Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Voicelessness and Emotional Survival => Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board => Topic started by: Bloopsy on October 05, 2005, 10:28:09 PM
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Just wondering is it a common thing among cjildren of n's to feel like their parents wanted to kill them?
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I'e never felt that my mom wanted to kill me, at least so far -after all with Ns there's always some room for surprizes. :P After all a living child has more potential for supply than a dead one. What she really wants to kill is my spirit. However, I've never been afraid that she'd poison my food or anything.
Why do you ask, Bloopsy?
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Kill the kids ? Maybe! However there is a more subtle variant which,for me, was a contant feeling of being in danger . It is now really hard to acknowledge that my parents hated me more that they loved or liked me . I always had to 'earn' every morsel of acceptance( we never got close to the LOVE thing). My N dad created an atmosphere of fear in the house which said to me,"If you do what we say, we will let you live another day."
The greatest lingering problem for me is the feelings that come from being 'shamed' about every tiny thing that I did that irritated them. I still have a haunting fear that the shaming from even small transgressions will bring huge boulders down on me and crush me to death.
N parents try to make you pay for ever and ever. They are the worst holders of grudges and dig up the past to batter you with it at every opportunity. Shame on THEM!
DP
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That killing of the spirit thing makes a lot of sense, and so much horrible shame for everything--- it makes no sense they act like they are tyring to instruct you or whatever but really they are just shaming you. Ick!!!~! I just had this scary waking dream where my mom was standing over me with a knife and that is why I asked---- it is so crazy-making to live with her in real life--- she acts like she is so nice but I have all these horrible memories of her icky ranting and raving and the horrible feeling that she hated me when I was myself. I feel crazy because she acts so nice and sweet and all these peoploe tell me what a good mom she is and how jealous they are and stuff but I just feel like that makes me crazy, and the icky hatefuyl scary feeling I always got from her, like she wished that I was dead. I hate when people say what a good mom she is, that makes me feel crazy and bad like it is my fault that she treated me so icky and could never handle any truth from me. Hi. Love Bloopsy Rose. But it's true I am more use to her alive and stuff .
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I feel crazy because she acts so nice and sweet and all these peoploe tell me what a good mom she is and how jealous they are
Bloopsy, while I was growing up, allll of my friends loved my mom, went to her for advice, and envied me for having such a wonderful supermom! Only her brother, her husband, and her daughter saw through the act. I know it is really, really frustrating when your own friends start eulogizing your mom. Makes you feel like its an unfair universe or something.
she wished that I was dead.
If you felt this feeling from your mom, then trust your hunches. Just because my mom did not think of poisoning me doesn't mean that your mom didn't. In Scott Peck's People of the Lies, there is this example of a couple who gave a gun to a depressed teenager as a birthday present, and, and, and, this was the very same gun his brother had killed himself with! So parents like this do exist. Only you can judge severity of pathology in your parent.
Are you in regular contact with your mom?
Hugs, Marta
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while I was growing up, all of my friends loved my mom, went to her for advice, and envied me for having such a wonderful supermom!
Marta, I was, and still am, in the same situation. In fact, I have even lost friends due to the fact that they either take my mom's side when I really need their support, or think that I am a bad person because of my mother's lies.
She brags about the fact that so many people want to talk to her, benefit from her wisdom, etc.
When I was a teen, she mentored a girl who had had a baby at 15, unmarried of course. This girl was so wonderful and could do no wrong. However, my mother had told me, not once but ad nauseum, that if I got pregnant, not to even come home again!
Yet, she went into mother bear fierceness mode if any other woman dared to be friendly or nurturing to me.
Man, and I am going to visit her soon....not a good idea to stir all this up.
Plucky
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I totally relate with what you wrote, Marta and Plucky!! Thank you so much for sharing about that. My friends sometimes say "your mom is really good Bridget" and it makes me want to punch them because I feel like maybe she seems good to them but they can just keep that to themselves and not spread the lie all over me!!!I am in regular contact with my mom, I live with her!!!!!!!!!!! She is not a mess anymore now that she is on antidepressants, they have helped her 100%. I have to remind myself of why I do not trust her and why I feel like I never had a mom and have to help myself to recover form that and stuff because she acts like a saint now. But there are still the things like telling her I was abused and her not even hugging me and saying that it is a tragedy for her. I admit that it drives me crazy to come home from a day of realizing how bad it was to feel so unloved and shamed as a child and come home and feel like i have to be nice to her. She gets such a sad look in her eyes and I feel like I can't escape. All my friends love her and think that she is the perfect mom but for me it is like having a little child for a mom!!!!!! I feel like I need to make it really clear for myself because if I don't I end up blamign myself and hurting myself and thinking that it is all my fault that i sufered so much in my life and felt like i never had a mom even though I have the perfect mom!!!!!!!! I hate that!
