hysterical parents

[cantb2happy]

I am 43 years old and I have a an extremely difficult relationship with my aging parents. On the surface we look very close. But my parents have made me feel that I am the most selfish, over-sensitive person on earth since I can remember. I know I have self-esteem issues I need to face up to, but I have never gotten therapy because I felt deep down that I would be told that my parents are right about me.

My father is extremely controlling. He always needs to be the center of attention. Always needs to impress people. He verbally abused my three siblings and I. He said things to us noone should ever have to hear about themselves. He tried to make us submissive in any way he could.

My Mother never defended us. She was so fragile herself that she made matters worse by being the martyr that he needed to defend against us. I was never allowed to voice my opinion. But I still did try many times to be heard, always precipitating a very big argument. Appologizing was humiliating in my family. My Mother would always say, "sorry is not enough". I often got into fights with my mother about my father and still do. This gave him the excuse he needed to attack me. I know my relationship with them is infantile. I want in some way to get back at them for ignoring and discounting my needs.  After a recent argument he wrote me a hideous email. It is first time I have, in writing, proof of verbal abuse.
My oldest sister is mentally ill and my brother, who had learning issues and was always picked on. My other sister S and I are the "normal ones." Because of all the trouble with my siblings my sister S and I were expected to always behave and make up for the fact that their other kids were such a dissappointment. There were AWFUL scenes in my house in which my father chased my oldest sister down like an animal. He was extremely controlling.

Thankfully, I had enough sense to move 2 hours away to NYC where I met my husband, the most wonderful, reasonable man. In fact, my parents love him more than me or any of my siblings.

Can anyone offer any advice on how to proceed through the minefield that is my family?

[mum]

Hi, and welcome to the board.  Your father sounds a bit like what my kids will say about thier dad when they are older (I left the SOB).
So, do you have to go into the minefield?  If so, can you choose your own path, or how far you will go?
I did not have N parents, but was married to an N, and accepted abuse from several others in my life until recently.
There are many smart and caring people on this board, who are in similar situations to yours, so hang on a bit, I am sure you will get some good advice.
I guess my only thoughts would be that this has to do with limits and boundaries.  What will you accept and what will you not accept....and then respect yourself enough to insist on those boundaries.
Harriet Lerner (I think) has a book:"the Dance of Anger" where she describes stepping out of old patters in relationships.  That might be helpful, it was to me.  Bottom line is, love yourself enough to know you are a good person, that you deserve respect, and will not knowingly place yourself in harms way. That has helped me..........as a starting point anyway.  Bless you. and keep posting.
MUM

[Jaded911]

Hi cantb2...

I deal with my NON-N Family easier when I keep this in the back of my mind.......You can not choose who your family is, but you sure the hell can choose how much of their chit you are willing to take.  I decided long ago that "FAMILY" should  be people who support, love, encourage, protect, etc......each other.  Family should not be a bunch of nit wits that belittle, demean, devalue, abuse, etc.....each other.

You said it yourself hun.  You are now married to a wonderful man.  He is now your family.  Start making new memories with him.  Eventually all of the happy memories and thoughts will smother the dysfunctional family memories out.  Have enjoyable holidays with your husband instead of dreading the time you are expected to be with the dysfunction junction looney farm called your biological kin.

[cantb2happy]

Thanks for the tip on the book to read. Good luck to you all.

[Brigid]

Hi Cantb2,
Welcome to this site.  I have been where you are.  My father was a horror to live with--very controlling, critical, demanding, an alcoholic, and emotionally abusive.  There are only 2 children in my family, 10 years apart.  I was the older and "stronger" and have never had any kind of relationship with my brother.  I married a man I thought was wonderful and moved away and had 2 children.  I finally broke off the relationship with my parents when my children got old enough to see and understand how dysfunctional my relationship with my father was and how draining it was to spend time with him.  I maintained the relationship as long as I did for my mother's sake, but she eventually turned on me, took his side even though I constantly protected her from his verbal bashings, and gave all her attention to my brother.  They have both since passed away.

20 months ago I found out my very wonderful H was having an affair and lots of other stuff and he wanted to end our 22-year marriage.  Through therapy, I have learned of his N personality, which explains why he has been able to end our marriage without a second thought.  Lots of therapy has explained why my childhood set me up to be with a man like him and not ever really seeing how dysfunctional my own relationship was.

