I did the same, but I still went through a cycle of feeling bloody terrible after any contact we did have, wracked with guilt and feeling frustrated and angry at the same time. Not fun.
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My dad is similar, I tried everything including : the grey rock method, only spending short periods with him, changing the subject etc. It ended up with me just exploding one day when he made a relatively small comment (for him). Ive been non contact since then.
Same. I think you get to the point when you realise no contact is the only option to protect your own mental health. Certainly was the way for me but after about ten bloody years of grey rocking!
I need some advice. My aforementioned mother has cancer (recent diagnosis). She has been given up to 6 months to live. She still has the same character and sharp comments. I was only seeing her every 2 weeks, not it’s hospital appointments etc.
How can I cope with contact with her? I need recovery time after every visit. Someone on here advised not giving myself regrets for after she dies, but every time I see her it costs me emotionally. I love her because she is my mother, but I don’t like her as a person. Help
How can I cope with contact with her? I need recovery time after every visit. Someone on here advised not giving myself regrets for after she dies, but every time I see her it costs me emotionally. I love her because she is my mother, but I don’t like her as a person. Help
I can't offer much by the way of advice other than to say I've been there. My mother died of cancer 4 weeks ago. I'd not seen her for 5 years. My brother 15. I did go and see her just before she died. It was probably my worst moment. My anxiety was off the scale.I can say that shewas exactly the same in death as in life. You have to do what you feel is right not what other people judge as being right. Noone can judge you,they haven't lived through what you have. They don't know.I need some advice. My aforementioned mother has cancer (recent diagnosis). She has been given up to 6 months to live. She still has the same character and sharp comments. I was only seeing her every 2 weeks, not it’s hospital appointments etc.
How can I cope with contact with her? I need recovery time after every visit. Someone on here advised not giving myself regrets for after she dies, but every time I see her it costs me emotionally. I love her because she is my mother, but I don’t like her as a person. Help
Much love x
Thank you. I’m sorry you had that experience.
part of recovering from narcissistic abuse is learning to sit with uncomfortable feelings of guilt, and identifying when they are inappropriate
for anyone generally dreading seeing a narc parent… do you really deserve to feel guilt or shame? Who deserves to have their feelings prioritised, the victim of abuse or the perpetrators?
we spend our childhoods+ being told to put them before us at every turn so it feels uncomfortable and unnatural and ridden with shame.
sitting with uncomfortable feelings, and letting them pass/letting them go, is healing
Thank you that's helpful. I've just got to execute it now.
My dad's nice to everyone else around him but a complete hole to family. Quick to blow up with anger over any little thing, you never know what's going to set him off next. Belittling and controlling. Most of my childhood memories are of my parents having massive overblown arguments over nothing. My mum is extremely needy and dependent on everyone around for everything, can't spend a minute on her own with guilt tripping everyone about it giving it the woe is me act. I never learnt any life skills growing up such as cooking, cleaning, laundry etc, I think my parents especially mum were happy for me to carry on being dependent on them forever. I struggle massively as an adult with self esteem (basically I have none), feelings of guilt and anxiety.
@SpindleWhorl Damn, we have very similar parents/upbringing. You have all my sympathy, it sucks 
The 'not teaching life skills' is horrible: I'm still learning 'how to adult' and do complete normal stuff for the first time in my mid-20s
The 'not teaching life skills' is horrible: I'm still learning 'how to adult' and do complete normal stuff for the first time in my mid-20s
Took me til mid-20s to stop cowering whenever anyone raised their hand in my vicinity, as a result of a my dads violence toward me when i was a kid. That's not normal.@SpindleWhorl Damn, we have very similar parents/upbringing. You have all my sympathy, it sucks
The 'not teaching life skills' is horrible: I'm still learning 'how to adult' and do complete normal stuff for the first time in my mid-20s
I saw an Instagram vid posted where basically someone broke a glass and then realised that they were healing because their first concern was making sure their hand was OK.
A lot of people in the comments didn’t get it… didn’t get that an accident or breakage or spillage of any kind meant absolute *hell* and so you’d be too terrified and jump into “appease mode” instead of checking you were actually, physically ok.
I don’t think it’s uncommon at all and it makes me feel a lot less lonely to see this type of stuff on social media and discussed in forums like this.
When did you guys start realising this wasn’t normal?
I think for me it was when I was at my grandparents house and I accidentally broke a toy and the filling went absolutely everyone. It literally was like it just exploded in my hand.
I remember just freezing and waiting for the hellfire to rain down on me, but instead my grandparents got the hoover out and laughed it off. They even joked about my expression, and how scared I looked. It didn’t clock for them why they was. To this day, I still remember that feeling of pure relief and joy, that I wasn’t being shouted at.
