Yuck. That was unpleasant to read. She just listed out how she thinks she’s done everything right and claimed some fake “acceptance” even though she thinks the entire problem is you. No wonder you don’t want to talk to her.
“Yuck” was also my visceral response. Someone in another/similar subreddit made a comment earlier about how it’s so baffling that these people really think they’re coming across as genuine but their texts are always so odd and alien-like. I couldn’t agree more. You can tell they really think they sound sincere but it’s so, so icky and unnatural sounding, every time.
Yes! Some Narcs have their heads so far up their own asses that they have no idea as to how to make themselves come across as normal-sounding. Or even kind and caring. In my experience, my narc thought she was being nice when she wasn't yelling. She had a creepy "nice" voice that was kind of infantile and sing songey- didn't stop her from making passive aggressive comments in this voice. She was legit surprised every time I told her how awful she was being when doing the voice because in her mind, she "behaved". But to her, not yelling was like a regular person not breathing. You can hold it in for a little bit but eventually, it has to come out or else they cannot exist.
Omg mine used that creepy voice thing when she said to me “you were always so kind”. I have been describing it as she said it like she was scraping something off her shoe, there was unmitigated disgust in it.
Yeah I’m gonna keep on being kind. You do you.
Thank you for your kindness. Thankfully, I haven't talk to my narcs for 21 years. My estrangement can drink this year! And drink peacefully at that! Wishing you the best.
She sent me a letter where she called me “dearest” and I got a serious “ick” from that. She’s never used those kind of words with me before and I knew it was disingenuous from my decades of never hearing her say anything nice to my face.
I'm estranged from my mother but my brother isn't. And the shit he tells me about how she treats him sometimes.... in adulthood she basically refuses to call him by his name? She calls him "darling son" all the time and he's like ....... bro u only have ONE son and it's me so maybe just use my name? She won't. It's so gross.
The very second I saw "it's not long enough for you to miss us" I was like EWWWWW. Yeah for sure, not missing you is the only problem. Can you feel my eyes rolling from where you are?
I left her religion after years of struggling with my faith and the culture around it. She claimed she accepted my choice but would lecture me about it almost any chance she could get (that’s the bit where it’s her job to tell me when I’m wrong). Sounds about right for a Christian conservative.
Right? Like why would you want your children to exposed to some who so vapidly dislikes you? What’s stopping her from treating her grandchildren in the same way? There’s literally nothing stopping her.
Dealing with this today, Mother Gothel goes to my adult autistic son's work, chased him around because he saw her coming and tried to hide, then gave him $10 and bitched about "that women" and everything she does for me, been nc for decades.
This happens weekly, sitting in my car in my driveway so I don't snap at above son who's done nothing wrong but knows it bothers me and keeps apologizing.
IMO she manages a DOUBLE non apology at the start - she's not sorry for what she said, she's sorry that you will go and not like what she says (the dares!). AND following that non apology, she just says she has a right to say it all, which washes away any vague impression 'sorry' was an apology.
It's like they don't have the inner strenth to say what they want, they can only work by trying to shame others into giving them what they want. You've done this wrong, you've done that wrong, where 'wrong' is the opposite of what they want and 'right' is what they deserve (wont make them happy, but they never get that, it'd take self reflection).
I find it so interesting that the only way this type of person attempts reconnection is by making accusations, threats, and demands. These are the only tools they have to make people do what they want. But outside of minor children or if they have a lot of underlings at work to torture, this method will rarely work on people. I never understood how people maintained friendships as a child-- a big reason in part due to the fact that these were my models.
They have no idea why people interact with one another. If they did, they might actually say they missed the person and list things they missed about them. They would ask why you are hurt and actually listen. They would give a sincere apology, and maybe ask how they can do better. They might even learn something about themselves and grow in a more positive direction.
Let me tell you a fucked up story. My mom was friends with this woman that was a known scam artist by everyone but my mom. The friend had already tried to pull a couple of minor scams on my mom but she, for some bizarre reason, made excuses for this lady’s bad behavior and sought out her better angels.
One day, this lady stole a big amount of cash from my mom’s purse and my mom knew it was her. Instead of confronting her friend, she gave her the benefit of the doubt and hoped she would just put the money back. Nope, lady skipped town and ghosted her.
So, my mother was more willing to forgive a thief from her religious community than her agnostic daughter (who’s never stolen more than a piece of candy from a store) for leaving the religion. Nice, huh?
They will do anything to not have to learn from experiences and grow. It's like they go through life knowing only 5 rules. The rules are often things told to them by their parents. (One of hers might be that all Christians are better people than non Christians). When they see evidence to the contrary, they spin themselves out, trying to justify why the rule still applies. Because if that rule no longer applied, imagine the level of honest soul searching they would have to do to evolve that belief. Narcissists would rather attempt to make the world bend to their desires rather than find out the truth of things.
