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.

We are what we need to survive. It’s just that we need to be aware that we are in survival mode and not make this the default mode. I was not healthy in my relationship with my ex either. I dissociated and ignored. I tried to keep him home so that he wouldn’t go out, get wasted and come home and start on me. I tried to control the shit out of the relationship (with no success obviously).

The damage that being afraid of or simply not acknowledging your feelings does is immense. It teaches you that they are the problem and not the person who is creating them. I literally can’t believe I gave my ex 12 years of the most toxic shit. He had me abusing my own feelings, it is very clever really!

We're (dear Baby Jesus help us 😂) the success stories. What we're suffering from is disgust. Think of the people who hid Anne Frank and family, they were 'mad' to put themselves in mortal danger. But they couldn't bear to go along for the ride.

We could have been 'happier' if we hadn't rocked the boat. But we've all said, silently mostly, 'nah, you're evil, I don't want to be evil'.

I'm ok with paying this price, my soul is not for sale.

That is the exact advice I gave my daughter this afternoon about a girl whose bullying her… I said look at her in the eye and just go “nah” and walk off head high!

Thank you @Crazysnakes
Have caught up on the thread. I need to read up on some of the terms - flying monkeys and things!

@Pleaseshutthefuckupunfortunately we do, have been guilted into it to celebrate an occasion. Have been on multiple holidays with in laws over the years and so DM feels it's her turn especially in order to celebrate. 🙄
I can barely suffer an afternoon without being completely drained and miserable. I am going to have to suck it up for the 5 days we are away.

I am going to start the ick list tonight.

At the moment, I think I am getting silent treatment/she's sulking with me after her flurry of messages worried about me being quiet and I have continued with grey rock method.

There is so much to read here and you have all been through so much 😥 makes me so sad.
I hope I can be where the cycle stops. My DM definitely had trauma childhood and her DM was also a narc. I am so desperately wanting to be better for my children.

@frostedshreddie it's really like being drugged into delusion with these people. I suggested the ick list and the less I deal with my one,the more and more I see and add to the list. Mine is incredibly covert and manipulative on a scale I significantly underestimated until recently. The things I now look at on this list actually makes me feel total disgust. This makes it so much easier not to feel any guilt whatsoever.

I'd try make that the very last holiday. They're a virus and I don't say that lightly.

You're already significantly better by miles.

I am in a no communication phase at the moment too, after a somewhat eye opening conversation. I feel like the bad person but logically I'm not sure that I really am, I just feel that way because I said something that might have hurt her feelings. It's hard. I just want normal, light hearted interactions, but given that she only talks about herself and things she's interested in it doesn't really work.

Btw a flying monkey is when a third person is manipulated into getting involved in the relationship - why are you being so mean to your mother, why don't you call more, why won't you do this thing she wants, you were rude/hurt her feelings etc. Flying monkeys often believe that they're doing the right thing because they can't yet see their own relationship clearly. They tend to feel morally righteous and like they are a decent person for stepping in to stop the hurt.

@frostedshreddie btw I also really struggle to spend more than an hour in my mother's company, and due to distance, an hour isn't possible. She invited herself for Christmas and i was stressed out of my tree the whole time. Husband said if you took a step back it was actually really funny - she built herself a nest on the sofa in the living room and only got off it when there was food on the table, and the only conversation she was interested in was complaining about horrible things on the news. When I spend time with her I come away feeling drained and heartbroken. Even my teen son afterwards said 'she complains a lot doesn't she.'

Visits have become tick box exercises for me. I get absolutely nothing out of them. I am not my true self when I visit, I feel like I do become hyper aware and go into my shell. It’s a reminder really that if you can’t be yourself in a relationship and loved for this then the relationship is worthless. When I visit the in-laws it’s like stepping into a different world. The spark goes, the simple joy. My playful inner child goes away. I look for ways where I’m put down or made to feel inferior. I don’t take the bait but who wants to visit that!

You shouldn’t have to protect yourself with family, it is sad.

Has anyone found themselves to be quite different when not in survival mode. I’m a lot less, how do I put it, productive?! I had masked for so long I thought I was more put together then I am. My ADHD symptoms are actually quite profound, I’m flighty, can’t remember anything, start and stop projects, social situations are a nightmare. I masked a much more put together person. It feels weird being myself. I’m not as on it anymore. It’s not a bad thing, I feel much much more comfortable.

