Mumsnet FWR Guide to De-Programming Yourself From Self-Harming Kindness

[arranfan]

Vipers - start writing.

I'm more convinced than ever that we need A Mumsnet FWR Guide to De-Programming Yourself From Self-Harming Kindness

Helen Saxby says, Women are socialised to be kind so it makes it difficult for us when standing up for our rights is painted as being 'unkind'. We should just feel 'entitled' instead, like men do

I think it goes beyond that to the point where we self-harm or we're implicitly being coerced into causing harm to other women.

De-programming suggestions?

Possession of a vagina is not a designated responsibility to carry the responsibility of anyone who tries to hand it to you.

This x 100000000

Excellent thread thank you.

I love the idea of Beryl (except that my own aunt Beryl was pretty cool so I'll have to have a Marion or something.)

Learning to say No has been excellent.

Sometimes there's a different way to say no which I've become clever at, avoiding the actual word but still none of the cowing or sorries, directing a different option . a bit like talking to toddlers

Mumsnet was my deprogram.

I was given short shrift by anyfucker on the relationship board. I literally had to turn my thoughts inside out to understand how conditioning had made me.

This is a very interesting thread. I have often looked back on my failed marriage and wished I had been kinder.
I was a real bitch at times and my ex said I was bullying. Ive spent a lot of time examining my behaviour.
At the root of it though, I defended my career ferociously, and vocalised my dissatisfaction with the unfair division of labour. Perhaps it was he he could have been kinder.
The question as to where we would be had we been the recipient of the care and kindness we have given out? Well I think that would probably put paid to the gender pay gap in one fell swoop!

Yup mumsnet has been my most effective deprogramme too.

Last decade I had years of counselling and she challenged me to say 'no' whilst looking at myself in a mirror. I actually couldn't do it.

Fast forward a lot of years and after becoming a parent and some intensive time on FWR I've got rid of a lazy, misogynistic chancer from my team. The last question he asked me before leaving 'have I done what you wanted with x task' I said 'yes' when I should have said 'no, but you know that so now fuck off out of this building'. So whilst I ultimately won the war with him I am still fighting the war with myself.

Lots of this comes from how kids are brought up.

Very trite example but... Dh fucking horrendous with Xmas cards etc. It does my head in. He's increasingly said however that my handwriting is nicer and I'm starting to think it's partly true, but also that in his family his mum always did the cards so it feels right that I do (to him).

I am trying very hard not to do the buying etc but what often overcomes this is that I want a relationship with his young nieces and nephews and I don't want them questioning where the sodding card is.

Ive been channelling ds into making and sending cards and letters (when he wants to!) and I'm glad now at almost 6 he suggests making a card to either send for a birthday or to say thank you.

It especially pisses me off that a uni friend of both of ours, v close to him, always writes the Xmas card to us. Dh would do so but I have to organise it.

To deal with this imbalance I don't do any of the car stuff. Which I know doesn't help Marion, but we also have the fucking laundry/ bedsheet/ washing machine issue here. I don't iron though and pre mumsnet did point out that a) I don't iron my own stuff unless absolutely necessary and b) he's never ironed my stuff nor would offer to.

I've a lot to say about breastfeeding too but I'll stop here. Actually, it was breastfeeding that probably radicalised me and started the de programming journey.

Breastfeeding was also an eye-opener for me. There was a real struggle in the early months of putting the baby first. My OH was great at doing all the house stuff though - he’d make dinner, put the washing on, do the cleaning etc. Where I really felt the pressure was at being ‘touched out’ after having the baby all day. I just wanted my own space and body to myself.

An almost addiction to the martyrdom of it. Enjoying watching others enjoy the fruits of your labour, gaining pleasure from putting others before you

I think there is a big element to that.

It especially pisses me off that a uni friend of both of ours, v close to him, always writes the Xmas card to us. Dh would do so but I have to organise it

You don't have to- you choose to do it.

I was a real bitch at times and my ex said I was bullying. Ive spent a lot of time examining my behaviour.

Haha yes, my DH accused me of being like a Rottweiler. The reality - as with you - was that I didn't tolerate shit.

