The silent treatment runs in my family. They are like haughty toddlers.

[AnFiadhRua]

So sick of it, and dreading Christmas. It's weird how rife it is, clicked on two threads and two people are being given the silent treatment by their partners.

My mother used to give me the silent treatment the moment I failed to endorse her rosy perception of herself. My father holds her coat in this quite happily, her willing foot soldier. My brother threw me under a bus for trying to be heard. They all talk about me but not to me.

The narrative in my family of origin is that I am sensitive, emotional, that I ....shout

And yet, my mother, having orchestrated a smear campaign that has reached cousins via my aunts, now wants ''a happy Christmas''.

She wants me to play the part of Daughter. Summonsed back to play the part of daughter but still, just to be clear, STILL denied any voice, any communication. She told me that my father and her decided not to throw accusations around. What I call a conversation, she calls '''throwing accusations around''.

If you try to connect with my mother, she literally gets angry.

But if I'm to go back to heel for Christmas, not sure what I'll be invited to under sufferance yet, but the narrative will be that they're saints overlooking my ''behaviour'' (ie, me raising my voice trying to make my point after they'd decided between them that there would be NO conversation with me about the hurt I told them they caused me, but not telling me that this was decided, and yet, when I said that they were stonewalling me, I was told ''no we're not''.)

I'm single and that's a problem only in that they don't respect me on my own. If I had a partner in my corner they would have acknowledged that they hurt me. But they have no respect for me. They own me.

I must respect their right to hurt me and stone wall me. But.............. I'm summonsed at Christmas. Even though, whatever distorted martyred accounts of our falling out my mother has given to my aunts, they didn't respond to a simple text I sent to thank them for something they sent to my daughter.

Anybody else feel like their family has the emotional intelligence of a bunch of toddlers? But worse, haughty toddlers who have zero self-awareness but act appalled by my ''behaviour''.

If I cut them off, I'll be the worst in the world and it'll be half way around Ireland what an ingrate I am after all they did for me. The 8 aunts will tell the 32 cousins who'll tell their spouses and they all believe it.

Can I update again?

My mother invited me over xmas day and I told her it would be too stressful for me given that we still haven't had the conversation we need to have. I said that sweeping it all under the carpet worked for her and Dad but not for me, so I wouldn't be able for Christmas together, but Happy Christmas.

I took inspiration for this text from a suggestion from another poster upthread, but I supposed I got a bit of a 'dig' in saying that it was their fault that they sweep it all under the carpet.

Got an absolutely horrible text back saying I need professional help (not the first time I've heard that from her). I've been abusive to them, my behaviour has been outrageous. She hates what I've done to the family.

Wow. Just no progress at all. While I've been through hurt, anger, pain, grief and acceptance in the last 20 months, she's still just blaming me for ''what I've done to the family''.

I sent back a text saying that I had been in therapy for the last 18 months to deal with their not caring that they called me paranoid for decades, their glossing over it like it bored them, giving me the silent treatment and stone walling me. I said it was interesting that she saw an attempt to have a conversation as abusive.

It's absolutely shocking how little self-examination she is capable of. She genuinely believes that I have destroyed the family.

In the last 20 months I've been through every emotion under the sun and spent about £3,000 on therapy. I don't regret that though.

But in that 20 months she has been intransigent in her position. I am the one who is to blame.

So, 2022 will be the 3rd year of this.

And maybe that's it forever now and I just have to accept that.

My Mother said I had cast them as the villains because I need a villain but the opposite is true. I KEPT THINKING that they would be the exceptions to the rule and that they would finally have an epiphany and get it.

But no. They were the rule. I had faith in them though. I thought that they had the empathy, in there somewhere.

But no.

All they can do is project it all on to me and tell me to ''get help''.

I'm just done. I had some hope when I started this thread but now I understand in a really sad way that this will never change. There is one perspective. My mother's. I always knew that, but i was foolish enough to think that she wouldn't sacrifice her relationship with her daughter just to be right.

But no she would rather be right. There is one perspective, hers, and I do not have the right to be hurt by her.

NO.

I do regret that she knows I've had 18 months of therapy though.

That was something I wanted to keep to myself. But being told to ''get help'' repeatedly by the most defensive person in the world. I took the bait.

But that's it now. I will not be initiating any contact. I will not try and get her to see.

I have to drop the rope.

2022 - I will have dropped the rope.

OP,

It is often trotted out but it is true, "we can only change ourselves, not others".

You cannot change your mother.

She has chosen her path and is staying on it.

All you can do is continue on your journey, help heal yourself and life your best life.

Your mother is who she is and will continue on with her self serving narrative.

Your whole life she treated you this way?

Why do you imagine that someone who would behave in such a way to their child would suddenly change?

This is who she is.
Believe her.
Accept her.

Focus on what you can do to make the rest of your life a positive experience.

Stop giving your power to her by wanting her to change.

It's not going to happen.

It is completely futile for you to expand energy on her conversion.

It is NOT going to happen.

Accept, and move on.

