Coping with the psychological impact of being NC with mother

[JOD74]

I’ve been no contact with my mother for about 10 years, because of her emotionally abusive behaviour towards me and then towards my dc. For many years I tried to work things through with her, because I really wanted to have a relationship with her, but I eventually realised it was impossible.

As what appears to be really typical behaviour going by the many threads I’ve read on MN, I have been shunned and vilified by family and now have very limited contact with most of them.

My dsis, who lives abroad, has come to visit the U.K. for a few weeks. I’ve seen the photos on FB of her get togethers with family and it breaks my heart, especially when I see happy photos of other people with their mums and wider family. I feel so down about it, I haven’t been able to stop crying this weekend, and I even have suicidal thoughts at times (although I do not plan on killing myself). I feel like there’s something wrong with me, like I’m damage and a bad person, and tbh it’s humiliating too. How do I move past this? I’ve had therapy in the past but nothing really helps me shift this feeling. People who haven’t been in this situation just don’t get it and I just don’t know what to do.

I’m sorry for all the self pity. I just needed to tell someone how I’m feeling.

So sorry that you are going through this. Have you heard of Stand Alone, the organisation which supports people with family estrangement? Hugs

I feel like there’s something wrong with me

There isn't. Stop with the reverse ego thing. What makes you think you're so different from other people? If this was the other way round (i.e. you felt like there was something amazing about you that was different from other people), you'd be classed as arrogant, egotistical, big headed... In the nicest possible way, there's nothing special about you in the way that things have happened in your relationship with your mother. She was horrible, so you've left her behind. It hurts, and that's just how it is.

You're having the typical, normal, absolutely standard approach of someone who has been emotionally abused. You are, I'm sure, in many ways, special, and unique, and really quite wonderful. But in this respect, you are dead normal, and have nothing to pin on yourself in terms of having anything wrong with you.

It is very difficult and a very lonely situation. You've done the right thing for yourself and your children but it is still hard. It's easy to say be kind to yourself and acknowledge the feelings but a very horrible place to be. I've found Nicole lepera's book, twitter and work very helpful.

I had to do the same thing, it was for my own sanity. Also many many other reasons. I also had to think of my kids. Do I feel awful, absolutely yes some of the time. However I mostly feel relief because I can live my life like an adult and make my own choices.

I’m NC too. I deleted Facebook. I tried blocking but FB would still recommend triggering faces to me. You have to cut contact completely, not watch what they’re doing like a ghost from afar. It can’t matter to you, you have to fill up your life and be too busy being awesome to worry about it.

Realistically they’re following the same patterns they always did and the photos won’t capture that.

Families that stick together and all turn on one person are spineless. Not one of them has the strength to disagree with the rest for fear of being outcast themselves and they are too low level of thinking to understand there are two sides to every story.

it's massively tough and probably best to unfriend them on facebook. ignorance is bliss. i have missed two weddings and 4 neices/nephews due to nc with family. and god knows what else i've missed tbh but i'm far far away and my head isn't constantly a mess.

if it's any consolation i think scott disick feels the same way.

This is so true. They all ganged up on me also. Who cares not me, two sides not just the first tale they heard.

Thank you all so much, you all make some really good points and I feel such a sense of relief reading these replies, although I’m sorry other people have been through this.

I haven’t heard of Stand Alone, but I will definitely look them up. I hadn’t realised their were organisations out their to support people like me.

I’m so sorry. It’s so so hard. I have been NC for about a year but LC for years before that. I didn’t have any other family anyway so I’m not missing out on those relationships. But I do find it really tricky to have dh’s family around. They are lovely people (and I’m fortunate to have a wonderful, supportive Dh and two lovely dc), but no one really appreciates how different my life is from theirs - or sometimes I think they just feel uncomfortable acknowledging it.

