"But we took you to stately homes" - Part 4

[oneplusone]

Can't beleive we're onto part 4, although i can't see this thread ever dying.

I was just reading through past posts to try and catch up on the months i have missed and something somebody said has triggered something for me. I know my mother didn't bond with me or love me and i think part of the reason why was because she thought i took after my dad whom she hates (although she is too gutless to leave him). I remember when i was young her saying things like my hair was like my dad's but she wouldn't say it an affectionate way, but quite a venomous way and it always made me feel uncomfortable when she said that but i must have been too young to figure out why.

The more i realise about my mother the more i despise and hate her. I remember she used to play hide and seek with me when i was very young, about 3. Only she would 'really' hide in a place i would never be able to find her. I remember crying and feeling completely distressed one time as i thought she had gone and left me alone at home. It was only after i had been crying for some time that she jumped out laughing from her hiding place. What a nasty, cruel, ugly piece of work and she parades around looking as if butter wouldn't melt and she has a lot of people fooled including my 2 sisters. I know my dad can see her for what she is which is why she hates him and i can see her true colours too which is why i hate her.

I know inside she is deeply insecure, lacks intelligence, strength and integrity. I have witnessed her lie, manipulate and cheat to get what she wants and the people to whom she lies and those who she manipulates are us, her own family. I just can't beleive my sisters cannot see through her, they are totally blind and deaf to her true character and have completely fallen for the victim role she has carved out for herself.

Cutting off my parents was the best thing i ever did and i have realised i need to set some boundaries with my sisters, my last remaining friend and even DH. How to do that is another thing, something completely new to me.

one thing I do find hard to comprehend is how my mother can say these things (that I am destroying my child's life, that I am a disappointment and failure, etc etc) with a concerned look on her face, how she thinks it is in my best interests. how she thinks they are in anyway good or appropriate, how she thinks we can carry on a normal relationship once she has said them. How I'm not supposed to cry or react or shout. How I'm supposed to stand and accept it and appreciate how much she cares for me and how right she is.

Surely that isn't normal.

But yet I do stand there adn take it and go 'hmm, yeah, aha etc'. It's only later that I have time to take it in adn react (when she's not there).

I have become so accustomed to shite like this that I just naturally accept.

And what I can#t forgive her for even more is making me wonder whether she is right.

The Armadillo: Bystander behaviour - the only thing I can think is that if you live with it long enough you probably get to think of most of the stuff as normal and only the real extremes as excessive. My dad probably had a hellish time with my Mum because I suspect she would not have been sweetness and light to him too. When I provoked her, he was probably angry with me because it would make his life harder too.
After my dad died, my Mum did a vicious, nasty thing... she tried to tell me that my relationship with him was bad too. Basically she tried to rewrite history. Our relationship wasn't wonderful but it wasn't the awful thing she tried to make it to be. Thankfully mym dad and I had some time to talk when we knew he was dying and we knew where we stood with each other by the end, so I was able to see my mum's lies for what they were. Though I can't even begin to think why she would want to make something like that up.

TheArmadillo, I actually asked my parents why if they thought I was that bad a parent as they made me out to be did they not call the social services only to be told not to be so dramatic.

Thanks quinne I can almost understand it logically like that, but the child in me wants to scream 'you were the parents, at least one of you should have stood up and protected your children'.

I am sorry to hear about what your mum did - that must have been practically unforgivable.

IMO she probably wanted to turn you against your father's memories to keep you on her side. She didn't think she had a great relationship with your father, so you were not allowed to either. To show you having a good relationship would expose her as being at least partially at fault in hers.

That would be my take on it anyway.

more - I expect that's what I'd get along with 'well that wasn't what I actually said' and the 'well look at all I have to cope with, you never think about me do you'.

It's easier just to take it tbh.

Nice to know I'm not alone thoguh.

It's the minimalising of it if you ever throw it back to them, and the thoroughly discounting your emotions.