@Crazysnakesthe ick list is a really good idea. And I think it will help me to stick to grey rock if I refer back to it often. Sometimes a bit of time passes and I kind of forget her ways, and pretend she means well. Which then means I will share stuff with her and the cycle continues. I am naturally quite social/oversharer so I really have to catch myself from what I would automatically message her back.
I can imagine the list does grow and grow!!

Mine is also very covert and sneaky with it. My DH sees right through it every time, sometimes more than I do!!

This will absolutely be the only holiday with her.

Thank you 🙂

Agree wanting the normal lighthearted conversations.
The difference in conversations between my DM and my DF (they are not together) are stark, and between my in-laws. If I ever message some news to everyone the reactions are interesting to compare.

Thank you for flying monkeys definiton. I don't think we have that in my situation. I have a sibling who although does agree with me and understands the situation, does not seem to be traumatised by it and kind of sails through life apparently unscathed. It actually infuriates me they don't seem to have any fire in their belly about it all. But not my issue to take on, we have a good relationship but I do find myself keeping them at arms length also.

Wow! Yours sounds so much like mine. That is exactly the kind of thing she would do too. Invite themselves round, not move and moan all day long!!!
My children are younger and for ages she would be commenting on how they don't give her cuddles or interact much with her - well maybe get off your butt and try to play with them or something? I keep them away from her now as much as possible too.

Agree tick boxes exercise massively. And I feel my demeanour shift as soon as I am there and I'm not myself at all. I used to invite everyone over for birthdays or events and host and now I never suggest anything, I want to avoid as much as possible!!

When I visit in laws it is the opposite, I gain so much joy and comfort from visiting them. When I leave them I feel so wholesome and like I want that whole energy for my family as we grow older.

@frostedshreddie I don't think flying monkeys are in every relationship, particularly not if there are few people that you and your parent have in common. I do know, however, that I have acted as a flying monkey for my mother in the past. I'm ashamed of it now but at the time I didn't realise, I honestly thought I was doing the right thing. The relationship I had with my mother was that she was the poor abused wife who needed to be helped/protected, and it was my job to do that. It was only as I got older and had children of my own that I realised how messed up that was. I was the child, it was her job to protect me, not the other way round. There were also occasions where she actively recruited me. 'X said this/did this/is just stressing me out/won't do what I want/I want this but don't want to ask, will you do it for me?' I don't think she's aware of what she's doing but that doesn't make it right. Interestingly, when I withdraw these services, she doesn't seem to know what to do with me. My suspicion at the moment is that she might have a dependent personality disorder to some extent.

She sounds utterly traumatised. Too much water in her boat. Sunk. Sorry.

I think there is a point where they’ve severed connection to themselves and to the world. We will not be able to stick this back together.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/conditions/dependent-personality-disorder

I found this earlier this week and I wonder if this is what I'm dealing with - right down to forming relationships with cluster B/NPD, and the thing about rushing straight into another relationship (which she's also done now she's widowed - she very rapidly attached herself to a relative of her husband and moved to live just around the corner. Which, in hindsight, is the third time that she's moved to a place that puts her very far away from me. She's chosen repeatedly to not live anywhere near me. Maybe I should hear what that is telling me).

She has probably lost all sense of self, of purpose of all autonomy. Completely severed from herself. Like one of those fish that has to attach to another fish to survive off. It’s sad for the human that once was.

@Happyfarm TBH I think she has always needed to attach herself to someone. Always men, FWIW. So there was the weird first marriage, and then in the second marriage, she suddenly started doing things that she'd never had any interest in before. She took up my stepfather's hobbies and they became her hobbies too. He was a heavy drinker, she became a heavy drinker. He'd always wanted to live abroad, suddenly she'd always wanted to live abroad. She became this person I could barely recognise. And when she's in this situation, and she's confident in it, she becomes more unkind to me, I assume because she doesn't need me so it feels safe. Now she's moved back, and she's taken up the hobbies of his son and these are all of a sudden things she's always been in to.

Sometimes I wonder why my relationship with her has hurt me so much, and then I write down stuff like that and it's obvious.

It’s sad. You have been sucked into her need for survival. She is not a whole person….but we are. (Trying anyway).