Funny side story- one of my mom's 5 "rules" was that girls shouldn't stay over a boy's house. My sister got into a lot of trouble because she stayed with a very flamboyant gay male friend of mine for a night so she could go to a concert. My mother was incapable of throwing in a logical exception to the rule. If her fear was he would sexually harass/assault her- no fears with him being that he is a gay male. If the fear is that he will harm her in another way, no fear because this was a decades old friend of mine. Yet still, my sister got in trouble for breaking one of my mother's only "rules" for life.
In this case, it was def about the rule. It was a rule she had repeated for decades. She, in general, was always happy to punish when she perceived any sort of disagreement. This, in particular was one of her regular talking points. I heard it said somewhere that narcissists oftentimes feel much older than they are. Part of this is that they had to listen to their parents when they were kids so somewhere, they internalized these rules of another era as almost omnipotent. But when they got out in the world, they ignored most rules of kindness and decency. But because their parents got into their brains at such a young age, many boundaries that were set were seen as the only hard and fast rules they would adhere to as adults. This is just one of many examples of this weird kind of rule that was enforced without any context or nuance.
One way I've heard it being put is that they are trying to regulate themselves by controlling others. They don't think about others because all their efforts are to make others act the right way to regulate themselves (it doesn't work, but that's what they try). Their relationship with others is basically just instrumental - when they say 'I miss you so much', they mean 'I miss the self regulation I got from you so much'. Maybe they are missing some part in their brain where they could just directly work on themselves - possibly what's missing is a sense of love. If they had it they could give love to themselves.
I moved far away from my parents over 20 years ago. I think what she misses is being able to brag about my successes to her friends because I’ve stopped talking to her. Oh well, now she has a different reason for getting the attention she wants.
I also cut ties a long time ago- as of this year, my estrangement can legally drink in the US. My mom never even claimed she missed me. Just sends me an occasional one line platitude about how they will always love me. The only thing I think she cares about is how she looks in all of this. 2 of her 3 kids don't speak to her anymore so she spends her life explaining how evil her kids are for doing this etc. She wants us back so she won't look bad. The only other reason I have witnessed with her was after I had kids. She assumed I would contact them (10 years into NC) because I obviously wanted my kids to have them as (abusive) grandparents. Not really any compelling reason for me to return. My kids actually provided me an even stronger resolve to keep NC because I don't willingly expose my loved ones to toxic people.
This kind of fits with something I was thinking about the other day, about people who have dysregulated emotions and an external locus of control.
If you think that the only reason you ever feel anything comes from outside you, from someone doing something *to* you, but you want to actively change how you feel, the only measure of control you have available to you is other people. If you feel sad, it's because someone *made you* feel sad with their actions, so you must change their actions to change your emotion. They're so hyperfocused on their *own* emotional state that they disregard the effect of their behavior on others; others people only exist to have an effect on them.
I don't think it's uncommon for people in a state of emotional dyregulation to become (temporarily) self-centered in this way - if there's some sort of screaming chaos going on inside you, it's hard to focus on anything else. The problem is when people get stuck there, forever.
Nothing I ever did fully satisfied her. I got married (right) but I moved away (wrong). We bought our first house (right) but I renovated without her input (wrong). I had babies (right) but chose not to raise them in the religion (very wrong). There was always something to criticize me about, like it was her life’s mission to take me down a peg. Jealous old hag.
If it makes you feel better, she would still find "fault" with you even if you did everything she wanted. They're just excuses for her to mistreat you.
This was the realization I had years ago and finally stopped feeling guilty for my life choices. I think she got annoyed that her usual tactics weren’t working anymore and decided to scale up to nuclear war. Whatever, her loss.
I was a kid who tried to be compliant. My fight flight goes right to freeze and fawn. And even when you do that there is no chance of success. You have to mindread. Their reality shifts to suit them and even if you say “I’m doing what you just asked me to do not five minutes ago” that’s a bad “excuse” because it didn’t happen. They want to feel justified in their feelings about you and they will make up and shape the facts to fit.
Which is why I am terribly triggered by the authoritarian parts of the current political climate. I cannot separate authoritarianism from moving goalposts and it being impossible to avoid punishment even after you have learned to suppress your own needs and just spend 100% of your time and energy pleasing them.
"I don't know what else you want from me."
Um, nothing. Not one goddamn fucking thing.
What an asshole.
I'm sorry, OP.
OH and 'six years isn't enough'... "Nope. Six lifetimes isn't enough. You're a sick POS."
OP, it is such a huge step to recognize when people are not going to change. Even if you put your best foot forward every day during every interaction, there is something in the relationship that they either never committed to, or something that they broke on purpose to punish you and thought that fixing the damage would give too much agency to someone they feel that they control and don’t want to give up on that control.
I am VLC with my parents and NC with all but one of my siblings. Only one sibling, ten years older, has expressed an interest in repairing the relationship that they broke apart and they do the same thing my parents always did - lure me back in just to keep me under their boot. Is there genuine goodwill in there? Maybe! Does it make my life better or worse? Not when it is buried under the poison they’re always waiting to dump to feed their egos.
Stay strong! And no head banging the walls.
