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Was This Reasonable? Need A Detached Viewpoint.

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@Sandstone now I think you are really not being fair. Its seems your wounds are cut so deep you are not listening to what actually people says?
I for once have never said It was reasonable of your mom to do and say what she did and nor will I ever say that.
Further I never said you should talk with her and say its your fault. I emphatically said that I very much understand you being upset with her. And If you dont want to talk with her I could perfectly understand.

I see all this people her wanting to give you love and support each in their own way. It looks like you reject us all and it makes me really sad on your behalf. It seems this thread becomes a continuation of defense and it wont help no matter what I say or any one else says. Its like you are looking for someone to say the wrong thing - the thing that triggers you and then boom - you choose to shut down.
 
I'm not looking for the wrong thing, I'm seeing the things that agree with what I've been thinking for the last few weeks - that I should stop hiding and go back to talking to her. The thing that my other daughter said when she phoned on Sunday" You should go and say hello to Nan, it is Mothers Day".
My current behaviour is inconveniencing lots of people, if I did as I should then only I would be inconvenienced.

Perhaps my reaction yesterday evening was also to do with coming home after a scary and physically draining afternoon, but I still see those criticisms and instructions.
I have actually talked to my mother about things that were happening back then and she too seems mystified at how she seemed somehow so uninvolved and took no steps to try to talk to me about anything. But I really understood that it wasn't about not caring - my parents were pretty young too, and I think they got caught up in this brave new world (?)
I'm glad I talked to her and I don't feel resentment because I really understood that those days were confusing for all of us - parents included
Ive seen it from my moms point of wiew too. I know her story. I know she didnt know how to handle being worried.
sometimes, as an adult, its helped to have conversation about it. You may learn that maybe thats how she was raised, as an example, and so did the best she could with what she knew.

I was only thinking about trying to have a light chat with her about the weather or sewing or the garden, and arming myself against the criticisms that would come with any of those. I would never take the risk of inviting the criticism and attack that would come with any sort of personal conversation.

However I can also see the more compassionate responses too, and I 'm sorry I threw a tantrum.
 
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I'm going to rabbit on and on with this. I'll split it into sections for the sake of clarity
my parents were pretty young too, and I think they got caught up in this brave new world (?)
All my friends mothers were about as useless as mine. They had no birth control, had too many kids, drunk husbands, married young, never went to college, and my mother has no moral compass.
I don't think that excuse washes. She was 46 at the time, I was a late baby, and one of only two. She owned her own home, was highly intelligent and often reminded us of how that had been wasted ,drank four alcoholic drinks a year and had strict moral certainty. For instance we could only watch the BBC as she disapproved of commercial television, considering it improperly regulated. As a child she had a social life, but she chose to live as an adult in total isolation which was required to include us too.

Our fathers came home from WWII with PTSD and were monsters.
There may be something in this. I'm sure my father's experience as a bomber navigator was pretty grim in itself, and adding that to having to bomb cities where German relatives lived can't have been easy. I think both WW1 and WW2 caused huge problems for families like ours with mixed heritage and people fighting on both sides. I suspect all this accounted for my fathers rages and his father's detachment from everything and everyone.
But once again, the biggest personal afffect on me came from my mother. Her father, my Grandad, was blind, and went once a week to a club for the blind. Many of his friends there were men who had been blinded during the war, who carried horrific facial scaring. As soon as I was able to do it, my mother always sent me in collect him at the end of the session. I'm sure she didn't want to see it all, but neither did I. I can smell the place, and feel the fear, but of course it wasn't permissible for me to say anything about it
 
Look up narcissistic mothers and see if you recognize her in what you read.

My last T suggested this was the case, and when i read about it I could see what she meant. I experienced that reordering of the brain as all the pieces fell into place, and my experiences made sense.

But I'm finding that now that I question it again.
party because I'm still susceptible to my mother's certainty that she is right, so obviously I must be wrong.
Partly because of that throwaway comment someone made
Narcissism - that disorder everyone on myPTSD's mother suffers from
makes me think I'm just jumping on a bandwagon
Partly because of a deep Evangelical distrust of looking for an excuse for bad behaviour in psychology. best summed up in the song from my teens
I went to my psychiatrist to be psychoanalysed
To find out why I killed the cat and blackened my husband's eyes.
He laid me on a downy couch to see what he could find,
And here is what he dredged up from my subconscious mind:
When I was one, my mommie hid my dolly in a trunk,
And so it follows naturally that I am always drunk.
When I was two, I saw my father kiss the maid one day,
And that is why I suffer now from kleptomania.
At three, I had the feeling of ambivalence towards my brothers,
And so it follows naturally I poison all my lovers.
But I am happy; now I've learned the lesson this has taught;
That everything I do that's wrong is someone else's fault.
 
but I still see those criticisms and instructions.

