Sometimes it still gets to me , nobody in family or family friends like me or have any contact

[Nutmegcinnamon]

Which is fine - as I want to be NC due to severe abuse as a child and teen and a narcissistic family set up. It’s the constant sabotaging to this day of things though. To make sure I have no or as little support network as possible and to make my life harder.

Im lonely but it’s not that I want them , im stressed because NC isn’t really NC when they are still doing things to make my life harder.

I think I need to arrange some therapy as i find it so hard to deal with still. I feel very damaged by it all. I’ve tried hard to make my own support network and have friends but I have anxiety that will all be sabotaged too and it’s a weight on my shoulders.

What do others do in these situations. I want to just not care but it does hurt and it also causes me inconvenience

I think it’s just triggered off as I saw someone I knew last week in a shop and her reaction to me was horrendous. Turned out that members of my family had told her a load of horrible lies (which she believed as they are the majority 🤦‍♀️) and it just really hurt

Can you start fresh somewhere else? Move house, new job if needed? Block them online anf change your number? Are you roots where you are too deep? It sounds awful?

Just that embarrassment of saying ‘hi! How are you !’ And getting had a go at in public I felt so shocked

It would be quite difficult and I feel they would still somehow find me and sabotage things again. I think I need to find a way to get a thicker skin but what’s getting to me is that they can’t just leave it the amount of things I have to sort out that they’ve engineered to make life hard is really getting to me

I agree starting afresh would be good.

I’m not ruling it out, I think I’m going to try some therapy , maybe change jobs and if that doesn’t work it’s something I may need to consider

Move away, start again. You’re giving these people way too much power. They can’t act at a distance.

It’s as if they can’t be nice to me yet can’t function without me in their lives somehow as if I’m not there to be the focus of this would they turn on each other ? I can’t work out why they can’t leave me alone if they dislike me so much - I don’t do anything to them directly or indirectly but it seems that merely existing is a reason for them to target me and I’m tired of it really really tired of it and last week I tried to tell myself ‘it’s ok people will believe the majority’ but it stung and I felt humiliated

I know that makes sense but I’m not close to all of them location wise so I feel would I uproot the whole family and it carries on then I’ve lost my lovely house I worked hard for. I need to somehow not care and just accept that every so often I’ll have issues with things after malicious reports etc but it’s really getting to me

I think I need therapy and to be stronger as I worry that wherever I am their need to do this will just follow. I actually can’t understand why they carry on , do they need me as their target ? I don’t understand Why they haven’t got better things to do with their time ? I’m just so confused

I understand exactly how you feel. This is exactly my life. Estranged narcissistic family who sabotage and destroy my life still. When people say they have gone NC and that’s the end to it, I envy them. I feel like I’m never going to escape my family until I’m dead.
We are planning on moving away. I’m not convinced in the modern world it will change anything, but at least it reduces my chances of having to run into them. It’s suffocating though and I hate the fact I have to go to that extreme. Family’s like ours ‘win’ no matter what we do to protect ourselves. It’s impossible not to care when your reputation is being unjustly destroyed by the people who are meant to care the most about you though.

I’m so sorry you’re living with this.
https://outofthefog.website/
you might find this website useful.
Talking therapy of some kind also but writing/ journaling every day useful too or instead.
Another vote for moving away here but if you can’t every ounce of strength to grey rock 💐

@Nutmegcinnamon how are they contacting you? Might be worth keeping a log of any harassment, who by etc. Threaten them with the police.

I'm guessing you've done better than your family?

It’s ok that it hurts and it’s ok that it upsets you. That’s a normal response You can accept that it hurts. And not let it change anything that you were going to do that day.

Start fresh emotionally @Nutmegcinnamon.

I have made a great life for myself and have loads of friends and I’ve eeked out family from the next generation down. I have learned so much about human psychology and the reality of what people are truly like from the experience and I have a whole different and far better approach in the world now. Honestly I am nearly grateful for the experience at this stage. My parents are elderly now and the manipulation tactics that they engaged in and how susceptible I was to those tactics would have made this phase of life incredibly difficult for me.

Id move and not tell them where. Worked well for us. A little different as move was instigated by one of my parents and my sibling moved too, so 3 of us. Abuse was from other parent and family on both sides.
eta: just seen you said you're not near all of them, how far away if you're still having encounters with them/their behaviour?

They are a 10 min drive away (older brother), 15 min drive (older sister) , 30 min drive (younger sister) , 45 min drive (mother) 1 hour drive (aunt) and 3 hr drive (also older brother) so really spread out

They get something out of it. All the drama and attention feeds them. Like Narcissistic supply which is the constant supply of attention and admiration needed by narcissists. To get that tbey need scapegoat/s and drama, then others can admire how well they're dealing with all the problems and fights and slights they've created/imagined. They draw people in, flying monkeys, who feed into and reinforce all the issues and admire the person at the centre of it all.

That makes it harder, any cities nearby you can fade into the background in? Part of the issue is that having been bought up in this its going to effect you more, they know where and how to get at you. Working on grey rocking and not responding emotionally can help but without the physicsl distance its very very hard to create and hold strong boundaries against peope like this. That's not your fault, its not because you aren't strong enough, ots because of who they are and the harm they've done.

It’s hard as it was always the less I react the more they try I think they need that feedback somehow . I remember as a child learning that if I cried early on in an emotional attack it was over quicker, it’s like the same applies now . I think the catalyst is money and power. My mother likes the power and has a large estate so siblings all want to stay on her good side

Honestly I think it is deeper than that. In my case my parents created an emotional void and my siblings literally want the attention my parents starved us of to fill it. There is money and status and “supply” but it is really about filling in that lack of attention hole. I felt that hole too until I started filling it in my own life for myself.

Yes I do feel that my siblings saw everything and knew how easily they could have been targeted so placed themselves to be the helpers to my mother and the indulge her and that became a source of ‘love’ for them as she wasn’t typically loving in any way ? Whereas I just knew or maybe I didn’t want to compete with them at all? I’m so confused still

She would often do things like only buy a pack of 4 treats and say to each of them first would they like one , then there wasn’t one for me so she would ask them all did they want to give up one for me and they’d say no and it was like she redirected that unkind choice to have been made by one of my siblings when she had engineered it and already decided . I used to get annoyed at them when I was young then I used to just remember looking at her and thinking as she said ‘sorry love ! Not enough for you as. You saw I did try but they won’t share with you !’ That actually she knew damn well what she was doing

@Nutmegcinnamon that's so sad. Evil witch 🤬

TW for CSA. I never had time, clothes, attention from my mother but the most lasting memory I have was my first day of Secondary school. I was talking excitedly about my day and she shut me down because she said it was more important to hear about my brother who was in some random year of secondary than mine.

We used to have political “debates” that she instigated for her amusement. She was grandiose and superior and saw this as enlightened family chats but not she would shut my sister and me down if we spoke up with an opinion. My brothers were bullies and very narcissistic and one of them sexually abused my sister and me. My parents attitudes towards women and girls were instrumental in the bullying.

You can go on and on into the dynamics but I can easily see now that we were dealing with incredibly psychologically damaged and emotionally immature people who were gifted with children to meet their supply needs.

Jimmy Carr put it so well about his narcissistic father. They have the disease and the family have the symptoms. It is so sad but like any other injustice you have to deal with it as it is not how you want it to be. If you are still in the line of fire for your family I would do everything to get out of that. I have literally no clue what is happening in my family and I want to keep it that way forever. As I said my parents live 300metres away but we are completely disconnected.