April 2022 - well we took you to Stately Homes

[AttilaTheMeerkat]

It’s April 2022 and the Stately Home is still open to all comers.

@joylurking9to5 yep it used to bother me a ton but at the moment I feel so numb. It's just utterly absurd behaviour based in zero logic except her constant delusion that she is the eternal victim. Sometimes I feel pretty bad for how traumatic her childhood must have been to turn out this way, but then I see her "pretend" to be a lovely affectionate, thoughtful, generous person with everyone else but us. Everything with her has a catch or a cost.

I'm not scared if she spirals too much she's going to come after me somehow and enact revenge. Like wtf is this real life? I look at people with warm loving mothers and I think that must be nice. I wish I had someone in my life that was that way but I struggle to let people in because I'm so convinced everyone is out to manipulate me, or use my vulnerability against me.

Found it. Thank you.

Yes, i would love somebody in my corner but im learning how to be more firmly in my own corner. Commit to my own interpretation of events. They are ostracising me (supposedly the worst thing, exclusion from the tribe) and yet, im ok.

So hopefully knowing im ok and surviving being cast out and silenced will heal me of my wound of betrayal, and make me feel less triggered by their ongoing betrayals.

I hope.

🤞🍀

Thanks @AttilaTheMeerkat !!!

previous thread here

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/relationships/4387624-October-2021-well-we-took-you-to-Stately-Homes

SO FUCKING ANGRY.

The damage done by the Fucking Hag - toxic mother in law - to my wonderful partner, Mr Monkey, impacts on us every SINGLE fucking day. EVERY single fucking day.

He’s begun counselling - week six - it’s brilliant, but so painful and it’s left him really exposed and raw.

We have a week away booked in Paris on the 25th. He can’t do it as hes struggling so much. I’m 125% with him on why he can’t. The counselling is bringing up so much pain that he can’t leave the house.

I’m going to go alone - I know Paris well and I’ve travelled alone in countries like Mexico in my 20s. I just wish he was well enough to come.

I live with someone who has Complex PTSD, caused by his violent and emotionally abusive and coercive narcissist now 85 year old mother.

He:

Flinches every time I make an unexpected movement - consequence of sustained physical abuse which included visits to casualty for him market as a child. His older brothers also became violent to him. Mr Monkey was the scapegoats.
Has violent nightmares - ditto
Is stuck in a horrific past - he never saw anything different
Is terrified of the future - ditto
Is terrified of the slightest bit of change - ditto
Is stuck in a rut - ditto
Is unable to be spontaneous - ditto
Is frightened by anything new - ditto
Struggles with sex - constantly shamed by Hag and his brothers, no body confidence, he saw a psycho sexual counsellor before meeting me
Can’t articulate what he feels or struggles with it - no positive examples
Is still terrified of her - she was vile then and is 150% vileness now
Is blocked - emotional abuse, frightened of talking about it
Behaved terribly recently on a night during weekend away when I didn’t recognise him at all. He wasn’t violent, but it was all the rage to do with the Hag coming out.
Can’t always go out, frightened of different things - because our home is a place of safety for him

I take the role of planner, decision maker as his ideas were completely invalidated when he was growing up.

I’m gutted he can’t come to Paris but I understand why and where he’s at. I’m so upset but he would just sit in a hotel room feeling awful.

I am so Fucking angry at the damage Hag and his horrible brothers have done to him. So wanted to phone her and scream at her, but realised I’d blocked the bitch earlier in the year after her appalling behaviour at Christmas. The fact i’d forgotten that I’d blocked her made me laugh a lot.

The counselling will really help him and he is totally committed to it. He has tremendous emotional intelligence and he will get better.

We’ve talked about all of this over the weekend.

Just so incredibly, INCREDIBLY tired. Self care and going back yo counselling for me. Reading lots on living with someone with complex PTSD.

I’m NC with her now. She lives 10 minutes walk away after she manipulated him to buy a house close by (before me). He has now made their relationship LC. Gone are the daily phone calls, he’s put up barriers to protect himself but it’s 52 years of damage. I just wish the c**t dead.

Easter is a tough time. I had a run in with my brother.

On my doorstep. I meant to rise above the fact that they don't communicate with me but it just hurts so much that there is no effort to hear me, none, the only thing on offer to me right now is that if I'm sufficiently contrite, I will be allowed to play the part of daughter that they wrote for me.

