April 2022 - well we took you to Stately Homes

[AttilaTheMeerkat]

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

I am afraid your sister may use this child against you. Withhold visits , turn the child against you, use you as a money tree. I am so sorry to say this but if it were me , given all l know now l would go NC .

@chatterbug22 I empathise, you want a relationship with your niece/nephew so don't want to burn bridges. One day that kid is going to need you when they realise that their mum is toxic. What is her partner like? Have you tried calling her out on her shit? Or creating some boundaries? Are there certain times / scenarios / channels where you know she will behave badly and can those be avoided? Is there anyone who can be by your side when you are with her who makes you feel safe?

@AttilaTheMeerkat I think you are prob right about trying to stop her coming to see us, however I don't want to make a big drama about it, I just want our relationship to fade away gently and naturally as I know it will, she knows I have an amazing family on my DH's (despite his parents being divorced), lots of friends and a growing family of my own. I am just going to tell her she has to stay in a hotel, she is disabled so it will be too much for her and she'll no doubt feel slighted about not staying with us. I am. It sure she is a narc, she doesn't boast about her special talents or think the sun shines out her bum, she doesn't desire admiration, there is no grandiose fantasies (far from it - she is happy to sit in her chair all day and do her cross word / listen to the radio), doesn't seem to demonstrate envy (if she did it actually might make her more human!) but she can be passive aggressive - when I was younger silent treatment, sabotaging my friendships - and she is very misanthropic and just doesn't really get what real friendship is. Her facial expressions can be really inappropriate, like when she met my daughter for the first time she was frowning and expecting her, and didn't really smile much at the wedding. She's majorly socially awkward. She also suffers from what I would call panic attacks. She defo does hold grudges and is so incredibly judgemental, last time we went there my DH commented on he felt he just listened to her slagging someone or something off all night and didn't like it. Overall She is pretty consistent as a person, no ups or downs, she is now quite helpless because she cannot walk unaided very well and defo is going a bit senile.

@LoveToWearADress thanks for your caring words, yes I do fear I have ocd tendencies, it's been this way since I was a child and morphed in all sorts of ways. There was voice of zoom for many years from when I was tiny, telling me if I didn't do x, y, z that I would die. In my twenties it was lots of checking, making sure plus were turned off, unplugged, constantly worrying about causing a fire. Right now it's lots of cleaning, and keeping house completely immaculate. And since I had my baby (exacerbated no doubt by baby blues) it's just loads of invasive thoughts about bad stuff happening to either me, my husband or my baby, I had some awful thoughts about my dad stabbing me at my wedding or hurting my baby to hurt me. My partner is away with work a lot and we live quite rurally, I check the doors and windows over and over and every little noise at night, I worry it's him coming to get me. It's really not fun. I am going to talk to my therapist about it properly next week as it's making life really hard. I am hoping talking more about it all, and having some time out (got a holiday next week) and having the wedding out the way will promote a bit more tranquility. At least I know now it's not me, it's them. My best friends at the wedding were suggesting we evict my father lol (luckily he left around 5pm - without saying goodbye) and my best friend commented on how she totally got what I was saying about my mum (she had never met her in our 20 year friendship - says a lot) - so it's all be validation. I hope I can help my brother break free in the future!

@LoveToWearADress *voice of doom

The nights are so lonely. I’m so, so alone. Despite being in a home with hearts and the sleepy smell of people & animals that genuinely care & want me, this feeling of rejection and being unheard is killing me. Literally. My child is asking when I’ll stop crying, she doesn’t deserve this either.

Broke down in front of a friend yesterday & relayed a few examples of what had happened to me. One situation when I was 7, one when I was a teenager and one that involved my 7 year old….and she started crying; genuinely clueless, She was heartbroken for me.

The positive side of some vicious, purely evil personalities is that you also got to see the wonderful part of others - as seen on this thread 💗

I’ve been told by the Golden Child I “misremembered” an event that happened, which is him being his father all over. DARVO procedure.

