what are they thinking?

[vunil]

I posted something on another thread that I realize should be its own thread.

There are some things I am mightily confused about. I know to work on myself and not even worry about my N family but now that I have some distance from them I do want to understand better how their minds work, to help me deal with them better (and anticipate better).  

I've read books but still don't totally understand a lot of the ways they think and act.  

As a for instance, here is the post from the other thread:

All of these posts of ex's listing all the things they "did for you" upon being finally confronted about their N behavior really reminds me of my parents. It was a hilarious (in retrospect) exchange but I can't really make it short enough to be a quip. I can sort of quote from it, though. It went something like this:

Me: You put me in a situation in which I was sexually abused, often kicked me out of the house for no reason, tried to get me fired from a job, and took money from me when I was very young. Also, there was a little too much slapping for no reason. So, I'm angry with you about my childhood. Can we talk about it?
Them: But we did a lot for you! Let us list everything now in a 10-page e-mail (and never address any of the things you actually said).


It was pretty weird. I guess in their mind there is some sort of a balance sheet? And what do they think balances out the awful stuff they did? It's almost like a count-- one ride to school equals one slap across the face. Cancels it out. I mean.....? So weird. I don't get it.

Anyone have a clue what in the heck they are thinking when they say this stuff?

I really have no idea what they were thinking.  It was clear they dismissed me for insulting them (the "off with her head" response we all know and love) but I don't understand any of their actual words or why they wrote them.  

What is their primary motivation?  When they seem to be reaching out to me, why do they bother?  They clearly aren't, really.  I mean, it has been over three months now and they have never mentioned anything about what I told them.  We just make odd small talk.  Sometimes my mom even seems to have forgotten it ever happened.  It's just so weird.

Any insights?

[Anonymous]

My impression of what happens here is that they avoid thinking about it, they avoid feeling about it.  If they can pretend it didn’t happen and you go along with it THEN it didn’t happen.

I think the motivation is to accept themselves, by yes denying and pretending certain things didn’t happen and then countering any awareness of such “bad” things with “outwaying” the "good" things.

[Anonymous]

The above post was me LM.

[October]

I think that the key you are searching for to unlock this particular mystery is that of denial.  The things that you mentioned cannot exist within the conscious memory of your family, so they bury them away underneath heaps and heaps of fake 'happy family' memories.  The most you will ever get is a 'sure, bad things happen to every family, don't they?' vague reference.  Nothing specific.  Nothing that addresses your feelings, because that is not on their agenda.

My dad says to me, why remember only the bad bits.  Why not remember the good times?  And I reply, what good times?

In a sense he is denying the bad bits, and to him I am just as bad because I am saying that there was so much pain that the good bits are not actually good at all, they are just waiting for the next bad bit to happen.

 

[Anonymous]

They are too infantile and disordered to deal with these accusations. If they could deal with them, they wouldn't have done these abuses in the first place. Unfortunately they haven't matured since then. I'm very sorry.

bunny

[Anonymous]

vunil:

1.  Do not try to understand or anticipate their "weird" notions
     Just when you think you have a pattern nailed, they will zig
     every time.

2.  It is a waste of energy on your part to try to make them "see"
    what they have done.  It is much easier to live in denial.

3.  Yes they do keep an account of everything they have done for you
     so when they are called upon to take responsiblity for anything,
     they can trot that balance sheet out.  Therefore that will shut you
     up.

4.  There will not be any conversation of substance so long as it is
     dealing with reality.  Small talk is much more "safe" and has no
     emotional content with which to deal.  The only conversation that
     matters is if it is about them.

5.  They will continue not to deal with what they have done, it is not
     the projection that is in keeping with their image of not having done
     anything but the best for you.  i. e.  see the balance sheet comment.

Just my 2c.  Patz

[Anonymous]

That's a good question vunil.
Clearly Ns are infantile, as bunny said, but that still doesn't answer the question of whether they have a conscience and try to suppress it or whether they are utterly devoid of a conscience. I believe, like a toddler, at some point  they may have had a rudimentary conscience, but like anything that is never used it atrophies.
When you combine the lack of conscience with their immeasurable insecurity and inability or unwillingness to empathize you end up with the near total impossibility of admitting wrong.
One ride to school doesn't cancel out a slap. One ride to school means you have no right to even mention anything that they might have done wrong because that would be a crack in their facade. I'm sure in the depths of their minds they know what they did, but you have NO right to mention it. Maintaining their respectable or superior mask trumps every other consideration, even their own children's lives or health.
They, I believe, think their facade is like Hoover Dam. One tiny crack and the whole thing will blow up. Not one infinitesimal fissure can go unpatched or not responded to. They have to win every battle. They have to have an answer for even the most benign comments.
Like I told someone else, its not just that they have to win every battle they have to believe the world thinks they have won every battle. Thats why they bury you under ten pages of their good deeds.
And that's why even after a humiliating loss they can strut around like a snotty little rooster crowing about their great victory.

Making small talk and pretending their crimes never happened is, I'm afraid, probably the very best these people are capable of.  

mudpuppy

[Kaz]

I'm glad you brought this over here Vunil.
My mother also has this absolute refusal to acknowledge any 'bad' things that may happen in life. Not only the things that she has done but also with things that have been done by others.
Examples :-
- only found this out recently (she's 82). When my mother, as a young adult was still living at home with her father and mother, he brought home a woman from the pub after a night of drinking. Grandmother, who had awoken, had a fit and threw the woman out of the house. Now, my mother absolutely insists that her father would never, ever have done 'anything' with this pub woman (just talk) "he isn't the type, he was a well respected member of the community" and she (my Mum) would put her hand 'in the fire' to prove that she was right with this. Absolute denial and repression of what she saw with her own eyes. Grandfather, she told me, also had other women 'friends' that he would 'talk' too!