IMO, you are best served to sever your ties with your N family members and concentrate your efforts on your marriage (children?).  My kids are all I have left now and the only reason I have to be grateful for my marriage.  It is not easy to walk away, but necessary to maintain your sanity.

Good luck and God bless.

Brigid

[lynne]

Hi Can't b 2,

Welcome to the board.  I'm new here too.  I am 40 also and I can relate so much to your post.  The difference with me being my Mom was the abuser and my Dad was the martyr.  I have worked on some of the same type of issues with my family and I have felt stuck for a long time too.  I journaled for a long time and that helped for a while, but sometimes after journaling I feel just as angry as when I started.  Some things that have helped me to cope are journaling the truth and watching the way I talk to myself.  What I mean by journaling the truth is instead of writing the events that would happen, I write "Mom has an illness, there is nothing I can do to help her with her illness.  Her words and actions reflect her illness, they have nothing to do with me or my actions.  And when I am around her I watch how I talk to myself.  I say things to myself such as "thats her illness talking" and I don't respond because responses fuel her illness.  I am finding that when I concentrate on taking care of myself this way I feel better and more confident about myself.  I am learning that as I do this, I become more separate from the things that happen in my family.   Being separate from it makes me stronger.  I also read everything I can on the web about NPD, and study books on verbal abuse (Patricia Evans has some good books out, they are mainly about spousal situations but abuser tactics are the same and the info about the tactics can apply to abusive parents)   I think the hardest thing about dealing with abusive parents is separating emotionally from them because we feel so guilty when doing that.  But no one has the right to abuse another and sometimes leaving the situation is the only hope for our own peace and happiness.  Refusing to respond, or responding with Oh really or that's interesting works for me also.  Abusers only feel better when they get a response, so not responding discourages the behavoir.  The neat thing about working on my issues instead of trying to fix my family is that the more I do, the better I feel and the better my life gets.  I am discovering things that make me happy and things I am interested in, where when my focus is on fixing my family I feel trapped.  As much as I would love for my mom to get help, I know she isn't going too, and being around her too much isn't good for me.  One saying I say to myself frequently is that you can't make the irrational rational.  This helps me to understand that no matter what my reaction is to my Mother, or what I do or say, I won't ever be okay to my Mother.  Her actions and words have a lot more to do with how she is feeling on the inside than anything I say or do.  When your father starts up, try to think of things to say to yourself such as 'there he goes again, that's just dad being dad, I sure am glad I know the truth about him.  Limiting contact should help also. When you are around him and he starts up, say "I hear abuse" and leave.  My Mother was shocked the first time I did that.   These are the things that help me, I hope some of my suggestions are helpful to you.

[Stormchild]

lynne, what a fantastic post! Thanks for sharing what you've discovered. Glad you're here.

cantb2, hang in there, lynne is telling you very wise things, and it does hurt less over time. the problem is that time is the most important antidote and we just can't make it go by any faster than it does...

(((((cantb2)))))

[October]

Can anyone offer any advice on how to proceed through the minefield that is my family?

Excellent metaphor, Cantb.  

All our lives we have been strolling through minefields, without any kind of protection.  Sometimes we have taken our children with us.  

And now, we find out, there should have been a great big WARNING sign at the start of our lives, and a manual to tell us what to do, and how to survive.

One strange thing to realise is that we are still here, although perhaps rather less whole than we would like to be.  And in visiting the family minefield again, we at least know now to find out what kind of mines we are dealing with, and to share with others who have encountered similar situations, and find out how they have managed.

Sometimes imagery is useful to help us to focus on ourselves, rather than the others.  Maybe if they phone, we could say, hang on a minute, and then imaging putting on a helmet and holding a blast proof shield in front of us before talking to them, in order to achieve emotional distance.  Or if we visit, we can imagine how dangerous it is, and set a time to go in, and a time to go out, and congratulate ourselves for making it safely through.

In essence it is about finding safe boundaries, where we are hurt as little as possible, or if we get very adept (which I am not yet) not at all.