What do I change the words in the image to, please? Brain is struggling to compute. Exhausted.

@failinghard I’ve called her out, to her face, over text, calmly, not so calmly, she has a massive reaction and somehow makes it all my fault. Every. Time. She will also run crying to my mum who believes her version.
Her partner is placid and quiet, can be arrogant in the right environment but generally happy to go along with whatever and go with the flow.
She comes across as quite insecure but will do anything to not show this, ie by calling me boring for not drinking, drawing attention to me and my partner for some reason or another. She hates the topic of conversation being on anyone else and will always bring it back to her. She will guilt trip people ie if they can’t make it to an appointment. She’s recently got married and she threatened to demote me from being a bridesmaid if I didn’t ‘step up’ as her sister and see her more. Generally quite entitled.

I have tried with boundaries but it is difficult. Complicates things further as you say with there being a niece or nephew involved.

Narcissists do not like boundaries and will actively rail against them.

Unfortunately it is probable that their child will be brought up to be just like them and there is nothing you can do about that. I would really start to further distance myself from your parents, your sister and her H now and certainly before their child is born. Women like your mother and sister cannot do relationships so the men in their lives are either as narcissistic really as they are or are otherwise discarded.

Parishcouncil

That response highlighted in your image is not wrong if you were saying that to him.

Stop all contact with the golden child. These types crave attention and emotional supply so stop giving it to them. If you try to deal with their tactics then you are letting them control you- stop. You cannot control the narcissist but you can control your actions and reactions. Put your own self first, you know the truth here and that is what matters.

@AttilaTheMeerkat thsnk you, it’s just tough. I don’t feel like I can really deal with the guilt trips that come my way if I take a step back

Love to everyone who's struggling. Dealing with abusive families is so hard.

I'm glad some people in the last few days have been able to explain to friends and that friends get it and are supporting them. The abusers are SO good at showtime that we aren’t believed - “your mum? But she's so nice!”

Today I'm putting the finishing touches to our spare room with the arrival of a desk in a cupboard so I can hide the chaos of my working life from any guests!

The spare room is hugely significant as it is - in it's previous total mess state - where I had to bed down on an agonising futon mat on the floor for five weeks in Spring 2020, (probably covid) three weeks in autumn 2020 (flat renovation) and four weeks in Spring 2021 (broken arm) when my psycho bitch of a mother in law aka The Hag stayed here. She had our room, I was in here and my partner had the sofa bed downstairs. Hag saw no problem with this and would move in at the drop of a hat.

I COMPLETELY understand everyone’s anxiety about having these people over the threshold. As a group, we are racking up credit card bills to stick them in hotels or panicking about having them near us, in our lovely homes, where they can gripe, snipe and abuse. It brings it all back horribly.

Tidying the room is space for reflection on how hellish those times were when we had the Hag here.

There is nothing worse than having a psycho under your roof in what Mr Monkey has made into his safe space.

Those times of the very much unwanted guest did, however, mean I understood her for the psycho she is, came to see the VERY dysfunctional family MM came from in lurid technicolor, started a therapy journey to go NC and supported MM to get therapy and put up boundaries and go LC.

The Hag hasn't been heard of since Thursday (five calls to MM at work about her medication - total attention seeking drama) and it’s bliss.

As my sister in law advised, we will NEVER mention this room and, if she ever crosses this threshold again (she won't, she was last here in March 2021 and will NOT be returning) to keep the door to the roof LOCKED.

Hugs to all xxx

@failinghard big hugs to you. I've been there too and yes, post partum it can hit hard.

Keep everything around you soft, gentle - and that includes your thoughts to yourself.

Allow yourself to check things once or twice, that's absolutely as it should be. When you feel the temptation to go back again and again, in reality or in your head, grab a soft thing, breathe deeply and reframe what you're doing. You are trying to keep yourself and baby safe, but it's ok, you've done and you will keep doing that. Hold yourself tight and think gentle comforting thoughts.

