February 2025 Well we took you to Stately Homes

[AttilaTheMeerkat]

A new thread indeed!.

@MotherIssues2025

We have a few sayings in this group that are always applicable:
Do not set yourself on fire to keep someone else warm.
Put your own oxygen mask on first.
Drop the rope held out to you.
Stop steadying the boat every time your mum rocks it.
It is not your problem to fix.
You can not pour from an empty cup.
You can not change anyone only yourself.
If a dog bites, dont ask it why and dont hold your hand out.

All are telling you to take care of you first. Your mother is selfish, self absorbed and demanding, that will never change. You can stop engaging with her when she behaves badly, let her have a tantrum, toddlers only learn by being told NO.

@MotherIssues2025 there were some excellent suggestions on dealing with the anxiety around boundary setting and it's also my experience that they work.

It sounds trite but I took to somatic exercises like breathing and such during these difficult times when my nervous system thought that saying NO to my mother would kill me. I often put on slow music I like and started the breathing exercises. Not only did my anxiety lessen I also started to cry every single time. Once all was released I was much calmer. It helped a great deal.

Mum used to say to me you'd rather live with me if we split wouldn't you? I'd say yes but the thought was terrifying. I think I'd probably have had to live with her.

dogaredabomb I used to feel this way every time I disclosed something in therapy. Ultimately it made me stronger to have spoken these things and rode out that awful feeling and come through the other side with the concrete understanding that of course nothing was ever going to happen as a result of me speaking the truth.

Unfortunately, I think it stems from a time in our lives when there would have been negative consequences for speaking the truth. From the narc, the flying monkeys or just from people who had no idea of the family dynamics and no ability to understand them.

See it as part of growing up? You're an autonomous adult in full control of your own life. You can say what you want and react to negativity how you want. When you're a child you're tied to parents because you need caregivers and have no other way to get them. So you do whatever it takes to maintain that, including keeping silent.

As an adult we don't have those parental ties, we can be self sufficient and can do whatever it takes to remove ourselves from the negativity in our lives. We're untouchable, basically, we just have to realise it.

MotherIssues there's a third option. With that much contact I'd never recover from panicking in between times, the panic would be incessant with no respite and extremely unhealthy for me. I have a second phone. Give the number to everyone except her (I'm assuming your friends and other family wouldn't give the new number to her. It depends how separate your lives are. I've got one number that's for all family, because they all speak but none of them knows my friends). Then you can switch "her" phone off, only switching it back on when you want to call her.

@Twatalert i regularly check the loval death notices and check ddad grave as dm wants to be buried with him and i am sure some relative or old family friend will send me a card not knowing the situation

My situation is very different to everyone on here I am not nc with dm not through choice i didn't have an abusive or neglected childhood contact has been cut due to my dsis wanting control over and to spend dm money

My sister saw my mum this morning and my mum didn’t mention once the fact she she and I are in this stalemate of her giving me the silent treatment and me not backing down.

I was quite surprised actually as I thought my mum would be going on and on about what a bad daughter I am and try and draw my sister into it, but she said absolutely nothing.

Sometimes they do surprising things. Maybe because they are sure we will give in soon enough and come back under their control. That we will crawl back so to speak. Unfortunately a smear campaign may start sooner or later.

Perhaps we’ve been led to think we are more important to them then we are. I always thought they’d be sat at home planning and simmering a plan to cause upset. But I don’t think they think that much at all about us. I wonder if all the thoughts we have about them thinking about us actually happen.

That's an interesting idea 💡

They certainly trained us to overthink with their unpredictability and double standards. They don't think about anything nearly as much as we do. But they will hate the loss of control and will want to reclaim the narrative.

I always thought that also. But if they have enough supply from elsewhere do they sometimes just not care. I was surprised how quickly my ex forgot about me. He was on the dating websites within weeks after 12 years married. It’s me who has been left with the overthinking. There was me thinking he’d get revenge etc but he’s just got someone else to give him what he wants. They always find others. It’s left me feeling a little silly for giving him so much thinking I was something special to him. I wonder if they get nasty when the supply is low.

I thought that's what many men do anyway. They move on quickly.

So, I’m finally seeing a clinical psychologist and I’m struggling. I miss my mum. I’m the villain in her story & sadly my 26 year old daughter believes her & has disowned me & her 20 year old sister.
on Mother’s Day I seen a picture of my mum & daughter and my abusive (arrested & convicted) ex all out for lunch.
im at my wits end and struggling and yet i still miss her & i desperately miss my daughter and my mum the key.
feeling suicidal to be brutally honest. I’m safe and won’t act on that but I feel it.

beachcitygirl that must have been so hard to see. You need to put yourself in a situation where you can't see such pictures. Even if that means shutting down all your social media, if that's the only way. I'm sorry you've lost your eldest DD. Letting go is a kind of grieving process, I'm finding. There's always the possibility she'll see the truth one day and come back to you. It's hurtful that she's with your mum, but your job as mother was to raise her to be independent and make her own choices, then let her go and you've achieved that. She could as easily have gone to live on the other side of the world and you'd never see her. I know that's not the same because of the mindset behind it but in practical terms it's similar. You need to learn to be ok without her in your life and I'm sure your therapy will help with that, but torturing yourself with social media isn't going to help at all. Acceptance is key. You played your role and raised her to adulthood. Now she's out in the world living her life and making her choices. Hopefully she's happy and healthy. I'd mentally wish her well and try not to think about it more than that. Are you grieving a fantasy in your mum? You went NC due to the person she is. So you're grieving the person you wish she was, who doesn't exist? It's still a process to be gone through. Be kind to yourself and comfort yourself in your grief. Like any other grief it's sure to get easier to manage, in time. 💐

Isn’t it just so hard to grieve for a living person. To just stop wishing and hoping that person could be what you want. It’s such a hard rope to put down. Even though you walk away and stop seeing them it’s hard to let that fantasy go. That person will never be able to give you what you need. It’s sad really. We miss someone that never existed.

