February 2025 Well we took you to Stately Homes

[AttilaTheMeerkat]

A new thread indeed!.

Good luck for the counseling Motherissues

Thank you. I’m feeling a bit apprehensive to be honest.

Today is just a 15 minute free phone call consultation from the head clinician to discuss whether counselling would be beneficial for me. I imagine they’re going to ask me for a quick summary of what’s going on in my my life to make me feel like I need counselling? I’m just worried they’ll think I’m overreacting or wasting their time. It’s been a few weeks now since I learnt the truth about my childhood and my mother and even I’m starting to doubt myself as to whether I need to talk it out or whether I should get over it like 1000’s of other people do without the need for counselling. My head feels a little bit all over the place to be honest.

@MotherIssues2025 I went privately but the initial assessment was general questions about how I was coping with daily life. I remember being asked about self harming/suicidal thoughts so don't be alarmed if they ask that, it doesn't mean they think you are, but they have to check. There were questions about food and sleep
It didn't dig into the really personal stuff.

They're not asking you to prove that you deserve help. It's just to see what sort of help you need as there are different types of therapy. I get the impression from your post that you're worried about this, as it comes across as a bit defensive. It's ok. It's ok to ask for help. We are allowed. It's ok to say there are childhood things that were bad and I am struggling with how it makes me feel and behave. It's actually a really brave thing to do.

You can do this. X.

No one should be asked to prove they need help. I think that’s a residual feeling from when we weren’t allowed to have our feelings. We are allowed all of our feelings and it’s the job of the professionals to help us through them. I imagine they have all sorts of people with all sorts of issues. Don’t be embarrassed or dismissive of your feelings as I’m sure they’ve heard it all before.

Were you by any chance conditioned to believe that you are overreacting, you don't deserve peoples' time etc.? Because it is quite telling that you think like that. I imagine it must be quite limiting in daily life without you realising because you are used to it.

At the very least you are welcome to speak to a counsellor even just to find out if you feel these nagging thoughts about your childhood are an issue for you. Why wouldn't you be entitled to use a few sessions for that, try it out and see where it takes you. I think it is very brave to face this and the unknown. I hope you will feel listened to during the consultation.

If you felt physically unwell wouldn't you go to your GP to try and investigate? This is similar.

I think our inner barometer and our voices are set by those that we grow up with. We are a reflection of their levels of empathy. If we have an empathetic parent then great but when we don’t we listen to what ever we are in front of. It is hard to take your self seriously and honestly when the voices you’re heard have told you that you are wrong or dismissive. I was surprised when I first met my IDVA after leaving my ex. She was horrified by what I told her was happening to me and I was telling her in a very nonchalant way. I had normalised the most awful things having such low levels of empathy for myself. When these levels are re-set during therapy you have to go slow and steady because you can traumatise yourself with what you have normalised.

Well as soon as the lady on the phone said, “So what issues are you needing support with?” I just started crying ☹️

I managed to give an overview of what’s happening at the moment but I don’t think it came out logically, I was all over the place really, but the woman was lovely.

They’re going to see if I can go in for my first face to face session tomorrow and I’m just waiting for the clinic to ring me back to confirm.

Well done @MotherIssues2025 it must have been daunting.

Does anyone have a mother that....just doesn't make much of an effort with them? Doesn't visit, doesn't call, rarely texts, expresses little to no interest in their lives?

That's the kind of mother I seem to have. I was always the "one they don't worry about" middle child, therapy opened my eyes to the dynamic and over the last few years, I've been grieving the mother I never had and don't have. The one that supports and guides me, who listens and comforts when I need it, who is delighted by my presence, proud of who I am, who listens without judgement and follows up on things I tell her about. I essentially raised myself emotionally, and it was going through a lot of sh1t these last few years - infertility, ADHD diagnosis, extreme work stress, planning a wedding - that who my mother is in my life became fundamentally NOT OK to me.

I tried the conversations and I tried to make her see, understand...oh if only she could understand. As you'll predict, it always went down like a lead balloon. I was crazy, jealous, she couldn't remember things therefore they didn't happen, she's old now so I should give her a break...etc. I'm lucky that I had a really good therapist and a really kind, patient husband to support during those times. They were really confronting. The grief got so bad.

