In the middle

[Carlym]

Hi there,
I was recommended this website by a therapist and thought I would finally give it a shot. I'm not sure exactly how it all works just yet. Today, I listened to a podcast somewhat by accident by Whitney Goodman about adult children and their estrangement with parents. It really resonated with me to the point that I thought about joining her online community - and then I remembered that this one already existed.

I have always struggled with my relationship with my parents. I can remember hiding in my bedroom as a child to avoid their tension and fighting, which sadly I could hear anyways. My dad was an extremely intense and angry person who I was afraid of and I always viewed my mom as his victim. Sadly, hating my dad was really all that my mom and I had to grow a bond over. It was a very stressful household, at least that was my experience. A lot of yelling. A lot of walking on egg shells and a lot of not knowing what you were gonna get mood wise. I was an extremely depressed, anxious, socially withdrawn child but nobody seemed to notice. I am the only girl of 4 children. I know that my brothers were affected in different ways and I know that we all had different experiences. My dad was extremely mean to my little brother and I spent a lot of time trying to protect him. But to get to the gist of the story without making this too long -

Over the years my mom confided in me about her marriage problems. I think I was all that she had honestly and I validated her experience of his constant manipulation, gaslighting, pretty sure narcissistic behaviours because I experienced it too. I remember when I was graduating from high school that the only way that my parents would help me attend a post secondary school was if I remained living in their house with them. I had to leave. It was desperate for me. I was miserable, depressed, anxious, and hated my dad so much. I chose to leave, and I'd say that my problems with them have only grown over the course of my adult life. I can also remember that after every time my mother told me she was going to finally leave my dad, shortly after she would pretend the conversation never happened, deny it, and of course, continue being in the same situation.

When I became an adult, I started to receive the input from both ends. My mom telling me she was done with my dads shit, but then my dad begging me to help him figure out what was wrong with my mother, blaming me and my own distancing as a reason for her unhappiness. It was my job to fix it yet again. When my brothers and I would get significant others, my parents would hate them and blame them for our distancing ourselves or for our normal healthy boundary setting. My brothers chose abusive partners in the end and now it's a constant battle for my parents to tell my brothers their wives are awful, even tho they learned it from them. I ended up in isolation - alone - somewhat like my old childhood bedroom.

At some point in the last decade, I decided I had no choice but to confront my parents about how their behaviour was affecting me and about how I could no longer be put in the middle of their marriage. It's not my job to fix it nor within my power and so I attempted to abort my role. They received my very carefully loving and well thought out letters as as attack and as a way to say 'get the fuck out of my life!'. I wasn't prepared for that type of reaction and I grew very afraid of them. Of course they became victims of me - me the crazy mentally unwell daughter who out of the blue tells her parents to get out of her life. Them constantly in a "we just don't understand!" viewpoint.

Since then, I tried to let them back in my life and have better boundaries. Now, years later again here I am in desperate need of guidance on how to overcome years of gaslighting, manipulation, guilt tripping, violation of boundaries, lack of respect for autonomy, and how to continue or not continue a relationship. Maybe I'm slightly off topic here as I know it is a forum about personality disorders but I guess I'm confused about which one of them is the narcissist at this point - maybe both, maybe neither I'm not sure but I'm in a head fog and feel like I don't even know who I am because it's like I only ever existed to pander to their feelings. It's hard to type your whole life's story out so I've skipped over a lot, but just trying to see if it helps to get a little bit of it down.
Thanks for reading

[NarcKiddo]

I'm sorry. A lot of this resonates. I became very enmeshed with my mother and she would also confide about her marriage issues, affairs and whatnot. Once I learned about narcissists I became sure my mother is one. It took me much longer to realise my father is also likely a narcissist too. Oh, joy! But my father was never volatile or angry in the way you describe yours. That was my mother's territory.

Being able to put a label on a PD parent can be helpful in terms of making it easier to seek guidance on how to deal with them, but it is not necessary. What is clear from your post is that your parents are not at all interested in your boundaries and it is all about them. Communicating boundaries to them and expecting them to respect those boundaries is not going to happen. I am not clear from your post whether you have come to terms with that and are in contact with them using things like grey rock, low contact and so on. Whatever the case, you need to know what your boundaries are and what the consequences are to your parents for violating them. These don't need to be communicated in terms. You might simply decide that if they say or do x you will change the subject, end the conversation, or leave the room. You need to be prepared for pushback. They will likely always try to play the victim, say they don't understand and blame you.