Gah, parents, who'd have them

thanks ally

I am doing good in a way - it's hard, but I have lots of practical stuff to concentrate on, and I am becoming more and more emotionally distant from them (hence more of the nasty outbursts). They actually make is easier as the behaviour is clearly not right.

Still struggling with the emotional stuff but I am dealing with it small piece by small piece after realising I couldn't do it all at once.

I am moving after christmas - and the date is getting closer and closer. I am getting excited It makes things easier.

Fantastic news re house move!!!

Yep perhaps deal with emotional stuff more as you get more physical distance from her...

allyxxxx

Armadillo, sorry for not remembering everything from when you last posted a while back but are you living further away from your mum now? Do you need to see her so often? I feel like I would like to come and get you myself and wrench you away from her and tell her to fuck off because she is continuing to damage you! I feel really angry reading it! I know it is easy to say Don't take it from her, but I can't believe how someone would try to destroy their own child's confidence for their own gain! The things she is saying are NOT true but it is not your fault you doubt yourself after being subjected to it for so long.

The best thing seems to be if you could have a long break from her (poisoning your own mind against yourself) and get back some of your confidence by measuring yourself by your standards not hers, or have limited contact but make it clear that if she wants contact you will not put up with her nastiness and if it continues you will cut contact down further or completely. I know these are easier things to say than to do.

It is interesting what you said about bystander behaviour because I feel as though I should be more angry with the people that physically did things to me yet the person I feel most angry with and bitter about is my mum who wouldn't do anything about any of it.

Also you said "It's the minimalising of it if you ever throw it back to them, and the thoroughly discounting your emotions". I feel this sentence sums up what makes me most angry about my parents. I thought I was the only one who was 'going mad' because of them acting like this until I found this thread.

Armadillo, Quinne, More, Ally - you all seem to have had this similar negative influence from parents - it is like they and their lives are/were crap and they can't stand it if yours is better so they try to make you believe in "their reality" like you said Ally and make you believe that you are as shit as them and your life is and will be as shit as theirs! (this is also how I feel about my mum's view of things). It must be because they want to think this is 'normal' or something so they don't have to feel so crap about themselves if they think others are crap as well.

I agree "Don't fall for your mothers 'reality'". Lets not let them do this to us! It is NOT real! We are better than them and want better for our children.

TMSBs, reading what you wrote about helping your DDs with things your mother never helped you with felt really positive and reminded me of something NotMamaG said a while back which I often think about and feel comforted by - something like, if you had no good role model of a loving parent you should congratulate yourself on every loving and positive thing you do for your own children

Emma789, I was struck by this which you wrote - "the thing that I lost out on most was the ability to trust my own judgement". I also feel this and it sounds relevant to what Armadillo has been talking about and what others have said as well. Bad parents seem to act like it was all normal because they don't want to accept they were/are bad parents. This is why they act like this, NOT because you are 'mad'. I feel we all need to trust our own feelings and instincts more and not let our childhoods/childhood families brainwash us.

Got to go as DH feels neglected if I am on MN too long.

The Armadillo-yes, their reflexive diminishment of us is to embellish, or at least preserve, their perceived status of superority. Parents sometimes can not see their offspring as adults. This can seep over into sibling rivalry also, which is my battlefield.

I have a more clear view of my circumstances and it isn't really sibling rivalry. My Middle Sister's behavior towards me was learned from my mother. Always ridiculing and dismissive, put me down, shut me up-keep me 'pressed down' (ie: depressed) all in the name of Middle Sister's superority (narcissistic). My mother would not love me and I was invisible to her, now Middle Sister can not have one iota of empathy for me.

Got to go dear little one melting down....

ActingNormal, I think you hit the nail on the head with what you wrote about them wanting their lives to be 'okay', by making damn sure that their kids' lives become as shit as theirs are/were. This is the sick, toxic part because real, good parents want the best for their kids. Most parents want their kids to live easier, better lives than they did themselves. I found that the only negative thing in my life was my mother. I mean, I was happy in all other areas and all all those areas she tried her damndest to drag me down. When I met a nice man and decided to get married my mother went all out in trying to put the breaks on the wedding. She simply couldn't believe that I was going ahead with it anyway against her wishes and she was livid that she couldn't just STOP it. She also couldn't comprehend why other people (grandparents, in-laws, cousins and, thankfully, my brothers) were believing that I was getting married when she hadn't given her naughty daughter permission to do so.