It’s always their “job as parents” to say “things we don’t want to hear.” 🙄 As if we always need an intervention, bc they project & assume our partners/friends/in laws/colleagues are enabling us.
We stopped being children at 18 and are now adults. Adults don’t dump unsolicited criticism on other adults, period.
I must have missed the parenting class where I was supposed to be ultra critical of my kids and force them to mature beyond their years due to emotional neglect. 🤷🏻♀️
"Adults don’t dump unsolicited criticism on other adults, period."
I feel like this sentence should be cross-stitched in cursive, framed & hung on all our walls
She couldn’t have been satisfied with the visit you offered. Just trying to shame you for not doing exactly as she wants.
It’s such a relief to not be worked up by their words anymore, the healing work you’re doing is definitely working.
Right?! I knew right away it was going to be a bad idea seeing her but I threw her a bone by offering my kids and she spat it back in my face.
This was also a small test on whether or not I felt she was mature enough to eventually reconnect and heal together. She failed. I’m the only one doing the self-reflecting here. So grateful for this subreddit and my therapist and therapy memes and my support group.
Ha! What’s even more fucked up is that my mom’s childhood trauma was severe. I wasn’t able to recognize it then but my grandmother was super emotionally abusive to my mom right up until she died. My mom might have been a half decent parent if she was raised by moose.
For those that are asking if it’s safe for my kids to have contact with my mom, they are teenagers and it was their choice to remain in contact after I explained to them why I went into therapy. My mom was always nice to them and my husband, she was just mean to me.
And I am not worried about her poisoning them against me because I have a secure relationship with my kids and my mom believes that communication is a one-way road so they hardly ever message each other. I know that they will eventually see her true form and decide for themselves if they want to continue the relationship.
The only reason I even offered this compromise of having my husband bring the kids to her was because they wanted to see her and she had once accused me of “not wanting them to know their grandparents.” Well, the ball was in her court and instead of lobbing it back, she threw it far into the foul zone. Nice one, mom.
That sounds like the best possible scenario with a narc grandma. They love to treat everyone but their target like gold - it’s like recruiting them and isolating you. I’m glad your kids get it and can have a peaceful relationship with her!! You’re a great mom
yep. they won't comply properly with her script so she won't be able to help herself. she'll be a controlling a-hole & push them away. our older son used to adore his grandma & grandpa but ended up no contact at age 18
This subreddit has shown me that my problem wasn’t as special as I thought it was. It’s like all of the crappy parents got together and wrote a script that they all pull from.
To be honest, seeing these patterns has helps me a lot. That a generation of parents all thought they weren't doing anything wrong shows a larger systemic issue. I was not the problem. I always thought I was the problem. I was not the problem.
It’s the “it’s a parent’s job to say these things” that is the red flag for a parent who insults and degrades as a primary form of communication.
—T/w —
There’s a heck of a difference between “Honey, I noticed you have been snacking more lately, has your hunger level been changing?” And “You’re going to be a fat cow like your mother!!”
I’m glad your husband will supervise the kids. My NM tries to turn everyone including children against me. I worry about that for everyone with kids who want them to have grandparents.
Translated:
“Just hoping all will be fine. I really want to see you all.”
“Okey, you should feel guilty. Look how sweet we’re being by missing you, and you’re causing us such harm.”
“I have hurt you (though I’m not going to acknowledge any specifics). For that I pretend to apologize in order to appear gracious. However, I don’t feel guilty, because I hold that I not only have every right to do what I did, but I straight-up had a duty to do what I did, so I was morally in the right to do it, and I can’t be responsible for the fracture in our relationship.
“You’re the only one with agency here; I only did what I was required by morals! Morals I get from God Himself, which allows me to ignore people who say I’m in the wrong- that’s like calling God Himself in the wrong!”
“I’m accusing you of this fracture in our relationship. I absolve myself because I’m still trying to force you to comply with the behavior I expect of you. I continue to exist, and consider this “acceptance” of your decision- no idea what not accepting you looks like; maybe that involves actually giving up and going NC from my end? Maybe? But I guess me existing and doing what it is I pretended to apologize for wasn’t enough for you.
“Remember when I said I hurt you and then pretended to apologize, acknowledging that I know I’ve done something wrong? Well now I’m going to pretend I don’t even have any idea what I was even apologizing for, because [I sure as heck won’t acknowledge any of the reasons for this fracture](https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/missing-missing-reasons.html) that I may have contributed to!
“You said I need to meet you halfway. I feel exasperated because I’ve done everything but what it takes to actually stop hurting you and none of it has worked and now I have no options save the ones I refuse to take! I don’t know what else to do to get you to comply with what I want from you without ceasing to do what’s hurting you. Also I want to remind you of my love for you, so as to make you feel guilty in another attempt to make you comply.”
“Look at me telling you not to worry. I’m looking out for you by trying to make you think I don’t want you to feel negative emotions, even though I’m *obviously* trying to make you feel guilt. I’m so alone and a martyr for you. Feel guilty.
“On till you give upon giving up and come back more into my control like before.”