♥️♥️♥️

Ps the voice of Zoom made me chuckle, that's got to be the autocorrect of 2022....!

@chatterbug22 it sounds like it would be better for your mental health if you went NC, it's not easy though. Do you think there is anything that can be salvaged, what if she were to agree to family mediation? I think going NC where small children are involved is an exception. I remember being a small child myself and not having any relationships with adults apart from my neglectful and abusive parents. It was like I did not exist, as they had no friends and were estranged from some members of their own family.

@LoveToWearADress thank you again, yes having a day where I am letting myself off checking, cleaning, watching what I eat and generally being neurotic. And yes voice of zoom - very fitting!! So happy to not have to do those anymore.

To the group - I have bought the book 'Adult children of Emotionally Immature parents' - in the first lines of the intro this sums up my childhood experience:

'Although we're accustomed to thinking grown ups as more mature than their children, what if some sensitive children come into the world and within a few years are more emotionally mature than their parents, who have been around for decades?'

--

I had racing thoughts last night in bed. Now I can see both of my parents for being abusers, I am seeing stuff they did in a new light. They fostered children ffs. My mum was a child minder (no doubt a very bad one at that). Why were they so focused on bringing children into our house when they were neglecting their own children?

I do also think my dad had an unhealthy interest in me when I was little tbh, I don't remember any sexual abuse but he was very tactile with me and treated me more like a girlf in some ways, to make my mum jealous I believe. How utterly fucked up.

@failinghard i’m so sorry that you're struggling. If you can get an app like Calm or Headspace or videos on YouTube to help with racing thoughts. Those thoughts are flipping awful. I used to have them about an abusive, violent ex. They are horrible. I think, too, that your the ups and downs of healing are natural. The fostering of children is often about control and “image”. And I see how that must hurt. Take care.

@chatterbug22 your sister would start screaming. These people cannot hear the truth and they cannot hear anything that contradicts their narrative of being “perfect”. Believe me, the guilt of removing yourself from the drama through lessened contact will lessen with time. If you feel, for the sake of “family happiness”, you can't remove yourself do the grey rock. Keep things really simple and don't engage emotionally with the drama. The narcs love a drama. Any attention to them feeds their self worth. And the damage to you is NOT worth it, concentrate on YOU.

At Monkey Towers, the Hag is now thinking about sheltered accommodation, thanks to her one friend who lives there who’s persuading her.

This is the sheltered accommodation I sorted out in spring 2020 for her. Top of the waiting list, understanding social workers and housing people etc

I spent HOURS of my time doing this only to be greeted with screaming “you want to get rid of me” which took up most of the hours and was exhausting. She wanted to live here and she was at the time for five long weeks - fuck that - and have two servants in me and Mr Monkey and with a horrible determination to have us morph into slaves like Slave Son. There would be NO freedom for weekends or holidays. Slave Son hasn’t had a holiday for years as he’s too scared to. The dick.

So, I have decided that I will facilitate this, but behind the scenes. If she knows i’m doing it, she will reject it. I have no problem doing this as it will mean as she gets frailer (she's pretty frail as it is) and Slave Son gets more disabled that the burden of someone so hateful will fall to someone else - us. I'm not having our 50s like this with expectations that we sort out shopping as well (Slave Son does this taking the screaming witch out twice a week) as medical appointments which MM handles.

Over dinner last night, MM said the incident in the restaurant last Saturday ranked up there with some of her worst behaviour. GRIM. Glad I missed it as I was travelling to the venue with SIL and DN. I feel like punching her when I see this. Fucking vile.

The investment of my time will be well worth it. She can feel it’s her decision.

Already found the removal people as they did a job for us yesterday. Lol.

Out. Of. Our. Hair.

Hilariously, we’ve had the trying to get sympathy call.

