Trying to get you to gaslight yourself?

[Cat of the Canals]

PDmil has started doing this thing where she bring ups something inarguably bad from my husband's childhood and tries to get him to say something good about it.

The first time I clearly remember this happening was when her ex-husband died. This was her second husband and not H's bio dad. He was abusive and just an all around miserable person to be around from what everyone has said, including MIL. She was talking about her ex and the house they lived in and reminiscing in a sort of grim "that was a bad time" way. And then I think she realized that as the parent, she had some culpability in putting her children in that situation. So she suddenly switched gears, made her voice all cheery, and said to H and his brother, "What's your favorite memory from when we lived there?"

H said, totally deadpan, "The day we moved out."

She tried to repeat this almost exact scenario a few weeks ago when she asked him, "What's your favorite holiday memory from when we lived in the house on Whatever Street?" (I.e. ex-husband's house.) H said he didn't have one.

Another twist on the same behavior came up yesterday. Out of the blue, she said, "Well, you think our family had drama!" and then launched into a series of stories about the mother of her son-in-law (H's sister's fiance) and how "crazy" she is. She was typically gleeful to have such scandalous/awful news, which wasn't really surprising since gossiping is her favorite past time. But what was weird was that several of the stories lined up almost exactly with incidents from H's childhood. Bizarrely similar stories.

One of them involved son-in-law's mom falsely calling the police on him when he was a teenager and claiming he'd come at her with a kitchen knife when he'd actually been in his room doing homework. MIL did almost the same thing with H around the same age, only instead of the police, she falsely accused him in front of his current stepdad, saying H had grabbed a knife from the knife block in the kitchen and tried to cut her when the reality was that she had been attacking him. MIL didn't mention this incident at all, but she did suddenly inform him that she'd "finally replaced that old knife block. We've had that since 1994!" My theory is that she was testing him to see if he'd call her out. When he didn't, that's as good as if it had never happened in her book.

Has anyone else had something like this happen? This attempt to change the narrative of an event and make you a participant in it? Or to sort of walk right up to the edge of talking about some terrible thing they'd done, like they're testing the waters to see if you remember?

[moglow]

Mine has made numerous "Oh I know, I was a terrible mother who made all of you behave!" in a very mocking goading tone, followed by we had no idea what *she* was going through. It's always in a "i double dog dare you to take this one on" way. She's also told stories about other families that are eerily like things we went through, kind of like she knew on one level it had happened with us but didn't want to bring that up. And there's the discussion with my brother earlier this year where she later text me saying "apparently things happened between us years ago ..." as if a. I was an active participant in her abuse and b. there was any kind of appropriate response I could make. I've always found it interesting that she never tells cute funny stories about any of us, it's always something embarrassing or something we'd obv never want to talk about.

[NarcKiddo]

Mine will sometimes laugh about how stuff she did back in the day could not be done now because the social workers might interfere. But recently she mentioned a specific incident when she deliberately burned me. Only she said she had done it to my sister. I refused to comment at all except to nod in agreement that the social workers would disapprove. I felt that to correct her would show I remember and that it matters. It does matter but I don't want to share that with her.

[Jsinjin]

I've seen this before.  Usually a parent using a passive aggressive statement to both refer to a hurt someone feels but in a mocking way and at the same time twist the statement to make them seem like the misunderstood party.

Example:
"I know that I completely screwed up your childhood and there was that time we disagreed on what you did wrong..."

The first part is to make it kind like the PD has been falsely accused of something in grand general terms and the second refers to a very specific event where the argument was contextual and could be made for one party or the other.  By linking the two in a sentence it ties logic together to challenge the event or the wrong. 

"Of course 'Bob' always accuses me of being a bad mother, like the time he ran away without telling me where he was over a simple disagreement about XYZ.  Remember that, Bob?"

The two narratives don't actually link and the first makes Bob look bad as though he always says bad things about her and the second defines a specific example about some event they shared but contextually isn't defined by a simple sentence.