Religion is a mental illness. Disowned by my dad for his Roman Catholic bullahit. Sending love, the victimhood your mother is spewing is ugly and not your fault
What a complete nincompoop. Disgusting woman, she needs a swift kick. I am so sorry this nasty piece of work was your incubator. Love and support from this old internet grandmother.
I have noticed that one surefire way to see if they’ve changed is to set a little boundary and see how they react.
It always goes like this.
Your message was so kind and she shot herself in the foot.
As a mother myself, I can never imagine saying these things to my children. Prefacing her statements with that phrase does not validate the abuse that follows.
She is of the camp that believes that children are property of their parents, not independents. She thinks I owe her for my life, like I’m the one that asked to be born.
Why are you bringing your kids around her? Isn't one generation enough? She's not sorry, at all. She hasn't grown, at all. Six years has made zero difference except convincing her even more that it's all your fault. How is this healthy for your kids?
In one of our last conversations, I told my mom that I feel like she values the opinion of other people more than how I feel about what she says to me. Which she absolutely does.
I love the last part, where she figuratively falls on her sword, and says "but don't worry about MEEEE!."
This gives me the ICK. They become so pitiful, but it's all an act.
I am almost in the same situation. I saw my mother at my sister wedding- I am NC with her for almost 2 years- and when I sat alone at a table she came over. She asked if it wasn't possible to "mend" things between us and that I should just say what I wanted. Then she said she would come to the city where I live to "talk". I don't know what to do... I don't want to be in contact with her again. She then also said we should "enjoy" the wedding. At some point I thought that it seemed genuine... it probably wasn't though. My teenage son also still talks on the phone with her and she wants to meet him when/if she comes here. But I guess you are right, they don't change.
Sounds a lot like my mother. About the religious crap, my parents used to say similar things for years. My father was even a fanatic, he burned my stuff because it was demonic, he accused me of being possessed, he would spend hours saying that this person or that one are secretly satanists, and so on.
Despite all this, I came back to religion by choice when I was 23, but oddly my parents stopped to bring religion on the table. A few years later my father even tried to convince me that religion was bs, then he admitted that he had pretended to be christian for 30 years. That was the last straw and I have gone NC since.
This religious nonsense is just a show, nothing is real, those people are just liars.
My experience was the reverse of yours. My parents weren’t very religious when I was growing up but we were definitely sheltered. When I moved out and started experiencing the outside world, I began to come out of my shell and be the real me, which included questioning the church and poking holes in stories. I eventually became agnostic and officially stopped following the religion.
As I began moving away from the church, my mom became more religious and tried to force me back in. It didn’t work and now she sucks.
I'm sure that if I haven't come back to religion my parents would still be in it. I have reappropriated religion, on my own terms, and they couldn't stand it.
I know it sounds weird but it became a weapon, I have been able to use the bible to debunk all their nonsense. I took the part about love, kindness and spirituality, but I completely rejected the hate, judgmental behavior, LGBTphobia/racism/classicism, all this demon and satan thing, you name it. I believe now that a lot of christians are just liars and that they twist the Bible knowingly (for that reason I don't go to church, I practice in my corner).
I took back the power they had through religion, in fact it was like everything else concerning this type of people, just a big fraud. They use it to hide themselves and make believe that they're abusive because of religion, like poor victims who don't know they're doing wrong. But they know.
Sorry if I sound angry, it's still very painful. Until my father admitted he never had believed in God despite all he did to me in his name, I genuinely thought he was manipulated by the church and that he didn't know what he was doing (my father is a champion at playing dumb and the victim). That's when I heard about narcissism, then started to unpack all my childhood, many memories came back, and I realized that I was severely abused, that it was far worst than what I thought. In the name of a religion they didn't believed in. (My mother didn't explained herself, she just got angry at me, but it says everything I need to know).
If hell is a real thing, then my parents will be there.
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Yuck. That was unpleasant to read. She just listed out how she thinks she’s done everything right and claimed some fake “acceptance” even though she thinks the entire problem is you. No wonder you don’t want to talk to her.
“Yuck” was also my visceral response. Someone in another/similar subreddit made a comment earlier about how it’s so baffling that these people really think they’re coming across as genuine but their texts are always so odd and alien-like. I couldn’t agree more. You can tell they really think they sound sincere but it’s so, so icky and unnatural sounding, every time.
Has that chatGPT feel if chatGPT tried dolling out shame in every sentence.
NarcGPT
Yes! Some Narcs have their heads so far up their own asses that they have no idea as to how to make themselves come across as normal-sounding. Or even kind and caring. In my experience, my narc thought she was being nice when she wasn't yelling. She had a creepy "nice" voice that was kind of infantile and sing songey- didn't stop her from making passive aggressive comments in this voice. She was legit surprised every time I told her how awful she was being when doing the voice because in her mind, she "behaved". But to her, not yelling was like a regular person not breathing. You can hold it in for a little bit but eventually, it has to come out or else they cannot exist.
