from the blogosphere

I am not as active a reading-and-commenting member of the ACON blogosphere as I might be. I post in spurts, when there's something I need to process in writing. I read in briefer spurts, having found in the past that reading a lot about narcissistic parents can end up causing me to dwell excessively on my mother, rather than living my own life. Does that happen to anybody else out there?

Right now, though, I'm feeling contemplative about my own family, desirous of connection with other ACONs who *get it*, and also emotionally secure enough to be able to take a dip in those waters without drowning.

A few things I've found that I think are worth sharing:

• Violet's post about stirring the pot and provoking drama on The Narcissist's Child. Wise, wise, wise words. Tread very thoughtfully and carefully when deciding to confront a malignant narcissist, and ask yourself: what is this likely to accomplish? What am I hoping to get out of it? In a nutshell: "If your NM is the rageaholic type, you aren’t going to accomplish anything good by rubbing her nose in her messes. In fact, taking any kind of overt action calculated to make her responsible for herself and her behaviour, anything you say or do designed to pry her away from her fantasies, rewritten histories, and sense of entitlement, will be met with resistance and, depending on her personality, could result in anything from a screaming match in which you are characterized as a liar who is picking on her to a full out assault that includes character assassination to not only the family, but to friends, lovers/spouses, in-laws, employers, and even the authorities."  Truer words were never written.

• Roots to Blossom's recent post about dealing with anger when you are the parent, Mommies Get Angry, Too. ACONs like us have to do a lot of healing and re-learning in order to raise emotionally healthy children.

• If you've been doubting your sanity and thinking that maybe your Nparents aren't really that bad, here's a refresher course from Sanctuary for the Abused on red flags that indicate someone is an abuser (or their victim).

• There's always something a little bit satisfying in knowing that other people have received crazy letter from their crazy mothers, too. Here's one, read by the daughter to whom it was sent: Letter from My Narcissistic Mother. 

letter to my brother

In moving some files around, I found this message, which was part of an email back-and-forth among my siblings and myself when some of them took exception to my choosing to share "publicly" that my parents were lurking around the outside of my house. 

He refused to speak to me after I sent this message, saying that I always have to control the conversation and that I was being a typical narcissist, talking over people as usual (um, it's email, how can you talk over people? I thought the built-in turn-taking was one of the perks of that mode of communication). I read over my message again today, to see if I could understand his point of view. Was I attacking him? Devaluing his point of view? I still can't see it. I'm sharing it below (edits to remove names or provide context made in brackets). Tell me if you can see something in this letter that would cause somebody not to speak to his sister for a year: 

**********************************************************************************************
[Brother #1], I'm really hurt that you would diagnose me with narcissistic personality disorder. Really hurt.  Please consider reading more about both NPD and the various ways it affects children of narcissists before handing down a diagnosis like that.  Knowing my history with mom, do you not see how it might be hurtful to describe me as "cut from the same cloth" as her? How is that productive or kind?

This is the FIRST time you have told me (in my memory, forgive me if I'm wrong) that you have come to my defense. I can ONLY know this if you tell me. Thank you for doing that. [Sister-in-law #1], thank you for pointing out to her that she cannot set time limits and that even if I want to talk to her in the future, it may be years from now. I'm glad you both told them that they must stop talking to you about it. That's an important boundary to set. I hope she'll respect that boundary.

We simply disagree on public versus private information. Families perpetuate emotional abuse by putting pressure on each other to keep quiet. It's very well documented in therapeutic literature. And you know what? If mutual "friends" come to you, tell them to come ask me directly, ok? And no, I'm NOT going to stop talking in public about parental estrangement, because SOMEBODY HAS TO FUCKING TALK ABOUT IT. Every single time I post here or on my blog or talk to friends in person, people THANK me. My brothers are the ONLY people in my life who have not shown support and who ask me to shut up.

I also disagree with you about finding fault with parents. Mom doesn't just piss me off occasionally like a normal parent does. Mom routinely devalues me. Routinely. With no "good stuff" in between.