Real life changes utterly when you accept the only person you can possibly change is yourself.
I would suggest THAT is a very hard thing to do, not to mind another person.

Focus on your own growth.

Some people use silence as a weapon, l stay well away from people like that and suggest you do too.

Well done.

DARVO - deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender

I wholeheartedly agree with the previous poster.

These people cannot be changed. It's heartbreaking when it's family. All you can do is break the cycle. Much love AnFiadh, you are not alone.

I was upset that my mother would sacrifice her relationship with me. Thing is AnFiadh, as a narc her ego is so fragile that she simply MUST keep in control via scapegoating and 'darvo'. She cannot change because to do so would make existing impossible. She is, in that sense, a failed human being - she cannot flex, be reciprocal, grow. She's frozen as someone who projects and deflects onto others and who places herself above the needs of others all the time. It's really very sad - my mum and your mum. But we cannot be in the middle of it - we have to be totally ourselves and free from the abuse.

You're right @billy1966 and thank you

I needed to go through these last 20 months though, to fully understand that she won't change. She is as you say sticking to this path. No u-turns.

She has been generous and helpful (but in a controlling way) so she honestly feels betrayed by me. Because there is only one perspective, hers. So she truly believes I'm a monster.

Even if I could forgive her for everything, I cannot live with their perception of me as an abusive monster so I have to just give up, drop the rope. Their perception of me as ''paranoid'' was intolerable to me so I'm not squaring up for their perception of me as an abusive unhinged monster who needs help.

I'm done.

Reality is whatever she needs it to be in the moment she is in. She's that fragile and that abusive.

PS. on a completely different subject, I am quite surprised to see my latest username free! It made me L.O.L!

Xmas also seems to bring these things up too. Its a time of connection and reconnection - or else its inverse, breaking those connections. A time of reflection : looking backwards and forwards (the end of the year).

Even if things don't go as the TV adverts suggest, you can be lucky - and regardless have a time of peace and freedom and clarity, honesty and love for whats true and distancing from what isn't.

I have been musing over your last post, AnFiadhRua. I was pleased that you've managed to gain such an insight into your situation despite what you've had to go through in order to do so.

The last sentence suggests you now have achieved clarity. I often think of this as the 'name and blame' point - you are not only able to state what the exact problem is ('there is only one perspective, hers') but who is responsible for it all.

I hope this clarity helps you to negotiate a happier future for yourself, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who is sending you their best wishes for this.

@billy1966

OP,

It is often trotted out but it is true, "we can only change ourselves, not others".

You cannot change your mother.

She has chosen her path and is staying on it.

All you can do is continue on your journey, help heal yourself and life your best life.

Your mother is who she is and will continue on with her self serving narrative.

Your whole life she treated you this way?

Why do you imagine that someone who would behave in such a way to their child would suddenly change?

This is who she is.
Believe her.
Accept her.

Focus on what you can do to make the rest of your life a positive experience.

Stop giving your power to her by wanting her to change.

It's not going to happen.

It is completely futile for you to expand energy on her conversion.

It is NOT going to happen.

Accept, and move on.

Real life changes utterly when you accept the only person you can possibly change is yourself.
I would suggest THAT is a very hard thing to do, not to mind another person.

Focus on your own growth.

''It is often trotted out but it is true, "we can only change ourselves, not others". ''Stop giving your power to her by wanting her to change.''

I have been looking at the drama triangle all morning. Everything I said is still true in my perspective but I can see I was battling with my mother for victim role needing them to see my perspective in order to be 'ok but she was determined to be the victim (wrongly accused) and cast me in persecutor role.

Now i'm listening to clips about how to go in to creator role which is apparently an empowered version of the victim role in karpman's drama triangle where you become an empowered version in the role you're in. Still a newbie to this subject.

So I think a creator (empowered victim) asks so ''what options do i have?'' and you assume that the other person doesn't need your approval to be ok and that you do not need the other person's approval/good opinion to be ok.

I certainly don't have their approval! I certainly don't have their good opinion. So the only option I have is to stop needing them to see my perspective and to distance and grey rock. BUT........it's interesting to have this scaffolding already worked out by somebody called Acery Choi in 1990 to pin this new mindset on.

I realise now that I DID try and step out of the triangle about 20 months ago.

But it didn't work. I wasn't allowed. I was summonsed back in to it but without any voice.

So now, this time stepping out of the triangle is the same again but different.

''Creating'' an estrangement doesn't feel very positive right now but I know it will bring peace. Eventually.

Now what's left is the ''rescuer'' my dad, the footsolder with no backbone who just tells my mother ''oh yeh, you're so right, she's so wrong'' and my mother, who has no competition for the victim role now.

I will never again tell her that they hurt me. But she will still be able to be the victim that I have not come back to heel apologising to her for having hurt her (by wanting to have a meaningful conversation)

I know the feeling of peace takes a while to kick in.

it does, @AnFiadhRua.

