New here, can’t figure this out

[Jane Doe]

Hello;
Sorry if this is in the wrong place.  I joined today and do not know how to do an introduction post?  I joined but not sure where my name is on this post?  When going to my name it will not allow me to post?  I'd like to be proper and do an intro - can someone help me?  PS:  I'm older and not computer literate that much so please forgive me for not knowing this.
Jane Doe is who I signed up as.  Plez help!  Thank you.

[Jane Doe]

Well it appears I did figure this out!  Somewhat embarrassing lol.

Hello!  I have been reading this forum for a long time and many of you have helped me so much.  I am sure my 82yo mother has nBPD but the one time she did go to a therapist that I was stupid enough to go with her she made me look like a monster and it was horrible.  I have been dx with CPTSD just last year due to what all that 82yo woman has done to me and is still doing.

Thank you for listening, I have some questions but will try to put them in the proper place, I am new to this.

[moglow]

Hi, Jane Doe! You're doing fine - well, here at least. Welcome

So I guess you had to choose no contact with her, or are you trying to figure it all out? A lot of the parents haven't been officially diagnosed, and I for one can sure relate to the whole being made out to be a monster myself. Mine is a master manipulator - until you get to know her and she gets comfortable. Then the real one comes out.

Please feel free to share when you're ready.

[Jane Doe]

Hello and thank you ... and I hope I can get this posted.  I think I'd better go back to just reading. 
Typed out a long reply and it wouldn't let me post and I kept getting something about being a robot and signing in on each post.  My vision is not good either and the pictures each time are difficult for me to see. 

This first post was suppose to be on the introduction, so I apologize for it being in the wrong place.  I am trying to go No Contact and not having luck.  I am too beat down I think.

Best wishes and I'm sorry again for getting this messed up.  I will go back to reading and soaking up the good information on this form, thank you.  Jane

[moglow]

Be easy on yourself - going no contact isn't easy for anyone. It's a tough decision to make and hard to stick with. 

Our forum does ask for verification for the first several posts, to ward off the bots and spammers. You're doing fine.

[Jane Doe]

How hard is it mentally to get a restraining order on them?  I'm not sure I could handle the guilt.  She sent the police to our home because I won't call her back to the messages from her that go to my blocked file. Don't know if she knows if I see them or not but she says in the messages:  I know you have me blocked but.... Or, I know you cannot see or read the text and I know you will be mad at me but...!

I honestly feel horrible just having the amount of hate I have for her but I was raised to be kind so this is tearing me apart.


I cannot stop her calls my phone company is messed up I think.  Blocked calls have their own file and I hate that.

Won't the police think I'm stupid for putting a restraining order on a 82yo woman that can hardly walk?  Everyone else has kicked her out and most are done with her but she latches on to me even this far away.  My heart is not use to feeling like this but I just really want her to go away and never want to see/hear from that monster again.

My BD is not too far off, I'm already triggered by the mail/calls I will get.  Thought I'd get the restraining order before then but not sure, really torn on this.

Thoughts?

[moglow]

That's not an easy decision to make. What you might want to do is see what requirements are for a restraining order. In some places there has to be a real or implied physical threat before they're granted. Getting that information might help you decide what you need to do.

Have you told her, please leave me alone. I'm not "mad" and don't wish you ill, Im asking you to leave me be. Then maybe talk with your cell carrier about really blocking her, that you don't want text or calls from that/those numbers at all. Surely they have an option? (I could block mother's on my phone where I wasn't notified, but calls still went to voicemail-however my cell carrier had a parental control option where I could block all from numbers I chose.) or report those numbers as harassment and let the phone company deal with it.

[Jane Doe]

Thank you for the information about the phone carrier, that I definitely will look into.

I've been trying to go NC for years but she got me/us by saying she was living in her car, which we found out was a lie.  We brought her into our home, she disrupted everything (about a year ago) and made our life hell. She attempted to take over our home every way and tried unsuccessfully to pit my husband and I against each other.  We couldn't get her out fast enough.

It seems to me, that if I contacted her now and said I didn't want to have contact...well I don't know?  I thought the whole goal was to stay away and this would just trigger me big time.  May have mentioned I was dx with CPTSD from her by a T?  I honestly just want her to go away, is there anyway to do that properly?  The friends I have in my older age are few but good ones.  The one that has seen my mother in action just as my husband has understands but the others do not.  Their mother died and were lovely ladies so I don't think the daughters of those ladies will understand.

So I should make contact to state I don't want contact?  Is there any other way?
 

[moglow]

Ah. I didn't know if you'd said anything to her, but you really don't have to do anything. I'd make it clear to the police next time they come round, that you just want to be left alone and she won't stop. Maybe ask if they have suggestions to make that happen, or let them know they may absolutely tell her that's what you want, for her to leave you be.

[Jane Doe]

Thank you once again, you've been kind.

