MARCH 2026 - Well we took you to Stately Homes

[AttilaTheMeerkat]

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."
6

There are such better ways to deal with boredom. Such nicer ways to find stimulation. Using people in this way is messed up. I said to my friend go sign up somewhere to volunteer if you feel you need to help people. Her problem is she doesn’t want them to get better. She wants the dependency.

@MustIgo I definitely didn’t think it was normal. It’s always a massive drama - inserting himself into the middle of things that are none of his business, any normal person would keep a million miles away. It wasn’t always helping, although sometimes it would appear that way. It just didn’t ever seem to serve him in any way (like with MiL it’s always over something she wants etc) so it didn’t seem like the same behaviour.

He’d also present something as a massive drama that was actually sort of made up. He broke up with his gf and then went round telling everyone how she had broken his heart, he had wanted to marry her - on and on and on like he was just in so much pain. We were literally in the room when he told her to leave. He was open with us he didn’t want to be with her. As soon as she packed her bag he was “shocked”, “heart-broken”. It drove us nuts.

These guys are just fluid little bastards, reality is fluid, lies and truth is fluid, boundaries are fluid. I feel there are probably less clever ones who kind of don’t hide well and easy to spot but having done all this reading there appears to be many clever ones who’ve sort of managed to control and manipulate the laws of nature to their advantage. You just don’t know who you are standing in front of. I’m a bit put off people at the moment.

Ladybird you're not wrong, it's possible to for a person to be narcissistic ie have high narcissistic tendencies as a personality trait/flaw (none of us is perfect) and that's within the realms of normality, although it could make a person "difficult" to deal with depending on the circumstances.

Then there's people with narcissistic personality disorder which is on another scale entirely and not remotely normal. It's what many on this thread are dealing with.
But we're all just guessing really because most people with NPD won't ever be diagnosed with it (because they won't ever seek help from medical professionals, because why would they do that when in their eyes it's everyone else who's the problem?!).

Does anyone ever feel that the more they look into narcissism the more they start to analyse their other relationships?

Totally, Must. Once you see it, you can't unsee it.
When you start learning about healthy relationships you start noticing all the unhealthy patterns in other relationships too, even if nobody is a narcissist.

If you've gotten sucked into (or born into) one toxic relationship, you've probably also got other bad relationships around you too, because you've normalised it in general. So people that other, more healthy people, would have noticed red flags in and shaken off long ago - you've kept them and their toxicity in your life, because you didn't recognise it for what it was.

I am feeling less alone these days for having few friends, because as time has gone on I've realised that I'd prefer to be alone than have toxicity around me. Which is how come my circle has ended up small. So I no longer feel like I'm missing out on anything, really. I'm open to friendships but I'm much more reserved about the time and effort I put into them because so often the people aren't worth it in the end.

I'm like you and just wanting simple, uncomplicated relationships with people who enjoy my company. That attitude seems a bit thin on the ground these days though. Although maybe it's always been so and that's why there's that saying - that if you can count your true friends on one hand, you're lucky? Because maybe most people have always had their own agenda (even if that's just to stave off boredom) rather than being a true friend?

I quite like those acquaintance type low grade friendships that exist in the background of life, because if I don't know someone very well then I can't be annoyed or repelled by their bad traits 😆. Seems like most of the time when I truly get to know someone I decide I don't much like them 🤷

Yes, my BiL was diagnosed when he went to therapy during his “I’m in so much pain” breakup period. He told us in a “can you believe this nonsense” kind of way, because he knows his mum is NPD and hates her and thinks he’s better than her 🤔 I was quite surprised he got diagnosed, but he does let things slip and doesn’t seem to remember the fact he’s told you conflicting things (or things you may have even been present for). Their mum was much cleverer and under other circumstances would have avoided detection, but went for “family therapy” and so couldn’t hide what the others had to say about her.

I have known others who I think definitely have it, but they’d never go to a therapist. I’m not entirely sure what possessed him - I guess it was an opportunity for him to talk about himself for hours with little interruption? For the mum, I think she genuinely thought she could pull the wool over the therapist’s eyes.

I’m hoping that through doing work on myself and trying to heal that I get better at spotting these people early on, or at least instinctively gravitate towards healthier people. I have also found “social contact” rather than “making friends” enough at least for now.

I have found it really healing being able to talk on here and know you all understand what it’s like. Having had no support from my family, I really appreciate that some strangers on the internet will just listen and understand.