Phone rings.

MM now doesn’t jump to answer the phone, but rings her back after finishing some emails.

”I’m out of breath”
”have you taken your heart tablets?”
”no, because they make me want to go to the toilet and I’m going shopping with our Slave Son”
”well, you have two choices and there are toilets in Tesco”

MM is now very brisk in his dealings with the drama to shut her up. He doesn’t argue for one thing or the other so she can start a row.

”I’m out of breath” - dying for a confrontation or a pity party
”well, you’ve got your choices and it’s up to you to make the choice. Only you can do that”.

ends call.

The closing down of this sort of crap really works if anyone has this crap which I’m sure many of us do.

Sorry for all the posts, but I’m so proud of MM.

It was exhausting, really hard and upsetting for him to get to this point. Wishing everyone well in their dealings with the Toxics - the journey to healing IS really hard and full of ups and downs. Hugs to all.

Thanks great that MM is finding boundaries and conversations with her so much
easier @MonkeyfromManchester - it definitely gets easier with practice.

Whilst I am pleased my DH is managing this too, we're definitely still not a peace with all this. I've been ruminating about this all day again . It is so incredibly infuriating but deeply sad at the same time. DH's mood plummets when he is contacted by them/has to see them (PIL) still. I slowly started dropping the rope years ago now and very, very rarely mention them. We saw them a few days ago and there is still a dark cloud (even though nothing bad happened). DC are now young adults (late teens) and I cannot believe how much this has affected the time they were growing up, and our marriage.

I remember asking years ago on this thread what the timeline is to 'get over' this. Still not there, despite not only having boundaries but enforcing them and being fairly manipulation proof. Having two sets of draining [euphemism!] parents has definitely taken it's toll on us. I feel like now DC has left school this should be the start of a great new phase for us, but I feel a bit broken. I think we are a bit broken.

DC is has been protected as far as we could manage from all of this (directly but no indirectly sadly) but now the questions as to why we don't see them like his GF see her GP. Tempting as it is to be the truthteller, he does have positive memories of time spent with them and they can be good company (strictly for less than 45 mins at a time) and I definitely don't want to take that from him. I don't want him to think it is all us though...ARGHHHHH!!!

I should add that my side is much easier, although much more complicated, to explain. He also didn't really know them before they died (my mum died when I was a child - I am referring to my dad and step mum) and so they never really was the option of them playing a traditional grandparent role - so much easier to accept.

@caulescens i hear you. It’s exhausting. Putting up the barriers and being on constant alert uses so much energy. Seeing them does create a feeling like a miasma for a few days afterwards.

My therapist said that’s it’s fight or flight mode all the time. Her advice to me was to do things with other people so meeting up with friends, then I’m not always in the maelstrom of the drama and doing nice things with MM. I think these things will be really important to you as your children get older (caveat: I’m not a parent) The hardest and most hurtful thing is accepting that one’s parents are like this and they are never going to be any different. It’s hugely sad and makes us grieve, I think.

Yesterday MM & I went for a walk to an old cotton mill near us that has pop-up cafe and it was lovely. Lush ice cream. We did talk about the Hag. I offered to sort out the sheltered accommodation and Mr Monkey said that Slave Son is sorting it. Sense of relief.

Of course, the Hag phoned to say she’d taken her 💊 - do we honestly need to know this? Do I give a fuck? Is it prize time for attention seeking? Then when we got home she rang again about her medication.

She is getting increasingly frail and slipping into dementia, but still has all her marbles when screaming which has been her default setting all her life.

I think yesterday’s Forty Faces of Fucking Hag was vulnerable old lady. I do feel sorry for her on a purely intellectual level, but then she says things like “I can’t believe my life has turned out like this”, illustrates - yet again - how she believes she’s blameless and has had no agency in how her life has turned out.

what I find in this forum is a group of women who, despite it all, are emotionally literate. Hugs to everyone.

