Assuming that the best way to deal with N parents is to detach from them, limit your contact if not sever it completely, what do you say when they confront you with this behavior? Especially if there are grandkids in the mix.
Let me elaborate. N parents are NEVER going to understand your point of view. To them, they have done nothing wrong, are the source of no hurt and are innocent victims in the situation. So if I choose to withdraw and have little contact with them, how do I explain this behavior. I mean I can't just come right out and say. "Because you are NARCISSISTS!" That will fall on deaf ears. Keep in mind I would like to have some kind of relationship with at least one of my parents.
What do I say when they come knocking on the door wanting to have "a little talk" about all of the distance and changes?
I've thought all week about this and how I would respond ( did respond )
These thoughts spring to mind:
*limiting contact can lead people to step up their unhealthy behaviours as they feel slighted or rejected
*are you prepared to sever contact? It's not easily done. I didn't talk to my father for a couple of years at one point and even though I wasn't severing contact- I wrote to him every week and made it crystal clear that I was trying to build a new relationship with him but I was very unhappy with the old one- I still got long messages on my answer machine, he refused to correspond, and he dragged my siblings in to take sides! At one point my ex said 'you think about your dad more now than when you were tolerating his unpleasant weekly phone call!'
*if you are going to rework your relationships it'll take time and forever-reinforcement. Sometimes a very long time and you developing a broken-record approach and never wavering.
The first time I said to my ex 'I think you are abusive' he laughed in my face, told me 'a few home truths' about how crazy I am, in short was more abusive. That was nearly 20 years ago.
Now we have a vocabulary in our family- not just with ex, but the whole family. The denial about alcoholism ( which is so much part of ENglish working-class culture ) is still there, but we do all discuss it, and things aren't perfect about communication, just a bit better.
My father stopped expecting my support, and 'forgave' my insubordination and went off and found him a new life. We speak rarely but do correspond.
My ex and I are divorcing, but we have kept a family relationship to raise our son. It's not perfect but it's pretty healthy.
Ex is in ( and out ) of therapy. Son is extremely assertive and able to say when things don't 'feel right'.
This week he ( ex ) had a stressful time and fell right back into a pattern of berating me. I told him every day- you are being unpleasant and abusive. He didn't hear it until Thursday when I burst into tears and said 'I am so stressed' and told him to stop coming over. If I don't insist he will push and push and assume I'm fine. That is the hardest thing for me about him- I can never relax, never treat him like my other friends. The pattern comes back- though not nearly so bad as all those years ago when I first told him I wasn't happy and he was abusive and he was scornful.
I have done loads of therapy myself and read everything I can about models of communication and relationships.
And I have had to work on the reasons i was hooked into my family relationships and marriage, and meet those needs in other ways, and drop or change behaviours.
I guess what I am saying tony001 is you can change things for the better and each little positive step helps, but people ( including ourself ) are resistant to change.
If they are N change is actually emotionally deeply painful as it triggers their abandonment and sense of being deep-down unacceptable.
I am still not in the same reality space as my family members or my ex, but there's a big overlap now, in fact isn't that a model of intimacy: two figure 8 s overlapping, representing people being able to inhabit their reality and yours and it not detracting from either. Of course for two people to do that in balance they both have to be pretty healthy!
I can't put it any better than Ram Dass:
My suggestion is to take it slow and continue your studies and personal exploration. You may discover things start to shift almost on their own.
Psychologist Ram Dass said:
I help people as a way to work on myself, and I work on myself to help people!'
That's a pretty good way to live so long as we are committed to being really healthy ourselves.
