Got my first hoover and need a refresher

[donutmoonpanda]

Actually maybe it's not a hoover. It's not that my en-mom has seemingly improved her behavior -- It's just that circumstances have changed in that her dog, which I loved very much, has died and she text me to tell me he "passed over the rainbow bridge."

I went no contact with her 5 months ago, around my birthday. I didn't tell her anything, I just never returned her phone call and I hadn't heard from her since.

Here's the score: My mother enabled my abusive alcoholic NPD dad for 20-something years while he physically, sexually, and emotionally abused me. She knew about all of this and was a party to most of it. I was the family scapegoat and my brother was the golden child (until he was diagnosed with a severe mental illness). After dad left her, she glommed onto me. My mother has her own problems with narcissism and alcoholism. She's never acknowledged her part in the abuse and she treats me as if she doesn't really respect me... or even know me that well. I just always felt so terrible after she'd visit me. It was like she was literally driving me crazy and it's because she doesn't care about me. She's not interested in me, in who I am, or anything going on in my life. She just wants to talk at me ad nauseam, and treat me like a little Louis Vuitton handbag that she shows off when people are around but throws in the corner as soon as we're alone. She also expects me to pamper her and throw money at all her irresponsible spending over the last 20+ years. There's no way to talk to her about any of this (not just because she has a PD) because she will just agree with me and pretend to acknowledge what I'm saying, then just go back to business as usual.

I am NC with both my parents and in both cases it was cut and dry. I just got a new phone number, didn't give it to dad, and presto. I haven't heard from him in seven years. He has the number now, he has my email, and he has my address. I don't hear from him. My parents are "You can't fire me, I quit!" personalities. Mom has left me alone so far too ... until now.

She is using the dog's death to play on my sympathy and get me to give her a free pass. That's all she ever wants, a free pass to do whatever she pleases. She hasn't ever asked Why did you stop speaking to me? She hasn't asked if I'm sick (I have a cancer history), if I have covid, if I'm having trouble in my marriage, etc., etc. What parent isn't curious about WHY their adult child never speaks to them anymore? DH says she doesn't ask because she KNOWS she's the problem and she doesn't want to hear about that.

I just need your wise and learned compassion. I know this is just a ploy to suck me in, but it's so hard to resist. I actually do feel sad about the dog, but he was really old. Help me stay strong. I know you all have put up with things like this and so much more.

[Andeza]

Yup, she wants you to reply so she can dump the latest load of emotions that she can't process in the emotional toilet. Aka, you. Mine always used to harp on about the dogs being sick and not having much longer, trolling for sympathy (supply). Your mom's dog has passed on, hopefully had a lovely life and an easy passing, and there's nothing you can do to help the dog. Similarly there's nothing you can do to help your mom. She would dump her latest grief/anger whatever on you to bear the burden for her, and then keep revisiting the topic to dump it over and over again because any and all potential sources of sympathy must be revisited ALL. THE. TIME.

She hasn't called you because she thinks she's "in trouble" but has no earthly clue why other than the age-old gaslighting line "you're too sensitive." Right now she's probably operating under the assumption that eventually you'll decide to forgive her and call and then everything can go back to the way it was! Which is PD-speak for "Get back here I'm not done abusing you!"

You deserve to be treated better. You deserve to have the space to process your emotions over news without someone else attaching demands to you about their own emotions.

I will share a story about how my mom acted when my uncle, her brother!, passed away. I will paraphrase, but she called me and said "Well, your Uncle X has passed away. And I'm so mad because your Uncle Y wasn't talking to anybody and I tried to talk to him and he was short with me, and then Uncle Z told me to back off! Can you believe they acted that way? I didn't do anything!" I was still processing the fact that Uncle X had finally passed away after a long and painful deterioration. Of the entire family he'd been the most intellectually similar to myself, with the same taste in books even, and it hit hard. But there's my uBPDm trying to stir stuff up to make herself into a victim to distract the rest of the family from his death and back onto her. Having succeeded only in making them all angry, she predictably waifed to me. (yes waifing is a verb, I promise)

They just can't be second fiddle.

[donutmoonpanda]

You're right, Andeza. You are 1000000% correct.

[notrightinthehead]

You have every reason to be angry with your mother.  You loved the dog and you are going to miss the dog, not your mother. 
In many of us there is that ever optimistic hope, just waiting to come out - maybe eventually she will get it, will give you the love you deserved, will realize her mistakes and be sorry for them and give you closure.  We know of course, that this is an illusion. And it is an indicator of the lack of love we experienced in childhood.
Your parents don't seem to make an effort to be part of your life, and they certainly don't seem to be contributing in a positve way to your life. Which is great! They make space for people who really like you and want you to  flourish.