I think it was my first “aha” moment… like… “yeah? This isn’t that big a deal? It took 10 minutes to Hoover up? Why does my dad always start WW3 for trivial stuff like this?”
My lovely nan didn’t even make me hoover it, bless her. She did it for me and made me a cup of tea. My dad would’ve blown up, told me it was all my fault, made me hoover the entire house and then go straight to bed, with me probably crying and feeling horrendous about myself.
I think the fact I stayed with my grandparents for prolonged periods of time saved me, because it made me slowly realise that the way my parents were, wasn’t normal. It gave me that insight into what an empathetic, kind, patient and caring relationship with a caregiver could look like.
It's difficult because it's the only childhood you know. You don't really know what's normal or not because you don't live any other peoples childhoods. You read stories in the paper about kids being murdered or starved so you think you shouldn't complain about your own childhood. All i know is cowering when someone in your vicinity raises their hand to point at something isn't normal, especially when they give you a really weird look for doing so. I remember making mistakes at work in my early 20s and the manager looking at me with concern and reassuring me that it doesn't matter
I am so glad I found this page. I joined a while ago but have never posted before because whenever I try and write out my story I stop because it sounds so crazy or makes me sound so weak. I am still trapped in my situation where I am still living under my mum's roof and I feel so trapped as I don't have much money to move out still.
She does such a good job that no one else knows what she is like to me apart from her brother. I get gaslighted by her all the time and i just don't know what to do.
Also I am sorry there are so many of us on here going through this
She does such a good job that no one else knows what she is like to me apart from her brother. I get gaslighted by her all the time and i just don't know what to do.
Also I am sorry there are so many of us on here going through this
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We need to unlearn and unpick everything they’ve taught us - all that subconscious stuff we picked up on and never even realised.
There have been so many “aha” moments that lead me to a level of understanding I’m at now.
I think the relationship we have with our bosses can be very telling. My narc dad had a huge problem with authority that really showed itself up in how he related to his bosses.
For me, I was *terrified* of authority figures. Especially male ones. Which was probably very telling… yet it’s shocking how none of the adults in my life, teachers, grandparents, family friends… no one seemed to pick up on it. I’d flinch if they moved too quickly. If they asked me a question, I usually misunderstood and assumed I was being told off.
Anyway, a big realisation for me was when I got a phone call from my boss and I tit myself because I was out on my lunch break (pretty sure I’ve posted it before!). I was doing literally nothing wrong… but I was terrified of this nice mellow man. I was shaking as I called him back and he was just checking up to see how I was.
It was like it was so deeply conditioned in me that I was somehow, inexplicably always doing something wrong. I guess whenever you’ve got a father who can kick off over anything and everything you slowly start to believe that just existing is wrong. I never purposefully did anything bad, but somehow he always managed to find something and so I was also second guessing myself.
I still struggle with this now, even though I’m more conscious of it. I can be sitting at my desk and working but if I take a break to go grab a coffee or have a quick run I’ll feel like I’m a fraud at work, I’m being lazy. Im somehow doing something bad. It led me to accept some really crappy behaviour in my career in previous roles because I just couldn’t refuse tasks, because I was scared of my bosses. Scared of their disproval or of being seen as “bad”. It was like little me was still desperately trying to disprove my dad.
My partner isn’t like my father at all, but he is a clean freak. I find that when he is out for the day and comes back, a small part of me is nervous that I’ve… done something wrong? Been messy somehow? Haven’t cleaned properly? And it stems from my dad. You’d never know what mood he’d been in. If he had a bad day at work, he’d come home and complain about a mug you’d just finnished drinking from and how dare you be so lazy and messy as to leave a mug out? And he’d rant and yell and as punishment you’d have to wash the mugs he’d left out overnight himself…
Thag culture of blame and fear is *so* hard to unlearn. We really have to be extra kind to ourselves.
Yeh. Like if you aren’t on the brink of starvation then you’ve no right to complain. It’s a fucked up mindset, and why it’s so important to just remove ourselves from their influence. A break can literally be lifesaving. It’s like breathing in toxic fumes and then you leave the room, go outside and slowly breathing becomes easier.
We need to unlearn and unpick everything they’ve taught us - all that subconscious stuff we picked up on and never even realised.
There have been so many “aha” moments that lead me to a level of understanding I’m at now.
I think the relationship we have with our bosses can be very telling. My narc dad had a huge problem with authority that really showed itself up in how he related to his bosses.