I can never ever ever expect to be heard though. I got so angry with my pathetic brother yesterday.

Anyway, @MonkeyfromManchester would your H's therapist allow fortnightly sessions? I found it better, more affordable and I had time in between sessions to reflect on what she'd said and to let it settle.

I think I would have been repeating myself on a loop (even more than I am now) if the sessions had been weekly!

Especially if he's upset. I found the therapy positive because enough tension built up over the two weeks that I was really anxious to get in there and talk by the end of the two weeks but I know it must be hard for your H to be no sooner recovering from the emotions newly accessed and confronted than he's back in there AGAIN.

I was quite insistent with my therapist that once a fortnight was better for me. I am rarely good with boundaries but that one I held.

I've occasionally glimpsed into these threads but as this is a new one can I join? Easter is a rough time for me as it's when my parents chose to tell me about my Dad's long running secret affair and then leave me behind at university to deal with it. I was in my finals year and staying for a week of the holidays to write up my dissertation. Needless to say I was totally thrown and could have failed my finals.

As it was I stuffed it all down and had a breakdown 5 years later which resulted in me losing my first job. I've never recovered from any of this stuff, spent thousands on therapy and I'm now in my 40s. My childhood was awful.

@JulesRimetStillGleaming welcome! To the club we are glad exists even if we wish we had no need to be in it.

I've ''only'' spent four k on therapy so far but I don't feel like i'll never go back for more therapy. That figure is not final. I do not regret it but I'm annoyed that I had to go through it.

Easter is a tough one, all those bank holidays. I only began to unpick all of this madness at about 47 so I feel very delayed! 52 now.

I am going to make myself go for a walk now. Listening to self-compassion audio by paul gilbert.

@JoyLurking9to5 the family roles written for you are AWFUL. I’m so glad you’re checking out of your role. I take it your brother is your mother’s servant?

Hag had written all the roles for her sons. Stepson, who came to live with her when he was six, who got lines like “I should have left you in the children’s home” is now Slave Son. As he’s Increasingly disabled, Hag had lined up MM to be slave which he’s pushed back on. Middle brother - he’s fucked off, present whereabouts unknown - was Golden Boy and didn’t receive as much of the abuse as my partner and was allowed to behave how he liked which included physical and emotional abuse to my partner and then the women in his life. I ABSOLUTELY detest the lot of them.

He’s fine with the counselling being weekly. It’s tough, but the counsellor is amazing. He needs this level of care because he’s bottled it all up for 52 years. Thankfully, his work pays for counselling. TBH I think he should be using the Hag’s £ to pay for it. He looks after a savings account for her.

I’m just so fucking tired of it.

Oh he is. He was the golden boy. ''rational''. ''logical''. ''Intelligent''. ''Reliable''.

All of his labels were compliments. All of mine are disparaging. And not even true. For example, PARANOID. The one label that I took exception to in particular because 1) I was actually too trusting and all of the trouble I ran in to as a younger woman was because I didn't feel I had the right to trust an intuition or say no.

And 2) my father actually went to a psychiatric hospital twice, inpatient, with depression and paranoid delusions.

And yet....................... my family see nothing worth 30 seconds of conversation around how I not my father emerged in the family narrative as paranoid.

I forgive them for the past but it was my mother's glossing over it so blithely and dismissively that drove me crazy two years ago. And I admit, at the time, I did feel nearly CRAZY with the gaslighting that was going on. It was just a defensive WALL of respect our right to label you paranoid and 100% commitment to being the victims of me, and the huge act of aggression I was perpetrating against them.

I will admit, I did feel quite crazy. I had the therapy. And I stand more firmly than ever in my own interpretation of events!!

That doesn't help my relationship with my brother but I feel less crazy. I still act crazy when he comes to my door, but I feel less crazy.

so glad he's found an amazing counsellor.

I’ve been dipping in and out of this thread for years….

I can’t decide if my mother is a naraccist (I don’t think she’s intelligent enough to be one) or she’s emotionally unavailable.

I had a terrible childhood with her. Of course to the outside world she was wonderful. A regular church goer, member of the school PTA, helps at a homeless shelter, Christmas Day cooks for the homeless. But it’s all a complete show & validation of her own worth. She’s a cold bitch.