Emma, I'm glad you mentioned the bystander role. My father was physically and emotionally abusive but he was also a bystander for my mother's abuse (she was the worst of the two). In one discussion he said, 'yes well I didn't do anything wrong did I?'. APart from the fact he'd forgotten the way he abused me himself I appreciated the fact he was managing to talk about it with me. But I answered him and said:
'Dad, its the same thing. When you stand back and watch somebody hurt your child its exactly the same as if you were hurting them yourself'. He had no answer to that, of course!

My mum phoned at the weekend when we were out and left a message just saying something like phoning to see how you are. I can't work out why I feel like my insides are going No, No, get away from me, get out of me and my life and I feel so nasty towards her and contempt for her. She doesn't continue to abuse me like some of your mothers. I can't really say that she ever did abuse me just stood by. She just talks about safe normal boring topics in a pleasant manner.

I made the decision to stay in contact but have limited contact so if I made that decision why do I feel so angry when she tries to phone. Must try to remind myself - I'm doing this because it is easier than the guilt and sadness I would feel constantly if I cut off completely. I just have to do a short phone call which makes me feel discomfort for a few minutes and a few minutes after so long as I put it out of my mind. Then I will feel ok for ages until the next time.

It feels like she has nothing to say, just wants to make me do what she thinks normal families do and talk to her at intervals like she thinks it is my duty. (this was her father's attitude to her). She does want to keep on at me in every phone call from now until Xmas about what we want for Xmas presents and when we are going to see them. This seems like something a nice person would want to talk about so why am I so uncomfortable about it. I feel like I have to be nice to her because she wants to do something nice for us. Normally when we say what we actually do want she says "Oh your dad won't buy you that because he won't approve, you will have to think of something else". She is scared to tell him what we want in case he gets cross, weird! So we try to think of something boring which we need and is useful rather than just want frivolously and he is happy to get us that. I feel uncomfortable when she feels worried by what I've said we want.

Somebody has recently put money in the children's savings thingy. The letters don't say who put the money in but it is normally my dad. I should phone him and say thank you. I don't feel grateful though, why is that. I just feel resentful that now I have to phone them because of it.

On the face of it, it looks like my parents are being really nice and I am being ungrateful and nasty and rejecting of them. But I can't help it. It feels like my whole insides reject them and want to retch them out of my life! I want to forget about them and my old life and enjoy the nice life I have now. Every time they contact me I feel angry like they are 'disturbing my peace' and reminding me of how shit my life used to be. I feel anxious that I might somehow be sucked into shitness if I go anywhere near them, which is irrational.

They don't mistreat me, they just remind me of how unhappy I was during my childhood and I don't want to be reminded. I want to feel I have completely escaped. The feeling of wanting to escape and be left alone seems to be a theme in my life. It just occurred to me I wonder if the fact that I woke up incredibly irritated by the children and DH as well and the thought went over and over in my head "leave me alone, get away from me", is a coincidence. Or am I thinking that thought about my childhood family but not expressing it (until now on MN), and taking it out on my own little family instead.

I hate my 'mixed up' days when other times I feel so clear about things and positive. I'm accepting that there will be days like this though and that is normal for everyone and the phases don't last a long time like they used to.

AN - I haven't moved yet, but am preparing to. I am hoping that my parents will carry thru their threat to cut me off if I move

I have cut down my visits to them and the phonecalls, but not completely. I need to leave communication open to complete my 'escape' for now. I am preparing the practical stuff.

It's nice that people are angry for me - in here and in RL, it makes me feel I'm not in the wrong and gives me strength.

I still couldn't tell you why my friends choose me as their friend, but I understand that they have. This is good.

The good days I have are becoming more frequent.

