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 would not meet them this evening particularly after a day of work. I also state this because I do not at all feel such a meeting will go at all well. In your family your mother is the head narcissist, your dad her willing enabler (women like your mother cannot do relationships at all and need a willing enabler to help them) and your sister the clone of your mother. You owe these people nothing let alone a relationship. Besides which it is not possible to have a relationship with a narcissist.

@chatterbug22 you could delay that meeting, give yourself a bit of space to think. I think a week day after work might mean you're a bit depleted and you're prob mentally exhausted from all this turbulence already. If you do decide to have a meeting with them then definitely take your DH.

Remember you have to comply with their every demand. You would benefit from putting yourself first and giving yourself more time.

Hugs x

@winningeasy that is true, they don’t want it ‘hanging over’ them apparently as it’s the elephant in the room. I said I didn’t see why they had to be so heavily involved and they said it’s because the whole family comes as a package. Have tried to make me feed bad by saying ‘don’t you want nice times as a family too’ etc… it’s all I wanted from the start.

@AttilaTheMeerkat I don’t see it much in my mum when she’s alone tbh she is very very selfless and a very kind person, thinks about others before herself and this is often her undoing. However, simultaneously never apologises when she ought to and doesn’t seem to respond to conflict very healthily and will push my boundaries to the absolute max. I do understand what you’re saying though and my sister hasn’t become the way she is out of nowhere!

you are all so very wise, I hope I am this wise at some point!

@AttilaTheMeerkat It’s actually starting therapy that made me go “this is not right”. It wasn’t the exact reason I started so I’m going to seek a more specialist therapist.

My Dad passed 14 years ago now.

Ive left her for coming up 2 months now with no contact.

As seems to be the pattern on this thread I have a sibling who is the “golden child”.

sigh. First abroad holiday in five years is on Friday - and now mother is in hospital with heart issues
Don't actually know what's happening as she's not on a ward yet, after being admitted to A&E Sunday evening
I have issues with her going back to my teens - which I'm too knackered to go into now - but suffice to say I think of her very much as the woman who was never there for me
it's alright that I'm still planning on going on holiday on Friday, isn't it?
I'll be on the other side of the atlantic from her

Whoever you are, wherever you are @AttilaTheMeerkat I thank you with all my heart. What an amazing job you do and have been doing for years on this thread.
A huge thank you, and to all the posters on here as well, for sharing and creating what is for many of us, the first safe place we've ever known.

@ClosedAuraOpenMind if it wasn't alright you wouldn't even be asking?

ClosedAuraOpenMind

I would still go on holiday, harsh as that may sound to some. She is in the best place for any and all ongoing medical issues.

roestbruin

Thank you so very much for your kind comments😀.

A poster named Pages (a lovely woman) I think actually created the original Stately Homes thread with Ally90 amongst others contributing valuable advice. I’ve been on this since the early days of this long running series of threads.

Other posters too have also set up the new thread for people to contribute and or read on when the previous one is full. It is they too who have kept this going. There is also a Stately Homes annexe section on MN and if anyone wants details of that I would be happy to oblige. I will continue to do my utmost to ensure this long running thread remains the safe space it should be for anyone who needs it, be it to post or to read.

Yes @AttilaTheMeerkat ! How and when did Stately Homes start?

thank you. I think I just needed a little bit of validation. DH doesn't really get it - he's close to his parents - so he's been saying he doesn't want me to regret anything
Having said that we have no idea how i'll she is given she's been in A&E for a day. but yes I totally get that it's the best place for her. At the moment my feeling in she has been in more serious medical scrapes than this one
And she likes being in hospital....she gets to make us all dance around her....

should say no idea how ill she is 🤦‍♀️

Thought I would say “Hi” and join this thread.

I just need hand holding at the moment regarding what I am going through with my mum.

I am well versed on Toxic Parenting - read numerous books, talked to people, even had some counselling sessions recently.

