May 2025 - 'We took you to STATELY HOMES' thread.

[Pleaseshutthefuckup]

Hope all ok with a new thread here. I've looked and can't find one anywhere past February.

It’s not blaming you for others behaviour but looking at how you react and how you look at it, a kinder narrative for them and you. Maybe accept they’re flawed, for whatever reason, and it’s not your fault nor is it because of you, and let it go. Be kinder in your view of them, I expect there was love and good intention as well as the blunders

Severe anxiety and depersonalisation are reported as common effects of narcissist abuse.

Questioning reality, confusion, blocking things out are part of experiencing this.

I can't recall if you have had therapy. It's incredibly helpful and validating.

Being away from them physically and emotionally helps calm your system over time. I'd advise lock down social media, don't use it or block them without them knowing if possible. The technology access these days can make it harder to disconnect from them and the way they set off your fight or flight.

I guess hanging on to the bitterness and hard done by feeling is serving you all well…

and look, my mother was very difficult, she told me daily we’d ruined her life, she wished she’d had us adopted, didn’t meet our needs both physical and emotional, so I have been through this myself. Maybe fortunately for me, she is far better now, but I do know how hard it is and how low my self esteem was and can be. I also know it’s freeing to all her the human error and to look at it with compassion instead

You do realise that people on this thread, probably 30s and 40s are only just seeing what they have endured. That some still don't quite see it. And when they start to see what they have truly endured, a process that is gradual, is long, and just beginning. What would be an appropriate human reaction to that realisation?

It would be anger, sadness, betrayal alongside a multitude of emotions.

All part of a healthy healing process.

Your desire to transport people straight to end point that satisfies you is bizarre. I can only conclude you're a mother who has been NCd.

Not appropriate here.

People will get to the destination they're heading when they're ready.

❤️ for you for enduring your mother.

@Emknewbest you don't seem to have much compassion for the people here who share their experience at whichever state of realisation and healing they are at. How about accepting that this their journey. Wishing you more healing.

I closed down all my social media a few months ago it was often used for passive aggressive posts from my mother. My children don't use it, we communicate directly no audience. I had counselling last year for intrusive thoughts and my counsellor was the first person to raise narcissistic behaviour. I thought I was the one with the problem.

On this thread we're talking about abusive parents. "Love and good intentions" doesn't negate any abuse. Not to mention that in many cases there was no love or good intentions towards their victims.

People are allowed to be angry at the abuse they suffered and in many cases continue to suffer. Especially since in many cases any outward sign of anger from their victims has never been tolerated by these abusers. For the sake of survival as a child those emotions have had to be suppressed. Telling people to "let it go" when in many cases the people posting here are only at the start of feeling their anger that's been locked inside them for decades, isn't helpful. It's asking people to continue suppressing their feelings.

Letting the past go happens after a person has finished feeling all their previous unfelt feelings and working through them, which is what many in this thread are doing, it's not something that's possible to fast-forward to. What you're doing is a like telling someone with a gaping open wound in their torso to just accept they've been shot/stabbed/whatever and heal a bit faster so they can feel better, as if the wound healing is something they can control and it's a personal failing of theirs if they don't do it. Your post isn't controversial, it's ignorant of the deep and long-lasting effects of abuse.

Effectively telling abuse victims to ignore their trauma and reframe it as something other than trauma or in other words gaslight themselves that they haven't been abused, which is what your post implies, really isn't an ok thing to do. It's the exact same thing their abusers have been doing for all their lives, making out that the abusive behaviour was ok and the victims are unreasonable for not accepting it and just moving on/forward/getting over it/letting it go as if it didn't matter and wasn't a problem.

It's ok to react with anger to the knowledge that you've been abused. For many, this is new and recent knowledge. They're still figuring out that they've been abused and neglected as children, the ways they've been abused/neglected and why. In some cases the abuse is still ongoing because they haven't been able to cut contact with their abuser yet. Many are nowhere near the getting-over-it-and-letting-it-go phase of recovery.

tinaabbot for the walk to the shop you need grounding exercises for anxiety. You could also try walking meditation, where you let your thoughts flow and acknowledge them but don't engage with them. Bring yourself back to the present using the grounding exercises if you find yourself engaging with the thoughts, then return to the meditation once you're stable again.

I don’t know what people have experienced on here so it’s difficult to say but I know that I do feel better with my mum. I hated her for years.
I got divorced recently and she has been exceptionally good and it’s been nice to feel warm with her after about twenty years of not doing so. I definitely had a part in that, feeling hurt and bitter

it depends what it was I suppose, I certainly wouldn’t feel that for sexual abuse or something as severe as that

@Emknewbest if your mum is a narcissist or sociopath, which is what we on the thread are primarily dealing with; the niceness you are experiencing is not genuine, it's part of a game and a ploy. These personality disorders involve people living in a reality that is different to the rest of us. Nice, giving behaviour is never genuine, never from love, compassion or empathy. Never ever.

So many of us will have experienced the warm fluffy feelings associated with nice acting for a short time. It's called love bombing or hoovering. We are also trauma bonded to them. There will have been glimpses of niceness that we become addicted to. That's what abusers do. Yes even those with grey hair and pearls and a wonderful fake veneer in society.

If your mum is not personality disordered then it possibly doesn't apply and you can have good faith in her efforts to do better.

Those mothers who are personality disordered, they will always revert back to their very toxic behaviour. It's therefore very unsafe for many of us to even look at them with longing until we realise how pathologically different and toxic they are. That is a process. It involves facing the unfaceable. That realisation is going to be tough and will bring great anger, bitterness and upset. Also denial.

Later on, once free and away from the abuse, we may find space for any nicer thoughts or memories.