[Call Me Cordelia]

Oh yeah. Usually accompanied by the lines, "Well, sorry, we left the manual at the hospital." And, "We'll pay for the therapy." Hardeeharhar. The incident in question is minimized and the context stripped such as to make it appear as I'm just soooo sensitive and absurd. But of course they're the ones bringing it up. They abused me, brought it up to make it a joke and gaslight me years later, and me the butt of it. No more.

Wish I could bill them for the therapy, though.

Mom would be the one to twist details of the history more explicitly, make it out like she went to bat for me in such-and-such situation but she was ultimately powerless but you're tough, right Cordelia? No, you did nothing to defend me there, mom. "But you're fine, right? WHY ARE YOU BRINGING THIS UP?" When I never did.

[Cat of the Canals]

Mine has made numerous "Oh I know, I was a terrible mother who made all of you behave!" in a very mocking goading tone, followed by we had no idea what *she* was going through.

Yep, MIL does this one, too. "Oh, I guess I'm just a TERRIBLE MOTHER!" in a sarcastic tone. The one she tried on me once was, "I'm sorry I'm such a burden!" I just stared at her. Not touching that with a ten foot pole.

Mine will sometimes laugh about how stuff she did back in the day could not be done now because the social workers might interfere. But recently she mentioned a specific incident when she deliberately burned me. Only she said she had done it to my sister. I refused to comment at all except to nod in agreement that the social workers would disapprove. I felt that to correct her would show I remember and that it matters. It does matter but I don't want to share that with her.

This was my husband's reaction exactly. She will surely take his silence and not calling her out as some version of acceptance/forgiveness/not remembering, but the reality is that there's no way he's discussing this with her. He fell for that once, and it turned into a total waif fest (see above response to Mo).

Also, laughing about it like it's a funny little anecdote? Check.

"Of course 'Bob' always accuses me of being a bad mother, like the time he ran away without telling me where he was over a simple disagreement about XYZ.  Remember that, Bob?"

The two narratives don't actually link and the first makes Bob look bad as though he always says bad things about her and the second defines a specific example about some event they shared but contextually isn't defined by a simple sentence.

Your examples are spot on. So much so that my husband actually DID run away, and this is exactly how she'd "explain" it.

"But you're fine, right? WHY ARE YOU BRINGING THIS UP?" When I never did.

The one time he did bring it up himself, her response was a haughty, "I've forgiven myself for that." Oh, have you now?

My own mother is so into her own "perfection" that she would never admit or even skirt around any wrongdoing, I don't think.

Actually... that's not true. There's a story she likes to tell about how I went through a biting phase when I was two. Apparently one time I walked up behind her and bit her on the back of the thigh, and she reflexively smacked me without thinking. When she tells this story, she laughs and says, "I felt awful, but you never bit me again!" She claims to feel bad about it, but the power she wielded over a toddler clearly amuses her. Outside of this incident (that I don't even remember), she was never physically abusive, but she kind of didn't have to be. I was terrified of crossing her, even into adulthood.

This also reminds me that one of the things MIL said after relaying all of these horrible acts by her son-in-law's mother was, "You just have to laugh!" We do? Why? What exactly is funny about it?

[Catothecat]

My narc mom routinely did something opposite, Cat.  She would bring up something from my childhood (often for no reason) and then rewrite the event to make her look like a good mom when in reality the opposite happened.  It was as if she had no awareness that I was also there at the time, experiencing the event.  That I had no memory of it and she had to provide me with the details. 

I often wonder if she did this for one of two reasons:  one, to make herself feel better by trying to get me to sign off on this rewritten history.  Or two, because she actually believed what she was saying and had somehow convinced herself of an alternative truth.  But regardless, the result was always the same. She wouldn't accept my correcting her, or my saying that's not what happened and I should know, I was there.  She would just keep quiet and then, at some other time, repeat the exact same event in the exact same way.  No matter how often I would tell her no, it didn't happen like that or that's not true, she just wouldn't hear it.

Very frustrating especially since she was the one who would always bring up these past events! 

[moglow]

This also reminds me that one of the things MIL said after relaying all of these horrible acts by her son-in-law's mother was, "You just have to laugh!"

No. Ya don't. Know why? Because it's not funny. 

