April 2023 -"Well we took you to Stately Homes"

@Trappedwitheviledna as an aside, I am the same with money. Always the reason to not see a therapist because who knows if it will be worth it. I think I don't like really spending it because someone else has fucked me up if you see what I mean? It feels unfair to me and so it feels like I need to compromise on even more (money) to deal with what my mother did to me.

I'm glad you can afford a therapist as it means you can just decide to go for it if you want to.

I'm in no way qualified to give advice but I would steer clear from CBT and anyone person centred. The latter believe all the answers are within you. Surprise surprise. They are not. I learnt a huge deal just from reading up on narcissism and abuse and that some people lack the capacity to self reflect etc. It would never have occured to me and my first two therapists didn't even remotely explain anything like that to me.

@twatalert I do understand that but I feel that way more about the time involved…all the hours wasted dealing with her strops and then the recovery time and trying to come up with strategies to deal with her behaviour.

Oh I totally agree with you about the cbt and the counsellors who won’t talk! One of them was quite cruel, staring at me in silence and saying that I looked uncomfortable! Also very obviously looking at the clock …I should have reported her really.

Any update on The Hag from monkey from Manchester? Hope husband is well x

Hi all - I've been listening to this - Growing Up as the Scapegoat to Narcissistic Parents: A Guide to Healing by Jay Reid (free on Audible 7 day trial: https://www.amazon.com/Growing-Up-Scapegoat-Narcissistic-Parents/dp/B0C2WQNNJC/ref=tmm_aud_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=) and finding it super helpful. I have ordered the other recommendations and waiting for those to arrive/be available at the library. In particular it has helped me to remember that I am safe and worthy and that going NC may be better for me and my mental health (and of course that of my two small beautiful innocent girls).

There is an analogy that has really resonated comparing the narcissist to a snake. Whilst if you came across a snake you would obviously seek to avoid it to not put yourself in danger, why do we not act in the self preservation way with narcissists even though they cause emotional hurt?

@Frazzledgoat that looks interesting…thanks for sharing❤️

Reading everyone’s posts makes me feel less alone as there is so much overlap in experiences even though circumstances and families vary.

I noticed quite a few posts about going wanting to go low or no contact. Similarly, I have gone very low contact with 2 out of 3 of my narc siblings. It’s been more difficult with my mother as she seems to swing between being caring to mean. I also have some self inflicted guilt and pressure (which I am attempting to work through). My mother expects me to call her everyday. She never calls me and if I miss a day she will say something like “I was wondering what happened to you. I was hoping nothing bad had happened. You just forgot about your own mum” I was so used to this pattern that I never questioned it. Now I ask her “if you were worried about me why didn’t you just call?”. To which she replies “that’s true I could have” but then never does if I miss a day:

I keep my calls to my mother brief as she doesn’t ask anything me anything and expects me to be her therapist or won’t chat unless I ask her how she is etc. Since I started journaling in January I noticed that at least every other day she has something odd or mean to say. An example of this is, when I recently got my haircut from a longer to a shorter bob when I FaceTimed her she said sarcastically ‘I see you’ve cut your hair even shorter because it must have been too long for you to comb’. Another example is she’ll often say “your daughter or son doesn’t look very happy in the photo you sent me and I though you probable shouted at them a lot”. Most of the time I don’t know what to say back to these comments as they are sideways dig at me. The type of comments that make me question if I am being overly sensitive which seems to be a special trick narc people use.

The kids and my partner have been lucky enough to take some time off and travel for 3 weeks. I decided to use this time to also reset and heal. Just spend more time getting to know myself as so much of my childhood has been taking care of my mother that I tend to fall into the caregivers role easily and forget about myself. It sounds weird but sometimes I don’t know who I am underneath all the expectations I’ve carried around with me since my emotionally traumatic childhood. Since he holiday began I have sent my mum a pic everyday instead of calling her. She doesn’t message me back as she is not that good with her smartphone so I don’t get any message back. She called me once and we had the usual chat I described above.