Where I'm at now is I visit maybe once every 2-3 months. I bring my husband, we stay one night only. I had a big birthday recently, my mother didn't call. She sent a generous cash gift. She's stopped calling completely since these conversations. This is her way now. Cash on birthdays and at Christmas and no phone calls, no interest, no involvement. It's so discombobulating.

I'm OK, as I've had such a big internal shift around therapy and this grief work. I can feel a strength emerging that I've never had before, I like myself and I'm making decisions about my life that honour my needs and my values now. But god, having a mother like this is just so...weird. Honestly so weird. It's hard to explain socially, so many others love their mother, get support and interest from her, she plays an active role. Mine just...ignores me.

Popping back on here again, I find reading all your posts and insights so helpful. I have done a lot of thinking in the last 2 weeks and come to the realisation that my complete inability to deal with any negativity is because I have spent my entire life, including adulthood trying to please my parents. I just spiral if I feel I have disappointed someone even minorly.
I am getting married soon and so so much of the planning has been to ensure everyone is happy with my choices rather than what I actually want. So much drama regarding my brother and how he will manage because 'poor guys' girlfriend left him again (good for her) and I am just done with it, I actually feel numb thinking about it, I can't find the energy to care whether they turn up or not. So I have decided no more people pleasing, they will be told the plans and if they don't like it tough, I won't be bending over backwards to ensure the 100 food requests are catered to, or adding their friends i've never met to the guest list.
It feels liberating to have made this decision, but if I do manage to stick to it, I know the fallout won't be pleasant. I don't think I have ever told my parents no in my 32 years on this earth.
I was recently diagnosed with PTSD following a horrific violent incident. I am struggling so much with that, my family do not know about the diagnosis but within days of the event, while I was still on sedatives to get through the day without a panic attack all contact became about how down my brother was because he was arguing with his girlfriend, how much he was struggling at work etc. etc. I think this has been the switch for me, the reaction from DHs family was so different, calling daily to check how I was doing, paid for us to go to a hotel for a week so I could get away from where the incident happened while the flashbacks where still strong, genuinely wanting to know how they could help. Meanwhile my families repsonse was that they really couldn't care less other than the fact it was something they could talk about and make about them and how distressed they where at what happened to their daughter.

@wonderingwonderingwondering I think many of us have a version of that mother that doesn't make an effort. It's one of the worst realisations I have had and I understand your grief. I have grieved through many things relating to my childhood, but seeing parents making an effort with their children is still hard. I somehow just want a mum. I want this feeling of being taken care of just for once. Not having to figure everything out on my own. Just to know that a mum will be there to pick me up when I feel down. It's not going to happen. I give myself as much as possible now, meet my own needs better, but I have this void inside me that I don't think anything will ever fill.

My mother was always keen on talking on the phone in certain intervalls. But the conversations were meaningless. She was keen to seem to have a close relationship with me but there has never been any depth to it. In recent years, before I went NC, I would call my mother and within minutes she'd had her phone to my father and just continue her TV show. She'd say to him 'take this' and hand the phone over and her attention would go back to the TV. I have had many realisations now where I think wtf.

When I turned 40 I received a card from her that was still in its plastic wrapper, no written message inside and £50. It was so incredibly hurtful. My brother and I did special things for my parents for their 50th, 60th and 70th. I spent a long time thinking what they would like to do and when I turned 40 I realised they don't think like that about me. She doesn't think about what I would like, what I would really appreciate. I just totally lacked any attention from her as a child, which is why small gestures or gifts by strangers/friends make me cry because they feel so special to me. And it's also why I don't think anyone could seriously like me or be interested in me as a person and what I have to say because my mother always made it clear that she does not care.

I wonder if these parents were just never loved enough as children. Insecure people can be so needy and self centred around what they need. To be a good parent you have to be selfless. I always thought insecure people need love and I should support them but I can no longer be bothered and I’m snuffing that part of my personality out. Being insecure keeps you looking within and you stop looking at how people in front of you are suffering.

wondering have you considered a small wedding with just your good friends, so as to avoid dealing with family fallout on the day? They'd kick off after when they realise they didn't get invited but at least you'll have had your lovely wedding day by then, without them spoiling it.

