February 2025 Well we took you to Stately Homes

[AttilaTheMeerkat]

A new thread indeed!.

@TrainTicket I feel it's some sort of inflammation in addition to tension. The shoulders/back are definitely tension but my legs and feet get considerably more painful. It's like a stabbing pain.

Hi everyone. Haven't been around here for a while. Thought I'd pop in and say hello.

I'm feeling...ok, at the moment. Some health issues I've been working through, and now we're in the middle of IVF, and I've taken myself out of work for almost a year now to deal with it all. Life is quieter than ever, and I've found myself able to process, feel through and heal a lot from all of the family stuff.

I've been reading a book called When the Body Says No by Gabor Mate. What really hit me was how literally every person with a chronic illness that he describes in the book has come from a family like mine. Repressed emotions, no parental support, a lot of isolation, parentified and neglected childhoods. He talks about how ALS is described by some medics as the "nice" disease, since sufferers have often been observed as incredibly "pleasant" in personality i.e agreeable because they have repressed all of their healthy anger through childhood emotional neglect / abuse. He quotes another woman who developed MS while dealing with cancer and as she talks about her parents, she says of her mother, "there's nothing there. No relationship, no love, nothing". That hit home, because yeah, same. My mother's too busy doting on her GC to pay attention to me, or the state of our non-existent relationship.

The book is allowing me to see and understand again how serious, scary, dark and difficult these types of childhoods are. How real and life-threatening my trauma is, despite a lifetime of being told I was the "healthy", "easy" one "that we don't need to worry about." Humans need connection to stay alive. We need our parents, our life depends on their love and protection as children. Growing up without that sets you at a serious disadvantage that may end up taking your health, too.

I hope everyone here has some safe, loving and kind people in their lives. There are definitely people out there that can love you, all of you, in the way your family never could. That's become very clear to me in this past year. The people caring for me during this vulnerable time are my husband, my best friend, a few others from my friendship circle. My mother is law is the one texting and calling like my "mother" should. I opened up about my fertility journey recently with some close friends and watched them cry for me in empathy: it was so beautiful and moving. YOUR people are out there. They are not in the family unit you grew up in that was never meant for you.

It is both strange and enlightening when someone responds to your story in a validating way. We don’t allow ourselves or even acknowledge just how huge the trauma is that we have. Our bodies do and our illnesses remind us but our minds almost dismiss this. We are so used to seeing our stories from the eyes of those who caused the trauma that it’s almost very nearly lost, like at the tip of your tongue.

Do many people on here have counselling to help them unpick the mess of their childhoods?

I have only really started to becoming aware of my childhood over the last 3-4 days and it’s been suggested to me (because of how upset I’ve been) that speaking to a counsellor might help. I kind of feel like it would be a waste of the counsellor’s time though so I don’t know what to do.

@MotherIssues2025 working with a therapist who understands childhood trauma can be extremely beneficial. A good starting point may be to see why you think you might waste the counsellors time 😉

I've had therapy. It was helpful to understand the situation was abusive. Before that it was more that I was struggling with these relationships but had no idea why, since I usually get on with people just fine. Now I know why! So can decide to behave accordingly.

It's necessary to be myself, if that means staying away from certain people to achieve it, so be it. It was subtle in that regard. Nobody ever said to me you can't do XYZ. It was always people who do XYZ are stupid. I really hope you'll do ABC for your own sake. Have you done ABC yet? What about now? And now? I can't stand XYZ it's so pointless. And on and on and on. I wasn't even allowed to have opinions about anything that differed from theirs. So I had therapy, started living my own life...and it all blew up. So I had more therapy, discovered it isn't me, it's them and ultimately went NC.

You won't be wasting a counsellor's time. For a start you'll either be paying for that time or you'll be referred on the NHS and they don't dish out referrals for things which they think are a waste of time.

I stopped therapy not because there isn't more work to do but because I'm at a point I can move forward with my life, as myself and living the life I choose, without that being derailed by their words or actions. So things are not completely ok but "enough". If you're in turmoil, that's not enough, you deserve better. You deserve a life.

@wonderingwonderingwondering what I don't understand is why do my abusers have no chronic illnesses. At one point they were victims and then became abusers. How come none of them ever had to face the choice to stop living or see a therapist as a last resort to try and make life livable. That's literally the choice I made in my early 20s when I went for my first psychiatrist appointment. How come they got through 70+ years of life when I wanted to off myself at 13 and it never stopped for another 25 years and I kept seeing all sorts of therapists for all sorts of therapy approaches. I'm just angry. I agree with Gabor.

The unfairness gets to me also. I have to decide whether I can shower and wash my hair in the same day or change the bed or hoover because of my C.F.S. My ex who was abused as a child then abused me is fine and can work full time with no issues at all. I work one small shift a week and it takes me a week to get over it. The unfairness is unreal!