Life is looking positive still.

TMSB - sibling rivalry is a huge problem between me and my sister. We have little relationship. I would like maybe at some point to try to create one with her, but I am waiting to see how she reacts as I pull away.

Being angry at my dad has always been easier than being angry at my mum. I have in the past always put my anger on him. There are many reasons. He was to a certain extent physically violent towards us (slapping, hitting, dragging down stairs by ankles) and there was always that immediate physical fear when he was angry. Plus as a child my mum told me he didn't like me and found me difficult, because I was like her (in her words). I assumed it meant he didn't love me, so it was easier to dislike him. Because of that it was easy to see him as the one behaving badly and use that to absolve my mum of any blame.

But now he is the bystander, and to an extent always has been. I choose to spend more time with him than my mum, but not because I choose him, but because I am avoiding my mum.

It's funny now that my mum says I am like him - but only in a negative context.

TMSB would you possibly pop over to this thread if you have a moment and don't mind? Her mother has passed away and left unresolved issues...and as your mother passed away I thought you may have some wise words?

Hi all, I have followed this thread with interest for a while but have not had the courage to post I am struggling with coming to terms that my Mum is in my eyes a toxic parent I even feel bad writing it down .
I am the eldest of four and my Mum was always violent (hair pulling ,chasing ,throwing stuff ,she once hit me with a curtain pole and made my fingers bleed and has always denied it)She has always been most controlling over me and my sisters she demanded most of my wages when I lived with her and also has on occasion hit me when I was pg and living with her .
She is a major control freak and even though I am 30 she still tries it my other siblings seem to be able to blow it off now but I am under her beck and call and am very frightened of her.
We do think she has dyspraxia (my dd has it and since reading up on it it fits her to a tee) I am now worried because my Dad works away and she is hurting my brother (he is 17) she throes him out late at night and has hot him with baseball bats and thrown dishes at him .
She has a problem with alcohol drinking up to 8 cans most nights .
There is so much more I could write about but I just wanted a general opinion on her and if she sounds as though she is a toxic parent or not.
Thankyou .

Is the pope a catholic?

Welcome to the thread and it gets easier to speak out once you get going...there are other people here with siblings currently at home with the parent and/or alchol problems. Her behaviour was completely unjustified. You don't hit children, ever. Nothing they do can justify that abuse. (disclaimer...hitting to bruise/humiliate/draw blood...that kind of hitting!)

hi I have followed this thread too, I have a toxic mother whom I have all but cut out of my life now.

If you met my Mother on the street all she would do was brag about her perfect daughter who has went to university, had a good career now has a "big" house and 3 beautiful daughters and she is a great Mother. I think this is to try and convince everyone that she is a wonderful Mother when in reality it couldn't be farther from the truth. She has always favoured my younger brother, this isn't just a casual oh he was the favourite all our family know he's the favourite, she has told me I was the mistake before she got her boy and that if he would have been born first I wouldn't have been here. I have never had a compliment direct from her, she would always pick up things about my appearance almost constantly and my achievements were belittled. This has left me with very little self esteem.

My Dad well his is more of a benign neglect in that he's not bad at heart just really emotionally retarded in that he was never around much and didn't really do anything in the way of wanting the best for the family, i.e. he was out "working" all the time yet we were very poor, hardly any money for food, electric etc

The last time I spoke to her was July when DD3 was born and she came up to see her. She phoned once after that and I didn't phone her back. I could go on and on about all the other things she has done/said but would be here forever. I think I am grieving in a way not for her but for the mother I have never had, I would love to be able to visit my Mum and enjoy the DDs with her.

Anyway I know theres loads on here who have had a much harder time that me

AN- I think your mother triggers your anger because she is behaving as though nothing has happened.
Every time she behaves like this it 'must'(I would assume) make you feel as you did as a child.
So whatever you feel now is possibly how she made you feel as a child when she repeatedly kept ignoring your truth.
I felt this with my mother when I saw her the other weekend. There she was larger than life, flouncing about the place, or acting like the wounded victim (whichever drew the most attention). I felt livid. Im not willing to comply anymore. Not prepared to put my feelings underground so that hers can be tended to. It pisses me off quite frankly.
This feels like what your mother is doing. She 'needs' you to continue acting normal so she can feel better about herself.
This is why I cant re-open the doors for a relationship with my mother despite having seen her.