@caulescens l can't believe how badly this grieving for a living kind normal family just lingers and lingers . It's never ending. I realised 4 years ago my family were toxic and went NC with my sister and Brother and their spouses. Since then it's been worse than putting up with them if l am honest l wish l could turn the clock back to before l realised they were utterly fake and didn't love me like l loved them . It's been so hard but l can't unsee it all now .
I'm so sorry you have this too 😭
@MonkeyfromManchester you & your DH are doing brilliantly. It's all so incredibly unbelievable how they can destroy us and how long it takes us to realise 💐

@caulescens yes it's all so hard, even if it's been years of having boundaries in place. Ultimately these were our primary caregivers, they offered us food, shelter and potentially some 'comfort' also, so we are hardwired to want to turn to them even in adulthood, but obviously we know more now about what true parenting really is so we can't go there. It's going against natural urges which I don't think ever go away. As @MonkeyfromManchester says it's just absolutely exhausting keeping the boundaries in place whilst re justifying and re explaining to ourselves mostly but often to others.

@caulescens tbh I would prob be honest with your DC, I have NC with my Dad so will tell my DD something like 'my real daddy wasn't very nice to me when I was little girl, so he's not part of our lives anymore'. Demonstrating that boundaries are healthy and necessary. When she is older maybe more questions will be asked. Ultimately you have to make the call whether you think they have changed at all and are safe near your children. If honesty creates separation between them and your DC then so be it, your parents didn't have to be awful, and I think knowledge is power whatever age.

I am really struggling at the moment. Been in such a bad mood especially in the morning and not been very nice to DH. I have zero energy. I do think it's cause I am processing so much since the wedding, to say it was triggering is an understatement (I think somehow need to let him know what I am going through but I am struggling to find the words). Also more triggering yesterday - I saw some pics of a family get together for my late aunty who died a few months ago. I know from my cousin (her daughter) that she was also an abuser. My cousin ended up awol as a heroin addict for about 15 years - in and out of prison. Yet there they all were with my father (the ogre 👹) and all the rest of that side of the family. Funnily enough I wasn't invited, not that I would have gone. They are all completely emotionally immature of course and everything is a joke to all of them.

@TheNewlmprovedMrsMadEvans that’s exactly it, isn’t it? You feel damned if you do and damned if you don’t! Have the toxics ever reached out to you in a “normal” way ? I know the whole lot of them the world over don’t do normal. I really feel for you. Because you’re empathetic, you feel it and TBH they are probably tootling around thinking they’re normal. It’s unjust.

Fallinghard, I’m so sorry you are feeling low. It sounds like the aftermath of the wedding. I think maybe all you need to say to your DH is that is was difficult and it’s left feeling low. Please don’t feel that you can’t talk about it as the abuse is locked in you and you’re carrying it around on your own. That’s a huge burden.

it sounds like your cousin is still locked in and unable to go from my mother was an abuser and this fucked up my life to getting the hell out of dodge. I believe our prisons are stuffed to the gills with men and women who’ve been abused in some way or other from neglect to sexual abuse. It’s just incredibly sad.

meanwhile, make YOU the priority with lots of self-care. And pat yourself on the back that you see it for what it all is. That can be a lonely place, but you’re not in the toxic web. Take care. Xxxx

@MonkeyfromManchester This bit from your post resonated with me so much:

I do feel sorry for her on a purely intellectual level, but then she says things like “I can’t believe my life has turned out like this”, illustrates - yet again - how she believes she’s blameless and has had no agency in how her life has turned out.

Exactly the same as my narcissistic mother. Every time I try and talk to her about my very complicated childhood - basically trying to keep track in my own mind times/dates of when/where we moved, etc - if she doesn't just completely ignore me, it ends with her playing the victim yet again, blaming everything on my father...who I've been total no contact with for nearly 33 years, so she knows I've got no way of saying otherwise.