I understand the feeling of injustice. I sit with a lot of that too. My instinct was maybe they keep on living through the force of spite alone, if my mother is anything to go by 🙂

I think as scapegoats / abandoned / invisible children we internalise the abuse, sit and poison ourselves with repressed anger and shame and develop no healthy sense of self to help us to build healthy lives for ourselves. Whereas narc parents and abusers externalise everything - it's all someone else's fault, they're the victim of others' weaknesses and incompetences, they're impervious to self reflection and therefore don't tend to torture themselves or poison themselves with the shame - it's all thrown onto external people and things. That's certainly my experience of my toxic family members. To be in their presence is to listen to hours upon hours of nasty gossip and judgement about others, or bemoaning "immigrants" or scapegoat family relatives that haven't lived up to some dumb expectation they have in their head. They make their shame someone else's problem, maybe that's what keeps disease at bay.

Would you prefer to be them though? My sister doesn't have a single real friendship that she hasn't destroyed, everyone gets pushed away through either scapegoating or her own crappy behaviour. My mother is in her 70s and addicted to facebook and gossiping, with three kids that have mental health issues, one that doesn't talk to her and another that's so bad she's in the care of the state. She also can't enjoy a single thing. I've noticed that since I've started my own therapy. She sits in a cloud of negativity and problems, she hates herself too much to let loose and do things for the fun of them, there are no hobbies, no laughter, no adventures.

I don't know. It's unfair. But somehow that unfairness makes me feel more driven to build my own life now, a better one than the cards I've been dealt through the family I was born into. There's been enough unfairness, enough suffering. The future doesn't have to be full of it either. I've dealt with health issues too, a lot that have caused the fertility struggles I am having now as an adult. It's been hard lately. But I also feel stronger than ever, too. I've worked through a lot of the mental stuff, I've dealt with the repressed feelings, I've cried in therapy for years now. I've found the right medications, the right nutrition, I've taken time out of my busy life to recover. I know not everyone can do that, but we all deserve peace and health now. Even with whatever crappy genetics or health issues we've picked up along the way.

I hear you all on the chronic illness and unfairness front. It’s infuriating . I feel like an old lady, chronic pain , chronic fatigue , I can’t work, somedays I can’t move .
its really not fair

@Twatalert I've got endometriosis, but I also have what I'd call hair trigger anxiety which makes the pelvic pain worse. I've had surgeries for the endo but it's proved to be somewhat resistant to treatment, and I've also got a lot of scarring and pain from all the operations. I grind my teeth at night to the point of having damaged and loose teeth. It's a combination of all the things, really.

FWIW I feel like Gabor Mate talks a lot of sense too.

@wonderingwonderingwondering you are right of course. I often just think that they don't know something is wrong so how do they even suffer nearly as much if they don't long for anything to be different.

I've had some therapy (actually for health related anxiety primarily, but we spent a lot of time talking about and unpicking childhood things). I found it helpful to have someone to talk to who wasn't my DH, because it's hard for him to listen to some of the things that happened to me. We did some EMDR to try and process some of the stuck feelings. I learned some helpful relaxation techniques and better ways to manage the anxiety.

But I came to the end of it more certain than I'd ever been that it isn't possible for me to have regular contact with my mother, and that there will never be any sort of healthy dynamic between us. At the same time, the therapist helped me to see that maybe my mother isn't my load to carry any more.

Did you always know something was wrong? I didn't. I thought I was the problem for struggling emotionally and mentally in spite of my "privileged childhood". I'd say my first therapist had a field day with that one when I had my first counselling session at 31.

Thinking I had this fine childhood and all my problems were because I was BAD (my mother's voice there) came at the cost of having any self esteem, or real relationships, or health diagnoses that would allow me to get better, or any joy whatsoever, or any positive beliefs about myself or the world.

I can't reverse the impact of it all on my health except to live a healthier life now, but healing has given me a lot of advantages that my family will never have, too. A healthy relationship for one. Emotional freedom and the ability to not be defined by others. The ability to think for myself. Healthy self beliefs.

Listen, I'm not there yet. I'll have to work on this stuff forever. And there in a deep unfairness that I can't control and I will have to sit with forever - the support and acceptance that the golden child gets, the lack of accountability, the years of my life wasted, boy can I tell you how triggering my struggle to conceive is now. But I'd still choose to be myself and to be on this journey and to have this freedom that I have, every time.

A lot of narcissists had abusive childhoods themselves so you’d think this would make them sick. Or perhaps they are sick as narcissism is like some nasty parasite. They may be able to work etc but they destroy everything that is good, that’s a sickness. Being a golden child and striving to be better then everyone is a sickness also as they miss all the good simple joy in life and repel good people like a magnet.

@wonderingwonderingwondering After therapy I remember moments now of my childhood when I knew something was wrong. Once when I was a young child, primary school age, and then again as a young teenager. Then in my mid 20s I wanted to go NC but gaslit myself another 15 years or so. I don't think I neccessarily knew I was being abused, but I knew something was off, that I was being treated differently and deep down I knew my mother didn't like me and all this made me unwell. As a teen I was convinced I must be adopted because why else would they treat me like that. I already wanted to see a therapist as a teen but could not without my parents knowing.