Fiveplusbump - Absolutely yes....beyond a shadow of a doubt. Feel quite you needed to ask actually.

Will have to pop back later dd is screaming!
Hugs to allxx

I am so worried about how things are going with my sons and I wonder if it is because of being brought up in several children's homes and foster placements. Typing that makes me realise that my DD is behaving well and I don't seem to have the same problems with her.

Hi
I've spoken to my Oldest Sister and she had a call from our Middle Sister. MS is in angry mode about my boundaries-well, let her be.
Background-
I told her I wanted a break from our relationship and told her I'd let her know when I was ready to deal with her again-that was in March. She, in her black and white world, is waiting for me to call her-she has told OS that she will not call me first. Why on earth would I call her?

Ds will be 16 next week and she wants to know what he wants (I almost typed she wants to know what she'll get him-there is a bit of a difference, iyswim). So she tells OS to tell me that (she won't call me first) which is a problem because she doesn't know what ds wants. I never told her she couldn't call ds, I just said no more expensive gifts.

Gifts.
They play a big part of MS's strategy of superiority. Not just financially-creating a sort of debt when she buys expensive things for my children-then I 'owe' her.

But also the way MS does gifts is a power play that goes something like this:
MS asks what we want (she is in a superior position to grant our wish).

Then she does not get what we ask for, but instead she redefines it into what she thinks we would want better based on our request. A power play. This is irritating and I finally figured out why. It is hard to explain but it comes around to she does not acknowledge our existence (she won't acknowledge our individual brain making a valid choice). She operates from her brain and expects everyone else to as well, as in the answer to the gift question is ___and that is the best answer- there can be no other- end of discussion.

I have read where this is called "over achieving" or "over functioning" which leaves no possibility for anyone else to function. Also known as "she breathes all of the oxygen in the room and leaves no air for anyone else". Very narcissistic.

I refuse to take the bait and won't tell her what I want. Let her choose something on her own since she won't get what we ask for anyway. Last time I said this (birthday-I said I am 46-I don't need a present, just send a card) she called back with, "If you don't tell me what you want, I'm not getting you anything." Oooooh, Superior Power, who is in control now?? (I said, Fine -just send a card. She sent a tea cup about a two months late.) So, just in time for the holidays, I've figured out that for her to choose a gift without a prompt would mean that she'd have to acknowledge our existence and actually think about us.

She might get us something we don't want...would it ever dawn on her that we don't want her 'redefinition' of our request?

I imagine she will still figure out a way to put conditions on the gift or have some other control feature to it. For example, a long time ago, I told her I'd never have a DVD player in my vehicle-the dc can look out of the window. The next holiday, there was the portable DVD player for the dc. Diminished me and pleased my dc-double win for her.

Sorry about this rant about gifts, but it plays into her diminishment of me, and my low plateau of not having feelings or a feeling of existence. But figuring it out helps and I am doing better. I have boundaries and I know I don't owe her anything. Thanks for listening/reading.

TMSB, have you got any links to the 'over-functioning' personality? I've never heard of it and it sounds really interesting. My mother and definitely my MIL might fit into that. I'm guesssing the line "After all I've done for you..." would probably come out of the mouths of these kind of individuals.

Hi all thanks for the replies to my post .
I have been thinking a lot about my mums behaviour and while I feel bad because I do love her a lot I also feel very angry with her for what happened when we were kids and to an extent is still happening now .
For instance she has the day off work today she has been moaning we never go to see her ..when we do visit she sits at the PC and tries to get me to fix stuff on it or help her understand stuff ,she also tells the LO's off if they make too much noise .
My sister and I told her to come and have a cup of tea with us at my house but she would prefer to go home and sit and feel sorry for herself until we go up to hers ....she is also angry over my scan because I asked my sister to come if dp can't get time off work and she has kicked off about it .