I will not go to therapy with our parents until they show human kindness and decency, a willingness to take responsibility for their own actions, and a respect for my boundaires. PERIOD. I've talked to therapists about that choice and they 100% agree with me that group therapy would NOT be productive right now while the parents are in the shame-and-blame Claire mode.

This is NOT about little mistakes mom and dad made along the way. Every one of us makes mistakes with our kids. Every one of us tries to do better than our parents did, even mom. This IS about continuing, constant disrespectful treatment at her hands. The reason I relate that to events in my past is because those events set the pattern that I see in my present.

I'm glad that she respects your boundaries. She does not respect mine. Ever. From conversations with therapists and oodles of reading, this also appears to be typical of women like her. Again and again I read about the differences between narcissistic mothers' treatment of daughters and sons.

I disagree strongly about Dad's role in this. He had an obligation to protect his children, and he chose not to do it. I have horrible memories of traumatic, inexcusable treatment from Mom and asking Dad for help and him just standing by. Yeah, he loves her. Yeah, he's loyal to her. BUT HE FAILED HIS CHILDREN. Parents have a moral obligation to step in and stop the other parent from abusing their children. If he didn't fail you in that way, awesome. It does seem like he has been there for his sons and for [sister].

I think I mentioned upthread that I DO have good memories, or maybe that's in the email that I wrote yesterday and waited to send. But being treated like shit in the here and now doesn't go away because of some good times and life skills learned. No amount of happy memories makes it ok to routinely treat another person with that much disregard for their autonomy.

Re: visitation rights: Mom told [my husband] straight out that she is planning to sue us. She held it out as a threat. She told him this on two separate occasions, over the phone, about 2 months ago. Dad never spoke to [my husband] about it. We haven't been sued yet and I honestly don't know if she will or if she's bluffing.

Re: calling the cops - that is what I will do if/when she does this again. [my husband] wanted, instead, to go out and try to defuse the situation. I HAVE told her to get lost (but more politely, even while being firm).  I HAVE laid out clear boundaries. She chooses to disregard them and I'm going with the best advice I have, to stop engaging with them.  This is standard how-to-deal-with-stalking advice. Please don't second-guess our decisions. You weren't here.

Re: [Husband]'s parents: actually, YES, [his] parents are better. MUCH better. They're fantastic grandparents, they actually want to know our children for who they really are and value them for that. They focus on them in ways appropriate to each child rather than expecting my children to perform for them or show love for them in the way THEY want it, at the exact time they want it.  Before [son #3] was born we had a confrontation with them about the way his parents, especially his mother, were treating us. Over the course of a year we all did a lot of work and the end result was that they took things to heart, we had some fantastic open discussions, and today I actually have a great relationship with them, for the first time in our history. They showed a willingness to listen, to work, to think deeply. Our mother has shown NONE of that willingness. Every communication with her - EVERY SINGLE ONE in the past four years has been a litany of Claire's faults.

RE: benefit of the doubt - it would be helpful if all of you would offer kindness and support more often instead of festering and making assumptions. It would be helpful if you would ASK ME if you want information. About a year or two ago I started holding back more and actively avoiding discussing this with you guys out of a desire not to have a constant bitchfest going on. You can't have it both ways - either you want to talk or you don't. If you want to talk, I can't know that unless you tell me.

I'm really happy for you guys [bro & sil #1, bro & sil #2] that Mom and Dad are good grandparents to your children. They are NOT good grandparents to MY children. Mom's "good grandmother" phase with us ended before [son #1] turned 2. She and Dad do not play an active, positive role in the kids' lives. My children are fortunate to have two other grandparents who work  hard to relate to them in ways that are emotionally and developmentally appropriate. The kids adore Grandma and Grandpa. They don't adore Nona and Pop. The reason they were "excited" yesterday is because they're excited any time somebody comes to the door, especially people they recognize. They have, unfortunately, witnessed mom's shitty treatment of me and understand (well, mostly [son #1] understands, [sons #2&3] not as much) that some people are unable to be kind to other people. We talk about the importance of treating people with kindness and also the importance of sticking up for yourself.

