I Thought I Blocked Her

[harlowblakely]

I have been NC with my mom for about 3-4 months now. This is the second time I have tried to go NC, the first time lasted 8 months. I hadn't blocked her number until I got message from her while I was in the middle of a health crisis with my dog and I just couldn't handle hearing from her. It's been almost a full month since I blocked her and everything has been fine. I have recently been feeling like I miss her, although it's less missing her and more missing the idea of her. Turns out though that my contacts in my phone aren't synced to the contacts in my laptop meaning that when she texted me today it came through on my laptop despite her being blocked on my phone. My birthday is coming up and she wants to take me out to dinner. That's not a bad text to get but it just caught me off guard.

One of the positive things is I experience pretty severe depersonalization/derealization and often times that means when I don't see someone for a while my brain can no longer process their existence. Sometimes I think that's the only thing that stops me from contacting her. More rationally though I know that any time I get back in contact with her it just hurts me.

I also always feel this guilt because I am the youngest of three and my two older brothers went NC 15 years ago, so I was the last to go. I feel so bad being the third and final child to leave but also feel validation in the fact that I am not the only one who sees her for who she is.

I'm not in turmoil over whether I should go to dinner with her or not, not to mention we're in a global pandemic. I guess it's just bringing up everything again. It's like I am trying to heal this wound and she comes along and rips the bandaid off and I have to start all over.

How do you guys deal with that feeling of wanting a mother but knowing that yours will never be that for you? Do you in general just have some advice for this?

[DistanceNotDefense]

Hi harlowblakely I've been NC with my M for about the same amount of time too. I also recently had a birthday that dredged up a lot of feelings for me, especially since I can see M's texts/bday wishes and she's not completely blocked (though I do not respond).

Her messages were kind, warm, and sounded a lot like she loved and missed me very much. It's too bad that that warmth is dramatically contrasted with gaslighting, manipulation, neglect, and favoring the PDs in my family's abuse towards me, no questions asked, before this all started.

I don't have advice, just commiseration I guess. I feel sympathy towards her sometimes and it feels like an arrow through the heart. Yes, like the band-aid being ripped off. How sad she must be that her child is not responding to her, I can't imagine what she's telling others. I get into her mindset and feel bad and responsible for her pain.

What helps me, though, to bring the compassion away from her and back to myself, is to remember that her short bursts of "motherliness" were completely conditional. Reaching out, staying in touch, supporting me, my relationships, my choices, etc. were convenient for her for a really long time when they didn't rock the boat and made her look good. When that changed, though (me resisting and pulling away from abusive FOO, while she encouraged my childhood scapegoat role all over again) the mind games began and she began to withhold love and support.

It was obvious she didn't want to see my pain, so I need to work on repaying her in kind, and just ignoring hers, though it is tempting. Trying to see the "mother" in her choices and to feel bad is also precisely what she wants. To get me to cave in and have things go back to normal, where I'm taking the abuse so she looks good.

So far in my LC/NC process the aching for a mother figure hasn't completely gone away. I am adjusting to deeming myself self-orphaned more and more. I look for "motherly" traits (the mother I personally wished I had, everyone's different) scattered across my FOC: unconditional love, support, physical comfort, pride in my accomplishments, acceptance of my FOC, etc. I realize I won't have them all from her or any single person in my FOC, but I can cobble them together from others, hopefully, the more I work on myself and my FOC relationships and making sure I'm healthy so those stay great. (E.g. you can't have the "love of your life" relationship if you're still hooked on your ex, that's what I boil it down to.)

And that's the crux for me: I wouldn't be able to find anything or anyone to meet my needs, and replace my fantasy of what I want from her, if I kept holding on. Since letting go of her being in my life I am finding very joyful moments with others, an ability to be more authentically myself without her and the FOO's weight on me, and a freedom to get to know people that I've never known and is hard to explain, but wonderful (though bittersweet). And it's just the beginning. It's definitely not easy or pain-free at all whatsoever, and I'm still grieving, but I have hope.