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I feel so guilty because ever since she has been on her antidepressants she really has tried and she has helped me a lot but I admit that I want to be healthy and when I don't let myself be angry at her for the way she treated me I just take it out on myself and that is worse and it is also a lie.
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Bloopsy, the way I saw it after my dad died, it was a choice between loving myself and loving him, and I had chosen to love him. I am not going to make the same mistake with my mom.
Girl, I think you need some distance from your mom. I don't think that you can live in the same house or talk to her on the phone everyday, and maintain perspective on how things are. If you are trapped in a situation where you have to live with her, make it a priority to slowly work your way out of it.
Plucky, OMG, my mom did the very same things!! When I was 14, mom mentored a maid servant of the same age and played us off against each other. In fact, she'd tell me things like I will drop her off first to her school and then drop you off. Sometimes I'd suddenly see my favorite shoes on her feet, and it made me feel sooooo angry. Whne I'd protest, the family would tsch tsch over my tantrums and make fun of me. The maid was asked to address my mom as mother and me as sister (against my wishes). She was encouraged to put me down, and I howled over it every single night for like two years. For this, I became the joke of the family and a crybaby. Mom funded her education for a while, made her dream great dreams, but her story ended in a tragedy. Nmom dropped her like a hot potato when I stopped being jealous of the maid. The maid was unable to adjust between her own world and the dreams she'd been shown which she had no way of achieving without support and guidance, so she was majorly messed up. Last I heard was that the maid had become a professional hooker and once even came to our house hoping to solicit attentions of my dad, much to his disgust!
I am also in the same situation back home, where everyone still raves about mom, which is why I've chosen to live continents away. I hope you too have some geographic distance between you and your mom. I'm so sorry that you had to lose friends over your mom -- that must be infuriating. I've never really ventured to discussed the abuse to anyone except one friend. I am almost too ashamed to disclose what is going on right now, like I feel in someways it'd refelct on me too, for this is the seed from which I sprout.
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Marta. I know that you are absolutely right. It's good to hear it from you, that helps me a whole bunch. It's too hard and is impossible. I don't have any money except my disability check but I can get food stamps and just get on a plan. Also, if I fix up my art I can sell it on the street. I feel like it will take a long time---- I think I will have to make a one year plan. It is my goal in life to have my own home and not have it be hers or her abusive n boyfriends, and I know I can do it if I take my baby steps.
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Bloopsy I know I have felt that way and even felt I was in danger just before I left the family home. I even will go as far to say that I think they wanted me to commit suicide, that they wished I had, to prove all along that I was ill. I rang up nmother recently for the very last time, and after I told her my current health problems she was trying to twist things to say that its because I am unwell that I am like this and at how she could "help" me. Yeah right!
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All my friends love her and think that she is the perfect mom but for me it is like having a little child for a mom!!!!!!
Bloopsy, I feel precisely the same way. I was the capable hero in my family. At the age of 8 I felt like I was the man of the house. Now, when I have small children my mother competes with them for my attention. There I draw the line. And she moved far away from us, to punish us I guess, but it hasn't worked out that way! I feel much freer!
Bloopsy, if your mother is still wanting you to take care of her, by looking at you with those doe eyes and expecting you not to express any anger towards her, she is still abusing you in her own special way. Now it is even worse, because it is more subtle and you have no obvious complaint against her.
The anger you feel is real and justified, and if you have to hold it in because of her, that is not good for your health. Get out of that situation. But before you even do that, give yourself permission to feel what you feel and be who you are.
Plucky
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okay. I always felt like I had ot take care of her. I would lie in my bed and couldn't get up she would come home and tell me about her job. I felt like I was going crazy. I did break down and start going to her out of desperation, and she always was burdened. I jsut feel like I absorbed her depressing rants my whole life and never complained, I always had to take her Sh88888t, and she never taught me anything and then would shame me and act bewildered when I did something wrong. Once I could have died of alchohol poisoning while she was visiting with her friend in the fancy suburbs, right in front of her, and she didn;t even notice. I refuse to feel guilty for being angry. Thank you for your encouragemen. It helps me a lot.
progress
I have amassed my bank statements of the last 3 months so i can get food stamps.
yay!!!!!!!!!!
hi!
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Once I could have died of alchohol poisoning while she was visiting with her friend in the fancy suburbs, right in front of her, and she didn;t even notice.
I think you are justified in feeling that she wished you were dead!!!!!
progress
I have amassed my bank statements of the last 3 months so i can get food stamps.
yay!!!!!!!!!!
Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If I were you, I wouldn't share with mom what I was planning; she'd do her best to sabotage your efforts; you don't need that.
Once you get out of her orbit, you'll discover possibilities within yourself that you didn't know existed. Of course you are right at being angry at her!!!!!!!!!
Marta
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I see my exN "parentify" our children all the time. They feel responsible for how he and his wife feel. I don't think the children feel that dad wants them dead, actually, but I do know that they feel that his love for them is tenuous and conditional, based on them doing what he wants them to, feeling what he wants them to, and generally attached to his having control over them. I do my best to teach them that love and control are not the same thing. ...Hope it's getting through....
You still are doing sooo well, Bloopsy. Keep on keepin' on!
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Thanks!!1 My next step is to clean my room out so I have a nice place to stay and don't hang around my family any more and get their ickiness in me anymore and learn to be my own individual person.
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I just feel so mad at myself. Last night my mom was worrying about a law suit and so i started singing to her and stuff and then talked on nad on to my friend about how hard she worked in life and stuff when really I am so mad at her for always coming to me with her work concerns and always ranting and raving about it to me and needing my help and I feel like I helped her to get through having that hard job and maybe if I hadn't had to do that I could have had a job of my own and maybe if she wasn't so all about her students she wouldn't have ignored me so much and stuff and left me with all these abusive people and then I go and act like i think she is so great and poor her that she has such a messed up daughter. i am going to have a hard time dealing with this because it is really hard I guess and i am so angry i love my mom but I am so angry that i had to put so much into helping her and dealing with her problems and her and my sisters fights and then get so sick I couldn't even move anymore, and now they think of me as this big problem with all these problems. Well I did fall apart for years and years but it was not because I am a bad daughter or person it was because I was abused and fell to wrack and ruin and stuff after my best friend and father died. I am so angry today and greatful for a place where people do not think I have a big flaming character defect for being angry. She would rant and rave in the car, we were always going to get into an accident just that next moment according to her. I am the one who had to be drugged out of my mind my whole life and yes I have yelled at her a few times and been very angry but at the same time I have apologized and meant it andthat does not make it okay how she used me and treated me so icky. Las t night she was liike "I need support at home" and I jsut felt like whatev if I give her support it just takes away everything from me and I did treat her that way for a while too but I do not any more and I do not have to pay for it for the rest of my life I am a good person not a bad person and do not have to worry about being a bad daughter because I feel that I would be dead on the ground if I had contiinued to "support" her.
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Hey Bloopsy,
I'm glad you got that off your chest. Your mother is a real case. She has been using you for years. Naturally she is going to put up a fight when you try to get out.
And her tactics are underhanded and unethical. Not like yours. You are trying to be good and fair and human about the whole thing, and just trying to save yourself from going under. She is trying to drag you under using any means she can muster.
You know all of this, it is all included in your post. Your brain knows that your survival depends on you getting out. Your emotions and your behavior have not caught up to this.
Do not beat yourself for taking some time to figure out how to get out of a lifelong situation. Take as long as you want and need. It will happen, just keep slogging on. You will have setbacks. Just get back up and keep trudging on.
It is nice for you (and all of us) to have a place to come where people understand what you are going through. You are part of making this place what it is. When you post the crazy behavior of your mother and how it makes you feel, dozens of people read it and nod in understanding and agreement. For every time I read about some experience like the one you are having, a little more understanding dawns on me and that tightly wound spring in my gut unravels just a little bit. Thank you.
Plucky
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Geez, Bloopsy. I hear you! Good for you, letting it out like that! I'm with you all the way.
I have found that as I changed and became healthier, the people who were/are most critical of me, started flipping out....they want things the way they were:
which was me allowing them to DUMP their negative crap all over me, actually INSISTING on it,. I think Harriet Lerner describes this perfectly in "the Dance of Anger". They want you back in the role they created for you!
Good for you, Bloopsy, for getting sick of it. Good for you for NOT putting up anymore.
Boy do I know this one: they try the one thing (still ) that will get me: pity. I feel sorry for them, I think less of myself...they imply that for me NOT to be their emotional toilet is selfishness on my part...so I give in!
ARRRRGGGGGHHH!!!
You are doing exactly the right thing in announcing out loud (to who ever...us I guess) how that makes you feel. That is the first step in letting this negative energy they dump on you go.
Honestly, when I realized that it was OTHER PEOPLE"S ENERGY that I was holding onto.....it was quite a revelation!
The other day, I kept hurting myself, physically, like running into tree limbs, falling, hitting my chin, etc..., one thing right after another, feeling really bad, got into an arguement with my daughter, etc..