Stupid thing is, she honestly acts like she believes myself and my two brothers were deaf, dumb and blind during those years. It all started when I was 9, so of course I remember a lot...most of it was incredibly stressful, and that's not stuff you forget! Something she also doesn't know is that I've read one of her diaries from that time (she had a massive clear out when my father left, I managed to retrieve it from the rubbish) and know from her own contemporary words that she was no victim, but a willing and eager participant. Her family was/is extremely wealthy, they would have (and in fact did on numerous occasions) helped her to get away from my father and set up on her own. My mother however valued her marriage and the money my father made over her children. Threw our childhoods under the bus for it all, basically.

I turned 54 recently and my anger at it all doesn't seem to be dissipating. The only thing I bless is that I don't have children, so unlike my mother I haven't passed this toxic bollocks onwards...and be amused that my mother can't understand why my two brothers haven't given her grandchildren, either.

Are there any advantages to speaking with the GP & having this on my record? Owing to the unexpected email received from my ‘brother’ which is textbook DARVO, and confirms narcissistic triangulation, I’m not in a good place mentally at all.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to attempt anything like I did 18 years ago, I have a lot to be here for, but my mood swings are evident, as is my unwillingness to speak with friends, I’ve lost my zest for life…but I don’t want antidepressants.

Is there anything to be gained by seeing the GP or not? Some days I feel the need to go there with no appointment, just get in the car and scream that I need help, I just need someone to hear me, other days I just want to disappear in the car but can’t because my child needs me.

Thankyou for the advice so far 💐

@Parishcouncil From my own personal experience - and it's complicated as I'm bipolar and also C-PTSD - most GPs just want to stick you straight on antidepressants at the first visit.

I attempted suicide in January 2020...the support that I've received since then has been shocking. I had two visits from CPNs and then obviously Covid happened, so no more CPN visits and my face-to-face appointments with psychiatrists was replaced by 6 monthly telephone appointments...but despite me repeatedly asking to be referred for talking therapies (not CBT which I found useless) that still hasn't happened. Every time I speak to someone I get promised 'oh you will be referred'...that's been going on for 2 and a half years now.

I'm not knocking the NHS, it's saved my life on more than one occasion. I just wish I had access to funds to go private...

I hear you. Complex physical chronic degenerative illnesses/conditions here so totally understand (as opposed to ‘imagine’) what you mean.

I actually emailed a department this morning about a delayed appointment re my DC. My own multiple clinics which used to be quarterly are now annually if they manage to fit me in/remember/don’t reschedule.

Very sorry to hear there is so much unnecessary sadness on these threads. It’s galling. Love to all.

@Parishcouncil I don't know whether there will be any advantages but it may still be worth doing as I can't think of any disadvantages either? I went to the GP once and was given one short CBT session (I think) and then links to work through something myself. I waited a fairly long time for the CBT and found it unhelpful (bordering on patronising I guess, on reflection). Maybe that was appropriate for me though. I've since suspected I had/have mild case of cPTSD. I ended up having private talking therapy which was much more useful, but that cost £45 for 50 minutes and I think I ended up having about 30 sessions in total (over a couple of years). It was worth it to me but nothing ground-breaking.

Thank you @MonkeyfromManchester , @TheNewlmprovedMrsMadEvans and @failinghard 💐.

I think I've had too much time on my hands lately (on holiday at home with no much planned) and been wallowing too much in this. There is an element of laziness in that for me. Keeping busy definitely helps!

DC fully accepts the explanations from my side of the family. It is his dad's side where the problem lies and he is only largely seen their good side. DH told me something his mum did to him when he was 15 only a few days ago (we've been married 20 years!) which is nothing but abusive (emotionally and physically), that I think would shock DC (now 18) to the core. This isn't really what caused all the damage though - it was the covert stuff. Doesn't feel like it is my story to tell, although after 20 years of this I certainly do have stories to tell.