[NarcKiddo]

The obvious thing is just to ignore the text.

If you feel moved to do anything I would suggest not texting back as she will likely take that as an invitation to continue texting - or may even see it as a signal to call. I guess you could send a card by post just saying something very bland like "Sorry to hear the dog died. May he rest in peace." That, of course, does confirm to her that you have not changed your number, because the text got through.

[Cat of the Canals]

You have every reason to be angry with your mother.  You loved the dog and you are going to miss the dog, not your mother. 

Agreed. And what's interesting in this situation is that it doesn't sound like your mother would care about your feelings about the dog. This is about HER. If she's anything like my BPD/NPD mom, her sadness is something for you to fix. She's playing the drama triangle game, flailing about as the Victim and hoping you'll swoop in as the Rescuer.

Stay strong. Mourn the dog in whatever way you find appropriate. And mourn the mother you didn't have as well.

[donutmoonpanda]

You're all so right.

My kneejerk reaction to her is always just to put myself aside and do whatever she wants. In this case, she's acting like she needs support or comfort, but she doesn't. She's a waif practicing her waifery. For her this was a perfect opportunity to try to get me to set everything aside and go back to business as usual. Her contacting me wasn't actually about the dog, was it? It was about using this as an opportunity to make me feel sympathetic or guilty and cave. It's pretty sad that sweet little dog just amounts to a tool. Just like me. Just like everyone she uses.

I am not texting her back no matter what. If she thinks I changed my number, there are endless people she can contact to find out. But she doesn't want to do that because then she'd have to admit to someone that I don't talk to her. I think she's probably told a lot of lies to people in the last 5-6 months pretending that we still talk, pretending to know anything about what's going on in my life. She'll spin it into a waifish manipulation, whatever is most useful to her at the time.

I can see now: Her reaching out to me is not about wanting a relationship at all. It's about wanting to speak again so she can tell people that we speak to each other. She can get some information from me and tell it to other people: She got a new job. She got a new cat. She got covid. She wants to continue dumping all her big icky feelings onto me like an emotional black hole in exchange for some info to tell her women's group. It's lose/lose for me. Honestly, can't they just make a machine that churns out false news about me and she can just present that to her "friends"?

[hhaw]

((donutmoonpanda:))

You don't need your mother's permission, understanding or approval to go No Contact with her.... your'e an adult now and no longer at the mercy of disordere parents..... no.  You aren't.

You have divine permission from the Universe and from your capable adult self to put up healthy boundaries and enforce them without justifying or explaining them.

I hope you never feel the need to explain your choices again.

I hope you embrace radical acceptance around broken parents who couldn't do any better.  If they could have, they would have.

They didn't bc they're broken and the parents you wanted never walked this earth.  It's OK to mourne the ideal parents you needed and consider them dead......gone.... give up any hope they'll change.

Release your FOO with whatever you feel is helpful..love or a warrior spirit.... you'll know what to do when you listen to your instincts.  Honor them and trust yourself to keep young panda safe.

IME there's the matter of housekeeping, regarding the trauma bouncing around in your limbic system/emotional/survival brain...... unable to be processed bc your brain has been biochemically hijacked, which shuts down access to your frontal cortex....the logic, reason and creative problem solving part. 

You can learn how to calm down your brain, integrate it and easily process all that old trauma in order to refile it in historic files, where it belongs and FOR GOOD, IME.

You aren't broken.  Your parents installed software into your brain when you were vulnerable,but you aren't a vulnerable childany longer, nope.

You're smart and from what I've read well down the path or figuring out the unconscious belief systems you're identifying for yourself.

I hope you find a good Trauma Informed Therapist......
(maybe practicing EMDR, memory reconsolidation and with Buddhist leaningsto make sure the Therapist is doing their own work which keeps their ego OUT of your Work,ime)......
to move you through this period of growth with economy of motion, bc you deserve advocates and safe fellowship while you're doing this brave good work.

Turn toward the pain, embrace it,bc it belongs... everything belongs and holds the keys to find the keys unlock joy.

Joy is a choice one makes in every moment; )

I love your username, btw!

[moglow]

If I responded at all it would be simply: "I'm sorry to "hear" that. He was such a sweet little fella and I'll miss him." Period, end of. You're addressing your feeling of loss, nothing more. Would I get into further conversation? Absolutely not - that's never failed to bite me in the butt.