Overcoming all of this is a whole other kettle of fish. I'm still working on it. Essentially you need to learn who you are and to trust yourself. Therapy helps.

[Carlym]

It just feels so isolating when at the end of the day even when you have siblings who have had similar ish experiences, if you're the one who says anything or tries to change the dynamics in any way to make them healthier, you're basically asking to be blamed. I feel like every member of my family of origin is so isolated like none of us can interact with each other. It's crazy to me as the only girl in a family of 4 where I have 3 brothers (2 older) but basically all the same age that none of them have ever really checked in on me to see if I'm okay for the last 20 years. And certainly none have stood up for me in the same way. Maybe that's me playing the victim. Should I just suck it up and accept people for who they are? 

[bloomie]

Hi and welcome to Out of the FOG. Thank you for sharing with the community the difficult relationships and painful realities you are dealing with in your family of origin. I can relate to so much of all you shared.

When I first landed here on the shores of Out of the FOG I learned something that I have held onto for many years now. It is a mantra we say around here that goes like this: You didn't cause it, you can't change it, you can't control it. Called The 3 C's

The only thing you can make healthier, control, cure and change is simply... you.

In my own family of origin the system itself was disordered and my parents had this toxic dance they did with each other that was what mattered to them. Like you describe yourself, I was the peacekeeper, receiver of secrets and confidences far beyond my developmental ability to process, much less do anything about. The burden to hold it all together, protect younger sibs, achieve, care for myself, etc, was heavy. I sense a similar heaviness in you. And my heart goes out to you!

The hardest thing for me to do, given the trauma and abuse I endured that sometimes masqueraded as acceptance or love in a strange way, was to name the patterns of behavior that were consistent over time and look at the long term cost of attempting to fill a role they determined for me and that my own siblings expected of me and resented me for all at the same time.

You ask if you should just suck it up and accept people for who they are... it is to our benefit to do the exploration to understand to the best of our ability who we are and who others are for sure, it is also important to determine, once we have done that, how close we can be to them and what patterns of behavior and responses are ours to manage differently if we want a more peaceful, healthy life.

This site is filled with resources and great conversations. The best jumping in spot I know is the toolbox, the Personality Disorders info at the drop down menus above and the threads and discussions.

Keep coming back and reading, absorbing, sorting through as you may find, like I have, your story woven through the posts of others you have never met who have had very familiar experiences. Join the conversations when you are ready!

[NarcKiddo]

I find a guy called Jerry Wise to have some very helpful information on dysfunctional family dynamics and how to navigate them while learning how to look after yourself. He has a You Tube channel with plenty of free resources. He is very matter of fact and practical in his approach. I wholeheartedly echo the advice to check out the resources on this site, but given what you say about your family dynamics I think you might find Jerry Wise to be useful too.

Sadly, in families with narcissistic parents it is quite common for siblings to be satellites to the parents and have no real relationships between themselves. This is often encouraged by the parents (possibly unwittingly) because it keeps the focus on the parents. My mother tries to stage manage my relationship with my sibling - she wants us to be close when it suits us but will happily try to incite jealousy or discord if it looks like we might be ganging up against her, or she is just bored and wants drama.

[Carlym]

Thank you both for such thoughtful replies.
I think what I struggle with the most is figuring out where to draw the line, but still wanting to be connected. I find my experience with my family of origin to have left me in a position where I don't fully know myself, and since that connection with them doesn't exist, I've never really felt seen or felt like that reflection of yourself you would normally receive in a nurturing child parent relationship has existed. At some point, I built a wall to stay away from the drama and the emotional manipulation. It is hard for me to see myself through the fog. I notice their attempts to connect and I still feel frozen and disconnected and of course the negative affects like fear of vulnerability, or having a mean inner critic pass on to the rest of life and other relationships. I think my ability to identify patterns is pretty good after all of these years of self reflection and living fairly isolated, but I have yet to put in to practice developing new healthy relationships. Maybe the only way to do that is to put myself in a place where there are more opportunities to meet new people who may align with me better.
I didn't do the most articulate version of my 'story' that's for sure, but when I break it all down the pattern that I can always see is that I'm in the middle of something that I can't control, or help. Trying to explain that to them has not helped, but I also wonder if I don't communicate clearly enough.
I can understand from a self absorbed emotionally immature parents point of view why they are hurt and confused when their children seem to distance themselves - yet, yeah it's hard to know how much involvement can exist without harming yourself.