But these were moments. It obviously took everything I had to supress as much as possible. Now after therapy, knowing what I know, I realise I knew all along. It was just too painful to acknowledge it for longer than a second once in a while.

I suppose it’s because on the outside I am “normal”. I have a good career, I’m self-employed, I live in a nice house with my wonderful husband and children that I utterly adore so I worry that I don’t fit the profile of a person in turmoil. I feel like I would be judged as complaining about something trivial when other people have it so much worth. But at the same time I feel like a huge part of me is a pretence but I have never fully understood why.

I ordered a book yesterday called “You’re not crazy - it’s your mother” which arrived today and I haven’t been able to put down. It’s all about daughters growing up with narcissistic mothers and it’s like reading about my childhood, my adulthood, and the behaviours my mum has always displayed to me over the years.

My brain just feels so confused.

@MotherIssues2025 you probably are what they call high functioning. That doesn't negate your experience and a therapist won't think you are wasting their time but will accept you and explore your concerns with you together. I don't think the issue is with too many people going to therapy for a not good enough reason. No reason isn't reason enough and if anything more people could benefit from access to therapy.

A therapist would have a good starting point with you thinking you might waste their time and don't seem to fit the picture of people going to therapy. That's quite a dismissive view of yourself and you don't deserve that. You deserve someone listening and working with you if you want that and believing that you are deserving.

Yes I did, in paralell with doing a lot of internet research and reading. It was helpful just being able to talk for an hour a week to someone not involved.

I hear you on the chronic illness and pain topic. I have an autoimmune disease which I 100% attribute to my traumatic childhood. Like some of you, I’ve often wondered why is it that the narcissists live forever and don’t seem to be battling with ill health. I think it’s because they can’t face the truth, they can’t handle or understand that at one point they too were victims of their upbringings but chose to not question it. Because they have chosen to not question their reality they get to live without physical pain (I’m only going on my own immediate family who I’m NC with), us abused children have chosen to face the gauntlet, look down the barrel of the gun so to speak, and that comes at a price too. So, while we have physical illnesses and pain (I have a tight chest/rib pain since I begun my journey 5 years ago) we do have a freedom they don’t have, a sort of spiritual freedom. I have engaged in therapy of the last 5 years and it’s been lifesaving, I needed to learn about boundaries and self respect which I was clueless about before. My family of origin are a miserable, joyless, soulless group who bring nothing but negativity and toxicity wherever they go and I’ve always known this, ever since I was a child, I’m just glad I got to break free from them.

Im beginning to get a little irritated by my partner and his..how do I put it…wetness. I’m not sure if it’s just because I’m getting harder in my thinking. I can’t get my head around why he is so nice to his family. I didn’t have a narc family so it’s not something I’ve dealt with in family sense. He doesn’t seem to have any fear etc. He never questions anything. Why they never visit him or his daughter. Why they never come into our world. Why he always goes to them. He doesn’t ever expect to be made centre of attention or spoilt by them ever. He will visit them without question every time on their birthday but it won’t be reciprocated. When I ask him he has zero opinion just a shrug and a blank face or a is what it’s always been. Where is his fire and his ego? He deserves to be important sometimes as he’s a great person.

Hello all,
I have read these threads on and off for years but never felt like I could join, the last few months I have been having therapy initially for things I’d consider unrelated but it has made me start to realise that a lot of things in my childhood where not ok.
Its currently very hard to come to terms with the fact that perhaps I was never the problem, the people around me where.
I am still in contact with my parents I moved far away at 18 for university and never returned but we speak on WhatsApp a few times a week, phone call once a month or so and see each other once/twice a year. Oddly enough we get on really well which makes the childhood trauma harder to wrap my head around. My therapist has suggested that it’s likely they themselves had issues and where in situations they struggled with and consequently behaved poorly and I was collateral damage, rather than them being out and out bad people.
anyway sorry for the rambling introduction I’m hoping talking to others may help me figure it all out and move away from the unhealthy behaviours and thoughts I have as a consequence of it all.
The stately homes things really does ring true, one of the things I first said to my therapist when she suggested issues might stem from my childhood was that I’d always believed I had a nice upbringing there was always enough food and nice holidays and horses, we never really wanted for anything material despite the screaming and threats and pressure and blame.

I agree with you that they don't suffer. We think from our perspective that they must be suffering because they're so empty and venomous.

They truly think we're mad I think.

I believe they're happy, smug and self satisfied.

Hi all, last weekend everything exploded a bit with my toxic brother, well suited fiancée and me declining the wedding invitation. Took nearly 2 months for it to actually sink in for them that I wasn’t going and I wasn’t going to fix all the fallout.

On a whim I started asking ChatGPT to analyse their messages. It was actually so helpful!! I ended up feeling so much at peace with my decisions because my phone was cheering me on and backing me up. I know it’s not therapy or a replacement for it, but maybe it would help someone in the short term.

Anyway, I have decided to give myself space until September, after the “royal” wedding, then I’ll reconsider how much, if any, contact I want.
I’m feeling so much stronger and at peace already