Squirmy sounds familiar. If I don't provide gossip fodder there's zero interest in me.

MotherIssues I hope you get an appointment tomorrow, they can obviously tell you're in crisis and need urgent help. I don't think 1000's of others do get over it without help, I think a lot of people suppress their emotions so they can carry in with some semblance of normal life and end up further messed up from that on top of being messed up from the treatment of them by the narc.

I relate to the feeling though of not being "allowed" or "supposed" to have any feelings or opinions about anything. "Should"ing myself to the nth degree. I've been asking myself why I can't just do XYZ like "everyone" else, all my life, the answer I now understand is because "everyone" else hasn't had my experiences in life and if they had, they'd probably be struggling a bit too. It's not "everyone", anyway. There's lots struggling with various aspects of life, you just don't know about it is all.

@twatalert oof, relate to every single bit of that. The 40th, the "void", the complete lack of any interest or feedback or care. I'm so so sorry you've had a mother like this. It really is a wound that stays with you forever in some way.

I get similarly emotional when someone goes out of their way for me with a gift or a gesture or a thoughtful favour. I just simply do not expect it, ever. I realised recently that i don't expect it because my mother set me up to believe I don't deserve it, or anything special or good. I've been operating on that wavelength for decades, getting into relationships or jobs that violated my needs, letting bosses or coworkers or friends cross all boundaries without saying a thing. I don't know how you can have a mother like this and grow up confident, with a strong sense of self and self belief. Not without a lot of therapy, anyway.

How did NC come about for you and how has your mother reacted to it?

@wonderingwonderingwondering it's tricky, because she doesn't make much effort, but then I don't make any effort in return, either, so it's not a one way street. But then I stopped making any effort for a reason, because I felt it was so often one way. I couldn't go to her for help. If I did, it was always turned around into my need for help being stressful for her, and it being my job to support her through it. I still feel a lot of guilt over how little effort I make, but I know I ended up here because she uses me.

When I had therapy last year, one thing the therapist very gently said was that although my mother sometimes says words that make it sound like maybe she cares and wants a relationship with me, her actions say the exact opposite.

@CheekySnake they do want a relationship a lot of the times don’t they, only one on their terms? We are the ones who don’t want one on these terms.

Yep, and I’m an only child so she’s not getting her child fix anywhere else! Also don’t get the big gifts to compensate ( am joking sorry it’s not a competition).

its an odd feeling to think they are just not bothered. Mine is slightly different in that I was very enmeshed and parentified as a child and she used me as a surrogate husband as she hated my dad.

she only contacts me no if she needs some job doing, to be honest it’s been like that for years I just didn’t clock it. Birthday card pushed through the door this year with £30, didn’t bother to see if I would be in or call to wish happy birthday.

my dad was totally disinterested as well, but he was always like that so no change so I didn’t really notice.

the norm seems to be that you pull back and they can’t stand it and try and love bomb you, not mine there’s nothing. You are one of the first posters describing a similar experience to me.

is she better with your siblings? That must really hurt if she is. Her loss x

Im glad you have a good therapist that is able to point these things out to you in a gentle way.

If you spoke to my mother, she'd tell you I have a communication problem and have done for years. That i never ask for help. Pre therapy, I called occasionally and would visit for holidays. Now, I barely do that. I've held so much guilt about this for so long. My own therapist helped me to see that children shut down for protection when they are not loved or prioritised. It's a survival mechanism.

I went through major trauma as a teenager without my mother so much as hugging me, telling me things would be OK, helping me through my pain. She picked her favourite though and has spent given that and more to her golden child. While coping with our family trauma on her terms - becoming a workaholic, telling us it wasn't happening, not picking up on all the red flags that I was a child struggling with her mental health.

When that happens, you don't ask for help because you've picked up that your mother isn't thinking about you. You don't become an avid communicator with her because she has become a source of deep pain.

