Forced to Be a "Family War Reenactor"

[j.banquo]

I just noticed something about the sudden total abandonment I just experienced.

They did the same thing exactly 20 years ago.

I'm not doing the same thing at all, or even really in a similar life situation, or psychological space. I'm not reacting remotely in the same way, either, but they are straight-up reenacting something, for sure.[/u]

It goes exactly like this:

• PDP sets me up for a crisis
• PDP starts goading and gaslighting me beyond normal limits of human endurance
• PDP + and other parent start violating boundaries, even sneaking into personal spaces and spying
• I experience more and more symptoms of emotional abuse
• Sibling legendary for always being there for me disappears when a real crisis emerges in my life.
• Triangulation between PDP and sibling; both start saying things to me that make no sense at all
• I find a solution to the crisis on my own
• Sibling is enlisted to "mediate" between the problem (me) and the parents, and even yells at me
• My solution is considered to be the worst choice I could've made
• I go NC because I get the message I should, or I have to for my wellbeing.
• I'm all alone with no or by now very diminished financial resources, scrambling to suddenly have enough money to survive

It starts with something having to do with my not being able to pay as much attention to them - like going to college, or starting to work again after not working. Ughhhhh.

If I finish the pattern, a few steps down the line is "PDP never stops letting me know that when I "disappeared," it was the "worst part of her life."

It's the same pattern, same people (actually there's an extra one now, lol), even the same timing and times of year.

[sandpiper]

I stepped out of a relationship with my oldest friend from school when I realised I'd chosen another toxic relationship. I was grieving because a friend who I'd shared a house with for seven years had died two weeks earlier & BFF from school threw a massive tantrum because when I saw her that morning and asked her how she was and she said 'Fine' I didn't notice that she was upset and I was apparently meant to mind-read and say 'No you're not, tell me about it, ' but I didn't because I was distracted by my grief over my other friend dying. Cue the tantrum of 'you aren't paying enough attention to me + the laundry list of wrongs' etc etc.
I dealt with it calmly and asked her about it but I'd seen her treat her younger brother abusively, and I'd seen her mother treat both her kids like that, and I knew that it was a pattern of abuse and she'd just decided to elevate me to the way she treated her family.
When I came to these boards there was a conversation about how PDs like to 'test' their friends to gradually build them up to accepting a level of abuse and I thought 'You know what? I don't think I want to keep this woman as a friend.'
I don't regret letting that one go. It's hard because she's incredibly charming & she was obviously able to contain herself for 10 years before she pulled that stunt on me.
You're absolutely right, they just re-enact the same drama and the same patterns. Unless someone is willing to work on their issues, that merry-go-round is just going to keep repeating itself for generations, unless someone is willing to step up and do the work that's needed to create change.

[j.banquo]

I stepped out of a relationship with my oldest friend from school when I realised I'd chosen another toxic relationship.

I'm so sorry to hear this. This just happened to me less than two months ago. One of my oldest and best from high school; we were often very close. I did drift out of their life on purpose about ten years ago, and there was a reason. We'd only been back in touch since late 2020.



I'd chosen them as someone to support me with a current really bad emotional abuse situation I'm going through, and in helping me to deal with its effects. I was in really rough shape, raw and terrified, and with very few options that could be exercised soon. When they got there, I'm almost sure they gaslit me about a book we'd been talking about (seeing the book and saying they'd never heard of it). It's plausible I remembered wrong.

But then we were talking with some others, and I was interrupted so suddenly and forcefully (not in a hostile way but still) with a statement questioning the entire validity of the concept they'd just brought up, I swear.

My body instantly recognized a predator, and I sat and paid attention to how I felt and thought for a minute about what to do.

My only option was to stand up, casually walk out of the room, and do something I haven't done since childhood, which was to lock myself in another room. I had to regress to being 10 at the oldest, because that's how far back the experience took me, and how awful it felt. The terror.

I had to ask other people to ask them to leave, which is 100% unlike me.


So yeah, I wonder if there's a pattern there too It somehow feels like there must be. It looked and felt like them reacting to something other than what was happening right then. Reminded of something, and just plain time traveled, and  went off...



For the next week (and sometimes still), I had a flood of realizations:[/i]

1. They never asked for help, but considered it when offered, and accepted it strategically, without offering me any.
2. They'd said stuff like "I'm having a hard time understanding you"
3. The only solution they could think of to my having trouble with part of my support network was to literally move to their town, lol
4. When I'd had a crisis way back when, I got pretty isolated. They told me they'd felt abandoned, which is okay, but they didn't have any empathy for why it had happened. So - half healthy, ha.
5. They'd gaslight me by pretending they didn't know parts of what I'd say, so they could ask questions that sounded like they thought whatever I was saying was really stupid, or impossible, or a horrible idea in some other way.

[SailBoatOnBay]

It starts with something having to do with my not being able to pay as much attention to them - like going to college, or starting to work again after not working.

This is something that resonates with me so much.  The estrangement between my sibling and me began from a similar starting point. I was working hard and we subsequently fell out which started a nuclear reaction from her.  She fell out with other siblings from a similar point too. They were working hard too and she didn't like it. She read too much into reducaed communications from them and a nuclear reaction followed.

[Andeza]

I'm just going to pop in and validate something real quick. Yes, the cluster B PDs notice when we are distracted or busy with something and they can't handle it. I read books excessively (is that even possible?) one spring break when I was about 14. I was chewing through an incredible series that had me completely gripped. My uBPDm waltzes up to my bedroom door and starts bugging me to come fudge in front of the TV because she's "lonely." I said no in a roundabout way, because straight saying "no" was unacceptable, and she pouted and gave me the silent treatment for days. Saying "no" would have triggered an hours long rant with the expectation that I set my book aside when she was done and do as she wanted.

They cannot stand being second fiddle to anything or anyone. It triggers, often, the worst behavior.

[j.banquo]

I read books excessively (is that even possible?) one spring break

I read "excessively" as "incessantly," so - yes, it's possible to read incessantly, even for an entire Spring Break. I have spent months straight in bed reading, 3 to 5 times. I did it for 90% or so of my waking hours. I'd do it when I'd wake up in the middle of the night from insomnia. It's just one of the ways things can get really bad for me. It's the best way to force my attention onto something, and I can't have horrible thoughts unless my mind wanders.

So, no, definitely not possible to read excessively. I would've found out.

[daughter]

Last year a longtime friend dumped me in a dreadful manner, because I didn't come "riding to rescue" after her minor accident causing a facial injury requiring several stitches.  Yup, sum total of her "difficult life circumstance".

Mind you, Her retired DH is THERE with no other commitments. I called every day.  But no, not enough. Me, I was apparently "neglectful and unsupportive" because I wasn't there there.   Both verbally blasted, then shunned via her NC silence, I thought, ok, let's just end this friendship. I'm neither her mother, nor her spouse, expect a modicum of respect and regard from my friends. 

I've found myself in this situation several times in my life.  So, being the shunned formerly FOG'ed SG dutiful daughter of two malevolent NPD-enmeshed parents, I get triggered when people act badly towards me, and will find myself flipping from "super-helpful" to "no way no more" if provoked. I do think I'm vulnerable to forming these sort of lopsided friendships where I'm expected to do the "heavy-lifting". And I usually do, until something snaps me awake.  I don't regret ending those friendships, and realize it's the healthier thing to do.