@Eeriefairy I think for me what’s helped is just working out what I want from life. I am not loud, I don’t like chaos, I don’t like attention. There is no point me hanging with these types of people. I don’t need lots of people to prove anything. I thought my friend was similar but I’ve noticed she lights up when she is in the centre of attention. We’ve been friends for a couple of years. I gave the benefit of the doubt but she’s drawn to chaos like a fly. My family are performers, shallow relationships where they concentrate on money and big houses. Again not my thing, my house is medium but I love my garden and growing things. We naturally don’t gel. In the beginning I tried to force it but now I let it be. I think healing gets us back to ourselves so we can gel with the right people.

I don’t think I want people anymore. I worry I’ve swung the opposite way. My H is a lot like this. I think from being the scapegoat he has learned to be pretty self sufficient and that’s not a bad thing I don’t think. When I was small I remember friends being a right of passage, you must be weird if you don’t have friends. My oldest doesn’t have a lot of friends and can entertain herself. I actually think this is a good mindset. If you can be happy on your own then you aren’t desperate to be attached.

Just saw my dad and he mocked me for being ‘privileged’ (he grew up working class and hates that he had middle class kids), talked about how much he hated being a parent and how he has no interest in being a grandparent… small things but just make me think why do I bother, you clearly don’t like me. He’s acknowledged he was abusive b it when he jokes about how privileged we were and how he hated being a parent I just think you clearly don’t give a toss

I am a little annoyed this morning. I am not sure whether to approach with friend or just slide away. If they are narc they won’t care. When we became friends she was strong on the kids being friends, OTT really pushing them to ask for each other in school. The last few months as she has gone over to this other school mum who’s in a crisis she has been telling her children to play with her kids. In the meantime my kids who’ve now become good friends with her kids are being ignored and actively told to go away by her kids. My eldest is sad. I know this happens. Do I just go down the line of friends come and go? I don’t want them to hold on to people. It’s easier to teach her to let go so she learns to let people go and not take it personally?

It's difficult but I think probably for the best in the long run that this person's DCs are playing with yours less. I feel sorry for all the children involved, but better for you and your family to get some distance from this person. If the children are telling yours to go away they're probably already following the example they see at home. As far as your children are concerned, depending on age perhaps you could gently explain that if they are being unpleasant and not wanting to play then they were not very nice friends and then focus on other friends and make a special effort to do something with them? We had something very similar when my DD was in primary school. It was difficult because as the child of a mother like this I could see it coming a mile off but all DD could see was someone who wanted to be best friends one day and then replaced her the next. Having friends from hobby groups outside of school was invaluable for DD in coping with this.

I don't think any of that is "small things". It just seems that way due to the utter shit show of the things they've put us through and says quite a lot about them that there's stuff far worse that makes this seem small by comparison. All that he said there is actually pretty serious and I agree he's saying he doesn't like you.

The thing that flipped something for me was the day I asked myself why am I hanging out with people who so openly dislike me that they're totally happy to say it to my face with their behaviour during almost every interaction we have?

Initially the reason was to keep the parent happy and to see the younger generation and the people who aren't toxic. But those non-toxic people slowly stopped coming, understandably. The younger generation grew up and avoided the toxicity as much as they could, for which I don't blame them. And as the parent became less outgoing they looked to me more and more for entertainment. Since everything I do and everything I say is wrong and gossiped about, I closed off and stopped communicating beyond pleasantries, grey rocking entirely. As things disintegrated more and more it became apparent that my mere presence wasn't enough to make anyone happy. So I stopped visiting.

Maybe you're at the same point Fawn?

Have any of you googled "why people go NC"? I did once and it was very enlightening. There were reasons like -
Strongly disagreeing with their religious practices or political beliefs.
They're racist or bigoted.
They speak constant negativity.
They dislike you.
They never make any effort to stay in touch.
You find it draining to be around them.
They've been violent towards you.
Are dismissive and unsupportive when you're going through something.
They've committed a crime.
They show favouritism or hostility.

List after list after list on different websites but all saying the same things. Things that seemed initially trivial when I first read them, until I really thought about it. And people had gone NC for ONE of these things. Just one. All of the websites were saying this was justified, understandable, ok. Sometimes even necessary.
Then there was me - putting up with layers and layers of shit far far worse, over and over again, and for what?

There is really little opinion then to teach them that people are arseholes from a young age. My H’s take is that people are generally shit and will fuck you over at any opportunity so just do your own thing.