Abuse over a lifetime is, well, a lifetime of abuse. All of us here will have forgiven endlessly. Forgiven all sorts. Including exposure to SA and doing bugger all to protect us, physical hurt when younger at their hands. Yes we forgive endlessly. But then one day you realise it never stopped it just changed and was abuse in another form which continues to this day.

Minimisation is a really terrible thing we have to endure on top of the suffering. And you're perpetuating it here. Stop.

People will get to the destination the right way. That way is hard, ugly and very emotional for most people brave enough to face up to it.

I’m sorry to minimise. Probably for me, it’s easier than feeling bad. I have no idea what’s right, only what helps me.

Thanks @SamAndAnnie, I’ll look into that

🙏❤️

This sounds an awful lot like my MIL and I wonder if this is my MIL on here. She told me why don’t you just stop having feelings about your past relationship with the ex (the father of my oldest dd)…..umm ok yeah, sounds like a plan. I’ll just forget and it’ll all be better. (Literally not comprehending that this is the ultimate prize and destination after painstakingly having to feel 15 years of dissociative and ignored events and the feelings). I absolutely hate this kind of thinking because it’s easy to start the downward spiral of self blame and “what is wrong with me”, “why am I not over this”, “there’s something wrong with me”….its a life long process. I’ve beaten myself up trying to be fully recovered and never achieving it and I’m a million times better now I know that it will be something I live with.

I've had my reality played down, distorted, minimised even completely denied. It's a horrible and cruel experience to doubt your own experience.

Most people who have meant to love me have done this all throughout my life and then I’ve gone on and done it to myself and made myself sick. So now anyone who does this to me can fuck right off. I’m a sensitive, ADHD women and whatever bloody other labels, I don’t really care! It’s the worst you can do to a person, deny their reality and deny them the knowledge of who they are.

As long as you don't think you're ' too sensitive '.

There's no such thing as 'too sensitive'. These arseholes we endure use the phrase ' too sensitive ' to undermine, deflect and avoid any accountability. You will be perfectly sensitive to the world as the person you were always designed to be.

I will happily challenge anything that undermines the true hideousness of long standing abuse suffered quite vociferously on this thread.

@Emknewbest my dsis is doing her best at manipulating and isolating dm for her money and seems to be succeeding despite ss police and opg involvement

I don't try to play the victim i try to allow them the headspace or let them affect my life I am just extremely hurt by my dsis and dm actions which is recent i need to process things and heal. My story is very different from most on here

I want to be free but sadly i only think i will be when i know dm has passed which is something i can only admit on here

Non of us want to be on this page but for me in my current situation it is my safe place where I can rant if I am triggered and i know i will get support

Dr Ramani wrote a book called ' it's not you' because the very real side effect of narc/ sociopath abuse is that we think it's us. That's part of the brainwashing.

I didn't rate the book that much tbh. You can get all the information on that aspect online for free. There are lots of good psychology articles on the subject of brainwashing narc abuse sufferers to think it's our fault.

It is quite protective cutting these people and their connections off access to us via social media. I came away a number of years ago and am relieved I did.

It would send me over if I had to witness the various people I have to manage covertly communicating via status updates, pictures, and all other fakery 🤮.

I'd literally put my head in a pile of cow pat next time I see my cow friends and probably not come up for air 🤷😆

I feel so much better since I've come away from social media. I was afraid of losing connections. However what I've noticed is that people who are genuinely friends are still in contact with me in fact more so now.
My mother thrives off attention so Facebook is an arena for her that I'm not prepared to be part of.

No Im the right amount of sensitive I should be, I was born this way. A gem in this hard grey pebble world. I no longer long for being like everyone.

The more I think about it the more families appear like little cults. There is always a hierarchy and a hidden set of rules to abide by. I wonder if this is true in most families? Whether there are black sheep even in more healthier families?

It's a phenomenon called the Narcissistic Family Cult.

A very real thing with roles and positions which may interchange sometime with siblings ( golden child and scapegoat). I think mums are often the matriarchs and the heads of these cults.

There's alot online about it. It's like a formula in terms of behaviour familiar to do many of us in these dysfunctional systems.

So are normal families much more welcoming of outsiders and differences in personalities etc? You aren’t just automatically on the outside if you don’t think exactly the same?

I don't know what a normal family is tbh 🤦 We all have our flaws and issues but I'd guess a more healthy family would seek to genuinely support and want and encourage the growth and well being of all members. There would be more honesty about feelings with accountability for behaviour.

In a narcissistic family, the nutty parent/s will want total control and domination of everyone as if they are an object, a thing, a puppet. There will be a significant lack of capacity to empathise in one or both parents. They give no shits about the well being of their children.

In a narcissistic family, siblings will always be pitted against each other, manipulated and lied to, gaslit, love given then withdrawn by one or both narc parents. The most truthful child or one with higher empathy will be spotted by the matriarch usually and made the scapegoat. Sometimes they can be the golden child.

The golden child will get preferable treatment, in front of the siblings, nothing they do is wrong etc etc.

It's just disgusting and so utterly messed up tbh.

What I describe is exactly what happened in my family. I was actually the golden child as was very compliant and learnt to please very early. It was however traumatic abusive and neglectful for me also.

My older brother was regularly left in charge of me and was a bully with other issues that caused me severe traumatic memories.

I'm now the scapegoat.

I've observed my mother make my own child the golden grand child and even overheard things such as ' you're my favourite ', ' don't tell the other boys I got you this etc '. My siblings children totally ignored and neglected. They couldn't be manipulated you see. They didn't deserve any of that.

Fuck off you psycho 🖕is my response to all this.