I did ask the police when he came by and told him a bit of what was going on.  He was the one that told me about the restraining order and I printed out the papers.  Here's the problem...I don't know if I can do this to her!  Yes she did it to us.  She is sickly (as I am but that doesn't seem to matter to her) and is finally settled in a new apartment.  I don't want to embarrass her and the other side to that is I'm not so sure if she won't like the attention even if it's negative.  My husband wants to tell her to never call, but I'm not sure if that is good either.  I don't want to get him anymore involved but he's had enough of her stuff and hates how she treats me.  I do to but guess I am use to it.  These people live forever to make us suffer it seems.  She wants to drain the life out of me it feels like and I am exhausted of this circus ride and want off.

[Rebel13]

Hi Jane, working on blocking measures in the external world is really important, like blocking calls and texts, and potentially a restraining order if that turns out to be a good option for you. But internal measures can help too! There are ways to help yourself cope and reduce the impact her attempts at contact have on you, even if you can't block them entirely. For example, dialectical behavior therapy offers structured tools for self soothing and emotion regulation. This has helped me a lot. I know other people have found help through various flavors of mindfulness or meditation, or activities like art or journaling.  The RAIN meditation is one that I like. These things help me in a world where ultimately I can't control circumstances or other people, I can only control my own behaviors and reactions.
RAIN Meditation
DBT self soothing
Good luck in finding your way through this difficult situation!

[Jane Doe]

Thank you Rebel for your post, I do appreciate it and looked at the links.  I have read about those ideas before!

I had a family member that was in AA and I attended Al-Anon, that is for families of Alcoholics.  It taught me something I think is like the RAIN method, and that is to:  "Accept the things I cannot change and to have the wisdom to know the difference."

I believe that the FOG has me stuck.  With her being so old and deformed it makes it more difficult.  It's only natural to want to care for and protect one's mother.  The crazy part is that my mother is trying to destroy me because I will not do as "trained".  I fell in love and got married and this totally messed up her plans for me to continue to eat the poop she shoveled my way and to care for her every need AND EMOTIONAL NEEDS which she calmly told me during a phone call...that I was responsible for caring for her emotions too!
 

I do not think she has a clue, no, I KNOW she doesn't have a clue as to how much I cannot stand her.  Hoping she is angry enough to never call me again but I know with her kind it's too much to ask for.

One more thing I have to ask, why exactly do I have to change to have to deal with her?  This is an important question to me because I see this a bunch where books and others will tell a person how to deal with people like that and my question is why do I need to?  Why can't I just be left in peace and why can't I be allowed to have this peace without changing to fit someone else?

[moglow]

Wanting to care for and protect others isn't a bad thing - expected to have responsibility for their lives and feelings IS. Are you not responsible for your own? Why then should you have to take on hers? I'm sorry but what about her responsibility as the parent. Where'd that fit into all this - She housed and fed and clothed you as a child, then you were to take over for her? I guess it sounds good to her but it's just not practical.

Jane Doe, it's kinda like a therapist asked me several years back: What if someone else, say a friend, treated you the way your mother does? What would you do? Without hesitation I answered, Well I wouldn't consider them a friend for starters, doubt I'd have anything to do with them at all! She sat there and looked at me while it sunk in what I'd said ... "So why does your mother get a pass?" I'm sure I babbled and stammered, couldn't really answer that one. Looking back, I know it's training. It's being told by way of excusing her treatment of us [when we dared speak up at all], "she's your mother" "you know she loves you and wants the best for you" etc etc ad nauseum. We grow to believe it, that it's easier to go along to get along. Until it's not.

Change isn't a bad thing. I look at it as us growing and finding our own way, even around the immovable objects like contrary people in general. You *don't* have to deal with anyone, if you choose. It's very much our choice, just as they choose their own behavior. Maybe learn to do [or find appropriate professionals to do] what's actually needed, instead of trying to full an endless list of wants and expectations.

[treesgrowslowly]

Hi Jane Doe,

I feel for you. I had fear after I went NC, and worried about my PD parent refusing to accept my NC as real.

Here's the thing about a restraining order - if she obeys it then you're not causing her any embarrassment or problems. ALL she has to do is stay away from you. It is not as if you are saying she has to do something.

What she has to do if served with a retraining order, is just NOT call you, not email you, not send you letters and not show up at your doorstep. If she can't do that, well that is her problem. That's a disordered person who refuses to stop calling someone after being told to stop.

If you get a restraining order and it has to be enforced, that is because SHE chose to do something she was told not to do.

If she simply leaves you alone, the order would never need to be enforced, she would go on with her life and so would you. The police are not going to get involved in her life ever again, unless she goes and does something she was told not to do. If she gets embarrassed because the police are having to tell her to leave you alone, that is because she didn't leave you alone. A retraining order sends one message: leave this person alone. She's simply being told to leave you alone. No more, no less is being asked of her.

What I suspect is that you are feeling the shame that comes from this situation. Having a dysfunctional parent is embarrassing. Especially when we have friends who don't have this situation. You mentioned having friends who don't know what it is like to have a mother like yours.