[BettyGray]

Hi Harlow,

It's such a no-win situation. In one way, we "win" because we protect ourselves with NC and have the benefit of working toward peace, but on the other hand, we lose again because we still have no mother.  And I am not sure that sadness ever goes away, really.

When I was a kid (and a teenager), the love I had for my mother was boundless. I thought she was the most amazing, smart, kind, loving and caring mom on the planet. I thought we were really close. That bubble burst after college and into early adulthood. As I grew more independent, the chillier she grew toward me. She got icier when I moved away, and my husband was treated cordially to his face, but underhandedly rude and passive aggressive in so many others.

That's the pitts that they somehow sneak through when you feel secure in having blocked them. That happened to me about 6 months in - somehow UBPD sis managed to get through to an older account I do not use that often. The email was nasty. I deleted the account.

Yikes - your sibs already fled? Wow, your mom must be a real piece of work to alienate 3 children!!  I am the youngest of 4 and the other 3 are her staunchest defenders.

I am 5 years into NC. Each year has gotten a little easier, but the holidays are brutal. Flying monkeys somehow still emerge. As for not having a mother, I have learned to be a mother to myself. It's no comparison, but I am much kinder  to myself without that critical voice. The strength I have gained through NC has given me peace with a lot of it. My MIL is a good person, but we aren't close close.
I have had other mother-like figures in my therapists, older friends and the like. But none of them were tangible, deep relationships.

I think we motherless children just cobble together what we can to fill the hole. We survive the best we know how. But I know I will always have that emptiness you describe. I try not to be sad about it and for the most part I am not. I am solid and secure in my acceptance that this is my path - without her.

I would suggest to steer clear from giving the sentimental feelings about her much weight. The holidays tend to screw with our heads. We feel more vulnerable.

Especially this year when all we want is to feel safe. That's what a mother's love is supposed to feel like- SAFE. When we do not feel emotionally safe with our mothers, it is extremely devastating. When they not only fail to comfort us, but do exactly the opposite, what are we to think? To feel? Pardon my French, but the sheer mind f—-ery of it all....
WOW.

Sometimes I cannot believe I survived it. But I have done a lot of painful work to get myself healthy. The depersonalization thing you talk about- I get it.  I don't know if it's healthy or not, but it works.

Nobody should have to feel this way. We shouldn't have to wonder if our parents mean what they say or if they have an angle working.

I wish you much strength in your journey along the healing path. It will build up over time. You sound very rational, wise & strong already.

[BettyGray]

DistanceNotDefense,

So well said.

I posted mine before reading your reply- how funny we both referenced "cobbling together" what we need. So true.

You both sound like you're doing pretty well, all things considered.

[DistanceNotDefense]

DistanceNotDefense,

So well said.

I posted mine before reading your reply- how funny we both referenced “cobbling together” what we need. So true.

You both sound like you’re doing pretty well, all things considered.

Thank you! Yes "cobbling together" what we need into a new tribe, pack, or community, even if they're each people from different communities, though never the single unified tight knit family to surround and protect us that we should have gotten. It's still better than a broken dysfunctional family and an illusion, and I have the rest of my life to build it now with no time wasted.

If we're using the same words to describe it (cobbling together) then we're clearly seeing the same vision and we're after the same thing in spirit, you and I. That's for sure! Somehow, that's a sign to me that it must be possible.

What you said Liz1018 about self-mothering is so true too. I'm barely figuring out how to do this. What's that voice in my head that berates me when I feel lost, confused, hurt, tired, sad, and over-worked? Oh geez - it's my mother! Time to start the lifelong journey of replacing that voice and inner critic, too, so I feel more comforted and less terrified. (And again, the only way to replace it is to remove what caused it, without a trace...)