The relationship with my mum have always been strained and difficult. She is a picture perfect narcissist and gaslighter. So we had on and off relationship and even one year of NC.

But as she has been approaching her mid 80-s I kind of started planning for helping her in her old age and even considering moving her in with us (I leave abroad, had to put some long distance between us due to the above) - mad, I know!

She came to stay with us for a couple of months and we waited on her hand and foot. She was also on reasonably good behaviour. I then accompanied her home to help her with some stuff around the house.
Since arriving at hers she had a complete personality change - started gaslighting me and being rude and everything. I was so taken aback, I reacted, despite promising myself to stay calm and avoiding rows as all costs. I was just not expecting it.

I am going home in 2 days and counting hours!

But I am now reconsidering the extent of my help to her. I realised that she is not going to change and I cannot stay in this stressed state for longer. She doesn’t need a daughter but a helper and frankly, she does not deserve me.

The trouble is, in my culture (I am Eastern European) it is tabu not to care after your mum, I mean personally. And when I try to explain to my friends what I have been going through all these years, they just say - “she is just being emotional, she is elderly, she will cool down, just ignore her”. But they just do not know what it is like - the constant gaslighting and stonewalling. I cannot sleep and have headaches all the time I am around her.

I am considering NC or at least LC but will I be able to face the guilt?

Argh! I just cannot believe I am going though all this again!

neverhadto

I would urge you not to wait another two days; leave today or at the very later tomorrow. If you can pack a bag and check into a hotel today do so, at the very least be out of her house as much as possible. Let her stew in her own juice.

Beware too of a narcissist who becomes "nice" all of a sudden because that scenario often happens when they want something of or from you. She set you up good and proper here into doing something nasty to you.

Ask yourself why you feel guilty. She does not feel any guilt or remorse for how she has treated you and in turn your own family. You've had the special training because you've been conditioned and or otherwise trained by her from an early age to put her first with your own self dead last. Hence you having her stay with you for a couple of months waiting on her hand and foot.

Many people, regardless of where in the world/what culture they are from, do not readily understand disordered of thinking and toxic people like your mother because this is way outside their own experience. Their own parents are emotionally healthy and so not toxic.

Any cultural mores of caring for the elderly do not and should not come into play when the parent remains abusive towards their now adult child. Abuse as well cuts across all cultures, classes and creeds. Your mother has been abusive towards you your whole life and she has not changed a bit since your childhood; if anything too she's got worse as she has aged because any and all authority figures and people she was really afraid of, have died off.

You already have physical distance in that you live abroad, now you need to put in more mental distance. She will destroy you given the opportunity. Keep up with the counselling you're having now and look at Dr Ramani on Youtube.
I would also suggest you read the Out of the FOG website.

neverhaveto, so sorry to hear you're going through this. It's so hard with aging relatives. But, as AttillaTheMeercat said, it will destroy you if you stay in this dynamic. Please remove yourself from the situation and take care of yourself.

Re the cultural obligation, is it also a gendered obligation? Would a man be expected to wait on his mother hand and foot?

I continue to learn so much for this wonderful community.

In my own toxic family saga, what is really irking me at the moment, after their devastating, traumatizing visit a few weeks ago, is the jokey, chummy messages via social media, like I have to pretend everything is happy and lovely so they can move on and not feel guilty or awkward about what happened. I am DONE with this. I'm not dancing to their tune anymore.

DH, who comes from a normal family, suggested that being breezy and superficial might be a way for me to find my inner peace and move on, except it doesn't. Living a lie, the whole hypocrisy of it, is really eating at me. I might owe my aging mother something but I owe my brother absolutely nothing.

Hugs to all you brave women on the path to freedom.

@AttilaTheMeerkat Ah ok, yes, I remembered you as a 'senior poster', a wise voice!
How long has this thread been going for? About 10 years? Imagine the number of people it has helped in this time. I've never posted before but it's been life-sustaining for me, reading on and off for many years.