I still guilt myself over this. But then I remind myself that any vulnerable honest conversation that centres my own needs results in invalidating and gaslighting. Any ordinary everyday conversation results in her venting about or bragging about literally everybody else without a thought for me. She doesn't ask how I am, except to gather information that might serve her to look like Mother of the Year elsewhere.

Oh the card resonates. One year because I didn’t visit her on my birthday (I was working) I went the next day and she gave me this card out of a pack not a specific daughter one - because you didn’t come round on your birthday. I was so
mired in the FOG that I just took it and didn’t ask what she meant and why she’d not come to me to drop it off. Went to work and a colleague id only known a few weeks had got me a better card than my mother. That really hit me.

Gosh how awful. Should we introduce them??!

Sorry you've been through that. Your mother was never prepared to be a mother. My mother is enmeshed with my other two siblings. The older one is special needs now through years of severe mental health and psychiatric institutions. She's in part time care, the rest of the time she sleeps in and sits around my parent's house doing nothing. It's a really sad and depressing situation. My younger sibling is the favourite, she's lived the life my mother would approve of (high earning occupation, loads of education, owns property) and the two of them are thick as thieves. If you're in the room with them you don't exist, my mother is obsessed with her and my sibling goes to her for everything. It's weird because I've done quite well for myself too but it's all been on my terms. I stopped asking for support as a teenager, my life has been on my terms. I've lived abroad a long time until recently, shaped myself in careers she never would've recommended for me.

I think that drives the indifference, my mother has had no role in shaping me and she has no influence over me. We're objectively quite different too - she's deeply religious, I am not. She's conservative and prone to extremes with that (think Trump voter style ideas re immigration, women's rights), I'm the opposite.

I fundamentally think she simply cannot love a child of hers that isn't a mini version of her and is completely dependent on her. That's the only version of "love" she understands.

@wonderingwonderingwondering yes we do have a tendency to become a doormat after a childhood like this. I didn't learn to set boundaries because when I tried I was 'the issue' so I kept my head down at home, then at work and in relationships. I'm still learning to assert my boundaries and I do it better but every time I set a boundary I still feel like I enter conflict or a war zone. I cannot relax about it.

I was always different. I was the truth seeker in my family, the intellectual and the truth teller. It was during a visit at Christmas 2022 when I could no longer tolerate my mother's treatment of others, especially my niece. I spoke up one last time and all hell broke loose. They tried to brush it under the carpet once again but not this time.

A year prior I had done a retreat that digs into your childhood, parents etc. it ends with the task to take your parents aside and tell them that you loved them. There was no way I could do this because we don't say these things. But it was nagging at me until one day I finally had to admit to myself that I didn't love my parents. It sent me down a nasty path of discovering how it could even get to that, that I don't love my parents. Together with the Christmas incident this was the final straw.

It took another few months until I went NC. I think I did a lot of my grieving before going NC. NC was just a relief and I reached a level of peace (moments or days at a time) that I had never known before. This is what I am chasing all the time now.

My mother initially respected my NC but after a while the messages, parcels, gifts started by both my parents and both are now blocked.

@TorroFerney I grew up thinking that we need to plan and organise special stuff on our birthdays ourselves. I thought that I didnt have anything special for my 18th because I didn't organise anything myself. It was only when my niece came along and I felt I just wanted to spoil her and make things nice for her and make her feel special that it hit me. And she isn't even my child. How a mother couldn't do that I will never know.

Replace 'not making an effort myself' with 'setting a boundary'. Because that's what you are doing. It's not tit for tat.

I never got anything for special birthdays either, and my mother excluded us from hers because she went on holiday with her husband (fair enough, her choice, whatever) but my attempts to arrange a meal out were met with bafflement, as if she couldn't understand why I would think she would want to do that.

Odd woman.

Actually, it shames me to admit this, but I'm really bad with my birthday and Christmas. I don't know how to enjoy it. I'm not good with going on holiday either.

My therapist said I should ask myself, when I look back at these things, if I would treat my kids that way, and use that as the guide for whether it was acceptable or not.

I know, but doesn't it make you feel lonely and rejected. Sigh.