She had a terrible childhood herself - she was an illegitimate child in the 40’s who was hidden away by her mother (who was a selfish person) and then packed off to boarding school at the age of 4. She seems to remember having a happy childhood but I think she has fabricated this to help her cope with what went on.

I always felt she was jealous of me as a child and the relationship I had with my father who I adored (and I now realise he protected me).

When he died - she rang me to tell me his life support was being turned off (I was at work 250 miles away at the time). She told me then put the phone down on me. When my dad did die and I cried she snapped ‘I don’t know why you are crying, he was my husband’. She’s always been a cold, hard bitch but this took it too a new level.

In my mid 30’s I had a horrific sports accident abroad. I’d recently split up with my long term partner. The hospital advised I needed to have someone with me. I rang her but she couldn’t come out as she had badminton on a Monday. So I spent 3 weeks in hospital abroad on my own. My ex partner eventually came out for support - he said ‘I know what your mums like’.

Over the years most boyfriends have said ‘your mums not very nice to you’. She has this obsession and tells them ‘to need to control her’. It’s a real trigger for me and she knows it so she says it to wind me up.

Since those 2 incidents (my dad dying & having an accident) I’ve withdrawn (for my own sanity). I’ve tried telling her how I feel but it always ends up with her getting angry and defensive and her turning it into an argument. She’s a controlling bully who can never be wrong.

After my dad died most of their friends disappeared (of course it was always their fault). Most of her own family won’t have anything to do with her (she’s fallen out with most of them). The only friends & family who stick around are pretty weak.

Of course my brother is the golden child who can do no wrong. The two of them gang up on me. Christmas - she would never think to invite me or ring me on Christmas Day. My golden brother will always get his secret invite.

I haven’t spoken to her since Feb. I hardly ring as I realised I while ago that when I did ring she would talk at me, not ask anything about me or my life and then she would end the call. Every time I rang her I would feel upset afterwards, so I stopped calling. She thinks we are really close - I have no idea where she’s got that from. I can’t ever remember her comforting me or hugging me. I was always told to stop crying & get on with it. At 18 I couldn’t wait to leave home and I never went back.

She rang me yesterday - her duty as a good Christian. Happy Easter I said….. then I could tell by the tone of her voice she was ripe for an argument. My partners dad has just died & we have his mum staying with us who has late stage dementia. I’ve been with my partner 8 years, we have lived together for 6.5 years. In all that time, she’s never added his name to a Christmas card, sent him a birthday card (let alone present), she never asks about him and has never asked of his parents. We moved into a new house together 6 years ago (and despite asking) she’s never visited & shows no interest in coming. I told her his dad had died. ‘Why didn’t you tell me’ was the angry aggressive response…. ‘Because you’ve never taken any interest in xxx or ever asked about his parents’. TBH if she took any sort of interest in my OH or me or bothered to ring me I might of mentioned it.

She becomes more and more aggressive then starts dragging up things that happened a while ago ‘you did this….’ Which has nothing to do with the inject. I ask her not to shout and get aggressive as we’re having a hard time loosing his dad and looking after his mum who isn’t well (I might have stuck the knife in at this point and mentioned how lovely they were to me and always sent me a birthday & Christmas present). She goes on and on (as it’s always about her, no one else is allowed an opinion or feelings). So I just put the phone down on her.

She’ll punish me now by probably writing a letter (telling me it’s all my fault and what a terrible daughter I am) and then not phoning me for months.

The relief not having to listen to her bleeding on will be immense.

Thanks for listening and the opportunity to vent!

💐🍷

I know what you mean not knowing if she's a narcissist. Sometimes I see a video I would like to send her but I can't because it uses the word narcissist and if I went ahead and applied that to her, my father and brother would be even more on her side as the victim of me. But that is her precise style, using being the victim to shame me.

My mother is very defensive too. SO defensive that she is just incapable of receiving feedback. She is overall a people -pleaser though so she's also thought of as a lovely person in the wider family and in our town. She fawns over people she cannot control (my brother) but this is quite subconscious I think. I don't think she actually thinks ''I cannot control golden boy so i'll fawn over him''. I can control her so i'll shame her in to agreement. But she has always used manipulation, shaming and disproportionate outrage to the slightest assertion of any small boundary to control me. Always. And it used to work until about 4 or 5 years ago and now she cannot see any other interpretation of events besides I am at fault here.

