N Mom back......... Feeling trapped and helpless

[spyralle]

Hi everyone...

There i was kind of doing semi ok,. when I decided o send a Christmas card to my mother.  In the card I gave a brief synopsis of the past six months (We have not spoken since April)...  Anyone who doesn't know my threads are around here somewhere (Desperately needing help after relationship break up and shattered illusions what now.)  I didn't tell her in the card about what exN had actually done, just that he had left and that myt daughter had a new boyfriend.

Anyway on Friday night I had three messages on my ansaphone.  Each one sounding more and more desperate,. 

the first one said.  i have read our card and and I am heratbroken for you.  Ring me onight I will be here all night

second one :  Oh wherever are you at this time of night Spyralle  7.30 in the evening!!!......  I will just hang on for our call.

the third one:  I am so worried about you.  You said that you had flu in your card,.  i will stay up until you phone....

I didn't call...  So the next morning she called again.  She spoke to my daughter (Who sees right through her),. but this meant that she knew i was here and I had to phone her back....

So I did....  The converstaion was two hours long and as a result I feel emotionless and cut off from everything.  The hippie insisted on taking me out last night when I really didn't want to go.  i went and then just wrecked it all because I was so miserable and felt totally controlled.   I can't reallyt speak to hime today.  i'm not sure I really want to speak to anyone.  And to make it worse,. now I am just craving to see myt ex again.  i keep thinking of what we were doing this time last year.  He decided at this time last year that he was going to ask me to marry him,.

My mother spent the two hours trying to condition my thinking I guess,. with GUILT featuring heavily on the play list of my thoughts.  She gave me the option of selling myt house and her selling hers (she lives in Spain)...  and us buying a house together.  She gave me this option about 46 times,. each wayt more manipulative than the last.  She went on and on about how she had always wanted a family that loved her and how we had all abandoned her.  She refuses to be reminded that she is judgemental and unaccepting and that is why we don't visit her.,  She ended the conversation in floods of tears at how terrible we all were and how she had done nothing but tried to love us......

She also said....  "I am going to give you a bit of rope.......  to find your feet...."  What she actually means by this is that she is extremely sure of the  control she thinks she has over me.  To her i am a puppet a posession.  She has helped me financially in the past and in her head this has been the only reason I have survived.  She cares nothing for the fact that at one time I was holding down four jobs to keep a roof over my daughters head.  What she actaully means is .....  Oh so you dare not want to live with me....I will therefore give you no money and watch you hang yourself with the bit of rope that I am giving you.....

She has demanded in the smallest yet most powerful of voices that I ring her regularly and tell her briefly how I am.  Not that she is really too bothered how I am.  She wants my vulnerability,. because that way she can take over my life.

I'm sorry for rambling on but I feel awful.  Here I am craving to see this man that abused me and treating other people who care about me badly...  I so badly want things to change this year.  I want a different life but I feel so enmeshed with her....

Spyralle x

p.s. Happy New Year....  Sorry I sound like this...

[Hopalong]

Dear Spyralle,
Don't give up on 2006...it's barely gotten here.
Don't give up on yourself either.
There are SO many "steps back" during the holidays...this board is covered with them. You're no failure.
For ACONs and the formerly abused, the holidays just build and build and then there's a burst of contact because the holidays just HAMMER at our unfinished business and longings for love...and then we have repercussions to cope with.

You can cope with this. You're in an ocean of emotion right now because of two hours (TWO HOURS!) of listening to your NMom and no wonder that triggers longings for fusion and rescue. But you do know that your Ex is the last place to turn for rescue.

Hang tight with your therapist, don't yield to NMom's demands or listen for so long. You can't do that. It's bad for you. It doesn't matter what she's demanding, you DO have the right to say no, ignore, screen your calls, change your phone number to an unlisted one, whatever it takes to regain your balance.

As to the Ex, it's not him you're longing for...it's yourself.

You're in there and you're only temporarily lost.
Get to your T as fast as you can and do extra appointments and get out to safe places, talk to safe people. The holiday isolation and vulnerability is going to recede and you can weather this.

Have faith, hang in,
Hopalong

[marie]

Dear Spyralle,

I know exactly how you feel.  My mom would like nothing more than to have my family sell our home and come and live in the town that she lives in.  My husband is a great cook and she always says that he could open his own restruant.  It all starts sounding real good until my husband has to wake me up the the fantasy.  Having to put up with phone calls every night that have to at least last for 30 to 60 minutes and if they don't the guilt sets in.  Oh!! I don't think so.  They mean well, but, there is always that underline reason on what they are going to do for you.... ( I do for you, you are going to do for me) If it only from the heart and not for there own selfishness. 

You will get through this without your mom pulling your strings.  I know all to well how the puppet master can pull those strings.

You have gone long time without talking to your mom.   My mom would have called the police and had them drive to my home if I had not talked to her for that many months.  She can be very controlling.  Lucky she lives long distance...and it costs money so I don't have to talk long.

Hang in there we are all thinking of you..