The thing I have underestimated is how bad these short daily phone calls feel. I am less anxious and I don’t have a tape playing in my head of the last few judgemental comments she made. Now, I am just wondering how I can continue this way when I get back home. I feel a responsibility to check in on her as she is old, alone and has fought my corner a couple of important times in my life.

Should I be upfront and tell her I will call her every few days? Should I continue to send her a pic of my kids daily (she likes to see them but not engage with them!) and call once a week? I feel stuck as she expects a daily call and moving to a different pattern feels like it might create more chaos than it’s worth! I also sometimes help her with admin and life stuff as she doesn’t read or write much english. She can speak enough to get by but sometimes also uses her age and lack of language skills as an excuse to get her kids to do things for her. It can be confusing at times to understand if she genuinely needs help or is just using it as an attention seeking thing.

Also, I highly recommend experimenting with a no or low contact break for anyone sitting on the fence about it. Maybe for a month or more. I had no idea how bad those calls were for my mental health and now I do! I need to figure out what to do after this holiday though.

Does anyone else have immigrant parents? The mental burden of being a child of immigrants combined with the narc traits of some of my family members has been a lot for me. I think about my children's lives and how they can just be children. It’s highlighted to me how much I dealt with at their age.

By the time I was my daughters age (10) I was a translator, therapist and friend to my mother (she was lonely and depressed). I had to explain everything I needed for school and why. I had to argue to be allowed on school trips (because my parents couldn’t understand how anything other than books were educational). I had to beg to be allowed to go to a friends house as I was told only family matters not friends.

On the other hand my parents left a very poor country and barely had enough food to eat as kids. My mother stopped school at age 8! They worked hard and sacrificed having things themselves so that we (the kids) could have more opportunities. For a long time I told myself this over and over again. It got me through all the stuff I had to go through and i minimised any feelings I had about the emotional neglect. It’s a complicated set of feelings and experiences. I don’t have much of a point in sharing this all but just trying to process it at the age of 40! I mean, I guess I have been processing it all of my adult life and it’s still a work in progress.

I want to move onwards and look forwards and not be dragged down by all this baggage. 🤗

What a long post!!!! 😳

@tonewbeginnings I suffer the same guilt. My mum is 62, she had me at 20. We moved to the UK when I was five and your experience aged 10 is something that fully aligns with my experience. I then also became babysitter to my little brother (golden child) a year later. The book I put in the link above talks about the scapegoat being told that they are unworthy and underserving and to be grateful for food/shelter and having to negotiate freedoms to see friends and be outside the home which normal families just don't do.

I just got a series of hurtful messages from my mum asking for me to reimburse her for petrol, her time, a bottle of 4Eur wine and a couple of beers we drank at her house. I offered to get a taxi from the airport and we shopped for our food and paid for her meal eating out, but those things apparently are forgotten.

If I needed confirmation that NC is the only way to protect myself and my little ones now I have it. Now I just need the courage to follow through and work through the guilt...

Hi @tonewbeginnings, I’ve only just joined the thread so don’t feel too qualified to give any advice but two things in the past week have helped.

firstly this. I know you don’t talk about chronic illness but I think you’ll still find it useful. I think most of us on here will.

Also the book Burnout by Emily and Amelia Nagoski.

@Frazzledgoat being told to be grateful feeds guilt and then being emotionally neglected + scapegoated is difficult to deal with. This pull and push is awful and tough to break through with going no contact. Sorry you’re having to go through this too.

@Trappedwitheviledna this book sounds good, thanks for sharing. Expectations on women can be so different. My brothers have behaved like bullies their entire lives and not much is said about it. If I don’t constantly smile and act happy or extremely polite around my family I’m told that I am being rude or ungrateful! My mum’s favourite phrase was “you should think positively” after my brothers bullied me.

I have a question for everyone. If we do manage to go NC with our abusive parents, what happens when they're elderly and need care. I'm already envisaging pressure to financially/physically support...

