SEPTEMBER 2025 - Well we took you to Stately Homes

[AttilaTheMeerkat]

I have now set up a new thread as the previous one is now full.
This long runnning thread has become a safe haven for Adult children of abusive families.
The title refers to an original poster's family who claimed they could not have been abusive as they had taken her to plenty of Stately Homes during her childhood!
One thing you will never hear on this thread is that your abuse or experience was not that bad. You will never have your feelings minimised the way they were when you were a child, or now that you are an adult. To coin the phrase of a much respected past poster Ally90;
'Nobody can judge how sad your childhood made you, even if you wrote a novel on it, only you know that. I can well imagine any of us saying some of the seemingly trivial things our parents/ siblings did to us to many of our real life acquaintances and them not understanding why we were upset/ angry/ hurt etc. And that is why this thread is here. It's a safe place to vent our true feelings, validate our childhood/ lifetime experiences of being hurt/ angry etc by our parents behaviour and to get support for dealing with family in the here and now.'
Most new posters generally start off their posts by saying; but it wasn't that bad for me or my experience wasn't as awful as x,y or z's.
Some on here have been emotionally abused and/ or physically abused. Some are not sure what category (there doesn't have to be any) they fall into.
NONE of that matters. What matters is how 'YOU' felt growing up, how 'YOU' feel now and a chance to talk about how and why those childhood experiences and/ or current parental contact, has left you feeling damaged, falling apart from the inside out and stumbling around trying to find your sense of self-worth.
You might also find the following links and information useful, if you have come this far and are still not sure whether you belong here or not.
'Toxic Parents' by Susan Forward.
I started with this book and found it really useful.
Here are some excerpts:
"Once you get going, most toxic parents will counterattack. After all, if they had the capacity to listen, to hear, to be reasonable, to respect your feelings, and to promote your independence, they wouldn't be toxic parents. They will probably perceive your words as treacherous personal assaults. They will tend to fall back on the same tactics and defences that they have always used, only more so.
Remember, the important thing is not their reaction but your response. If you can stand fast in the face of your parents' fury, accusations, threats and guilt-peddling, you will experience your finest hour.
Here are some typical parental reactions to confrontation:
"It never happened". Parents who have used denial to avoid their own feelings of inadequacy or anxiety, will undoubtedly use it during confrontation, to promote their version of reality. They'll insist that your allegations never happened, or that you're exaggerating. They won't remember, or they will accuse you of lying.
YOUR RESPONSE: Just because you don't remember, doesn't mean it didn't happen".
"It was your fault." Toxic parents are almost never willing to accept responsibility for their destructive behaviour. Instead, they will blame you. They will say that you were bad, or that you were difficult. They will claim that they did the best that they could but that you always created problems for them. They will say that you drove them crazy. They will offer as proof, the fact that everybody in the family knew what a problem you were. They will offer up a laundry list of your alleged offences against them.
YOUR RESPONSE: "You can keep trying to make this my fault, but I'm not going to accept the responsibility for what you did to me, when I was a child".
"I said I was sorry what more do you want?" Some parents may acknowledge a few of the things that you say but be unwilling to do anything about it.
YOUR RESPONSE: "I appreciate your apology, but that is just a beginning. If you're truly sorry, you'll work through this with me, to make a better relationship."
"We did the best we could." Some parents will remind you of how tough they had it while you were growing up and how hard they struggled. They will say such things as "You'll never understand what I was going through," or "I did the best I could". This particular style of response will often stir up a lot of sympathy and compassion for your parents. This is understandable, but it makes it difficult for you to remain focused on what you need to say in your confrontation. The temptation is for you once again to put their needs ahead of your own. It is important that you be able to acknowledge their difficulties, without invalidating your own.
YOUR RESPONSE: "I understand that you had a hard time, and I'm sure that you didn't hurt me on purpose, but I need you to understand that the way you dealt with your problems really did hurt me"
"Look what we did for you." Many parents will attempt to counter your assertions by recalling the wonderful times you had as a child and the loving moments you and they shared. By focusing on the good things, they can avoid looking at the darker side of their behaviour. Parents will typically remind you of gifts they gave you, places they took you, sacrifices they made for you, and thoughtful things they did. They will say things like, "this is the thanks we get" or "nothing was ever enough for you."
YOUR RESPONSE: "I appreciate those things very much, but they didn't make up for ...."
"How can you do this to me?" Some parents act like martyrs. They'll collapse into tears, wring their hands, and express shock and disbelief at your "cruelty". They will act as if your confrontation has victimized them. They will accuse you of hurting them, or disappointing them. They will complain that they don't need this, they have enough problems. They will tell you that they are not strong enough or healthy enough to take this, that the heartache will kill them. Some of their sadness will, of course, be genuine. It is sad for parents to face their own shortcomings, to realise that they have caused their children significant pain. But their sadness can also be manipulative and controlling. It is their way of using guilt to try to make you back down from the confrontation.
YOUR RESPONSE: "I'm sorry you're upset. I'm sorry you're hurt. But I'm not willing to give up on this. I've been hurting for a long time, too."
Helpful Websites
Alice Miller
Personality Disorders definition
Daughters of narcissistic mothers
Out of the FOG
You carry the cure in your own heart
Help for adult children of child abuse
Pete Walker
The Echo Society
There are also one or two less public offshoots of Stately Homes, PM AttilaTheMeerkat for details.
Some books:
Toxic Parents by Susan Forward
Homecoming by John Bradshaw
Will I ever be good enough? by Karyl McBride
If you had controlling parents by Dan Neuharth
When you and your mother can't be friends by Victoria Segunda
Children of the self-absorbed by Nina Brown - check reviews on this, I didn't find it useful myself.
Recovery of your inner child by Lucia Capacchione
Childhood Disrupted by Donna Jackson Nazakawa
This final quote is from smithfield posting as therealsmithfield:
"I'm sure the other posters will be along shortly to add anything they feel I have left out. I personally don't claim to be sorted but I will say my head has become a helluva lot straighter since I started posting here. You will receive a lot of wisdom but above all else the insights and advice given will 'always' be delivered with warmth and support."