Like your Mum, ONly my mum is allowed to have feelings. Mine don't exist. Like literally, it's not even that she puts my feelings last. She seems unable to comprehend that I have them. I'm her people pleasing tool. An ''object self'' I read it described as once.

@JoyLurking9to5

Gosh, our mothers sound very similar.

I’ve also thought about sending her a print off of the classic signs of a narcissistic mother. But it would result in WW3. Same here - my brother the golden child would only use it against me (he thinks she’s wonderful) and I can’t be bothered with the aggro it would bring. It’s the same here - she’s the victim and everyone else is in the wrong. All the friends, family etc that have nothing to do with her anymore.

My mother is also very defensive and you can not give any feedback without it turning into an angry argument (on her part). You can’t have a normal conversation with her (for fear that you may dare to say something she doesn’t agree with). Yesterday as an example when I started to say ‘I feel…..’ she quickly turned it into an argument and it was all about her (how dare someone die and SHE the victim not be informed immediately)!

My mother is also a people pleaser - everyone thinks she is such a wonderful person, but it’s all a show and to justify her ow self with. Same here with her using manipulation, shaming, anger and outrage as a means to control.

As it no longer works her anger is worse towards me (this is why my partner ‘should control me as she is unable to’ in her words.

Years ago I was sad that I didn’t have the sort of relationship that I saw my girlfriends had with their mums. The phone calls to cat about things, going shopping together, getting tour nails done together etc….. I could never do any of those things with me mum. I think I’m actually a little scared of her. She was quiet physical when I as a kid - I still remember getting slippered and slapped across the face for pretty minor things. The words ‘I want a little word with you’ still put the fear of his up me.

I realised a long time ago that I can’t control how she behaves but I can control how I react. Good luck 🤞

Hello!
I've thought about joining in before but never felt it was.... bad enough.

I've had counselling, and am living with a more positive mindset nowadays and can see quite clearly when my mum tries to manipulate me. She did it today. We were meant to go and see her and dad this afternoon but she phoned first thing to say that she had a negative LFT but was feeling unwell, bad cold, cough. Was concerned.

So I said it would be best for us not to visit. She likes to take to her bed for days on end for a simple mild head cold, so something like this she would get mileage for a week in bed. Then she turned the tables, she would feel better later, it wasn't bad enough for us to cancel, she'd talk to my dad and call me back.

So she had called to make me make the decision not to visit. So that I was the bad one, choosing not to visit. Even though her opening gambit was how unwell she was feeling.

Dad phoned back. Mum had come up with a complicated alternative that excluded her - something she would get good sympathy and pity for. I told him it wasn't fair that I was being made to make the decision when I had already said we wouldn't visit because mum should rest.

Thankfully he agreed, he said he was making the decision to call the visit off and we would meet up soon.

I hate that I keep getting forced into being the bad guy, that I'm the one who is calling the shots or controlling things because of how she manipulates things. And I know that she has done this all my life.

I feel like telling her to get down off the cross, it's Easter and (for those who believe, I'm an atheist) surely Jesus should be on it.

I'm not as torn up as I would have been pre counselling. I'm just... upset she is still doing this, still playing the game. She's in her 70s, I'm in my 40s. This is insane.

@brinksmansentry interesting and reassuring that your Dad could see what you were saying. My Dad always thinks what my mum thinks.
In two years he hasnt contacted me because.... my mother is the vivtim of me.

I regret not trying to have a separate channel of communication with my dad. She would always say "dad says hello" and id say "tell dad i said thanks" etc so when my mum was punishing me with a silent treatment, i obviously never heard from my dad. And didnt feel i had the right to contact him without going through her. 😐
That is so weird and unhealthy I know, but is seen as normal to my parents.

Just reading some of the other replies and so much chimes with me about my mum.

I've had a serious conversation with my dad, about 6 months ago, telling him how difficult it has been with how she behaves to me. And how hearing them both tell me from a young teen age that if I wanted to move out, that meant I would never want them in my life I'd cut them out forever. I never wanted that, they told me that's who I was. He told me that he thought I was just a resilient person because I deal with everything that comes my way. I replied that I'm resilient because I have to be.

I struggled to keep friends when I moved on to another city or town for work. Because I grew up believing that nobody actually liked me, I was a horrible person so why would anyone want to be my friend. Its only in recent years I've realised that isnt true and for the first time am working hard at maintaining friendships rather than seeing friends as people relieved to not have me in their life.