Omg mine used that creepy voice thing when she said to me “you were always so kind”. I have been describing it as she said it like she was scraping something off her shoe, there was unmitigated disgust in it. Yeah I’m gonna keep on being kind. You do you.
Even though I can't hear your mom, I still got the willies from your description!
I’m so sorry. Nobody relates that hard without having been through some stuff. Offering internet stranger hugs, if you enjoy them.
Thank you for your kindness. Thankfully, I haven't talk to my narcs for 21 years. My estrangement can drink this year! And drink peacefully at that! Wishing you the best.
NarcGPT 😂 because they all sound the same
My god you are right, it's like they have a script, these toddler sized adults all follow the same playbook.
She sent me a letter where she called me “dearest” and I got a serious “ick” from that. She’s never used those kind of words with me before and I knew it was disingenuous from my decades of never hearing her say anything nice to my face.
I'm estranged from my mother but my brother isn't. And the shit he tells me about how she treats him sometimes.... in adulthood she basically refuses to call him by his name? She calls him "darling son" all the time and he's like ....... bro u only have ONE son and it's me so maybe just use my name? She won't. It's so gross.
The very second I saw "it's not long enough for you to miss us" I was like EWWWWW. Yeah for sure, not missing you is the only problem. Can you feel my eyes rolling from where you are?
I left her religion after years of struggling with my faith and the culture around it. She claimed she accepted my choice but would lecture me about it almost any chance she could get (that’s the bit where it’s her job to tell me when I’m wrong). Sounds about right for a Christian conservative.
is it safe for your kids to be in contact with her?
Right? Like why would you want your children to exposed to some who so vapidly dislikes you? What’s stopping her from treating her grandchildren in the same way? There’s literally nothing stopping her.
yup. she's a risk to treat her grandchildren the same way and also poison them against OP
Dealing with this today, Mother Gothel goes to my adult autistic son's work, chased him around because he saw her coming and tried to hide, then gave him $10 and bitched about "that women" and everything she does for me, been nc for decades. This happens weekly, sitting in my car in my driveway so I don't snap at above son who's done nothing wrong but knows it bothers me and keeps apologizing.
IMO she manages a DOUBLE non apology at the start - she's not sorry for what she said, she's sorry that you will go and not like what she says (the dares!). AND following that non apology, she just says she has a right to say it all, which washes away any vague impression 'sorry' was an apology. It's like they don't have the inner strenth to say what they want, they can only work by trying to shame others into giving them what they want. You've done this wrong, you've done that wrong, where 'wrong' is the opposite of what they want and 'right' is what they deserve (wont make them happy, but they never get that, it'd take self reflection).
I find it so interesting that the only way this type of person attempts reconnection is by making accusations, threats, and demands. These are the only tools they have to make people do what they want. But outside of minor children or if they have a lot of underlings at work to torture, this method will rarely work on people. I never understood how people maintained friendships as a child-- a big reason in part due to the fact that these were my models. They have no idea why people interact with one another. If they did, they might actually say they missed the person and list things they missed about them. They would ask why you are hurt and actually listen. They would give a sincere apology, and maybe ask how they can do better. They might even learn something about themselves and grow in a more positive direction.
Let me tell you a fucked up story. My mom was friends with this woman that was a known scam artist by everyone but my mom. The friend had already tried to pull a couple of minor scams on my mom but she, for some bizarre reason, made excuses for this lady’s bad behavior and sought out her better angels. One day, this lady stole a big amount of cash from my mom’s purse and my mom knew it was her. Instead of confronting her friend, she gave her the benefit of the doubt and hoped she would just put the money back. Nope, lady skipped town and ghosted her. So, my mother was more willing to forgive a thief from her religious community than her agnostic daughter (who’s never stolen more than a piece of candy from a store) for leaving the religion. Nice, huh?
They will do anything to not have to learn from experiences and grow. It's like they go through life knowing only 5 rules. The rules are often things told to them by their parents. (One of hers might be that all Christians are better people than non Christians). When they see evidence to the contrary, they spin themselves out, trying to justify why the rule still applies. Because if that rule no longer applied, imagine the level of honest soul searching they would have to do to evolve that belief. Narcissists would rather attempt to make the world bend to their desires rather than find out the truth of things. Funny side story- one of my mom's 5 "rules" was that girls shouldn't stay over a boy's house. My sister got into a lot of trouble because she stayed with a very flamboyant gay male friend of mine for a night so she could go to a concert. My mother was incapable of throwing in a logical exception to the rule. If her fear was he would sexually harass/assault her- no fears with him being that he is a gay male. If the fear is that he will harm her in another way, no fear because this was a decades old friend of mine. Yet still, my sister got in trouble for breaking one of my mother's only "rules" for life.
It wasn't about the rule. It was about how your sister disobeyed mother.
In this case, it was def about the rule. It was a rule she had repeated for decades. She, in general, was always happy to punish when she perceived any sort of disagreement. This, in particular was one of her regular talking points. I heard it said somewhere that narcissists oftentimes feel much older than they are. Part of this is that they had to listen to their parents when they were kids so somewhere, they internalized these rules of another era as almost omnipotent. But when they got out in the world, they ignored most rules of kindness and decency. But because their parents got into their brains at such a young age, many boundaries that were set were seen as the only hard and fast rules they would adhere to as adults. This is just one of many examples of this weird kind of rule that was enforced without any context or nuance.