It is so weird how nuclear families have such a strong hold on us. I'm writing down all the incidents I can remember and already have too many pages filled with behaviour that I would not tolerate from anyone else. And yet, I still feel the need to be responsible for my narcissistic mum! To be a "good daughter".

Frazzledgoat - then they get to take their chances with the system, as far as I am concerned. Or maybe my brother will do it. But it's nothing to do with me and (I cannot stress this enough) I don't care.

@Frontroomroomjungle how long did it take you to get to the not caring part?

@AttilaTheMeerkat sounds like I need to deprogramme. Again, grateful for any tips.

I stopped caring at 50 as by then I finally realised they didn’t care after witnessing favouritism of my children where one of them was now the scapecoat was was getting the same treatment as me , either ignored , laughed at, or subtle little criticisms

@Frazzledgoat Difficult to be precise but I had gone low contact in the year prior to lockdown, as I realised just how damaging my relationship with my mother was. When I decided to go no contact early in lockdown, I sat myself down and spelled out to myself what it would mean and I decided I wasn't going to feel guilty about any of it. And I don't. My mother has shown no remorse about her treatment of me and my siblings, so why should I feel bad? She trained us to switch off our inconvenient emotions, might as well put it to good use.

Luckily none of my grandparents are/have been frail or required any kind of care so it's not something we as a whole family have ever dealt with anyway. If they did, my mother wouldn't be caring for them, far too beneath her.

@Shortbread49 I glimpsed this with my two (3 year old treated golden and 1 years old being told off/criticised constantly). That's what has scared the sh*t out of me. I would rather die than let them endure the mercurial, illogical, spiteful venom from my oh so Catholic at peace and lovely mum.

@Frontroomroomjungle I've noticed that I've thrown myself into work and that has managed to keep my mind quiet. Now I realise that my hard work ethic and perfectionism was linked. I saw an escape and ran with it. I'm so grateful for that survival instinct.

Thanks @AttilaTheMeerkat selfish is one of the labels that has always been thrown at me. But you're so right. It's not my mess. I do feel cultural pressure (Hispanic families seem to be more enmeshed and patterns seem to keep repeating), but I'm choosing to let it go.

Update: my DH is fully supportive on NC.

Hi everyone. Same here. My NM alesys showed preference for my eldest DD preference and it was horrible to watch. A couple of years ago told her she was her favorite and not to tell anyone. My DD cried as she felt this was very wrong and told me. As a consequence she nows understands how NM is not to be trusted.

I am on holiday with DH and kids and having a really lovely time.
NM really wanted to join us. I told her this was a holiday for us only (and not her) several times and she kept insisting to join us. She doesn't care I don't want to be with her.
A few years ago she actually showed up at the location we were having a holiday completely uninvited and stayed with us being as nasty as possible.
I didn't tell her this time where we are. She stopped talking to me for not telling her. She is fuming.

Emotional detachment is one of those things that needs to be mindfully practised. I found it a bit "fake it until you make it" because of all the FOG and knowing that I was still be slagged off from here to kingdom come.

The other thing was that once I had achieved some level of distance, I started to be horribly haunted by all the memories of the awful things that had been said and done to me. I suppose that creating a bit of space and perspective meant that there was now room for me to start thinking about and processing the lifelong experience of being scapegoated and subjected to abuse since my earliest memories.

Not nice at all.

So it's a very long process. Going LC, then going NC, then starting to pick up the pieces and rebuilt a better life.

There is no place in my life for people who make me feel bad or who behave badly around me. I don't care who they are. I only wish I had learned to stand tall and say no much much earlier.

@Sicario memories certainly rattling around my brain for the last few days and I am grieving my daughters' loss of a grandparents. I am actually really thankful that they moved abroad when I went to uni (without telling me btw) as since then I have stood on my own two feet and have amazing loving and functioning relationships.

One of the worst things my NM did said to my DH the first time she met him