Mof4,
I don't mind you asking at all!
What happened was that, when I was 31, after YEARS of trying to make my NMum behave normally, and not getting anywhere, with the support of my soon-to-be husband, I decided to start setting boundaries. I told her that, if I visited her and she insulted me, I would 'allow' (count) three insults, telling her each time when she'd done that. After the third one, I would leave. The only time I actually tried it, I was in her house about two minutes. It was so hard to actually follow through with it!
She contacted me during the week and said that *I* (not *we* or *the family*) needed to get family therapy 'so that you can learn how to fit into the family better'. That's what she thought family therapy was.
So, to try to keep the peace (again) I found a therapist, and started sessions, on my own, as that was the way the therapist said it had to be. I had about 6 sessoions on my own with him, during which time I constructed various letters to my Mum, Dad, brother and sister, setting out why I was unhappy, and asking them to meet wth me on a particular date at the therapist's, for a 2-hour session, twice (on two consecutive nights). After the last session on my own with him, I sent the letters.
The two sessions were video'd by the therapist( I knew about this, the others were only told as the session started, and my Mum and sister were NOT happy). The two sessions discussed my anorexia, my Mum's affairs, my Dad's alcoholism, etc. Pretty touchy stuff - most of it, we had NEVER discussed as a family before.
After the first session, we each went our separate ways. The second session, my Dad didn't turn up - apparently, he and my Mum had had a dreadful row after the first session, and my Dad refused to be 'humilated' by the affairs being discussed again. This instigated their divorcce the following year(which was apparently 'all my fault' according to my Mum).
At the end of the second session, it was clear as day that they would never change, never accept that they were anything other than a 'perfect family' and that I was just lying, whilst also being neurotic, mad, evil, sinful, wicked...you name it. Even the therapist seemed a bit out of his depth, and just kept looking from them to me, saying 'What are you going to do, if they stay like THIS?' He'd obviously expected a better outcome. Possibly, he'd not come across raging N's before.
I left the session knowing I had to stop seeing my Mum, at least.
But I found that she 'infected' all of the others, by saying to them (and all of my extended family, and her friends, and their children, several of whom I'd grown up with) that they had to choose either HER or ME. As so often happens, they chickened out, and all except my Dad chose her.
It was the most difficult decision I've ever had to make. I went from having a network of family (however dysfunctional, they were still my family) to having just my husband, and his relatives. I cried for weeks. I couldn't concentrate on my work. I felt really empty.
They tried contacting me sometimes (still do, annoyingly), but gradually, I've come to realise that I had to do that for my sanity. I see my Dad, and phone him, but our relationship is a bit distant - but then we were always kept apart, even when I was small, so I have to be grateful for the relationship that I do have with him.
I don't think it would have been possible to have had 'limited contact' with some of my relatives, and not my NMum and, as I later realised, NSister. They control everyone in the family, and the vitriol wouldn't have been worth it. I admire people who do try to still see parents when they know they're an N, but mine was simply too dangerous. I see that now ...I wish I'd seen it before I was in my thirties. I'm 45 now, and still healing.
But at least I'm healing
Janet
