There's No Place Like Home For the Holidays

[SilverLining]

I just came back from the weirdest and most stressful FOO visit I've ever had, and figured some of you might identify with this stuff.  It's all so strange, I started to question my own sanity after awhile.  Underneath a phony facade of holiday activities there was an incredible amount of stress and animosity.  Here are a few of the highlights:

My mother was so busy constantly griping about  her problems she was even following me around talking  as I packed to leave.  She seems to have issues with absolutely everybody.  She used to have friends, but these have disappeared.  She's going over supposed slights against her going back sixty years.  Many of her "memories" I believe are highly suspect.  When anybody leaves the house, she starts to complain about them and how badly they have treated her.

My father doesn't talk much at all for the first couple of days, but then (predictably) starts in with the usual counterpointing and know it all talk.  At least this much was "normal".

My sister is on so many antidepressants and sleeping pills  she can't get out of bed until noon.  Then she spends hours looking in the mirror and making herself up.  She just bought a $2000 television set, but couldn't afford to buy people Christmas presents.  I received a pair of socks for a gift.  She also tells highly suspect memories of things which supposedly happened to her many years ago.  She spends her time complaining about my mother, but then hitting her up for money. 

My 10 year old nephew spends all day staring into a Nintendo gizmo.   He's also managed to alienate all his former friends, which his parents (my sister and her husband) blame on the other kids. 

I try to discuss some of the issues with my brother and asked what he remembers about the long ago events described by my mother and sister.  He accuses me of trying to "cover up" the truth, even though he doesn't seem to remember anything about the alleged events.


But at least there are some positive results.  I believe I've realized more new things about the dysfunctional family system than I have in years.   I may just have to move to something more intensive than the "medium chill".   

[sKePTiKal]

SL:

Do we have the same mom?

she was even following me around talking  as I packed to leave.

My mom lives with my brother, so when my dad died - long story short, I ended staying there sleeping on the couch. The day bro & I were to meet with the lawyers, I was up & dressed waiting on bro who a.) sleeps like your sister and b.) moves as slow as molasses without any concern for the people impatiently waiting on him... and doesn't see anything inconsiderate in this... even if he makes you late. (He also blows off appts without notification that he can't make it, too... and just goes AWOL... leaving important business decisions hanging... sigh!!)

Before any meeting when I feel I need to be "on", I'll take 10-15 minutes just to clear my mind of distractions and focus on what I hope to get out of the meeting or accomplish. My mom wouldn't shut up about herself - her problems - all the evils perpetrated against her by bro & sister-in-law just by being who they are - and when I went outside to smoke... and said I needed to think a bit before the meeting... she just rolled right on outside with me... and she supposedly hates cigarettes.

At the time, I saw this as just her being oblivious to boundaries. But there's more to it than that, I think. A neediness, like a whiny spoiled child, that absolutely does not respect others. "Pay attention to my problems NOW"... "I'm more important than anything else you have to/want to do".

Let me rephrase that - it's not that she doesn't respect others - it's that she doesn't recognize that she isn't the center of everyone's attention and concern and that we might have other things that really are more important than listening to the same broken record of complaints... yet again.

[Twoapenny]

Hi Silver,

Phoenix said exactly what I was thinking when I read your post - what are you doing hanging out with my family?!

I read it and I just see selfish, self obsessed, no sense of anyone else all through it (I mean them, obviously, not you!).  My mum would be the most charming hostess you could ever want to meet and then, before their car even left the drive she'd be slagging them off.  My step-dad would quite happily not even look up from reading his paper as people came and went before deciding to join in the conversation in order to tell everyone they were completely wrong and they'd never said/done anything right.  And so it would go on.  You have my sympathies!  Well done for getting through it.  And re the socks - there was a thread about presents a little while ago and quite a few of us got socks

[Guest]

she was even following me around talking  as I packed to leave.

I saw this sentence yesterday and it reminded me too much of a non-bio-person's behaviour. Really nuts stuff. Oblivious to anyone else's real existence.

Here's another, anyone know it? I was eating with this person a while back and they talked and talked (while eating...yeah) and I suddenly felt dizzy, as though I was about to faint (which I've never done). Realised that while they were basically 'on transmit only', I was doing too much concentrating on their stuff and thereby fillling up with my head too quickly, too much, with their crap. Overload. To cope I guess I deliberatly zoned out, finished my meal and hopped it. And thought about the experience in terms of 'what a nut'. Horrible horrible times, at the time. Over now. Well the worst is over.

Children are far less demanding than these FREAKS.

But yeah, they'll follow you anywhere. Make sure there are locks on the bathroom door...

[Hopalong]

Hi all,
I recognize this so well...from so many sources. My mother launching into delaying demands (none urgent) every time I tried to do a simple leavetaking, the clutching/smothering feel of it. How I never could understand how she didn't seem to hear me say, "I've got to go, now." And that when she would see me again the next day, and when I was living with her, even the next hour.

It was a feeling of her insatiability, that so drowned me. And guess what.

The unpleasant truth is that, until recent years, I could've been the person yabbering desperately away at the table, absolutely stuck on my frantic narrative, clutching for attention, anyone's listening, and I could go on until someone, like you Guest, was absolutely drained. You should've heard my phone calls. It was a gasping feeling, that if I didn't have a listener I'd just fall apart with anxiety. And I didn't know how to stop.

A horrible feeling. I had very porous and sometimes utterly missing boundaries and a whole LOT of Nspots -- voicehoggery, entitlement...

I am okay with myself now. I have finally satisfied myself that I do not "have NPD" but I sure was taught or absorbed a lot of Ntraits.

I'm sure I still do, too. But I'm less terrified when one surfaces. I don't believe any more that I am hollow like that.