Submitting myself to mom's poor treatment would be unhealthy. I understand that the rest of you have different interactions with her and I am absolutely NOT asking people to choose sides. I do wish all of you could show more empathy for me, but I understand that that might not be possible.  

********************************************************************************************** 

mad

I'm pissed, and I'm not sleeping. 

My mother, my childhood, my extended family has been on my mind every day this month. I'm sure it's one part holiday-family-mindfuck, one part normal ACONness, and a bunch of other parts of other things all tossed in for good measure. 

Even while I feel happiness for making the choice to end contact with my mother and father, even while I revel in how good life is without the two of them and their shame parade, there has also been a bitterness brewing inside me. Something I learned tonight put a torch to the whole bitter pyre, and now I'm awake and seething about it.

The lovely message at the top of this post is the FUCK YOU that I never mailed to my mother. It festered in my head for many months, and finally I grabbed a sharpie and some paper and wrote them out. First they were simple line letters, then they became block letters, and then they grew curlicues. A fancy fuck you. Fuck you very nicely! Fuck you very much, y'all don't come back now, y'hear?

It made me smile, and I took the paper and stuck it in a journal. I later glued it in. When I'm feeling especially ticked off, I think of those embellished, bold, black letters and raise a middle finger to my FOO.  Tonight, in my ire, I scanned it and added a frame. It's a Formal Fuck You. I'm fantasizing about mailing it, or creating yard signs, or putting up a billboard, or hiring a skywriter. Yeah, a skywriter.

Tonight I'm feeling MAD. 

MAD that my mother won't leave my family alone.

MAD that my oldest brother said cruel things to me six months ago, things that were totally planted in his head by my fucking mother. MAD that he hasn't spoken to me since, even the one time we ended up in the same restaurant together. MAD about the way my mother played her children against each other, so that they have evil pictures in their heads of each other.

MAD that my mother cries her crocodile tears to whomever will listen, and MAD that they actually believe her. 

MAD about the times my sister-in-law has told me how sad she feels for my mom and my dad, who really do love me and miss me. MAD about how weakminded she must be to fall for this shit.

MAD that none of my siblings seem to remember the times when they were the black sheep.

MAD that in a huge extended family, I don't feel like I can trust anybody except maybe my sister. 

MAD that the habits I learned from my mother as a child make it so fucking difficult to be a patient, loving parent. MAD that I have to work so hard to do something that should come naturally.

MAD that she has the audacity to come onto my property. A little MAD that I didn't know she was there at the time, because I totally would have called the cops on her ass.

MAD about all the time and energy this emotional crap takes - time that could and should be spent on other things.

MAD that my lasting legacy from her is anxiety and depression, for which I take medication. MAD that the medication feels necessary for me to be a kind and engaged wife and mother.

MAD that she didn't deal with her own family shit, and instead handed it down to her kids.

MAD that I'm alone, the only one of her five kids who GETS IT, while the rest still do their adoring mommy-we-love-you-so-much routine.
MAD that this is SO UNFAIR.

And tonight, I'm MAD for one more reason. I'm MAD that she had the audacity to send my in-laws a Christmas card containing a woe-is-me letter. MAD that she's crying her sob story, "apparently I'm forbidden from seeing my grandchildren", to these people who ARE NOT HER PEOPLE. MAD that she is such an inappropriate bitch. MAD that she treats my children like her possessions. MAD that she would tell my in-laws to give my children a hug and kiss from her and tell them that she loves them. MAD MAD MAD.

And MAD that what I really want to do, send her a scathing letter letting her know that I'm fully aware of her manipulative bullshit and that I WILL NOT TOLERATE IT, is exactly the kind of thing I should not do. Do not feed the trolls. DO NOT ENGAGE.