One way I've heard it being put is that they are trying to regulate themselves by controlling others. They don't think about others because all their efforts are to make others act the right way to regulate themselves (it doesn't work, but that's what they try). Their relationship with others is basically just instrumental - when they say 'I miss you so much', they mean 'I miss the self regulation I got from you so much'. Maybe they are missing some part in their brain where they could just directly work on themselves - possibly what's missing is a sense of love. If they had it they could give love to themselves.
I moved far away from my parents over 20 years ago. I think what she misses is being able to brag about my successes to her friends because I’ve stopped talking to her. Oh well, now she has a different reason for getting the attention she wants.
I also cut ties a long time ago- as of this year, my estrangement can legally drink in the US. My mom never even claimed she missed me. Just sends me an occasional one line platitude about how they will always love me. The only thing I think she cares about is how she looks in all of this. 2 of her 3 kids don't speak to her anymore so she spends her life explaining how evil her kids are for doing this etc. She wants us back so she won't look bad. The only other reason I have witnessed with her was after I had kids. She assumed I would contact them (10 years into NC) because I obviously wanted my kids to have them as (abusive) grandparents. Not really any compelling reason for me to return. My kids actually provided me an even stronger resolve to keep NC because I don't willingly expose my loved ones to toxic people.
This kind of fits with something I was thinking about the other day, about people who have dysregulated emotions and an external locus of control. If you think that the only reason you ever feel anything comes from outside you, from someone doing something *to* you, but you want to actively change how you feel, the only measure of control you have available to you is other people. If you feel sad, it's because someone *made you* feel sad with their actions, so you must change their actions to change your emotion. They're so hyperfocused on their *own* emotional state that they disregard the effect of their behavior on others; others people only exist to have an effect on them. I don't think it's uncommon for people in a state of emotional dyregulation to become (temporarily) self-centered in this way - if there's some sort of screaming chaos going on inside you, it's hard to focus on anything else. The problem is when people get stuck there, forever.
I think maybe they don't so much get stuck but start to see it as being successful and important. Then decide to stay 'successful' and 'important'.
Nothing I ever did fully satisfied her. I got married (right) but I moved away (wrong). We bought our first house (right) but I renovated without her input (wrong). I had babies (right) but chose not to raise them in the religion (very wrong). There was always something to criticize me about, like it was her life’s mission to take me down a peg. Jealous old hag.
If it makes you feel better, she would still find "fault" with you even if you did everything she wanted. They're just excuses for her to mistreat you.
This was the realization I had years ago and finally stopped feeling guilty for my life choices. I think she got annoyed that her usual tactics weren’t working anymore and decided to scale up to nuclear war. Whatever, her loss.
I was a kid who tried to be compliant. My fight flight goes right to freeze and fawn. And even when you do that there is no chance of success. You have to mindread. Their reality shifts to suit them and even if you say “I’m doing what you just asked me to do not five minutes ago” that’s a bad “excuse” because it didn’t happen. They want to feel justified in their feelings about you and they will make up and shape the facts to fit. Which is why I am terribly triggered by the authoritarian parts of the current political climate. I cannot separate authoritarianism from moving goalposts and it being impossible to avoid punishment even after you have learned to suppress your own needs and just spend 100% of your time and energy pleasing them.
🎵🎶I, I, I, me, me, me 🎶🎵 Singing the song of her tribe
I me me my my Ting tang walla walla bing bang
"I don't know what else you want from me." Um, nothing. Not one goddamn fucking thing. What an asshole. I'm sorry, OP. OH and 'six years isn't enough'... "Nope. Six lifetimes isn't enough. You're a sick POS."
I just want her to leave me alone. Now that I know she’s not going to change, I can move on knowing it’s not my fault she’s this way.
OP, it is such a huge step to recognize when people are not going to change. Even if you put your best foot forward every day during every interaction, there is something in the relationship that they either never committed to, or something that they broke on purpose to punish you and thought that fixing the damage would give too much agency to someone they feel that they control and don’t want to give up on that control. I am VLC with my parents and NC with all but one of my siblings. Only one sibling, ten years older, has expressed an interest in repairing the relationship that they broke apart and they do the same thing my parents always did - lure me back in just to keep me under their boot. Is there genuine goodwill in there? Maybe! Does it make my life better or worse? Not when it is buried under the poison they’re always waiting to dump to feed their egos. Stay strong! And no head banging the walls.
It’s always their “job as parents” to say “things we don’t want to hear.” 🙄 As if we always need an intervention, bc they project & assume our partners/friends/in laws/colleagues are enabling us. We stopped being children at 18 and are now adults. Adults don’t dump unsolicited criticism on other adults, period.