My mum is the harmful one, and my dad the partner.  And my brothers seem to be following the route dad has taken.  I suppose that is to be expected, really.  I seem to have escaped by having no clear role model.

[Stormchild]

My mum is the harmful one, and my dad the partner.  And my brothers seem to be following the route dad has taken.  I suppose that is to be expected, really.  I seem to have escaped by having no clear role model.

Or by making a choice not to follow the model you had available - 'whatever I do, I won't do THAT!'.

Excellent minefield analogy. And October, that visualization of putting on armor - there's something very like it in the book of Ephesians! Thanks for reminding me, I'd lost sight of it.

[lynne]

Thanks Stormchild....none of the methods I have been using are my own, some I've gotten as examples in books, and I have gotten alot of information on this site....so many good people and good ideas here.  I read a post the other day from Bunny.  She had described projection in a very clear way, and I wrote her description over and over again because it helped me so much.  It made instant sense.  She said that projection is the abuser finding a container for his/her own emotions and the best way to deal with it was to refuse to be the container, and when we don't respond, that puts thier emotions back on them.  I've been thinking about this so much, and I think the reason we are in so much pain is because we care about our abusers, and we are tempted to consider their actions and accusations about us as accurate.  And the more we are around them, the more we consider that the accusations could be true.  For me, I was soooo convinced I was a nobody for so long, I remember feeling guilty for things I hadn't done as a child because I had been told that I had done them.  And parents are always right in a child's eyes.  These days I am learning that we can know something in our heads and not beleive them in our hearts, and for me the only way to teach my heart the truth is to tell it over and over again what my head knows to be true.  Does that make any sense?  Do you agree?

[Stormchild]

Absolutely!

And I also agree that bunny is a genius at hitting the nail on the head about this stuff, too.

Isn't it interesting that caring is what gets us into so much of this pain? But the choice not to care is a choice to put away the very best of ourselves...

(((((lynne)))))

[October]

Excellent minefield analogy. And October, that visualization of putting on armor - there's something very like it in the book of Ephesians! Thanks for reminding me, I'd lost sight of it.

Well, if you want to get all religious        you can also take your guardian angel with you.  I read a book recently about angels, and is said that cherubs/cherubim are not as we imagine little chubby toddlers with wings; they are warrior angels, tall and fierce and dressed in armour with a flaming sword.  Maybe taking a couple of them along on a visit to the parents would help.  Must try it.      

[Anonymous]

Hi guys,
You know one thing I have always found interesting about the armor in Ephesians; there is no protection mentioned for our backsides.

Evidently, God doesn't expect us to turn around and retreat from the things we face, lest we get a firey dart in the bum.

mudpup

[October]

Hi guys,
You know one thing I have always found interesting about the armor in Ephesians; there is no protection mentioned for our backsides.

Evidently, God doesn't expect us to turn around and retreat from the things we face, lest we get a firey dart in the bum.

mudpup

Well, that is one way of looking at it.    Another is that the Breastplate comes attached to a backplate - how else would it fit on?  Any glance at armour from Roman times onwards would straighten that one out.  

Also, when in retreat, you put your shield over your back, and run.  Bum covered safely.  

I am not one for saying that attack is the only strategy.  As we all know very well, sometimes a strategic retreat is far better.  By strategic retreat, the Russian army ended up defeating Napolean.  If they had stopped to fight, they would have been destroyed completely, and Russia would have been lost for decades, perhaps forever.  Instead they backed away, and allowed the French to fall to pieces all by themselves through indiscipline and lack of forethought.  Then when the French started themselves to retreat, the Russian army followed and they were destroyed, bit by bit, until a tiny proportion made it safely home.

So, by all means, turn and run.  Then you live to fight another day.

As a good friend once told me, if you are faced with a tiger, sometimes it is not good to stand your ground.

[Anonymous]

October,

Instead they backed away, and allowed the French to fall to pieces all by themselves through indiscipline and lack of forethought.

The enemy I am thinking of is neither undisciplined nor lacking in forethought.
And presumably Paul knew what a backplate was, but significantly never mentioned one.
I believe in strategic retreat in the physical and the emotional realm.
I do not believe in retreat in the spiritual realm, at least when we're wearing our armor.

mudpup