So tonight, because I'm so full of MAD, and unable to vent my spleen all over the person who most deserves it, I'm spewing it here, instead:

BACK OFF, BITCH. My children do not belong to you. *I* do not belong to you. We are not objects, we are not playthings at your disposal. If your grandchildren meant ANYTHING to you as people, as human beings in their own right, you would know that anybody who harms me has NO PLACE in their lives. And if they meant anything to you, you would be working your ass off, night and day, to try to figure out where you went wrong in our relationship and FIX IT. You would not be courting the sympathies of people who are much more important in my life and my children's lives than they are in yours.

My kids are amazing people. I'm an amazing person. And YOU SUCK for not knowing it.

Stay off my lawn, stay away from my family, and STAY OUT OF MY LIFE.

And because maybe you didn't hear me the first time:

FUCK YOU

free as a bird

I've been cleaning up my files in anticipation of switching over to a new computer. Today's project included transferring data from one old external hard drive to a new, bigger one. In the process, I dug around in the old files, deleting stuff that I no longer want/need and rediscovering plenty of great old stuff.

One of the things I found was a copy of my initial STOP THIS SHIT letter that I sent to my mother. When I had initially stood up to her regarding my plans for my youngest son's birth and then took a month off from contact with her, I had imagined that her anger would be short-lived and that we would eventally go back to business as usual. In the past, when one of her children had defied her, she would punish us via devaluing and/or discarding us, but that eventually she would get bored of that, we would pass from being in the doghouse to being ignored, and eventually back to normality. In my family, there's generally one child who is the black sheep, one who is the golden child, and three who are ignored, wishing they could be the golden child, but happy that they're not the black sheep. I anticipated a short time in the black sheep role, ended by the arrival of the new baby, and then either going back to a brief golden-child stint or to the flying-under-the-radar position.

Except that's not what happened. Instead, she acted as if my newborn son didn't exist. She acted puzzled by my attempts to include her in his infancy. She ignored me when I attended a birthday dinner for her, and at the end of the dinner, she handed me a letter. I dreaded reading it for the whole hour-long drive home, then couldn't touch it. My husband volunteered to look over it. After he did, he opted to read it to me in her voice. The result was that I still felt hurt by her, but that I was able to laugh as he did his comic impression of her as an imperious, melodramatic Queen of Hearts. 

It was five pages long and full of accusations and lists of my character flaws. It was not the work of a woman who honestly wanted to heal the rift between myself and herself. It was the work of a domineering parent who was issuing a condemnation and order to her wayward child: "you are a worthless turd, and if you ever want to get back into my good graces, you will get back in line where you belong." 

I think my reaction was supposed to be "I'm sorry, Mommy! I love you so much! I'll never do that bad thing again!" Cue the crying and hugging. I had had that fight-and-makeup before. I wasn't doing it again. My initial reaction was to write FUCK YOU in big letters on a piece of 8.5" x 11" computer paper. Just that. Black marker. And mail it. No return address. 

I decided against that response, but it took me almost two months to come up with something. When I did, I had to draft it on the computer, because I simply couldn't get words to flow onto paper with a pen. After typing it, I realized that I didn't like sending things to her in my own handwriting. First, it seemed like too much of me on the paper. Second, she had often boasted of her perfect Palmer Method handwriting, and scorned my own (perfectly legible, perfectly serviceable, perfectly me) writing style. I decided to print the letter and mail it. She didn't deserve a handwritten response.

This is what I sent:

Mom –

I was not surprised to receive this letter from you, since I was aware that you have been feeling hurt and left out.  While you mention a recent estrangement, I would suggest instead that the recent state of our relationship is simply a more honest reflection of a dyad that has been emotionally unbalanced for years.  Your letter reflects a misperception of events and an eagerness to assign character faults and blame to others.  I am uncertain what you hope to accomplish by sending such a letter.  

I am no longer willing to tolerate the disrespect and abuse with which you treat your children.  I am neither the direct cause of your emotional distress, nor am I responsible for resolving it.  In fact, I believe that it would be unhealthy for me to assume that responsibility.  Enclosed is your letter; I am keeping a copy for myself but thought that you might find it useful in the future to re-read what you expressed to me.  You once suggested therapy to me; I encourage you to take your own advice, and would suggest that discussing the thoughts expressed in your letter would be an excellent starting point.