Marie

[spyralle]

hanks Marie and Hopalong,.

It's wierd but ever since the call I have been down and isolated and completely and utterly miserable.  i so badly need to put boundaries down but I find it so difficult when she is on the other end of the phone.  You are right about the holiday period.  he more i don't go to work the less I want to and the more I don't go the less of a role I have to play and he more child like I become.

yesterday when my mum was talking to me I so badly wanted her to just stop and actually listen to what I was saying. but I know that wishing for this is futile,...  I guess I'm just feeling sorry for myself this evening.  Trouble is then I start imagining that i am the one with the personality disorder and I was a terribl;e daughter and maybe she is right,. and then if she is right then ex N must be right etc.... 

Thank you for watching my back...

Spyralle x

[Healing&Hopeful]

Oh Spyralle hon (((((((((((((((((((((((hugs))))))))))))))))))))

I know what you mean with the self doubting, that maybe they are right.... but they aren't.  It is so important to trust your own thoughts and opinions.  Your own thoughts and opinions are right, trust what you believe.

I think we all go through times where we hope they have changed or that we hope they will listen to us, but as you've said, you understand it is futile.  Trust that thought and then you can maybe decide whether you want to answer the phone or not.  Do you want to speak to her?  Do you get that feeling of dread when she's ringing up?  ...then again trust your own judgement.  You have the choice whether to answer the phone or not... which will make you happy?

Take care and all the best for a peaceful and happy 2006.

H&H xx 

[guest444]

Dear Spyralle,

It's funny that we think about going back to unhealthy relationships to make our N parent(s) happy.  Like this will somehow "prove" that we are not the failure they've convinced us we are.  In my case, I've thought about going back, and my Nparents didn't even like my ex!  They waffled between beating me up for marrying him, and them beating me up for getting divorced.  You are not a failure, you are a wonderful human being, and you have gotten yourself help.  There is a distinction between you and them, for this reason.  You recognize you need help and are getting it.  It doesn't always reap its reward right away, or in the way you think it will--sometimes, in fact, it takes years and months to see even a small payoff, but I guarentee, you will find your strength.  You must.  It is the only way for you to be whole again.  Trust in yourself.  Turn it over to a higher being.  Turn over the fact that you need to be healed, and you are sick with needing these people to be there for you and you keep hoping but it can never be--and you know you have to just accept that.  It will get better one day you'll be very strong and will truly turn the other cheek forever.  Think about this, you must.

It's OK to be human, in other words.  We all make mistakes.  To not make them is to not be human. 

[Hopalong]

Hi Guest444,
It will get better one day you'll be very strong and will truly turn the other cheek forever.

By this do you mean it will become easier to deal with parent Ns if we no longer expect or wish for anything at all from them? If so, that's a poetic way of putting it and thank you.

I want to think about that.

Hopalong

[Marta]

Guest, what a lovely post! Please become a member of our family, don't remain a guest....    Welcome aboard.

[Plucky]

Hi Spyralle,
'tis the season to take up all bad habits again.  So that's to be expected about your ex and your mum.  This, too, shall pass.   

When I feel those doubts, I try to do this.  Even at the times I am giving myself the worst messages, I can think to myself that there is a 1% chance that the worst is not true, and that I am imagining it or people are not thinking badly of me and talking behind my back, I am not a failure and socially inept, I am not a bad daughter, mother, whatever, etc.  All I need to do is to convince myself of that 1% chance.  Then I think, how would I behave if that 1% chance were true?  And I try to make myself do that.  And I just keep trying to force myself into that mold of the benefit of the doubt.

So try to think that you are not a complete failure for having a fleeting desire for the poisonous ex.  The best case scenario is that you are a good person taken in by a con man.  You did the right thing to get out of it.  You did not hurt anyone and you were always honest.  And just roll with that explanation.

Plucky

[Hopalong]

Hey Spy,
I think you mean when your mother was talking AT you.

You sound paralysed, attached to the phone by a powerful magnet. Helpless when she calls, not able to say, I have to go now, can't talk any longer. This pot's not calling the kettle black. I know extricating myself from Nmom's babble after work is like pulling my feet out of quicksand, every evening. But it's getting better. I've found if I just say firmly but in a polite voice, I'm heading to bed now (never mind that it's 7 p..m) and follow on, no matter what she's saying, with "Good night, have a good sleep" and then start WALKING, she subsides.

Maybe you could find the phone equivalent to end those calls faster and sooner and before your misery builds? It's an unrequited love or yearning, and from child to parent it's so very powerful. I know this sounds foolish but I think the practical step by step advice in the little book Don't Call Tat Man might help you with this.

It's amazing how Ns can drain the strength from our knees and paralyse our will. (But that's why people write books like that, because there are so many people who need help snapping out of the trance state. No shame in that whatsoever. It's a powerful biological urge to try to get what you need from a parent, and takes a long battle to persuade your inner child to let it go.)

Here's wishing you calm and phone control. (The timer thing, might that help too?)

Love,
hopalong