It was clear something was up, and these clumsy accidents and bad mood were no coincidence. When I stopped to think about what was happening, I realized I was still really angry about the recent legal and emotional bullying my ex has been doing. HIS negative energy was still hanging around me...I was still holding onto it! I had never really SAID outloud, as you just did how really bad what he does makes me feel. I laughed about it, I said: "oh, I can let this go, I always do" but I never really acknowledged how rotten I felt.
You know that saying: you can't let something go that you are not holding? Well....admitting I was holding it helped me to really let it go.
I am still amazed every time I figure something out (and then don't always do what I've figured out).
Hang in there, Bloopsy. You are right on the money....Your boundaries were crossed. You have every right to be pissed.
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Hi Bloopsy and all! Wow- what a question! I can relate to your situation Bloopsy! My N mother tried to abort me several ways- didn't want kids and got pregnant16 yrs. after my oldest sis was born. Increased her intake of alcohol and narcotic- an addict- smoked 2 pks of cigs daily instead of her usual one- threw herself down a flight of stairs into 3rd month of pregnancy. Was supposed to be on bedrest till delivery due to bleeding- non compliant. I was obviously a hardy little fetus cause here I am despite her twisted efforts!!! She always dislliked me intensely- said she hated me but don't really know if that's valid. My father- not a N but typical partner of one- spineless, totally passive, driven crazy by her constant lying, verbal and physical abuse towards him and crazy making accusations and communication. She would torque my dad into white blind rages with accusations of things I'd done and allegedly done and encourage him to beat me. She would stand in the doorway of whatever room and scream obscenities at me and my father, encourage him to punch me in certain areas of the body- " not the head or face...don't want anyone to know". After he came to his senses- always felt extreme remorse and made peace with me when I was an adult before his death- or I was unconscious on occasion, my N mother would typically lose interest and wander away. Later in evening she'd play all lovey dovey with me and then verbally and often physically abuse him. I was also the target for this behaviour because I was the " different" one in the family- left handed, dyslexic, OCD and bipolar( severe depression and suicide attempts starting at age 7), only one who confronted her on her addictions, her N and abuse and called her on it. One thing I found a saving grace as a child and teen was finding good teachers and getting validation and incredible support- scholastically and emotionally- from them( also feedback that I wasn't the family freak and they were the sick ones). I also started spending as much time as humanly possible away from my home either in sports and clubs as well as spending dinners, wk.ends and frequent overnights at girlfriend's houses. Again, wonderful parents and sibs who nurtured me and validated. Not to say my N mother hasn't left huge scars emotionally and on my self esteem and continues to reach out from the grave and try to strangle me( actually my shrink's analogy- i like it). The good thing that I thank her for, is that with her death in Feb., I suddenly realized that I was living with my N mother in the guise of my ex N. Hang in. I've also now got a whole new circle of non N and non toxic friends who've been a god send and life saving. Hugs Moira
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Hi! I can really relate to what you guys are saying. I admit to have gotten a little overwhelmed. .I just yelled at my friend who was being icky to me--- I feel really overwhelmed and confused about Ns and abuse and all this stuff--- it is so hard not to repeat these icky patterns. i jsut want to do my art and find people to love and have life, and I know that will be a lot of work. Knowing that you guys are out there working too is so iinspiring all the things you have written thank god for this message board!
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To Moira,
I was overwhelmed when I read of the abuse you suffered at the hands of your parents. I am so sorry they treated you that way. I can't even imagine that kind of mindset or how they could justify that criminal behavior. And it's sad that no one rescued you from that torment. You are an amazing person to have been able to survive.
Gail
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All my friends love her and think that she is the perfect mom but for me it is like having a little child for a mom!!!!!! I feel like I need to make it really clear for myself because if I don't I end up blamign myself and hurting myself and thinking that it is all my fault that i sufered so much in my life and felt like i never had a mom even though I have the perfect mom!!!!!!!! I hate that!
I can relate. To my friends and the rest of my family my Nmother was/is the perfect mom. And for years I asked myself, "What is wrong with me? Why don't I think she is the perfect mom?" Then I'd answer my own question, "I must be pretty screwed up." I always believed I was the crazy one in my family because my reality didn't match the reality of anyone else.
It wasn't until I left home for the first time that I started to gain perspective and see she wasn't so perfect.
However it wasn't until this year when I discovered she has two different personality disorders, NPD and OCPD, that my life began to truly make sense. I was no longer the crazy one. I was no longer pretty screwed up. I was okay.
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Moira,
I am so glad you survived! You were meant to thrive and triumph over your sick sad mother. She could not stop you, even when you were just a mass of cells! You go girl!
Plucky