- Claire

I think it's the last time I called her "Mom". She later called my letter "nasty" and berated me for "speaking for your siblings." She cried to my aunts and my siblings, who tried to tell me that I needed to "just sit down and talk it out" or begged me to "bury the hatchet." The thing is, I had discovered my dignity, and I wasn't ever going back. I was free, and there was nothing the flying monkeys could do about it. 

bullying

A while back, when the shit was hitting the fan because I was no longer willing to play the crying, wheedling, please-mommy-I'll-be-good-and-do-whatever-you-ask daughter, my mother wrote me a long letter telling me everything that's wrong with me, and I wrote a short letter back. My letter could be summed up as saying "I won't allow you to treat me this way. You may not bully me."  Using the B word struck a nerve. Nobody wants to be called a bully, least of all the bully herself.

My letter came to mind a few nights ago when I attended a parents' night at my children's school. The topic was bullying, approached not from the zero-tolerance, bullies-are-bad-people standpoint that I'm accustomed to hearing from schools, but rather from a very thoughtful, developmental-research-based angle. We discussed a definition of bullying put forward by Dr. Dan Olweus, a Norwegian professor of psychology who has been studying bullying for almost 40 years. He describes bullying thusly:

"A person is bullied when he or she is exposed, repeatedly and over time, to negative actions on the part of one or more other persons, and he or she has difficulty defending himself or herself."

This definition includes three important components:

1. Bullying is aggressive behavior that involves unwanted, negative actions.
2. Bullying involves a pattern of behavior repeated over time.
3. Bullying involves an imbalance of power or strength.

Negative actions are defined as actions through which someone intentionally inflicts, or attempts to inflict, injury or discomfort upon another person. This may include physical abuse as well as verbal abuse like namecalling, threatening, taunting, teasing, spreading rumors, or also "indirect bullying" actions such as making faces or excluding someone from a group. In bullying situations, there is generally a power imbalance, in which the bully has greater power (social status, age, size, intelligence, etc) than the target.

This resonates with how I view bullying when it applies to my children (as instigators or as targets), but what was even more striking to me was that it was exactly what I have believed for many years about my mother and her treatment of me. Discomfort, both emotional and physical, was intentionally inflicted upon me and my siblings repeatedly. I heard her talk on many occasions about exactly why she did what she did, and it was all about manipulating people and intentionally making them squirm so that she could obtain/maintain the upper hand. While she also did this in her professional life, this MO was especially applied of her children, who were, of course, smaller, younger, and weaker than herself, and dependent upon her.

My mother's entire parenting philosophy centered on power. When she recalled problems with us in the past it was always framed as a power struggle, and the only acceptable outcome was for her to win. She made fun of parenting advice that focused on consensus-building or parents showing friendly compassion for children; her favorite parenting author was James Dobson, who wrote:

...Mom or Dad should have some means of making their youngster want to cooperate...I will suggest one: it is a muscle lying snugly against the base of the neck...when firmly squeezed, it sends little messengers to the brain saying "This hurts: avoid recurrence at all costs." The pain is only temporary; it can cause no damage. But it is an amazingly effective and practical recourse for parents when their youngster ignores a direct command to move.

That sounds like intent to cause discomfort to me. I suffered the neck pinch on multiple occasions, usually in public. I imagine it looked like a mother lovingly putting her arm around her child's shoulders. In addition to having to immediately comply with whatever I was expected to do, there was also the expectation that I not let other people know that I was being hurt.

My mother was a person who could read the passage above and think "yes, this is what I will do to my children, this is a good way to parent." How does this happen? Bullies are people. Why do they bully? Because of a fundamental insecurity that stems from receiving inadequate nurturing and/or inadequate limits. They bully to get attention, to get power, to elicit fear, to gain connection.