Big hugs to you both Harlow and Liz The paths we walk are impossible to not have feel lonely at times. But at least we have each other, here, helping each other show the way. Despite having FOC there's a part of me that can't help but feel lonely no matter the company I'm in, and it's a bit of a Catch-22...

...and that's one weird comfort I do have is how people (who don't necessarily come from our backgrounds) can express feeling lonely in crowds or groups of people, because they realize they haven't found themselves and don't know who they are yet.

We, on the other hand, have the gift of finally knowing exactly who we are and learning to be the highest quality company to ourselves to cope with our traumas. Some people never learn how to do that, trauma or no. What a powerful step and gift that is the more I think about it!

[Stardust1982]

How do you guys deal with that feeling of wanting a mother but knowing that yours will never be that for you? Do you in general just have some advice for this?

Good question. I just feel like an orphan even though I see my PD mother daily but I certainly don't feel I have parents. Because I've spent a lot of my formative years with healthy parents of my friends, I know what a loving family is-and mine isn't one. So, I just wallow in the feeling of accepting her the way she is, and in order to move on from the wallowing, I try to meditate and visualize a future with my chosen family (this includes friends, a SO and a dog or two). Visualizing this reality is what keeps me going. It also helps me to stick to the NC decision that I have just taken (but haven't put into practice yet).

Also, just so you know many folks slip up during their NC. I slipped up in my 4th (!!!) year of NC. If that's even believable.. I was doing OKish when the pandemic hit, I remembered my caretaker's role and slipped into it again-so I called them and here I am today in full contact with them. I don't regret it at all. If I haven't done that, I wouldn't have realized that life will never, EVER get better if I am in any kind of contact (full or minimal) with BP/NPD mother and Edad.

Dr Ramani has a great video on NC slip-ups on YouTube. She makes this sound normal (it is normal actually, we are only human, we slip up because we may think our absence will change the PD parent or at least makes him/her regret how they've treated us).

So I don't really have any actual advice for you except if you wanna do what I do and just imagine a future free of PD parents and the amazing bliss and freedom that can come from it. It doesn't hurt to imagine right?

[harlowblakely]

Yikes - your sibs already fled? Wow, your mom must be a real piece of work to alienate 3 children!!  I am the youngest of 4 and the other 3 are her staunchest defenders.

Yes unfortunately, I was the staunch defender of my mom for the first 14ish years of my life. Her downfall was sending me to an RTC (which overall was one of the worst things in my life but it did have one benefit), they exposed me for the first time to who my mom truly was. After that the next 4.5 years until I graduated HS were me figuring out how to get the hell away from her and trying to unravel myself from her.

My brothers had a very different scenario than me, they are 6-7 years older than me and I feel like my mom was more openly abusive (mentally, emotionally, and occasionally physically) towards them. When it came to me she became a lot more subtle, I think that's why I stuck around so long because it was all I had ever known and I believed in her delusion.

I am definitely grateful to be where I am now but like you were talking about, I grew up thinking my mother was amazing so now the cognitive dissonance I experience in deciding who she is is really intense.

Honestly it's just so helpful to know that other people understand it and that I am not alone. Since me and my brothers had such different experiences, even they can't understand the way that it feels for me right now.

Thank you, everything you said really hit home with me.

[harlowblakely]

How do you guys deal with that feeling of wanting a mother but knowing that yours will never be that for you? Do you in general just have some advice for this?

So I don't really have any actual advice for you except if you wanna do what I do and just imagine a future free of PD parents and the amazing bliss and freedom that can come from it. It doesn't hurt to imagine right?

I really like the visualizing the ideal future, it's something I really have been trying to put into practice. I've recently found myself using the anger and other overwhelming emotions as fuel to help me get where I truly want to be.

I will have to watch that video because honestly, I really kick myself for ever getting back in contact with her. It doesn't help that my two closest friends at the time shamed me for it and made me feel stupid. I definitely need to learn to be more understanding of myself.

It really does help to know that I am not alone in feeling this way.