I apologise for causing offence mentioning ND. Life is too short for arguing over who’s more deserving especially amongst survivors of hate and bullying, I have more respect for myself to do so. Some people have helped me greatly and me and my kids will forever be grateful and this is what it’s all about. You’ve made me more stable so my kids are going to be ok.

I hope everyone on this thread finds peace and Christmas goes the best it can, I’m out. xx

I agree

I apologise for my own part in turning this thread into a parenting one by ruminating on my DDs’ problems and my parenting. I accept that they need to be discussed elsewhere on MN.

I have been on this thread for well over a decade and welcome the understanding, exploration and explanation in all my relationships. I have had support for conflict with siblings, ILs, DCs and I recognise the systemic and inter generational nature of how hurt people, hurt people (I include myself in that) - and that it is only the intentional choice challenge and adapt in my own mindset and behaviours whether that’s ‘managing’ a relationship with new boundaries, accepting, reframing, detaching, healing own wounds, living a fuller life with the focus pivoted away from the source of distress. I have learned and been supported on this thread and it has been live saving.

Growing up traumatised by people who not only didn't care about you but actively wanted the worst for you is difficult to find somewhere talk about.

I have felt squashed and disengaged here recently. Which is largely about me but not all of it. I have observed that there aren't the variety of different posters that there used to be.

@Dogaredabomb I think that is what is the hardest thing to comprehend especially if you go on to have kids yourself is that we want and should want the best for our kids but our parents didnt. It baffles me and it is very hard to articulate to others who have not been in that situation. I bumped into someone the other day I had not seen in years and the usual how is your mum/dad etc and I responded honestly I have no relationship with my mum. she did not make a comment but can see the bafflement and horror almost on a persons face who have had no reason to go nc with a parent.

Podcast link from something i watched this morning from Oprah.

I can't deny that I've been shouting at the bloke with the beard who is trotting out all the same crap that abusive parents trot out when they're telling us we should be grateful that they weren't worse.

Oh I got the rage listening to him. Twat.

When he trotted out the bit about how the definition of abuse has changed and parents will often say that they had it far worse than their child did so what's the problem and he said this with a straight face I may have muttered eff off.

My father used to trot that one out. He once told me I should be grateful because he only hit my mother and didn't hit me (except that he did, when I was a small child and he would wallop me (and call it smacking which apparently means it doesn't count). I can still remember one occasion begging him not to and trying to scramble away from him and being grabbed by the arm and belted across the bottom/back of the legs. I can remember the fear. I can still feel it. I have no idea what I supposedly did to warrant that level of punishment.

I'm glad the therapist lady put the beard guy right with his 'you are a role model to your kids in how to handle conflict by cutting off parents'. I'm glad she pointed out that instead they are role modelling to walk away from people that aren't good for you. I find this pretty amazing to do this as parents to protect your own children.

I'm not far in and I can see an estranged parent from tiktok on the benches. I can't wait to hear her speak and see if she is going to be as unhinged as she is on social media.

The beard guy needs more therapy.

I love the brunette estranged daughter and how she described that nothing has changed other than she is no longer being walked all over for the first time in her life and she now actually knows peace. I see myself in her. I also find her gorgeous.