@MustIgo I like to think that there are many good people around and we need to teach our children the skills of identifying when people are not genuine and/or not treating them well, plus the confidence to express that and walk away. Having the self confidence to be happy to go their own way rather than follow others just to avoid being alone is also a key skill.
Having grown up in a dysfunctional family these are things I know I have had to try to develop later in life. With my family dynamics I grew up accepting it as normal that people would expect more loyalty from me than they gave me, and that any disagreement or mistreatment was my fault. In fact, looking back I often felt it was odd if people wanted to be around me just to spend time with me (and not because I was helping them etc) so I sometimes pushed away decent people because it was not what I was used to.

Just received a parcel with my dad’s handwriting on addressed to my daughter. It’s her birthday on Friday. So no apology for having us drive 3 hours for a visit when he’s buggered off somewhere with their cousin. No concern for my children at all. This was almost 2 weeks ago and they’ve not even acknowledged it was wrong. They honestly expect a thank you call and a reset. I’m absolutely speechless.

I think I’m just going to stay away from people with trauma who’ve not had therapy! Everyone I meet seems to have some terrible back story that they just sweep under the carpet. (This includes myself but I sort therapy).

I agree, they’re not really small things. Especially not when it’s family who are such a big part of life. The people who are supposed to love and support you, behaving like they couldn’t care less.

@ElatedUmberFawn I’m sorry your dad is a twat. It’s not your fault.

@Ladybyrd, if I were you I might just send (or allow DD to send) a thank you text and then not speak to them again?

@Eeriefairy I don’t think I will. She’s too little and next it’s Father’s Day - I feel obligated to send something but the way they’ve been behaving towards us has just gotten worse and worse - I don’t feel like honouring someone who just skips out on an arranged visit and acts like nothing has happened. I can’t just absorb it anymore.

Drop the present straight to the charity shop if it's going to bother you seeing it around the house. Your DD will never know it ever arrived.

@SamAndAnnie I just feel like crap. Been up since 3am. Next thing it’ll be my brother sending my nephew to drop her card off like they did on my birthday. It’s like to them nothing has happened. They come to the town where I live several times a week - make a point of telling us afterwards. He’s got my nephew into a sports team attached to the school I want my kids to go to. They live a three hour round trip away. It just feels really invasive and weird. I wish I didn’t have to deal with any of it - we’ve got enough on without their nonsense.

My eldest didn’t even get a happy birthday or a card from their dad’s sibling and family. It’s been getting forgotten and later and later. I had my card 3 months later, my H weeks. They can’t be bothered. Mine live 4 minute trip. Distance doesn’t matter. Family is stupid.

Last year he gave one of our kids their present months later and didn’t even bother with the other one. It’s the second time he’s done that - at least he alternated them but it’s pretty shit.

I told my mother I thought it was mean not even acknowledging their birthdays (don’t care about the presents) and he sent my nephew to deliver a card for me this year (for the first time in decades). I think it was just to make a point though. He waited outside with the car running so all that did was unsettle the kids.

I’m saying we’re cutting back at Christmas because I’m sick of the pretence - he always spends a fortune on that. My nephew never seems to like my presents anyway.

Last time my brother was there when we visited my parents he stayed in his bedroom - didn’t even say hello to his niece and nephew. Not even my partner. I forgot sunglasses and had to go back - he was sitting on the sofa! A 54 year old man. I’m sick of this crap being normalised. It’s all a performance I’m just sick and tied of it.

I’m feeling very triggered by my friends behaviour at the moment. I am sick of putting myself out there to be cast aside. I’ve tried to help, I’ve done everything a friend should do but it’s not enough. I’m fed up of narcs. I understand it’s them not me and it’s my cue to back away but seriously how many of these people are there!

I might buy a dog!

It’s a case of once you see it, you can’t unsee it. The pattern is so clear.

The positive is it that it stops you continuing a pattern that’s never going to lead to a desirable outcome. That’s also the negative though. You have to face up to the fact that that desirable outcome cannot be achieved, and that’s sad.

I only wanted a peaceful relationship with my family but I can see now these blowups are an inevitable part of that relationship because that’s feeding someone else’s need.

I just want peace. I can’t do it anymore.

One thing it’s taught me though is that I was starting to emulate some of the behaviour - my partner could never do anything right - constant moaning at him, whereas in reality he works his arse off. Now I’ve seen myself and nipped that in the bud.

Highly recommend it. We’ve got a sheepadoodle. Best cuddles ever. He even sighs in your ear!

Belches like a dirty old man though, so it’s a trade off.