I reflected a lot over the last 24 hours and I understand the rage and sadness other posters feel.

I got most of my Beryl from my mother and grandmother, reinforced by social and cultural messages. But, in that, I knew from being quite young that my mum's Beryl was wrecking her life. It's only in the last ten years that she's managing to shake her off to do the things she wants (and she's quite magnificent in what she now does; I'm very proud of her). But she's nearly 70. What could she have done if she'd shaken off Beryl in her 30s?

Beryl is like a curse in my family. It gets passed down generations until someone fights and destroys her.

Interestingly, as I was aware of my mum's Beryl, I was determined to carve my own path at 18. It kinda worked until... I moved in with an ex-boyfriend. Then Beryl manifested overnight.

It is only in retrospect that I can identify this, however. At the time, I just knew something was wrong. I ended up, three years in, with a horrendous anxiety problem that made me practically house bound.

I think defeating Beryl has become an urgent issue for me now because I have a one year old dd. I realised a few months ago that if I don't eradicate Beryl, there will be no space for the real me ever again. And that is something I do not want to model for my daughter. I do not want her to develop a Beryl.

But what alarms me is that I don't actually know how to be a forty-something, married mother of one that isn't a Beryl. How do you balance fulfilling the needs and well-being of your child/children with non-Berylness? I don't know another way. I have no role models. And we don't have the money to outsource aspects of Berylness.

I keep asking myself what Beryl actually is and where she is, what the parameters are. I'm currently sat in my bedroom, looking around and wondering whether Beryl chose the furniture or not. Did she position it?

When it comes to the big questions, it just frightens me. I don't think I'd live where I do if I hadn't got a Beryl. I don't think I'd have done the work I did. My teens and twenties would have been massively different. The amount of time and energy spent on others that was essentially abused would have been spent on developing myself. I might have actually achieved something of note.

As an aside, I've been watching that new series Homecoming with Julia Roberts on amazon. It's worth watching just to see Beryl in all her destructive glory with Julia Robert's character.

My mum once said (a sort of throwaway comment) that she'd made a conscious decision to bring me up as if I was a boy. By which I think she meant allow me to be assertive and ambitious and not make me pander to others. So I don't have a generalised Beryl.

But I do seem to have a relationship-specific Beryl. If I'm in a relationship, out she pops, saying "pander to his every whim or he'll leave you."

When I look back on my life, all my achievements and all the exciting stuff I've done has been done while I was single. (Including the decision to have DS as a single parent by choice). I'm much happier and much more productive on my own without a man or Beryl.

lass - I don't do it, I mean that if order for it to happen I have to organise it.

I don't have a Beryl. I somehow, entirely by accident, failed female socialisation. I'm quite kind by way of things like volunteering but I am probably the more selfish one of the two people in my marriage.

But this thread is brilliant and, reading it, I am more convinced than ever that talking together outwith male input is the best way to get our Beryls under control.

Well done to all of you!

Yes it's relationships for me too @FermatsTheorem.

When I was single for 6 years in London, I never moved so quickly in my career, owned a house, sports car, great social life and even enjoyed a varied sex life on a noncommittal type basis.

As soon as I get into a relationship - my kindness puts me on a losing basis.

I actually did an international management program once that defined me as a Supporter type personality. I'll try and dig out the guidance and info on it later to share (stbxp is in the middle of moving out at present) .

Packing I think you're on to something with the idea of a "relationship induced Beryl". Your post made me think of two relatives, decades apart, who both started out as strong, independent women who got crushed into little balls. The elder married a man whose mother's Beryl was so strong that he would take his shirts home to mummy to be ironed. It turned into a full-on manipulative relationship, my relative became an alcoholic and tbh never completely got over addiction problems despite divorce and years of therapy. In later years she was known as kick ass and feisty to the point of rudeness, but on clearing her house after she died, the addiction problems were obvious.

The younger relative married a narc whose position was that he was more important than their newborn. His home life was "traditional", let's say, and he became controlling and abusive when her Beryl didn't manifest to the same extent as his mother's and was ploughed into the child instead.