- my mother and father met a man on a camping trip when I was a kid and got friendly with him. They agreed to send my brother (12-13) for a holiday with him, thought it would be fun and good for him. My brother came home again and when the next invitation came he said he didn't want to go. Eventually it came out that this man was a paedophile. All I heard from them (I was about 7-8) was that 'they didn't know' and it was hushed up. No responsibility for their 'mistake'.


She says to me these days that she only wants to hear good things and she only relates the good things that she's done. (I have set firm boundaries with her over the years - she doesn't affect me anymore).  
I think she's very naive and immature. The humiliation of accepting this (a bad thing) is too much for her. But I do think she's aware of it.

[Kaz]

Don't know how that smiley got in there, I was 7 or 8.

[vunil]

Thanks everyone, that helps.  I am still feeling confused but that may just be their legacy!  It is just very confusing.

Paz, my parents are very similar to your mother.  They said in their e-mails that they are happy and don't see why I can't be happy.  Why do I blame my childhood for my problems, they say. Why can't I look at the bright side of things?


Ok, so this response has nothing to do with anything that is going on.  I didn't say I blamed them for my "problems" (except for weirdo parents, I wouldn't say I really have problems!-- my life is full of wonder and joy right now).  And I am really optimistic, to a fault. That's why I didn't look at the truth for so long.  I just didn't believe it!  Utterly didn't.  I still have trouble believing it.


And-- my mother had a lot of seriously awful things happen to her in childhood. She never talked about it and still doesn't. Her mother never talked about it either, not a word.  And I am talking at the level of daddy left never to be heard from again, with the secretary.  But daddy is never mentioned forever after.  Same with my dad-- his standard response to any question about his feelings or his past was always complete and utter silence.

So maybe that's the key?  Not that it's my job to find the key, I agree, but  it does help me capture the pathology in my mind.  They have no ability to deal with trauma, because they weren't taught to do so.  Everything feels like a threat to their self-hood (which doesn't really exist in solid form) so they just spend all of their time defending.

And they  spent so many years lying about what did and didn't matter to them, that now they have no idea what the truth is.

Plus I'm betting there is a ton of repressed anger toward everyone who didn't provide for them (and toward family in general).  All of that got plopped right onto the family that they then made.    

I feel anger and jealousy and hostility from them, buried but there.  I always feel it, even when they are telling me loving things or doing nice things for me.  I don't feel it with anyone else but them (except maybe my sister) so I don't  think I made it up.   I am wondering if all of that cauldron of unexamined stuff is what makes them so odd, and so hopeless.

(yes, I know I'll never know!  But it helps me to process it, and it really helps me to hear from you all.  Thanks. )

[Kaz]

I am wondering if all of that cauldron of unexamined stuff is what makes them so odd, and so hopeless.

Yep, I'm sure it does. My mother told me that 'nothing good comes from looking into the well and dragging everything up'.

[sleepyhead]

- my mother and father met a man on a camping trip when I was a kid and got friendly with him. They agreed to send my brother (12-13) for a holiday with him, thought it would be fun and good for him.

This is just such a weird thing to do! What parent would do this? Why would they do this? I could understand if they went and brought him along, but why send your kid away to someone who isn't his friend or family, and that the parents hardly know? Sorry for the venting, I can still get completely amazed at what some parents will do.
Sleepy

[bunny]

This is just such a weird thing to do! What parent would do this? Why would they do this? I could understand if they went and brought him along, but why send your kid away to someone who isn't his friend or family, and that the parents hardly know? Sorry for the venting, I can still get completely amazed at what some parents will do.
Sleepy

It is unconscious, murderous rage against the child. To the parents, the child represents hated parts of themselves. Sometimes, when a parent was molested as a child, they will unconsciously put their child in a risky situation. I don't know if either of these irresponsible parents was molested themselves but it wouldn't surprise me.

bunny

[Kaz]

I've considered this possibility Bunny, whether my mother's father did something to her. She adored him and said he was an 'authoritarian' type. The only good thing she says about her mother was that she was fun to play with, otherwise she speaks about her in very cold terms. Didn't protect her?
As far as I know my brother hasn't confronted her about what they did, (father died in 2000) but his anger runs deep. He is very intelligent, highly educated but completely screwed up emotionally. He told me a few years ago that he 'doesn't have feelings'.
Vent all you like Sleepy, I wish my brother could/would.

[vunil]

It is unconscious, murderous rage against the child. To the parents, the child represents hated parts of themselves.

I think this is right.  I never fully accepted it before.  You know, I recognized that Kaz's story was strange, but didn't get how totally awful it was, because my parents did something really similar to me when I was 7.  And something really similar happened to me, too.

And, oddly enough, I also think my mother was molested as a child.  When I tried to talk to her about my own situation she said "for the record, I know something about molestation!" But it was such an odd time and way to say it (it was her first response to me telling her for the first time about my experience), and seemed to be implying that I was lying, so I didn't pursue it.

But I think, like Kaz's mom, that my mother is acting out her rage because she being molested herself.  Isn't it quite a coincidence that we have the same situation?  Or maybe N behavior is always caused by stuff like this?  

Is there any benefit to trying to get her to talk about it?  Does she want to, given she sort of brought it up?   I still have these naive ideas (that Bunny will tease me about!) that my parents can develop self-knowledge.  If they don't, then I can't feel safe around them, and don't want them around my new child (when he comes).  And that really hurts...

Kaz, did you ever ask your mother about it?