At least mine was no where near a critisim or an instruction but rather a suggestion. What I had stated above the quote was that I didnt know if it would go over well or like a lead ballon (not go over well) as only you would know.

I, personally, have had MANY conversations with my dad as an adult (i do not speak to my mother) and i learned that my dad and i shouldnt speak about my past.

I didnt know if you had a relationship w/ her as an adult or not and how well you guys got along.

I was only thinking about trying to have a light chat with her about the weather or sewing or the garden, and arming myself against the criticisms that would come with any of those. I would never take the risk of inviting the criticism and attack that would come with any sort of personal conversation.

If she critisizes you, then i wouldnt speak to her about it, you certianly dont want to invite cristisims and must protect your mental health.
 
Was there some deeper significance to your mother seeming indifferent to the situation, maybe something else that it reminded of you, that stirred up feelings of being unloved?
There's a significant loss there it seems - loss of the childhood with affectionate mum that you were entitled to and never had..?
When you were a child, the message you got from mum was "I don't love you, I don't care about you, you're an inconvenience." And it wasn't just this one time, although this event no doubt symbolises how you felt throughout your childhood.

Yes, to all of these. It was absolutely all the time, about everything. I remember when I was about 19, my siblin and I told my father how it had been for us. He said he had thought it was just him and we had been protected from it. She considered each of us only as things to be controlled and blamed. There is her overt statement that children aren't people. There is that constant eggshells feeling of having to interpret everything she said, did or looked to understand what she Really meant so as to avert the wrath of Having Got It Wrong. About the same time as I ran away, my parents bought a holiday home, and from then on they went away every weekend, leaving me at home alone. I had the option to go with them, but if I wasn't willing to go, then they would. (But I suppose I can't complain,lots of peope would have loved the freedom)

I also think of @Klo s brilliant thread n which she says
you cannot sit there and tell a patient that their parents were never capable of change, self-control, introspection or anything else, but the patient is.
if someone tries to actually embrace this paradoxical nonsense, it's probably just going to cause cognitive dissonance problems.
"My father couldn't help the way he acted, because he had a bad childhood. But even though I had a bad childhood, I can control myself and improve as a person."

She had enough emotional strength to rule the household absolutely, though fear and manipulation. Yet she didn't have the strength to acknowledge anyone else's needs. When we went on holiday to a place with one double bed and two twin beds she was not prepared to share the double with my father, so she required me aged 12/13 to share it with an adult male who just happened to be my abuser. I was over 50 years old before I realised that there were other permutations. She could have put both men or both women in the double. I was so in her control that the idea NEVER occurred to me. It was how she required it to be,so it was how it was. And that is why I still fear her so much. What she says is how it is. I know that whatever I do or say will be wrong, so I am wrong. And there she is, living in our annexe while we pay for it because she wanted to be there, and didn't want to pay for it. (though to be fair, she did pay for the conversion work, but declined to be involved in the decisions, so she could complain about them being wrong)

I sound like a selfish spoiled brat ranting and whining on and on
 
My middle daughter left home at 14 and shacked up with a 19 year old guy for at least 6 months. I would be on the phone a LOT to the police (statutory rape yeah?), to the point that she phoned me at work one day asking me to tell the police to leave them alone. Ummm, no.

The advice from the police at the time was not to disrespect the guy to her, just ignore that part, but leave the door open. So I did. I'd talk to her, but avoid any opinion of him at all. During this time she kept going to school, graduated with high grades (senior maths award) and worked 2 part time jobs.

Out of the blue one night in the early morning hours I heard somebody knocking at the glass sliding door in my bedroom. I have a glass sliding door that opens onto the back verandah. It was her, asking me to let her in as the rest of the house was locked up. She climbed into bed with me that night, and didn't leave until she moved out of home proper, with a lease and a housemate.. She's 24 now and has her head screwed on. Works hard, pays her way, I love her to bits. She marches to the beat of her own drum, and it's funny, because I know that beat.

ETA @Sandstone - no it's not reasonable for her to have that attitude. She sounds like she was embarrassed at her perceived failure, and if you shut up about it, it would go away. My family and close friends were well aware of what happened with my daughter, but I didn't make it disappear. Nobody knew the right way to handle it - they often looked to me and I had no clue - I just did what I thought was best and that was counter-intuitive often times but it worked out ok.
 
