the rose tinted dad goggles and grieve for the relationship you should have had rather than the one you actually got.

The best revenge here is to,live well.

Christmas 2022 in the house of the Meerkats is going to be spent abroad😀✈️

@AttilaTheMeerkat - sounds magnif. Hope travel is much more open by then and you can bask in freedom and adventure.

You were spot on previously about maintaining a relationship with the mother being impossible vs manageable with boundary-keeping, so I give a lot of weight to your advice about dad. I just feel like, with it being an abuse scenario, I find it hard to completely blame him for failing as a parent while effectively being controlled, manipulated, narc-raged at and having his self-esteem destroyed for years and years. That doesn't mean he didn't fail and was completely powerless in the interaction, but it feels like it was not a totally free choice, 'hey I'll throw my kids under a bus for fun', kind of thing.

@MonkeyfromManchester - good idea re. having a script to shut that down if it comes up. I do see a parallel with slaveson. It's hard to look at another human who has comprehensively had their spirit broken. They sort of shuffle.

Relatedly, hag always seems to be getting haircuts, it must grow fast. Do they suck in negativity and grow it out through their follicles or something? I do mine myself every 6 months or so. I cut my own hair and had a ritual New Year's Day chopping, took a few inches off, felt symbolically cleansed & ready for new growth (without needing to do a full Britney).

He had a choice when it came to you and he chose his wife over you. He would rather stand there and see you take her abuses than he. It perhaps also gave I would seriously consider lowering all current contact levels with him too because he is also her secondary abuser. He likely also tried even harder to please and he is also unwilling and unable to realise how strategically tormented he is himself. He has a lack of empathy himself for you and readily agreed with her.

You deserved to have been protected from your mothers abuses of you and yet he stood by and watch that happen. He has like your mother abjectly failed you here as a parent.

Fuuuuuuuuuuck. Slave Son has had two falls in the last couple of days. Fills me with complete dread of MM having to take on more Hag work. No fucking way is he running the bitch round to the supermarket every time she clicks her nasty little claws. She’s going to have to get used to the carers doing more for her.

Just had a revelation I think after 2 years - you guys might think that’s blindingly obvious and I’m a bit slow on the uptake….but here goes:

A couple of years ago a family member pulled a stunt that was incredibly humiliating and hurtful to me and my DCs. The rest of the family by their inaction and silence colluded with relative to ensure this stunt happened (I suspect that they were terrified of her unhinged anger themselves and it was convenient to allow me and my DCs to be the scapegoats to avoid them being a target).

This last stunt was after numerous public bullying incidents and alongside a series of malicious emails - none of which I responded to.

My action was to go NC with the whole family. I wonder if I found it easier to blame all of them than the perpetrator directly. I turned down an invitation to Christmas Day
citing that the recent incident was the last straw and that I was disappointed that they didn’t acknowledge the impact and had let it happen (maybe on reflection they may even have had some quiet pleasure on my humiliation?)

Anyway me not attending and going NC has caused the most ridiculous eruption and rift.

I would have thought that if someone was so intolerable to you that you had to berate, humiliate and send multiple malicious emails that it would be a relief to have finally pushed them away.

But no.

I think that because I have been able to make a preference to take myself out of punching distance and out of this enmeshed family - that this where it has got worse.

My insight is that the expectation (by all) was that I was to continue taking a public and humiliating hard emotional beating and was after a brief time to come back for more.

The main perpetrator is flailing around raging more and more because I didn’t come back for further punishment. I think that after all these years they cannot comprehend this new dynamic and they are totally destabilised that I am not available to unload their toxicity on to.

I struggle with my stance on the bystanders - was I being too harsh to take myself out of their lives as well and to rail at them directly due to their inaction and not at the lead perpetrator (who has us all hijacked by their fragile MH and suicidal threats).

I think that there are parallels with leaving an abusive relationship - it’s the most dangerous time and it’s when the retribution and Narc rage ramps right up.

Also all the bystanders it’s so enmeshed it is impossible to have separate relationships. The expectations are that I should shut up and put up - sit face to face at a family dinner and say nothing - continuing to fawn like the others.

ESGdance

They are indeed totally destabilised because you are no longer a part of the game, you have dropped the rope. with you people now out of the way hopefully they will further turn on each other!.

By the way I have read a lot of your replies on other threads in this relationships forum and am very impressed by your thoughtful responses.

That’s very kind of you @AttilaTheMeerkat.

However I am still the scapegoat and the raging narrative has escalated to smearing with others outside the family. I have chosen to keep a dignified silence as I am not interested in washing my dirty laundry in public with flying monkeys - but it hasn’t got any easier for me and the Narc rage hasn’t abated 2 years later.

Hello all, it's been a while. How's everyone doing?

We have been trying move house which is (as ever) fraught and stressful.

DS7 has been out of school since November but was offered a place at a lovely school last week. We will not miss homeschooling and we will be glad to be apart

Still NC with the bogeymum. Xmas was very quiet, except four attempts at contact.

Relationship with older sister very strained. I think it likely the resentment she feels over my actions will never subside.

Still working through the abuse I suffered, I realised my parents financially controlled me and used money to shame me.

They are partly responsible for our current financial difficulties.

I found out recently that at the height of the financial abuse, my parents had 1.4m in savings and a million pound house they owned out right.

I am still decluttering ready for our move from a house to a flat.

Am taking all my photos out of albums to store in boxes. I have ripped up almost every single picture of my parents because looking at them makes me feel sad and anxious.

I have thrown away lots of keepsakes from childhood which is a relief since they triggered a feeling of hopelessness and shame in me.

On the positive side, I have bought a beautiful small chest of drawers and am going to fill them with things that make me happy-two cuddly toys from childhood who were my 'friends', a blanket, photos of my husband and kids, a dress I wore on my honeymoon, some little keepsakes from when my three kids were tiny.

I have felt a sort of loneliness when I think of how unloved I was by my parents. But I will have these drawers and I feel as though they will remind me of all the wonderful love I have in my life now.