Mental pressure: Planning to go home to visit Nparent ended up in meltdown

[SaintBlackSheep]

Countrygirl,

I can relate to your feelings about a visit.  I used to visit my parents over the holidays, and would begin to dread it as we rounded the corner from summer into fall.  I visit for only five days or so, but I spent many weeks dreading the visits and then weeks recovering from them.  I did see a therapist, and she remarked on this recovery period. 

What did your therapist say about the recovery period? This is the exact issue I'm struggling with right now, and just told my nMom and enDad NOT to visit me on Thanksgiving, which is also my b-day, because it takes me weeks to recover after, and I've been dreading it ever since driving home from my last visit with them almost 3 months ago.

Fugitive Daughter, I do understand your trust issues, after all, we've been programmed not to trust anything but the nParent. Nothing is good unless they say it's good, and surely therapy because of them will not be deemed "good" in their eyes.
20 years or so ago, I reached a point with my nMom where I told her not to contact me until she got herself into therapy. She invented a therapist, and weaponized what this fake therapist told her and tried to use it to control me more! She'd say things like "my therapist told me you're being too controlling" in response to every boundary I had.
You deserve control over your own life! We all do.

[countrygirl]

SaintBlackSheep, I am sorry that you also experience a recovery period after visiting your parents.  My therapist simply pointed out to me how I regressed.  Eventually, I started visiting less often, not that I visited often as it was. Note that I always had to be the one to visit them; I could count on the fingers of one hand, with a finger or two left over, how often they visited me. They were the "royals," so I had to visit them.     

Your mother inventing a therapist, and weaponizing what was supposedly said to her during therapy is positively diabolical.  Doesn't it sometimes seem that UPD people like nothing more than making us miserable?   They are unhappy people, and so we can't be happy.  Truth is:  We have to work hard to achieve our own happiness.  A fair number of people with difficult parents end up divorcing them.  I was never able to do that, but have often wondered if I should have. But what works for one won't necessarily work for another.