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Intellectual part of my head made a note to include grief & mourning on my checklist of recovery tasks...but I think it might be sitting on the list for a while
When I picked out his quote I genuinely intended to, and had words to, reply to it. Now I've talked my self back into, "well it wasn't so bad, everyone else here had it worse and what right have I to have any feelings about it all"
That is what I have so consistently been told. We were fed and clothed, though there were requirements to praise her for everything. Again it is only in the last few years that I've realised she wasn't actually as good a cook as we were taught to believe and her food hygiene was shocking. When my children and I used to stay with her we usually came back with worms, and I recall having to explain to my sibling, similarly afflicted, what was the cause of the itching.

I have no sense of reality or scale. I can't tell if there was really any problem or not. So how can I ever work out if there is anything to mourn? My responses yesterday suggest that I am determined against all odds to paint her as black, and will fly off the handle if anyone says otherwise. But there have been so many years of being told that black is white, by others as well as her. At school I twice sought help. My lovely headmistress assured me there was no problem in my life, and reminded of people who had to care for handicapped parents. My friendly young RE teacher told me I had not been raped, was making it up and must not speak about it again.

I can't find the truth.

Either would be painful, one way lies that grief, the other lies acceptance that I am a selfish, manipulative, exaggerating liar. That is why oblivion so often looks so tempting
 
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"well it wasn't so bad, everyone else here had it worse and what right have I to have any feelings about it all"

This is NOT true and your pain has validation and mertit and I think you need to also give your pain validation. You've had everyone invaildate your pain, dont do that to yourself. You have a right to hurt over the obvious abuse that has occured into adulthood.

She sounds like a very sick woman by the way.

I can't find the truth.

Either would be painful, one way lies that grief, the other lies acceptance that I am a selfish, manipulative, exaggerating liar. That is why oblivion so often looks so temting

I would go with the first one if it were me.

But there has to be a way to work through that pain, thats were I was going with forgiveness in my first reply.

Do you have a therapist? They would be able to help in this situation. I, as well, am the "crazy liar" in my family and have always been told that and so i needed someone to believe me...my therapist gave me that which then paved the way to healing.
 
However I can also see the more compassionate responses too, and I 'm sorry I threw a tantrum.

Being triggering and possibly going on a tailspin isnt called a tantrum...its called being triggered possibly going on a tailspin.

And you did that better than i used to. I used to, in early days of being on the site, tailspin all over the site.

You have a right to be hurt, to be triggered, and tailspin. You have pain and thats what pain does, it hurts.

:hug:
 
Do you have a therapist? They would be able to help in this situation
I currently have no therapist nor any form of external support.
I have had 5 previous therapists.
1. A very good, extremely direct Psychologist who diagnosed CPTSD, possibly with a Dissociative condition too, started EMDR but couldn't continue as I was so unstable. He wanted me to have meds for stabilisation, and to be under the right service to get them I had to stop seeing him.
2. A dreadful NHS therapist/counsellor. I saw her for year and had no idea what was happening or why. I still have no inkling of what went on, beyond the fact I was afraid of her and we couldn't speak the same language. I think her main idea was that I found working in the NHS as stressful as she did, so was ill to escape it. Terminated after a suicide attempt when in the same session she suggested I was Autistic and wanted me to give her details about why the rape was like the coil fitting.
3. A brilliant private therapist, who I saw for another year. (the one who suggested my mother is narcissistic), comprehended that I live most of my life as a three year old and suspected I was much more dissociative than testing indicated. She doubted the safety of doing trauma work, but was persuaded. Another suicide attempt indicated she was right, and though she was willing to continue with non-trauma work I was fixed on the idea that I needed to address the trauma. If nothing else comes up, and IF, IF IF we can find the money I may well crawl back to her.
4 A very odd private Psychologist who said I couldn't have PTSD as I listed my traumas without breaking down, but started EMDR in the third session anyway, then terminated me after the fourth session
5. The rather good, though overly gentle, NHS Psychologist I've been seeing for the last year. She started out to do TF-CBT, decided it was too destabilising, diverted into Dissociative stuff and is now trying to get me referred to a specialist service. Our allotted sessions have run out, so I'm waiting for the NHS to make a decision.

So yes, I think as several people have suggested, that I need to discuss this in therapy, but I have nowhere but here to articulate it. The good therapists have supported my idea that my mother was a complicating factor for me, but maybe they were just maintaining our relationship?
 
You have a right to be hurt, to be triggered, and tailspin.

But I also have a duty to recognise when it happens and behave with respect and grace to you all. I wouldn't attack my husband or daughters when I'm distressed, I'd just shut up till I'd worked it out. I need to learn to treat forumites with the same consideration.More if anything, because you are probably more vulnerable than they are.
 
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