@Twatalert there's a veiled threat in the suggestion that your kids will see and then think it's OK to do it to you, isn't there? I did not like the bearded guy at all. Funny thing is, I watched my mother bend over backwards to try and please people who treated her like shit (my father and her own father) and it just made me wonder why she wanted relationships with people who were awful to her, and promise myself that when I was an adult I wouldn't put up with it.

I'm not on tiktok so I haven't come across the woman with the curly hair before but one thing that struck me was that she refused to actually say what had caused the estrangement and snapped out 'she didn't get her own way' whilst then insisting that her sons thought she was amazing so it obviously wasn't her that was the problem. I just thought, I bet your daughter can tell us in under a minute exactly what the problem is, and I bet it's you, and I bet there's a preference for sons mixed up in it. Even Oprah wasn't buying that.

@Crazylizzards I couldn't put my finger on it but yes, it does feel like a threat and I am not even a parent so this cannot happen to me. I get a sense that he's still speaking from a place of hurt that gets mixed in with his therapist work.

You clocked the curly hair mother. She fits the template completely. Note the number of times she says a version of 'it's not me, I have tried everything, my daughter is the issue, I am not the problem'. And how she points out that the last incident was something small. How does it not occur to her that 'oh, it must have really upset my daughter and maybe it wasn't small to her'.

@Twatalert did you notice also that she said the daughter had cut contact three times, had come back and attempted to repair and had explained herself. And then the mother said with the third time she didn't know what the daughter's problem was or why she had done it.

We all know. Mother slipped back into the same old crap that caused the problems in the first place.

I don't think I'll watch that link sounds like it'll just annoy me.

I was watching a different type of YT video yesterday, one about nostalgia when we were kids and it had about the snow we used to get. The comments were about people staying in bed until their dad lit the coal fire and warmed the house up of a morning, their mum warming their wellies on the radiator for them before heading off to school, assuming the school was shut if snow was deep and not going in etc. All I could think of was my parent who wouldn't let us have the heating on at all because it cost too much and they weren't cold. I froze all winter every winter, to the point I had cold-related health issues. I thought that was just the way I was made until I lived alone, in charge of the heating and no matter how poor and frugal I had to be with it, I never once had those health problems recur. If we were poor I could understand it but although we weren't wealthy we had money for heating, had my parents chosen to spend it. I never had snow days, I didn't dare come home from the bus stop whether the bus came or not, because I was supposed to be in school and would get it in the neck for skiving if I went home.

Same with illness, unless I'd vomited I had to go to school. All that was cared about was me not being under their feet all day. As a result I learned not to prioritise my health, to actively ignore anything about it and became extremely unwell as an adult due to not looking after myself properly and seeking help before minor issues became a permanent major problem.

The impact of a parent who cared only about themselves has been life altering for me. That's the sort of thing I can't forgive. It goes far beyond the things they did to us. They destroy our lives even when they're not there because of the things they trained us to do to ourselves in always putting ourselves last and them first.

I don't do that any more. I've done the work and created a good life for myself but I can never get back the time that was lost when I was living "wrong", the lost opportunities and paths not taken as a result.

I don't think I'll tell people I'm estranged from my family in future, I'm going to say I haven't got any or I'll only mention the ones I like. It'll be like the others didn't exist. If I go to the funerals I can say it was a distant relative I wasn't close to. It seems telling people you're estranged isn't good from a social perspective. I don't want to be marked out as weird just because of things my family did that resulted in NC. They don't deserve to have that power over my life even when they're not in it. I guess it helps that I moved so I'm not going to bump into people who knew them.

@SamAndAnnie there is nothing in this podcast a group like the one on this thread doesn't already know. It does actually stir up some stuff so my afternoon would have been more relaxed had I not watched it.

It's just media and they need to invite people from all sides for a balance and stuff to talk about. But it is the same old, same old.

@SamAndAnnie I am sorry you were treated that way. It's not right.

I found it interesting that there was so much in it I recognised, I haven't really seen many discussions about it beyond this board. But crikey the passive aggressive bullshit from the parents is a lot, isn't it?

It actually stirred up memories for me of a time in my early twenties when I had some difficulties in my relationship with my maternal grandmother over something she had done to my mother when she was younger. I was very angry with my grandmother over it. It was at a time when I still felt it was my job to protect my mother from other people. I remember my mother saying 'you can't just cut people off' (I was estranged from my father by this stage). I look back now and wonder if this wasn't about my grandmother at all, it was about my mother having some level of awareness that at some stage the spotlight might be turned on her behaviour and that might be the end result. Well, you should have been nicer to me, then, shouldn't you. Being family doesn't give you a free pass to treat people like shit without consequence.

Thanks crazy lizards.