It's been hard to accept that things were never going to improve, ever, that there was never going to be that moment of grace - I could understand this intellectually but it took me so long to integrate.
I can just about get over my pathetic childhood, but one thing I've found is that the abuse escalates to meet you where it hurts the most at every stage of your life!
^^Having them in your life is 'like bleeding next to a shark' (borrowed from an other thread).

After so many years lurking and reading I've had a real breakthrough with this latest thread; so many textbook fuckups, word for word examples of things said, same situations experienced... they really are interchangeable, grotesque caricatures aren't they?

Not 10 years, more like 15 now. And it's still open to all who need it.

Some may wonder why the thread has this heading. It's because a very early poster wrote of her parents that they could not have been abusive towards her because they had taken her to stately homes in her childhood.

15 years! I went to see a therapist about 12/13 years ago, that was depressing! No understanding whatsoever, never been closer to topping myself, crawled back under my rock instead.

@AttilaTheMeerkat My narcissistic mother has said many times ( usually whenever it is pointed out to her that our childhood was shit) 'but you got to see so many countries!' (mainly 3rd world and horrible). She honestly thinks that having to give up family, friends, schools, pets etc so many times was a good thing...because you know, 'travel'.

I've come to the conclusion that most narcissists are brain dead.

Thank you @AttilaTheMeerkat and @briarhill ! Being heard is wonderful!

You are right of course. No option of leaving sooner but I am counting days! Will try my hardest to severe all ties!

Thank you!

Ask yourself why you feel guilty. She does not feel any guilt or remorse for how she has treated you and in turn your own family.

I know it’s obvious, but this really jumped out at me. Seeing things this way really does make me personally question why I allow my mother to make me feel so guilty.

Just talked to a dear older friend, as needed respite from the awful day I just had. Also had my blood pressure up, and normally it is low. That made me realise that it also affects my health.

Anyway, my friend had spoken to her sister, who is a psychiatrist. She also said that there is no cure and the only thing to do is to limit or cut all contact.

So that's what I am going to do.

Feel completely exhausted by the whole week I spent with her. I came here happy, confident, feeling good about myself and in just one week she managed to reduce me to a quivering wreck! That in itself has been eye opening!

So fascinating, this thread is amazing and I keep coming back to read your posts. A PP said it well, the playbook is the same. In my case, it's my ex h and father of my children. We are all learning how to break free but I feel so much guilt about saddling them with a narc parent.

I've learnt that my attachment issues led me to get involved with him, and my autistic desire for rules, cos we all know narcs love control and use 'rules' to achieve it. Although they kept getting changed to suit his needs and that was what nearly destroyed me in the end.

Sorry for not engaging with everyone's posts, they come thick and fast but thanks for being here and sharing.

Hope everyone is hanging in there.

I am a little bit proud of myself. I have managed to disinvite my mother for an impending gathering but did so in a kind (ish) way. Without blowing stuff up or causing any arguments. I am now very much looking forward to the family get together (will be mostly DH's family and lots of our friends). I am no longer doing what I think I should do but doing what I want to do. It's a big shift.

I am currently am going through fairly intensive therapy. It's too soon to see my mother, I swing between her being an out and out narc and having not much sympathy, to her having some kind of ASD, pretty badly parented herself (her mum was 💯 narc) and getting into an unfortunate relationship with a narc man (my father), and having empathy for her situation. But she didn't protect us from a very dysfunctional dynamic and the narc wrath of my father. Anyway all stuff I am trying to work out.

For Xmas, instead of staying with them (I actually like my step dad a lot and he has had a positive influence on my mum as well as caring for her), I will invite them to a lunch with some of DH's family. Neutral territory.

@neverhaveto , this sounds so haunting familiar!

Feel completely exhausted by the whole week I spent with her. I came here happy, confident, feeling good about myself and in just one week she managed to reduce me to a quivering wreck! That in itself has been eye opening!

Just when we think it's over or all in the past . . .