I do think it's exceptionally wicked that she's co-opted your daughter.

I've been wondering about this for the past year, interestingly.

@beachcitygirl I am sorry you are struggling I think @SamAndAnnie put it far better than i could. Sadly you dd is an adult and can make her own choices you just have to hope she comes to her senses

Thinking back dsis used to put me down to my dc when they were teenagers and had a massive influence on them especially dd party my fault for allowing her to be so involved in their lives as she didn't have her own dc and possibly tried to turn them against me and dh thankfully they have now realised what she is like and what she is doing and although I left it up to them if they wanted to still have a relationship with her they have chosen not to.

I’ve come to this realisation myself. I’m currently NC with my family but during a previous period of NC when I met up with my parents (extremely awkward and uncomfortable meeting) my mother admitted that she “got used” to not speaking to me. It took a while for me to really process that statement but what normal mother would even think that? Never mind say it out loud.

It struck me again today how quick these user types are to drop me when they're not getting what they want from a situation. It's a mentality I'll never understand.

If I am friendly with someone, whether that's a relative or a friend I've made somewhere, it's because I like them. I enjoy their company. I'm interested in their life plans, what they've been doing and how they are. And happy to share my own life in the same way. To me, that's what friendship is.

The narcs in my family, one is a FM and only contacts me to try get me to feed supply to the other one. Apart from that, if they don't have some other kind of problem I can help them with then I won't hear from them at all. The other switches between two modes, both unspoken, but the undercurrent is either "Oh, but I miiiiiissss yooooouuu! I'm so sad 😢" or "Well! Aren't you just a total bitch for living your own life and not doing whatever I say!". There's literally nothing else. No interest in any normal conversation. Feed them supply or fuck off, is the message. It's so weird.

I've had it with user friends over the years too. The minute I set any kind of boundaries around my time, like keeping phone calls to half hour max and not answering the phone at work or after 8pm - and suddenly they're gone, nowhere to be seen. No interest in my life at all. All they wanted was to dump their own problems on me at their own convenience and get emotional support. The second they can't do that, they're off without a backwards glance.

Makes me realise the importance of good boundaries so much. If you've got them from the beginning, people like that won't befriend you in the first place. The worst thing is those types used to suck up all my energy and meant I neglected the genuine friendships.

Now I've got all the toxic friends and family out of my life I find I have so much more time. It's crazy how much time I used to spend worrying/thinking about things.

I thought this image summed it up well. A healthy relationship everyone feels good in. They don’t need to be the same but they are loved for their individual goals and achievements. They visit each other not everyone visiting the one person and that person never visiting in return. All feel valued.

I’ve got a free phone call tomorrow with a counsellor to discuss whether counselling would be beneficial for me.

It’s been 3 weeks now since I last had contact with my mum, which is when she started giving me the silent treatment (for the 4th time in a year).

I don’t miss talking to her at all. I feel absolutely nothing. No anger, no upset, no frustration or anything, I just feel completely nonchalant. It’s such a strange feeling. I guess my disinterest her latest game shows what a dysfunctional relationship we must have even if I have only just started to realise it.

It's so weird isn't it MotherIssues. They're supposedly the "loved ones", so surely we should miss them when there's been an extended period of not hearing from them? Except when there's nothing but negativity, there's nothing to really miss. It does feel so so odd though. I rarely think about them when they're not in touch. The only strong emotions come when they are in touch and it's always negative emotions they generate.

I like that pic Happyfarm. I've always thought of the main narc as the "glue" that holds the family together and I've often wondered what will happen when they've died. Used to worry about it, if I'd never see other family members again. Could see us all drifting away on our own. Looking at the other pic of the healthy family, I can see it's because there's no real connection between any of us. I suspect we've all been so focused on the narc there's been no proper opportunity to forge those connections. With all the narc's gossiping, they may even have helped subtly destroy any connections naturally there.

I'm not worried about it now. It'll either be the same as it is now - sporadic, low level contact with those I like or something will occur around the death, some drama will unfold and I'll be cast as the villain again and they'll go NC with me. Either way my daily life or future outlook won't change.

I wonder how the GC is affected when the Narc parent dies. We may be a scapegoat but we have forged many relationships with people. The narc is central to the GC in my family, they’ve put no attention into any other relationship’s. In a healthy relationship when someone dies, like a parent they all still connect to each other. When the narc parent dies what happens to that vacuum I wonder.

I often wonder what will happen to my GC brother when his covert narcissist mother dies. He works very hard to please her and toe the line. He probably knows what's expected without truly thinking about it. There is enmeshment going on as well. He will probably be totally lost.