Yes I don't feel like I'm missing much twat but thanks for confirming. I don't really watch YT things about this type of problem, I'm more of the type to watch cute cat videos 🐱

I could really use a hand hold tonight. I have one sister and thought we were close. I am planning a very small wedding early next year. My sister has just told me she and her youngest daughter (14) have decided not to come due to fear of what my mum may say or do if they do come. I have told her I am really upset and really wanted her there to support me on my special day, one of the most important days of my life but she she has made her decision. I feel betrayed. I feel even more uncomfortable letting her visit my parents with my primary school aged children, uncertain as to whether she can she support and protect them

@Gudinne I dont remember all the back story but I'm assuming your mother is a problem and you are inviting her anyway?

Are you and your sister on the same page regarding your mother but are keeping a relationship with her?

Congratulations on your marriage. I am sorry your DSis has felt unable to attend the wedding - I can understand the hurt.

It’s not clear if you believe that your DM has been at fault in the past or is an emotional risk with her words to your DSis and your niece?

I don’t understand about your DSis then being a risk to your DM and your DCs?

I am NC with my parents at their choice. My sister sees them regularly. A couple of years ago I was looking after my nephew whilst my sister was on holiday. I called into my parents with my nephew and my own two boys on the way to school. My niece was staying with my parents. I asked her if she could try to listen to my nephew read for ten minutes here and there over the summer holidays as I thought it would help him and I had noticed an improvement in his reading over the short time he had stayed with me doing ten minutes a day daily reading. My dad then flew into a rage shouting that my nephew didn't need help reading as he was already very good at it. I said I disagree based on actually doing reading with him and his teachers share my view based on comments that they have made to me at school drop off and what they had written in his recent school report. Dad became more angry and said teachers had told him differently and his school report said differently. I asked when he had spoken to a teacher and pointed out he had not seen the school report. He insisted he had seen the report it had been emailed to him and it was clearly me that needed help with reading. This was all with my niece and nephew in the room. The exchange left me shaking and doubting myself. I went home, double checked the school report and confirmed the school policy was only to issue hard copy reports, I was the only person to whom the report had been issued. I messaged dad with a tiny pic of the relevant piece of the report and said that his aggressive shouting had made me doubt myself and feel undermined in front of a child in my care. His response basically boiled down to he accepts the report said what it said, he had misremembered but I deserved what he had given me. I spoke niece and nephew after school to check they were both okay and to explain their granddad's behaviour that morning had been poor and they should not behave like that not accept that behaviour from others. Niece said she thinks he has dementia so be kind, I explained he has been like that since his twenties. Nephew said he didn't know why his grandad had said what he had as nephew had read his own report but said grandad often gets angry and shouts when he sees him. From that point I decided that I would only see my parents in public places and that my parents would only see my children chaperoned by a responsible adult. When my parents learned of this they refused to see me in public places or see my children with their dad unless I will allow them unsupervised access to my kids without supervision, which is simply never going to happen. My sister is relaxed about them. She has always lived with or within a few miles of them and has always lived with domestic abuse. I moved a a few hours drive away when I was younger. Only returned to my home city in 2017 after my parents told me the summer before that that mum had emphysema and had a prognosis of three to five years more life if she stopping smoking and followed other advice, which she had no intention of doing, so probably less time for her. Mum is still alive nine years later still smoking and not in any obvious ill health.

So now you have invited your mother/parents to your wedding or your sister is worried your mother might show up without an invitation and act out?

I would doubt your sister is on your side. I wonder if the relationship with your sister is what you think it is or what you would like it to be. It sounds all too messy without clear boundaries, lots of back and forth and emotional ties that are questionable. I'm surprised you trust your sister in taking your kids to see their grandparents. I don't think her loyalty is with you and you probably see her as the one that gets closest to seeing what you see but she can't quite get there.

I'm sorry that this will now impact your wedding day. It's not clear to me why your sister is worried. If you haven't invited your parents then they don't need to know the day and place of your wedding and you should be able to trust your sister to keep it to herself, in which case her worry might be irrational.

If you have indeed invited your parents: do you think it's likely your mother will be a pain?

Oh I haven't invited my parents or told my sister or her children where I am getting married, so they don't need to worry about slipping up. I had arranged for her and her husband and children to be collected from their home and taken to the venue and hoped that element of surprise would make the day more special for them. I think her decision is to avoid the backlash she expects from them if she does attend, she thinks mum will try to top herself and my parents will say my sister drove her to it by coming to my wedding. I have told my sister I don't think that would be rational behaviour from mum, just performative, controlling victim play acting - mum has had a number of suicide attempts which I think are pretend over the years when she doesn't feel she is the focus of adoration from her family. But my sister is scared to risk it.