I am trying very hard atm to take a step back from everything been so intense with her she upsets me so much with her thoughtlessness and demanding .

I have been thinking a lot about our childhood and the stuff she does and some of the things I can never imagine doing to my dc she never told us she loved us ,never kissed us goodnight or even held our hands and it all sounds so trivial but I wonder why it has had such an effect on me .

Hi all, haven't been able to post for a while, nor read recent posts. Have just skimmed through and wanted to say welcome to the new posters. Hope you find the support you need here.

I am still struggling with feeling or even working out the emotions i felt as a child when my dad turned from being my 'attachment figure' within the family to being a 'nasty, scary monster' who seemed to hate me completely. I realise now that the hugely traumatic incident signalled the end of my relationship with my dad as I knew him and loved him and the start of a new, hurtful, damaging, painful relationship with my new, and most definately 'not improved' dad. But the worst thing was he seemed to switch from being nasty to nice and i suppose every time he was nice I, as a little 11/12/13 year old girl would feel happy and relieved that my dad did love me after all. But then there would a nasty incident and i would be hurt and shocked afresh. I can see how i would eventually have 'shut down' my feelings to avoid the repeated shocks and pain and my initial confusion, bewilderment and hurt gradually turned to anger and resentment and to a degree indifference.

The nice/nasty dad was around for years, from when i was 11 til around 18 and then i went to university and got away from him for a while. And he also seemed to 'calm down' a bit as well, although his nasty, vicious, vindictive, uncaring, unreasonable side was always around. His rages lessened I suppose, but my rages didn't. But he never accepted my right to be angry at him, he always evaded responsibility for making me angry.

There were so many incidents and episodes of him being so hateful and hurtful towards me, do I really have to experience the emotions of each and every incident in order to be free of my past? It's too much. I can't even remember each individual incident apart from a handful which i suppose must have been the worst and most shocking to me. I think now that every time an incident took place, i went into shock and felt nothing at the time, well not consciously, but subconsciously there must have been loads going on emotionally. I think that must be why it is so hard for me now to experience the emotions from that time, because at the time i felt nothing, apart from shock.

The other night i had a dream, it was awful, more like a nightmare. I think i had been having the same dream for a few nights and it always left me feeling devasted, incredible pain and feeling like i would never recover from the pain. I am sure that these are the feelings from the 'incident' with my dad, perhaps my brain is only allowing me to feel them in a dream as they are too painful even now for me to feel them consciously, whilst i am awake. If so, I am glad, as i don't think i could survive if i felt like that consciously. The feelings I had in the dream were the way i would feel now if something terrible were to happen to my beloved DS; I would be heartbroken, utterly devasted and i think it is something i would never recover from. And i don't actually think i have ever recovered from feeling and realising that the dad that i loved and who i thought loved me, overnight seemed to hate me and continued to hate me to this day. And even though i never really thought it was because I had done something to make him hate me, i do still wonder why, to this day, he suddenly went from loving me to hating me.

I think i have never got over the shock of first realising this. Perhaps that is why that incident seems so terrible, as it was probably the first time i knew for sure that my dad hated me and also perhaps had always hated me and had all the time been pretending to love me and like me. I must have questioned the past 10 years of closeness that we had and wondered whether it had all been a lie. He must have destroyed all my trust in him, destroyed the attachment i had to him, destroyed the love i had for him and amazingly to me, he seems to have no idea what he has done, what devastation and damage he caused to me. But then i suppose somebody like him, with no empathy for others, who is cut off from his own feelings, will never realise how others feel or how he can hurt people with a few careless words. And particularly a child, his words would have been hurtful to an adult, but to a child they would have been a thousand times so. I can see through my DD how sensetive children are, she gets hurt so easily, and she has experienced not even a fraction of the devastating incidents i endured.

I am sorry for rambling, thanks to anyone who has read this far.