For Christmas, we had BIL and his new partner and MIL all here, and there was so much exchanging of gifts, and BIL’s new partner (again whose perfectly lovely) had loads of presents come in the post to our house from her parents and siblings and there were loads of phone calls to speak with distant family on Christmas Day. But there is no one to ring me. I don’t receive any gifts or cards from my family. And no one really acknowledges it or asks if I’m okay or makes an extra fuss about me because I only have a few gifts to open and they have piles of them from parents and stepparents and siblings, etc.

That’s not in anyway to be ungrateful and actually Dh is wonderful at buying me presents. But it’s just very obvious that on special days (Christmas, Easter, birthday, dc’s birthdays) everyone else seems to be surrounded by people who love them and I don’t have anyone sending me anything or ringing me to wish me a special day or say they miss me. I don’t wish to have any relationship with my mum and I can’t really as she is a risk to my dc due to her behaviour, but I do feel an emptiness and a loss that I think you only feel when you’ve been through the same.

It is a very hard and lonely road. It’s a living grief that doesn’t fade with time. There are periods when it amplifies - like now with your sister visiting and each and every milestone through the year. These are especially tough and lonely days when we question everything. This specific intensity will ease a bit until the next event.

Its a painful bumpy road. Not sure where it leads.

It does make me feel lonely and really bad about myself. It definitely is a kind of grief, and a mourning for a family that I desperately want but know I’m never going to have.

What specifically do you feel bad about yourself for? What is it that you feel you've done wrong?

I feel like I’m a bad person, unlovable. As my mother, she is the one person in the world who is supposed to love me unconditionally, and when you don’t have that it does make you feel like there is something wrong with you, and my sister turning her back on me just adds to add. It’s a lonely place to be.
I’m really sorry if it seems like I am wallowing in my own self pity.

Try to block these feelings op - you don’t need your mother to love you if you love yourself enough and have people around who you love you

it’s really sad and hurtful and unfair but you can do life on your own (I don’t want to out myself here) lots of People are going through this

Try to block these feelings op

Bad plan. Feelings are there for a reason. Try to understand your feelings, and cater for them. That doesn't mean doing what they tell you to do, it means gaining greater insight into yourself.

As an example, if you fell out with your partner, you might want to cut up all his clothes and throw them into a fire, because you felt rageful. It wouldn't be a good idea to block these feelings. It also isn't a good idea to damage people's property though, or to be disrespectful, so you might listen to what the feelings are telling you: 'I'm absolutely furious with what he did/said to me, to the extent that I want to damage his stuff and massively inconvenience him.' Once you've deduced that, and put the matches down, you can go and talk to him about how you feel.

No blocking of feelings. It's the equivalent of saying to yourself 'You've got feelings? SHUT UP.' which is very disrespectful.

Totally normal way to feel, especially when this has been a life long pattern. As children, it’s too painful for us to realise that our adult caregivers are in the wrong as we need threat protection in order to survive. So it’s a survival mechanism for us to stay in attachment to our parents (so that they continue to provide for us) and we take all the blame for what’s going on onto ourselves instead of them.

As an adult, your work is to realise that your parents had responsibility towards you to provide for your emotional needs. Try to find your anger with them and start putting that responsibility back where it belongs - onto them, instead of you.

You’re right it’s a grief process - it may include anger, denial, sadness, loneliness etc before you get to acceptance. And it’s not a linear process, you might loop back and forward through lots of feelings and think you’re done and then it will hit you again. It’s all normal. Painful but normal.

Absolutely agree with a pp that it’s a disaster to bury or deny or suppress your feelings. The only way out is through u fortunately. If you don’t attend to your feelings and let them in, they will cause you depression, anxiety, addictions etc.

I think mother and father wounds go extremely deep and if you’ve had therapy before it might just not have been enough. If you can get more (to teach you the skills to recognise and feel your feelings) that would be great.

‘Their protection’ (not threat protection!)

I feel like I’m a bad person, unlovable.