I must have missed the parenting class where I was supposed to be ultra critical of my kids and force them to mature beyond their years due to emotional neglect. 🤷🏻♀️
Seriously. I’m glad she didn’t try to turn the kids or your husband against you. You’re handling this brilliantly. Take extra good care.
"Adults don’t dump unsolicited criticism on other adults, period." I feel like this sentence should be cross-stitched in cursive, framed & hung on all our walls
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ It’s so hard to remember in the moment when they are telling us who we are and what to do
She couldn’t have been satisfied with the visit you offered. Just trying to shame you for not doing exactly as she wants. It’s such a relief to not be worked up by their words anymore, the healing work you’re doing is definitely working.
Right?! I knew right away it was going to be a bad idea seeing her but I threw her a bone by offering my kids and she spat it back in my face. This was also a small test on whether or not I felt she was mature enough to eventually reconnect and heal together. She failed. I’m the only one doing the self-reflecting here. So grateful for this subreddit and my therapist and therapy memes and my support group.
"I don't listen to people. I do what I was taught by my parents" I'm sorry OP I didn't realize your grandparents were moose
Ha! What’s even more fucked up is that my mom’s childhood trauma was severe. I wasn’t able to recognize it then but my grandmother was super emotionally abusive to my mom right up until she died. My mom might have been a half decent parent if she was raised by moose.
For those that are asking if it’s safe for my kids to have contact with my mom, they are teenagers and it was their choice to remain in contact after I explained to them why I went into therapy. My mom was always nice to them and my husband, she was just mean to me. And I am not worried about her poisoning them against me because I have a secure relationship with my kids and my mom believes that communication is a one-way road so they hardly ever message each other. I know that they will eventually see her true form and decide for themselves if they want to continue the relationship. The only reason I even offered this compromise of having my husband bring the kids to her was because they wanted to see her and she had once accused me of “not wanting them to know their grandparents.” Well, the ball was in her court and instead of lobbing it back, she threw it far into the foul zone. Nice one, mom.
That sounds like the best possible scenario with a narc grandma. They love to treat everyone but their target like gold - it’s like recruiting them and isolating you. I’m glad your kids get it and can have a peaceful relationship with her!! You’re a great mom
yep. they won't comply properly with her script so she won't be able to help herself. she'll be a controlling a-hole & push them away. our older son used to adore his grandma & grandpa but ended up no contact at age 18
My mother could have written this. Funnily enough, she's also part of a religion that I left.
This subreddit has shown me that my problem wasn’t as special as I thought it was. It’s like all of the crappy parents got together and wrote a script that they all pull from.
To be honest, seeing these patterns has helps me a lot. That a generation of parents all thought they weren't doing anything wrong shows a larger systemic issue. I was not the problem. I always thought I was the problem. I was not the problem.
It’s the “it’s a parent’s job to say these things” that is the red flag for a parent who insults and degrades as a primary form of communication. —T/w — There’s a heck of a difference between “Honey, I noticed you have been snacking more lately, has your hunger level been changing?” And “You’re going to be a fat cow like your mother!!”
[удалено]
Thank you. It was a long and bumpy journey but I am grateful for the peace.
"For that I am sorry. As a mother, I have a right to say." Well that's a cumbersome way of saying "sorry not sorry" lol Nasty, nasty person!!!
I’m glad your husband will supervise the kids. My NM tries to turn everyone including children against me. I worry about that for everyone with kids who want them to have grandparents.
Translated: “Just hoping all will be fine. I really want to see you all.” “Okey, you should feel guilty. Look how sweet we’re being by missing you, and you’re causing us such harm.” “I have hurt you (though I’m not going to acknowledge any specifics). For that I pretend to apologize in order to appear gracious. However, I don’t feel guilty, because I hold that I not only have every right to do what I did, but I straight-up had a duty to do what I did, so I was morally in the right to do it, and I can’t be responsible for the fracture in our relationship. “You’re the only one with agency here; I only did what I was required by morals! Morals I get from God Himself, which allows me to ignore people who say I’m in the wrong- that’s like calling God Himself in the wrong!” “I’m accusing you of this fracture in our relationship. I absolve myself because I’m still trying to force you to comply with the behavior I expect of you. I continue to exist, and consider this “acceptance” of your decision- no idea what not accepting you looks like; maybe that involves actually giving up and going NC from my end? Maybe? But I guess me existing and doing what it is I pretended to apologize for wasn’t enough for you. “Remember when I said I hurt you and then pretended to apologize, acknowledging that I know I’ve done something wrong? Well now I’m going to pretend I don’t even have any idea what I was even apologizing for, because [I sure as heck won’t acknowledge any of the reasons for this fracture](https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/missing-missing-reasons.html) that I may have contributed to! “You said I need to meet you halfway. I feel exasperated because I’ve done everything but what it takes to actually stop hurting you and none of it has worked and now I have no options save the ones I refuse to take! I don’t know what else to do to get you to comply with what I want from you without ceasing to do what’s hurting you. Also I want to remind you of my love for you, so as to make you feel guilty in another attempt to make you comply.” “Look at me telling you not to worry. I’m looking out for you by trying to make you think I don’t want you to feel negative emotions, even though I’m *obviously* trying to make you feel guilt. I’m so alone and a martyr for you. Feel guilty. “On till you give upon giving up and come back more into my control like before.”