[justducky]

If I responded at all it would be simply: "I'm sorry to "hear" that. He was such a sweet little fella and I'll miss him." Period, end of.

or ignore the text. It sounds like you've figured out what your mother's game is, though.

I will share a story about how my mom acted when my uncle, her brother!, passed away. I will paraphrase, but she called me and said "Well, your Uncle X has passed away. And I'm so mad because your Uncle Y wasn't talking to anybody and I tried to talk to him and he was short with me, and then Uncle Z told me to back off! Can you believe they acted that way? I didn't do anything!" ... there's my uBPDm trying to stir stuff up to make herself into a victim to distract the rest of the family from his death and back onto her.

Andeza, I'm so sorry you experienced that! How very PD of her.

Your story stirred a memory of how my enMom (possibly covert N) relayed the news of a relative's death to me several years ago. We were already LC. I rarely visited, so we emailed or talked on the phone occasionally. She'd tell me the latest extended family news that, to be honest, I didn't care much about because I moved far away 20 years ago and none of us kept in touch.

My cousin's wife's father or brother--I don't remember which, and I've never met the wife or any of her relatives--committed suicide. She stated this in a matter-of-fact manner. I said something like, "Oh! How awful. Jane and John must be so upset."

enMom went on to criticize the deceased for being so selfish to commit suicide because that means life insurance policies won't be paid and the dead man's relatives won't get any money.



I don't remember what I said to that. What DO you say to something as callous and calculating as that?

PDs delivering the news of relatives' death is the worst.

[JustKathy]

I had an excellent therapist once who told me that Narc hoovering is like a game of tennis. They serve the ball and wait for you to return it. If you walk off the court and don't return the serve, their game ends. But if you return the ball, game on! They will then keep playing the game until you can't take it anymore and are left feeling exhausted by the whole ordeal. So I would say, try to resist returning the call.

I do understand you being upset about the dog. I know I would be. But if you want to remain NC, you can still grieve the dog in private without returning her call. If your mother is anything like mine was, you probably loved the pup a lot more than she did and she's just using his passing to suck you back in.

She hasn't ever asked Why did you stop speaking to me? She hasn't asked if I'm sick (I have a cancer history), if I have covid, if I'm having trouble in my marriage, etc., etc. What parent isn't curious about WHY their adult child never speaks to them anymore? DH says she doesn't ask because she KNOWS she's the problem and she doesn't want to hear about that.

In my case, that was the reason I never resumed contact. My abusive Nmother knew the reasons why I went NC, but I do think my enabling father was a bit fuzzy on the reasons. He sent hoover cards for almost ten years after my mother died saying it would be decent of me to visit. Not once did he ask if I was okay. I could have been seriously ill, in hospice, in rehab, any number of things, but he never asked. There was never a sense that he loved me or missed me, only that I was obligated to remain in his life. He died last year without me ever resuming contact, and I have zero regrets over that. None.

[moglow]

DMP, an old friend used to say "a hoover doesn't work if you don't plug it in." That's kinda stuck with me. I can refuse to accept the hoover, see it for what it is and carry on. Or I can plug it in for the ride, knowing where it'll go. Mine - like yours - would throw out innocuous texts or comments like we're buddies, and she'd most assuredly have very particular expectations of my response, no matter how the previous silence came to be. Any hesitance or comments from me that's indicated otherwise, she'd go outer limits. Hair trigger meltdown. BUT even if I chose to play along and just be nice, she'd still  - at any given moment and over any misplaced word - lose it. The woman is permanently loaded for bear and ready to rumble. I grew to look at any interaction with that first in mind, it just wasn't safe not to.

[LoverofPeace]

Hello donutmoonpanda,

I am very sad to hear about your past abuse as a child and up to today. So glad you can at least create a physically safe space as an adult. Now it's just about our spiritual, emotional, and mental work to heal the effects of growing up/being around narcs.

As an animal, namely dog, lover, I am also saddened to hear about your mom's dog. They are definitely family and I am sure he/she helped you deal with them all these years. Your presence even helped him/her, too! Imagine how they can't get away from the narc like we can! But I hope his/her long life was full, especially with you around. And no, there's no need to speak to your mom about that baby; praying a thanks to God that they arrived safely at the Rainbow Bridge is what matters. You can keep your peace-of-mind that way, as she's sure to taint everything... yet again! Remember that she and your dad doesn't deserve anything more after such abuse!

And as for this part, Honestly, can't they just make a machine that churns out false news about me and she can just present that to her "friends"? Dear heart, they don't need one, because they ARE the machine.

Take good care. You deserve it. 🙏☮️❤️