I would say that my mother is one of the bullies who is the way she is because of inadequate nurture. She didn't want to be like her father. She knew that he was an abuser because his mother both withheld appropriate nurture and did not set important limits. She knew that he visited the same neglect on her (although not the permissiveness). She didn't want to repeat his mistakes with her children, yet she never realized (and still apparently hasn't) that the key to being a good and loving parent was not merely to avoid doing the specific things that he did, but to examine her own neglected childhood and care for herself so that she would not turn to bullying her children in order to get the attention and power she needed but didn't get as a child.

In the schools, enlightened administrators know that in order for bullying to stop, somebody must help the kids who are doing the bullying. Those kids have a need that must be filled, by adults or by themselves. For enlightened parents to stop the cycle of abuse, we have to dig down and find that injured, neglected place inside and find ways to nurture ourselves. If we don't, we are doomed to repeat the errors of our parents and commit negative actions against our own children in our own struggle to find connection.

trust your feelings - a letter to a friend & fellow ACON

I remember that my mom spent a lot of emotional energy and time on her relationship with my grandfather. Lots of stress, anger, dissecting her childhood and how he interacted with her in the present. When he came to visit, she would feel ill for a week before his visit and for at least a week afterward. She even developed an ulcer that would flare during that week before/after his visits and eventually she started taking medicine before an during visits to ward off the ulcer. Can you imagine?

In the past couple of years, I realized that she has a similar physical affect on me. No ulcer yet (knock on wood) but I feel consumed with anxiety and depression when I know I have to interact with her, the actual interaction is very uncomfortable, and I spend at least a week afterward with the same intense anxiety, depression, and consuming, obsessive thoughts. It takes a long time to feel back to normal again. So really, one interaction with my mom might affect me for a month! I had been worrying about whether it was wrong or unfair to my children to "take away" their grandmother and grandfather from them, but I wasn't thinking about the impact on them of my being so affected by her. Is it more fair for kids to see their grandmother but have a mother who is emotionally unavailable to them because she's so wrapped up in her own baggage? Does the stress on me affect them? It undoubtedly does, and I know that the stress my mother felt (which was very real, and I feel sympathy for her) had a negative impact on her marriage and children. In our case, my mom is not a great grandparent to my kids - she has unrealistic expectations of how they should interact with her, and seems to value them more as possessions than as individuals. Are my kids really losing much? I don't think so. And in removing ourselves from contact with my mother, my kids benefit, because I am a healthier, more engaged parent when my life is not punctuated by interactions with her.

Did I benefit from knowing my grandfather? I have some happy memories, but was not close to him, and as I got older and understood who he was better, I disliked him and disliked spending time with him but still felt obligated to him. Knowing him helps me to understand my mother, but I would never expect my children to know my grandmother just so they can understand me. Would I give up the happy memories with my grandfather in exchange for a mother who was more tuned-in to her emotional health and able to establish boundaries between herself and her abusive parent? Absolutely.

I also realized at some point that I never enjoyed being near her or talking to her, not even a little, and that my relationship with my father was very shallow and not significantly important to me. And my kids seemed to like them but not really know them or be excited about them.

My point is that I think listening to your body is important. How do you feel, and what affect, if any, does that have on your relationships with your kids and with your husband? How does it impact your work? I have also found it helpful to think about what exactly we gain through each of us having a relationship with my parents, and what we lose. If we don't interact with them, again, what are the gains and losses? For me, part of what we "lost" was the idea of a certain kind of grandkid-grandparent relationship, which wouldn't have been a reality, anyway. Honestly, sometimes it seems like the biggest part of becoming healthy is figuring out which unrealistic hopes I had, and building more realistic expectations!

In my case, the affect on my sanity is sufficient enough and my parents are weak enough grandparents that it's in my kids' best interest for none of us to see them or interact with them in other ways. This might change in the future, but all I can do now is what is right for us in the present. You are the only person who knows what your emotional needs are and what your kids need, and who your mom is, and you will make the choice that is right for you. It doesn't have to look like anybody else's choice.

All you can do is what is right for you and your kids and husband right now. Listen to your body and your intuition! I trust you and you can trust you, too.

When is your mom's visit? I'll be thinking about you.

- Claire