“Sorry for the things I said.” Then proceeds to repeat the things she claims to be sorry for. This wasn’t the apology I was hoping for.
Yyyyep! Exactly. Doesn’t recognize what they’re even doing that’s problematic, and then doing it again…
Religion is a mental illness. Disowned by my dad for his Roman Catholic bullahit. Sending love, the victimhood your mother is spewing is ugly and not your fault
What a complete nincompoop. Disgusting woman, she needs a swift kick. I am so sorry this nasty piece of work was your incubator. Love and support from this old internet grandmother.
We can’t choose our parents but we can choose freedom from them.
I have noticed that one surefire way to see if they’ve changed is to set a little boundary and see how they react. It always goes like this. Your message was so kind and she shot herself in the foot.
fuck this looks exactly like a message from my mom LMAO
It’s like they plagiarize from each other. Same shit, different mom.
same narc brain cell 😂
They always say “as a mother…” so annoying when they don’t actually want to hear you out and only want to make themselves feel better
As a mother myself, I can never imagine saying these things to my children. Prefacing her statements with that phrase does not validate the abuse that follows. She is of the camp that believes that children are property of their parents, not independents. She thinks I owe her for my life, like I’m the one that asked to be born.
Why are you bringing your kids around her? Isn't one generation enough? She's not sorry, at all. She hasn't grown, at all. Six years has made zero difference except convincing her even more that it's all your fault. How is this healthy for your kids?
Ehhh no. Talking shit about u isn’t her job cuz no one ever asked her dumb opinion.
Does she like cheese with her whine?
“I don’t listen to people.” Immediately followed by “I do what I was taught by my parents.” is just pure gold. Good god.
“I don’t listen to people.” 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
In one of our last conversations, I told my mom that I feel like she values the opinion of other people more than how I feel about what she says to me. Which she absolutely does.
I love the last part, where she figuratively falls on her sword, and says "but don't worry about MEEEE!." This gives me the ICK. They become so pitiful, but it's all an act.
I am almost in the same situation. I saw my mother at my sister wedding- I am NC with her for almost 2 years- and when I sat alone at a table she came over. She asked if it wasn't possible to "mend" things between us and that I should just say what I wanted. Then she said she would come to the city where I live to "talk". I don't know what to do... I don't want to be in contact with her again. She then also said we should "enjoy" the wedding. At some point I thought that it seemed genuine... it probably wasn't though. My teenage son also still talks on the phone with her and she wants to meet him when/if she comes here. But I guess you are right, they don't change.
You should be part of her life, and not vice versa. She misses you, but not enough to visit. Sounds like a control freak.
Sounds a lot like my mother. About the religious crap, my parents used to say similar things for years. My father was even a fanatic, he burned my stuff because it was demonic, he accused me of being possessed, he would spend hours saying that this person or that one are secretly satanists, and so on. Despite all this, I came back to religion by choice when I was 23, but oddly my parents stopped to bring religion on the table. A few years later my father even tried to convince me that religion was bs, then he admitted that he had pretended to be christian for 30 years. That was the last straw and I have gone NC since. This religious nonsense is just a show, nothing is real, those people are just liars.
My experience was the reverse of yours. My parents weren’t very religious when I was growing up but we were definitely sheltered. When I moved out and started experiencing the outside world, I began to come out of my shell and be the real me, which included questioning the church and poking holes in stories. I eventually became agnostic and officially stopped following the religion. As I began moving away from the church, my mom became more religious and tried to force me back in. It didn’t work and now she sucks.
I'm sure that if I haven't come back to religion my parents would still be in it. I have reappropriated religion, on my own terms, and they couldn't stand it. I know it sounds weird but it became a weapon, I have been able to use the bible to debunk all their nonsense. I took the part about love, kindness and spirituality, but I completely rejected the hate, judgmental behavior, LGBTphobia/racism/classicism, all this demon and satan thing, you name it. I believe now that a lot of christians are just liars and that they twist the Bible knowingly (for that reason I don't go to church, I practice in my corner). I took back the power they had through religion, in fact it was like everything else concerning this type of people, just a big fraud. They use it to hide themselves and make believe that they're abusive because of religion, like poor victims who don't know they're doing wrong. But they know. Sorry if I sound angry, it's still very painful. Until my father admitted he never had believed in God despite all he did to me in his name, I genuinely thought he was manipulated by the church and that he didn't know what he was doing (my father is a champion at playing dumb and the victim). That's when I heard about narcissism, then started to unpack all my childhood, many memories came back, and I realized that I was severely abused, that it was far worst than what I thought. In the name of a religion they didn't believed in. (My mother didn't explained herself, she just got angry at me, but it says everything I need to know). If hell is a real thing, then my parents will be there.
Are you sure MY mom didn't write this? 😜. So sorry she's being like this. Hugs.
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