Ive just sat with my 2 year old and had breakfast. She’s levelled up with what cup she will drink from (no longer closed cups) spills it everywhere. I had a little cry because she is so wonderful. Then I had a cry because no one told me I was.

Nothing damaged my relationship with my mother quite like having my own kids did. Finding myself in various situations as a mother and suddenly understanding that how I was treated was a choice, and being so acutely aware of the fact that children have feelings and how easily they are bruised, that they're looking to us for love and support, they're not there for us to take our mood out on.

But it’s not a choice. We see it as a choice but it is not. I was that women who had a child with an abuser, my brain bypassed choice and kept me in the marriage. We have our own instinctual survival mechanisms built into us which operate at a subconscious level. Your mums survival brain being so disordered has kept her in this life. I am lucky, it was no choice. I could have stayed if my brain kept up the disassociating and dissonance. These were my learned survival behaviours, so detrimental to me in this situation. My dad died and this was a short sharp awaking of my brain, enough for me to see my life and leave. It’s not choice it’s survival and it’s subconscious. If that means dimming the reality of your kids life then the brain will try this.

As someone who grew up with those parents, this is where it gets really difficult for me, because the message is that neither of my parents was able to control their actions, should be expected to control their actions, or had any responsibility for any of it. It's really hard to accept. I know that being trapped in that cycle messes with your thought processes because it messed with mine. I believed certain things and had ideas about the world that in hindsight were completely wrong. I didn't know what my own likes and dislikes were because I wasn't allowed to have them, I was told what I liked and what I didn't. I couldn't make decisions and would hand that responsibility to someone else whenever possible, even over basic things like what do you want in your sandwich. I had to bury how I felt because my feelings would be ridiculed or used to shame me.
Now I get told over and over that it wasn't her fault and she had no choice and she couldn't leave, but she did. But she only left because she got a better offer.

That's the elephant in the room. She was always able to leave, she just didn't exercise that choice until she got a better offer. She didn't leave when he trapped us in a room and called her disgusting names over and over while I begged him to stop, she didn't leave when I went in their bedroom one morning and her face was covered in bruises and he laughed and said he'd rolled over in the night and caught her with his arm by accident, she didn't leave when he was openly taking me with him to buy drugs, she didn't leave when he broke her plate at the dinner table in front of me, when he took naked photos of me, when he took money and presents I'd been given for birthday and christmas and gave them to other people, or any of the hundreds of other revolting things he did. I'm not sure there was anything he could have done in front of or to me that would have been bad enough to make her walk away.

I was not enough and I know it.

That's why I can't deal with her now, why I don't know what to say, why I am so heartbroken and why I am struggling to move past it.

You will never be enough for those who don’t view people in the normal way. You don’t even exist to your parents let alone be worth anything. They are utterly disordered, lost in an alternate reality that they have created. We will never reach a level of understanding because we live in alternate realities. We have to exist in our world now. It’s a head fuck but the person we were as a child does not exist, we have to let that person go. We can’t exist in 2 realities at the same time, it creates chaos. You stay in your world with your children and those who love you for you. Close the portal, it’s not real.

@Happyfarm I think I've done this, for a really long time. It's the change in circumstance that's set me back. I've got really contradictory feelings - I'm relieved she didn't want to live near me but I'm hurt that she seems to have put a lot of work into making sure she has a positive relationship with SD's son (though I know that's an old childhood wound, the feeling that she valued others more than me). I want a mother, just not the one I have.

You don’t have one unfortunately. Turn away and face that which brings you joy and peace. Like you do with a child, take your own hand, tell yourself you’re sorry you feel down but it’s understandable and take yourself away. We can’t have what we don’t have.

It's a tough call, though, isn't it - father didn't want/like me, his family turned their backs on me, I never knew any of my mother's extended family and wasn't included when my mother reconnected with them post divorce, mother herself not really that interested.

Sigh.

You have to pick one explanation and stick to it. It’s bloody hard but otherwise you swing one way or another. I go with the side that they are all a sorry bunch of dick heads. The other side of the pendulum is that you are in fact not loveable. Fuck that! We need to protect our little ego. Fuck all those who challenge what we want to think of ourselves, especially when that little ego is so delicate. We need to differ from those narcs tho and just remove ourselves because we know our worth. We don’t play all the silly games, or hurt people or control people or please people in order to protect the ego. We have control of who we put ourselves in front of.