I guess I'm blessed that mine generally prefers to pretend nothing untoward ever happened at her hands. Acknowledging it never ended well - full waif mode activated and she's in complete denial on all fronts. And to think she often accused me of having a convenient memory ...

[walking on broken glass]

The two narratives don't actually link and the first makes Bob look bad as though he always says bad things about her and the second defines a specific example about some event they shared but contextually isn't defined by a simple sentence.

This is so spot on!

[Cat of the Canals]

Very frustrating especially since she was the one who would always bring up these past events! 

I've been wondering WHY. Why they are the ones to bring it up, sometimes repeatedly? I think they feel guilty about it deep down, and they are desperate to get rid of the guilt, but they don't know how. So they make up stories or outright lies, downplay, try to get you to tell them "It wasn't so bad!" Anything but actually dealing with it in a healthy way, which would probably require taking responsibility for their actions. And so it always comes back. Because -- shocker -- putting makeup on your problems or trying to sweep them under the rug doesn't actually DO anything to solve them.

[treesgrowslowly]

My 2 cents.

On this topic, one of the things I've been thinking about is what happens to someone's mind, if they have gone through life without any sort of therapy. As they age, how do they make sense of their own life, when they have not learned the tools that would enable that process?

Part of what happens in therapy or any sort of counselling session is that you get time to talk about your past, and make sense of things that happened in your life. If everyone went through this at some point, then the PDs would get exposed - because they would not know how to go through that process. But since they mostly avoid therapy, we may not realize how little skill they actually have with understanding their past, and processing their regrets / guilt and so on.

Instead, they ask their adult children to reassure them that it wasn't that bad. Like a child who needs reassurance.

I've met a few people, over say age 50, and you can tell that they probably can't process guilt or regret. They have not gone to therapy, and so they try to make sense of their past, without an ability to do so. The older we get, it is natural to have guilt and regret, and the PD is stuck, not knowing what to do with any of it.

I agree with you Cat, it could be an attempt to deal with pangs of guilt that they might feel at times. Which they probably don't know how to do.

And so they might resort to what you describe, Cat. where they use their adult children or others (but probably mostly their adult kids) to try to make sense of their past in some way. But they are doing it in this really dysfunctional way.

If they brought these stories and memories / half-accurate memories of theirs to a professional, that therapist would expect some sense of accountability or accuracy, and so the PD avoids that! If they tried to feel better by comparing themselves to others (like gossiping about how much more messed up other families are), the therapist would call them on it. So the PD avoids that!

Instead, they put their adult kids through this faux-sense making process where they look like they are reflecting on the past, but from such an immature place, that it is totally warped. It's not the 'real thing' that it would be, if they had gone to therapy to do this work.

When a PD parent is asking their adult children to help make sense of their past (notice it is always the parent's past they want to focus on), it is another form of parental emotional abuse / manipulation in my view. The parent rarely even recalls the event accurately (because they have to see themselves as the victim), which skews the facts of what was really going on. The adult child is asked to go along with the parent's version of past events. Which is emotionally manipulative. 

I would just distract and change the topic if I had to deal with this from a PD parent. If they really wanted to make sense of their life, they can go to a professional for that, and not use their adult children in this way. This was one of the things that made me realize that NC was my only option. I was constantly being expected to do this faux-reflection for my PD parent. It was nonsense.

Overall, I don't think PDs age very well, psychologically speaking. I think that the tools for aging well, are out of reach for them, because of stuff like this. They can't review their life in a healthy way. I think that over time they are more and more out of sync with the people around them. It is sad.

Good point about the sweeping things under the rug over and over. As we age, if we keep sweeping everything under the rug, then eventually the rug is too small to fit all the things we've swept under there! It must be hard to age when your main coping mechanism is to sweep everything under a rug. Do they make rugs big enough for all their rug sweeping??

Trees

[Cat of the Canals]

Instead, they ask their adult children to reassure them that it wasn't that bad. Like a child who needs reassurance.

You're right. Both PDmom and PDmil seem to want constant reassurance from us on a normal day. But when unpleasant memories and feelings get stirred up, they are even more demanding.