I'm naturally introverted and a bit weird. I always believed that I wasn't deserving of friendship, had been taught to understand (always implicit from my mum, never explicitly said) that there was a badness inside me.

I had a breakdown when out for a run once, full on sobbing, when I realised that it just wasn't true. There was no secret badness inside me that if people unearthed it, they would never want to know me. There was no hidden evil.

At the big talk with my dad, he explained how he and my mum are very nervous and anxious people. They worry and fear for the worst. So rather than supporting someone wanting to do STUFF, they thought best to keep me and my sister close and scared. Me stepping out or living away from home was a fear for them. So they tried to keep me from moving out. And when I did, they pushed me away as they couldn't cope with the idea I would be out there, in the world, prey to evils and one step away from falling into heroin addiction.

But they didn't know me, they didn't know I was able to say no and keep safe. They didn't know who I was or who I am now and feared the worst of me and everything I did.

Counselling absolutely saved me.

I always, always got on well with my dad. But she has worked away at him over the years. And now i know I'm talking tk him when I'm with.him, but she uses his phone on WhatsApp or text and I don't know if it is him or her.

She was jealous of our relationship. And I can hear her voice through him. She instigated a huge row between me and him about 18 months ago, he was actually red faced and screaming at me. Instigated because she had been telling him how rude I was to her, how badly I spoke to her and it was all in her head. DH was in the garden with the kids and she joined him once she set dad off, and DH said her face was full of glee and she was loving it.

She has had a good go at wrecking the bond between me and my dad. And over the years he has let her.

I've not good a good relationship with my sister either, primarily because of years of work from my mum telling us if we ever had a small falling out then that meant we would never speak to each other again.

Why have a reasonable relationship and enjoy your children getting on if you can escalate things to 100 and have everyone divided and conquered?

@BrinksmansEntry I could have written 90% of your post. I know that that badness isn't inside me but it resurfaces when I feel insecure. I'm feeling it at the moment because I have a new manager at work who has triggered it. I feel like I hate myself and after every interaction with anyone I'm an anxious mess assuming I've been horrible, I am horrible and I deserve to feel all this.

Therapy hasn't saved me yet. I'm 45 and all this toxicity is still in me.

Yes, resonating with thatbtoo. My parents were fearful people with low self esteems and i had such fear projected on to me. I had to somehow become successful enough not to embarrass them without ever takingba risk.

That is precisely the level im at. Just qbout not an embarrassment!

My therapist recommended self compassion to me.

💐 MAY WE ALWAYS SEE THE GOODNES IN OURSELVES 💐

I have a really "cold" robotic high up boss who triggered me too but it turned out it was the outwardly warm immediate boss who scapegoated me about two years ago. Pushing down not up. Robot boss was and is and will be as predictable as always. But it really made me see how i bring my fear of authority to work.

It took me quite a lot of turmoil to get to the point i am at now. I still have some fear of failing, that inner voice of "of course I'm going to fail, it's me!" That springs up when I do something new. But I push that down - I'm not perfect but I'm not a failure because of an intrinsic imperfection or badness.

I had a very horrible boss. Sociopath. She reinforced some of the things my mum said, but also I spent my life in terror of failing because of her too.

Life doesn't have to be as hard as we are led to believe. Obviously, difficulties happen and life can be hard but that is because of obstacles or issues we need to deal with along the way. Life isn't hard because we are bad and should expect it to be that way.

I told my counsellor I want to believe I have a core of carbon fibre inside me. By the end of our 3rd of 6 sessions she told me I already did, I just needed to believe it.

I spent so long living fearfully. I just couldn't do it any more. And even now I have to stop my first response of fear of new things, fear of failure.

I don't know about the rest of you but I'm afraid of myself. I'm afraid of getting into that painful dark place where I can't stop crying and don't want to be alive anymore. My new manager triggered that last week with some critical "tips" she gave me.

I'm beginning to feel that I will never break through this. So many times in my life I've had to pick myself up from another disappointment and I'm not sure how much I have left to dig deep into.

Am I wrong in thinking that a person should leave home as a well rounded adult, feel loved and cared for by their family and ready to take on adult life.
Not a cowed, mentally destroyed wreck who doesn't know how to cook do anything useful and has no idea how to make friends, dress or cope in the outside world?
Yet despite it all I've survived but it's made life so difficult. Why do people like that even have children?