First, the lack of stress happens. It wars with the FOG at the beginning (Fear Obligation Guilt). But gradually, you start to notice that your stress levels decrease. You don't flinch when the phone rings. Realizing that holidays are coming don't fill you with dread and put your shoulders up around your ears.

Weirdly, you may not even recognize it at first. It'll be the feeling that something's missing, but you can't quite put your finger on it. Something. It leaves you feeling at odds and out of sorts, b/c WHAT THE HECK IS IT? Did I forget something? What was I supposed to be doing?

And then WHAM, it hits you. It's the usual cycle of negativity and abuse that's gone.

Children who grow up in those environments become used it it. it's our norm. So when that pressure is gone, when we're not living with the weight of all of it, we notice something's different, odd, missing... but not always able to identify right away what it is.

It's a grieving process. Grieving what was, and what wasn't. The mother you deserved vs the one you had. The hopes you had vs the reality of what was and is. The good memories tempt us into thinking maybe next time it could be different, after all, nobody's ALL bad, there were some good things...

I like to use the cake analogy.

I'm making you a cake. I've sourced the finest ingredients, gotten the best, most expensive, delectable chocolate for the batter and icing. Truly an amazing feat. Gordon Ramsey is jealous and weeps.

But I add two tablespoons of dog crap to the batter, and another to the icing.

Would you eat it? I mean, 98% of the cake is good, right? It's ONLY two tablespoons in the batter and one in the icing! Hey, you could scrape off the icing, and that means just the poop in the batter!

That's what abusive families are like. You can't eat around the crap, it's mixed in.

And you don't deserve to eat crap for anyone.

OP, this sounds like my mother. The silent treatment started when I was very young (she did it to all of us) and has carried on - in fact it grew to threats of suicide and disappearing for days. It was horrendous.

And similar to you, I was also put into a role in the family that she and my siblings put me into - a comedy one in my place, but yes also seen as "emotional". I think I was there for them to mock and laugh at.

My mother would send ridiculous present lists at Christmas and expect us to get them for her.

I have gone NC with them. I did step out of the triangle. Life is immeasurably better. Good luck.

Brilliant analogy clubby. And don't forget 'you're ungrateful for not wanting to eat the cake we provide...'

I woukdnt go why put yourself through it and minimal contact

Great post @ChubbyMorticia

Hi OP

I'm in Ireland too and I feel that there is a pressure here to be a 'good' family . I could be wrong and it's the same everywhere - it must be to some degree- but the gossip and judgement is widespread. I think it's worse outside cities.
My family has favourites and financial favourites and secrets . Everyone seems to know the secrets ( eg one brother given repeated house deposits and regular sums of money others nothing) but woe betide you if you bring these secrets out into the open .
My father was the silent treatment practitioner in our family . Pillar of the community though.
I snapped once and argued and shouted about the chosen few being helped and gifted money while the rest could be on the street for all they cared. The recipients played along with the family image 100%.
A few of us called it out and were literally thrown out. We are close . And, after a difficult time , free .

It'd be lovely to have another sibling who got it, but it id just me and my golden child brother.

Ive been realising how i was goaded in to being "emotional", "sensitive" and "angry" all these years. And there was never anything wrong with me, well, i did want to control myself better around them and still wish i had managed to come across as calmer.

All the time it was my super buttoned up mother stonewalling me and driving me crazy.

I fixated on the label of paranoid because that was the first projection i saw. My dad went to a psych hospital with paranoia and depression and i emerge as the one with the label paranoid in the family, but all of the ther things have been projections too.

Ive heen goaded in to being angry and emotional and sensitive. Although sensitive and emotional mean less than you'd think. Just having a visible reaction to something, that's angry, sensitive and emotional.

I know i have to stop caring. I'm getting there.

It took a lifetime for a few of us siblings to wake from the fog!
I did cut my family off at one point years ago but like you found it make things complicated with my children. They were younger than yours seem to be .
I also felt exposed by my own anger with my family and somehow didn't want them to see that . Someone on mumsnet talked about grey rock and that's what I do . I am polite , distant , there in body but not spirit. I limit time with them very carefully . We all live near each other so cutting them off ( which I did initially) was doing me harm after a while ( the stress) . It was a cop out to some extent I realise that .
When my mother was alive I was 'summoned' to things ( twice a year was my limit ) and I shook approaching the door .
Those summons don't happen now .
I dread my fathers funeral because I'll have to see the siblings who perpetuated a lot of this and whipped my parents up to cut me off. The emotion feels like fear and I can't explain it . I'm in my 50s!

I know the feeling. It's horrible. Like waking up and realising something bad happened ystrdy and feeling that uncomfortable uncertainty all day.

Things are too raw for reaching out to her right now but one day i want to do grey rock, and be there in body only. Polite, distant, buttoned up.

Yes I know the raw feeling . I couldn't be near them when I felt like that .
It will pass .
People hate it when you challenge a cozy little set up and break out .
Good luck

I can see how the cut off caused more stress than just having kept my thoughts to myself all along, and done polite, distant grey rock 😐