Maybe that’s how you were treated by your family - but it doesn’t make it a fact that you are bad and unlovable.

As my mother, she is the one person in the world who is supposed to love me unconditionally, and when you don’t have that it does make you feel like there is something wrong with you

Your expectations of unconditional love from your mother are appropriate and biologically driven.

It’s a lonely place to be.

Yes it is. If you look at the stages of grief ‘acceptance’ is the final healing destination. It’s very hard and painful for the child inside you accept this unnatural outcome - we are programmed for hope.

I’m really sorry if it seems like I am wallowing in my own self pity.

Don’t apologise. It’s a huge, fundamental, basic need for anyone that is unresolved and leaves you with an emotional deficit. Self compassion for the pain you are suffering is a starting point.

This may be a transient ‘especially difficult’ time which may revert back to the ‘standard difficult’ times you endure once the visit from your sister is over.

I agree with what you've said, @Ooolaaaala , and don't mean to pick holes. I just wanted to offer another viewpoint on this

It’s very hard and painful for the child inside you accept this unnatural outcome - we are programmed for hope

When we become adults, the child inside us doesn't stop needing to be parented. We are simply deemed old enough to parent that child ourselves. We all still have a little tiny 'us' inside, and we have to take care of them, otherwise we end up doing things like children, i.e. trying to put up with abusive relationships when we could, as adults, leave, or having temper tantrums, or sulking. We all know the feeling when our inner child gets upset, and we can't keep them quiet. OP's inner child doesn't have to accept that she will never have a loving mother. OP can mother her herself. There is no need to let go of hope, there is no need to accept an unnatural outcome. OP can step in now, as all adults do, and mother herself, and that is the natural outcome. Unless we die young, we all have to be our own mother eventually, and that's how it's meant to be.

I'm making this point because it saved my mental health, my ability to find a healthy relationship, it enabled me to leave my father behind after my mum died, it enabled me to drop unhealthy friendships and jobs, and move forward into a life that's good for me.

Our inner child can be nurtured at any time, and never needs to hope; loving care can always be present for him/her, and that's all s/he needs.

It’s both IMO - it’s a painful reality to have never had the experience of a parent who loves you unconditionally and it’s possible to learn to parent/look after yourself as an adult. Nothing is going to bring back the childhood years of having to be too independent or lacking the love you should have had etc.

For me, the lacking childhood years no longer mean anything. They don't need to be brought back, and my independence has taught me good lessons that I put to good use. Essentially, my point is that full recovery is perfectly possible; there's nothing unusual or special about me, and I did it, so I think that probably most people can. There's a lot of self limiting lessons out there, like the comment above, but that doesn't mean that they are the only way to go forward. It's your life. Believe those who say that you will always lament what you didn't have, or believe those who say you can come out just as strong and happy as you would have been without the poor childhood; it's up to you, OP.

I understand what you’re saying Watchkeys, but I just think it’s helpful to be cognisant of the stage the OP is at too and not diminish the pain they’re expressing alongside giving them hope. Both are true and grief is only limiting if you don’t know how to acknowledge it and move through it. I didn’t say the OP will always lament - that’s a black and white interpretation you’ve added for yourself.

I agree with all of this 100% - just not sure that the OP has yet identified the part of her that is a deeply hurting inner child and that the yearning and relentless hope that the original mother will meet this need is futile…..and of course that part of us can be reparented by our adult self through the process of therapy.

I just think the OP needs validation on where she is right now and to be aware of the depth abs shape of that pain, loss and deficit to be able sit with the discomfort, attend to it, relate to it etc to feel it deeply without fear or judgment before being able to tackle what needs doing.

Do you want to get in touch with you Mum and wider family? From your post it seems that you have a good relationship with your sister.

and of course that part of us can be reparented by our adult self through the process of therapy

... again, there are other ways. It can be done by self education and increasing self awareness. Therapy isn't the best way forward for everybody.