I remember the boundary invasions of my mother, multiplied thousands of times. I think partly my own desperation to be heard was an overcompensation for having felt so smothered and UNheard by her. But boy, have I had some very PATIENT friends.

This holiday season, my intentional isolation was painful but I thought it necessary. I think another reason that I "go hermit" though, despite my basic extraversion, is that the "middle way" -- of natural, comfortable sense of self and a protective boundary around myself -- is not what I do automatically.

My boundaries have often either been collapsed or ... as lately ... so rigid (suddenly then I'm an intravert and can't bear to mingle) that I isolate to the point of despair. And then it's a big f-ing deal to connect again.

I remember my NexH² (narcissistic ex-husband, the second one) literally slamming the bathroom door open when I tried to retreat to do my bidness. And not Number One, either. I was appalled by it, but being also a loving codependent frantic to make HIM happy...I put up with it. He made a big deal about having to "share everything." In hindsight, I see how sick that was...but that was decades ago.

Today? I have reciprocal friendships, I share time, I love to talk but generally never let myself totally take over and dominate (or if I'm talking a lot, I usually pause and "check in" with the other, or even remind myself aloud, "I want to hear about you, too, sorry I've had so much to say"). My friendships are peaceful and affectionate and wonderful -- but I still can feel surprised at how I am loved and accepted.

I've healed a lot. I am so grateful.

I wonder, when I think about Guest's dinner companion, or the clutching parents who can't let one simply go on about your business to take care of your own life...what would have happened to them if THEY had had years of reading about self, boundaries, Nism, codependency, how to be healthy...

Do you suppose there ever could've been healing for those N-ish people too? I like to think so. I like to imagine that even my mother, if she'd been of the generation taught to get help, to study the nature of the self, to examine and cleanse and air out wounds -- she might have healed some too.

thanks for letting me ramble,
Hops

[Guest]

Hops
drained to the point of feeling sick. Drained to the point of almost losing my consciousness. What the hell!

Hey my dinner companion Hops, well, I've tried some, a little, over the years and you know? This person criticizes and blames everyone else. All the time. Whether they're alive or dead. All the time. Broken records make a lot of noise. What the hell.

Silver Lining

I may just have to move to something more intensive than the "medium chill".   

I like this.

[sKePTiKal]

Actually, there is a subtle, hard to put your finger on benefit in putting a lot of distance between you and the "broken records", who feel their mission in life is to (only) share their misery with you. Especially, if the person is one whom you feel "obligated" to listen to... as it's the only form of relationship they know how to have.

It's like how it feels when you finally! get the that damned splinter out of your foot... and you can finally see all the OTHER things in life that the negativity or pain had blotted out or besmirched.

And Hops - I think there's a big difference between your gushing, rushing to finally be heard and those of people who only relate to the world through "spreading the misery". I went through a phase of being hypersensitive about my own babbling like this... and I'm still trying to find that "happy medium" of sharing me (good & negative stuff) and letting the other person do the same. Because we didn't have the "practice" of this with dear ole mom... and perhaps didn't find other places to practice this... it's not as automatic or natural feeling as it is for others. But it's for sure, there!

I would quibble with you over the idea that one develops N-spots through accepting the behavior of N's while growing up. How can it be N behavior, if you're aware there's something "not quite right" about it? If you're wishing the relationship could be different? It's that bit of self-awareness, even if one doesn't know what to do differently, that is the huge gap between N and non-N, for me. Sure, we develop behaviors and habits, etc from modelling the N's... that's stuff that's easier to "edit" until you know what to replace it with... and even our "pouring forth" phase - when we've finally realized we don't need "permission" to talk about our thoughts, our feelings with anyone within hearing distance... if you actually hear what comes out... then you'll find the difference between the "broken record" and what happens when we finally uncork our own voices.

[SilverLining]

Thanks everybody for the replies.  After a few days away from this mess, I start to get my bearings back and begin believing I may not be losing my mind.  My experience of the situation is much like Guest described above.  I started noticing this some years ago with my father.   He would launch into one of his usual monologues on a topic of no interest to me, and I would feel like I was suffocating, and at the same time sort of "beside myself" watching this weird process.  

Now the whole situation shifts again and my father seems like the healthiest one of the bunch.   He just has a social disability, while the rest of them are flat out nuts.  They are so enmeshed in the situation I doubt they will ever find their way out.  About six months ago my sister and her husband had an opportunity to move out of state to get away from my parents.  Instead they moved 5 miles closer.  Now they live one mile away.  It's seems a great statement of how much she really wants to solve her issues.  

I'm with Phoenix on the issue of distance.  It may not be a solution in itself, but it does allow for a life without the constant exposure to craziness.  I've lived far away from the FOO for 30 years and I feel like I'm finally starting to get a glimmer of what positive reciprocal relationships might be like.  For a lot of years I was convinced it wasn't even possible.  

Now my mother is calling and leaving poison messages on my answering machine.   Fortunately for me the machine has about a one minute capacity...  

[sKePTiKal]

SL:

my main contact with bioNicMom is her broken-record phone calls. I may have inadvertantly come up with a "solution" to the voicemail issue, tho'. For one thing, I've noticed she feels really uncomfortable leaving a message; talking to the machine...

and I've thought about telling her that we did away with the land-line completely and to call my cell instead. Damn reception! 
I must've been in a dead-zone and didn't get your message!!     Or - I was charging the phone and it doesn't "receive" in charge mode... or the phone was "off", coz I was in a meeting... or .... (she's not tech literate at all, so wouldn't know the difference...)

Yes, it's devious and untruthful. But it's not much worse than hubs' technique of sending a time-delay page to himself, to get out of boring, non-productive meetings!!

[Guest]

Silver Lining
positive reciprocal relationships - yeah, they feel good. It takes some getting used to, though!