An almost addiction to the martyrdom of it. Enjoying watching others enjoy the fruits of your labour, gaining pleasure from putting others before you.

This is the bit I think is most close to other forms of self-harm. Knowing it is doing damage and tearing out pieces of oneself, but doing it joyfully, like knocking back pure spirits.

By the way I also have known a lovely Beryl of my childhood, so my apologies to all those who don't like the name associated with this fearful, timid, punitive and controlling archetype! But to me there is something in the way the name rings that sounds right.

NeurotrashWarrior

lass - I don't do it, I mean that if order for it to happen I have to organise it

Not seeing the difference- you don't have to organise it- you choose to organise it. Tell him to organise it, tell him you're not doing it.

I'm fascinated by the different ways that 'Berylness' can manifest. I used to think I didn't have a Beryl as I was pretty ballsy when young and certainly didn't feel the need to be submissive. The pressure growing up was more on academic achievement for me and I still have a 'Petunia the perfectionist' who tells me nothing I do is good enough.

I actively rejected the notion of marriage and motherhood as I didn't want the kind of martyr's life I saw my mother and other married women leading. Probably a bit of 'cool girl ' syndrome there- trying to identify out of oppression! I wanted independence and above all freedom. No responsibilities!
This didn't prevent me from turning into a people pleaser in other ways though and perhaps as a result of school bullying I care too much about being liked.

Life can take unexpected turns though. I ended up in a job that involves working with vulnerable people that need a caring approach. I am also a carer for my DH as he is now in poor health and can't do much. I have realised how much Beryl has been whispering in my ear though, as he is capable of more than he does and I'm doing us both a disservice by not applying my foot to his arse more often! He's a dear, sweet man who does do things if I ask- I just wish I didn't have to ask!

This is interesting;
At the root of it though, I defended my career ferociously, and vocalised my dissatisfaction with the unfair division of labour.
Thats the thing. If you have escaped Beryl you are kind of automatically a ball breaker, even when what you are expecting is just what any man would expect- not to be a drudge or a martyr.
(I probably faked Beryl for a while in my very early 20s when I was married, but it felt like invasion of the body snatchers!)
It's well and good to say that women must escape Beryl but trust me, no fucker likes you when you do. You are a pain in the arse!
I'm better single too I think- I like having a man, but I'm scared of a full on domestic set up.

I don't have a Beryl either. It seems to confuse a lot of people. I watched my mum struggle with hers though, and finally cast it off during menopause.

For me the struggle has always been how to relate to women who're attempting to force me and/or other women to develop one. Men I'd just tell to fuck off, but what's going on with women in that scenario is a lot more complicated and thus harder to navigate.

There is a lot about self worth. If parents treat their kids like props and possessions to shove where it's convenient and who'd better put up and shut up - it destroys their self-worth.

Adults whose actual needs had been factored into their parents decision-making as children find it very hard to relate to or understand the pathological behaviour of those people who weren't so lucky.

I've never wanted a man about the place since my marriage ended. I don't want to have to do anything for anyone (apart from my dogs). My parents were very laid back and passed that on. If anything interferes with my extreme laid-back-ness I get very bolshy. 😂 Beryl can't co-exist with being laid back.

You're right LikeDust- lack of self worth is a key part of this isn't it.
This manifests in different ways in different people or even at different times in our lives.
Another manifestation is 'impostor syndrome ' -something I struggle with and seems to be quite common. It's only fairly recently I have started to acknowledge that I'm bloody brilliant at my job and need to have more confidence in that.

For me the struggle has always been how to relate to women who're attempting to force me and/or other women to develop one.

This is a fascinating point because it reveals how insidious Beryl is in culture and society, largely because Beryl is a function of modern patriarchy. She is the hand maiden.

I also suffer a lot of paralysis about 'the impact on others' and feeling like I don't have 'permission' to factor my own needs in.

This probably seems quite contradictory to those who know me- people have described me as assertive, no-bullshit, strong, brave, etc - but in the core, the Beryl stuff runs deep.