For me, I was *terrified* of authority figures. Especially male ones. Which was probably very telling… yet it’s shocking how none of the adults in my life, teachers, grandparents, family friends… no one seemed to pick up on it. I’d flinch if they moved too quickly. If they asked me a question, I usually misunderstood and assumed I was being told off.
Anyway, a big realisation for me was when I got a phone call from my boss and I tit myself because I was out on my lunch break (pretty sure I’ve posted it before!). I was doing literally nothing wrong… but I was terrified of this nice mellow man. I was shaking as I called him back and he was just checking up to see how I was.
It was like it was so deeply conditioned in me that I was somehow, inexplicably always doing something wrong. I guess whenever you’ve got a father who can kick off over anything and everything you slowly start to believe that just existing is wrong. I never purposefully did anything bad, but somehow he always managed to find something and so I was also second guessing myself.
I still struggle with this now, even though I’m more conscious of it. I can be sitting at my desk and working but if I take a break to go grab a coffee or have a quick run I’ll feel like I’m a fraud at work, I’m being lazy. Im somehow doing something bad. It led me to accept some really crappy behaviour in my career in previous roles because I just couldn’t refuse tasks, because I was scared of my bosses. Scared of their disproval or of being seen as “bad”. It was like little me was still desperately trying to disprove my dad.
My partner isn’t like my father at all, but he is a clean freak. I find that when he is out for the day and comes back, a small part of me is nervous that I’ve… done something wrong? Been messy somehow? Haven’t cleaned properly? And it stems from my dad. You’d never know what mood he’d been in. If he had a bad day at work, he’d come home and complain about a mug you’d just finnished drinking from and how dare you be so lazy and messy as to leave a mug out? And he’d rant and yell and as punishment you’d have to wash the mugs he’d left out overnight himself…
Thag culture of blame and fear is *so* hard to unlearn. We really have to be extra kind to ourselves.
I am in my 40s and in my mother's presence I go back to child/teenage years, she brings everything she see as my 'unacceptable behaviour' back up in an angry/ blaming manner but if there is anyone else present this doesn't happen and everything is Sweet as Pie.
The main issue is at 20 I told my parents I was moving out with my now husband but come to realize it was my wanting independence and her lack of being able control me, but for years I thought it was because she was over protective.
The main issue is at 20 I told my parents I was moving out with my now husband but come to realize it was my wanting independence and her lack of being able control me, but for years I thought it was because she was over protective.
I was scared to introduce my fiancé to my parents for this exact reason. They can both be so charming in their own ways, he really struggled to comprehend it especially since his parents are nothing like that, and since I hadn’t really gone into a lot of the detail. I’m terrified of introducing my mum to my friends for the same reason.
I actually had a huge fight with my fiancé over it. He was basically like, well all parents make mistakes, you just have to forgive them and move on. I had to explain in detail about how my parents terrorised me. And it’s hard to even capture two decades of abuse and all the microaggressions it encompasses. The subtle digs over time, the angry fits that are a daily occurrence… the gaslighting and ignoring that anything was wrong. Or worse, being blamed and feeling silently furious at how unfair it is, but knowing there’s nothing you can do.
Yeh, there’s no easy way to explain all that to someone who hasn’t lived it. You just have to believe that they trust you. My partner still doesn’t fully comprehend (thankfully) but he’s more sensitive around the issue now.
2019, in grade school, I met some of my closest friends who really showed me that life wasn't supposed to be like that. Who knew you weren't supposed to be a ball of terrified anxiety 24/7... At first they kind of laughed it off, then they must have realised that my upbringing was very different from theirs and tried to gently made me realise that it wasn't normal or okay. They made me feel safe for the first time in my life (I've never felt safe with boyfriends or friends before them, how sad is that). I'll forever be grateful to them.
It took me more time to grasp that nother kind of life was possible. But in the last year, I really came to terms with what my parents are (well, mostly my dad, my mum is more of an 'enabler': she bends to whatever my dad says/wants) and that they will never change. This thread has been so helpful in the last few months too!
I pretty much relate to everything you said @cee-bee and @SpindleWhorl
Love and hugs to you all. It's comforting to have a place where others get it.
I cut off contact with narc mother a few years ago. It was her birthday this week and I still had the guilts. But I followed the advice here, thanks cee_bee, and sat with the uncomfortable feelings. She's not going to change now. The added pain for me is that she's my adoptive mother. My natural mother is nothing like her and loves me unconditionally. So many what ifs
I cut off contact with narc mother a few years ago. It was her birthday this week and I still had the guilts. But I followed the advice here, thanks cee_bee, and sat with the uncomfortable feelings. She's not going to change now. The added pain for me is that she's my adoptive mother. My natural mother is nothing like her and loves me unconditionally. So many what ifs