What I learned is that if I spend too much time with people who have no experience with this, I will envy them, what they have, that their mother was not disordered, and so on. I can easily feel a sense of shame when seeing someone my age, whose mother is not a raging narcissist. It's really more about grief - knowing I'll never have that, and I never had what that person has. A safe and loving mother. 

Its natural to want a loving, safe mother. It is tied to our survival system to want that. No matter what age we are, we don't outgrow the need for safety, and its very very hard for us to deal with the fact that the most unsafe person in our life, is our own mother.

I think you're feeling a lot, and that you want something 'normal' to happen so that you can make sense of the crazy situation you have lived by having her as your parent. You said you want to protect her cause she's older and frail, but I think that's actually our need for a safe place to grieve what we never got.

I think we might project this need for protection onto a frail parent, when we really need a safe place to explore what we never got, which was safety and protection. Parents are supposed to protect their kids from harm, not be the cause of it. Something inside of you knows how upside down it is to need protection from the one person that society says is your safe place to fall.

She's not your safe place, your safe person, and she was supposed to be. This can hit us hard as daughters of narc mothers.

You asked about why do we have to be the ones to change? That is an important question I agree. I'll talk about how this went for me, and you can see if this fits with what you've lived through.

Let's look at the changes I had to make after being raised by this woman. My mom groomed me, as a small child, to take responsibility for her emotions. As a child I was taught this is normal, that the daughter is hypervigilant to the needs of her mother. My mother reinforced this over and over. If she was angry it was up to me to help her, and if I needed her attention, I was bad and my needs made me weak.

I was trained to feel bad for having my own need for this and that. Any need I had, she taught me that this need was wrong. She trained me to believe that my boundaries were problems for her. If she called and I didn't answer the phone, this was me being a bad person. If she wanted to visit and I didn't want her to visit, she got mad. I was well into adulthood before any of this became a bit more obvious to me as emotional abuse.

So why do we need to be the ones to change? Because we were trained to think about our own needs as problems, and to put their needs ahead of ours. The changes you make, after a childhood like that, are all good ones when they go in the direction of giving you space to live your life without these constant interruptions - from a demanding parent who crossed your boundaries early in life, and kept doing it over and over.

What you are really doing when you change, is adopting the boundaries that she should have respected all along - had she not been disordered. And yes, we can be angry about having to learn this in adulthood. We are the ones working to recover, while the parent just goes on staying in her denial and causing problems for us while denying that she's causing one problem after another. It can be downright infuriating to realize how much work it takes to recover from such a parent.

Disordered people rarely change. the few who do, would need to work real hard to get out of their own way. Most never do. They spend their entire life, in the state that your mother is in. And as you said, she has no idea what effect she has on you. Dr. Ramani says that narcs don't change. Even the ones who do change, the change is not nearly enough to put them into a place where they are now safe for us to be in close relationships with. She says this in several interviews and videos.

I see the changes we make as replacing the dysfunctional with functional. I think another question is, why do we have to do all the grief work? Why can't they do it?

Well they can't do it because they are too disordered to do it.

I've come to believe that it is grief that moves people into a psychologically healthy place after trauma or loss. So thank goodness you are capable of change - your disordered relatives probably are not. You can do grief work. They probably cannot.

Trees

[Rebel13]

I watched a video by Dr Ramani just last night, talking about the aging narcissist. You might like this too, Jane!

The short answer to "Why do I have to change?" is, you don't. No one HAS to change.  (Our disordered family members are living proof of that.)

It's really easy to think that the source of all my problems is one person or one circumstance in my life. "If only I met my perfect partner, if only I had a better job, if only my mother would leave me alone -- my life would be perfect." Unfortunately, so many times the wished-for thing has come to pass, and come to find out -- I'm still me, with struggles and problems and bad habits, and there's always *just one more external thing* that needs to change for me to be truly happy. It's magical thinking.

So what I've come to realize is, if I want my life to get better -- if I want to not feel anxious all the time, if I want to quiet the voice in my head that tells me I'm awful, if I want to improve my relationships (with non-disordered people), perform better at work, enjoy the times of relaxation and pleasure that come to me -- then I have to unlearn what my parents taught me, and learn beliefs, habits and values that lead me where I want to go. Trees' explanation of how parents can brainwash and indoctrinate children in ways that are very unhelpful for the children is spot on! I'm going to copy that into my journal as a matter of fact, and re-read it when I forget how hard I have worked and how far I have come.

Have I sometimes felt angry and resentful about "having" to change because of the choices my parents made? Sure! But again, my parents are the perfect example of what happens when people get stuck in unproductive patterns and refuse to self-reflect and help themselves. I sure don't want to be like that. I wish my parents had chosen to undo what THEIR parents did to them, before they had me -- and since I feel that way, now that I'm an adult, it follows that it's my responsibility not to pass on the trauma they caused, to the people in my life. So I gotta do the work.