When they blame you for the abuse

[KD5FUL]

I was talking to NPD father recently and he accused me of not wanting to be part of the family.  As evidence, he mentioned that I moved away and then I started staying in hotels, and then I stopped coming to visit.

That is completely true.  I moved 3,000 miles away from them when I was thrown out at only 17.  After they made me homeless,  I still flew to visit them,  at my expense, twice a year for over 8 years. 

Each time I visited I was treated with open hostility and made to feel very uncomfortable.  I would stay in my old bedroom, but it was always an issue for my NPD Step mom. 

There was an incident where my youngest sister was clearly spying on me while I was making some food in the kitchen and I asked her what she was doing.  She told me that NPD parents had told her to watch me because they didn't trust me to be in the house.  That hurt.  I realized that they didn't want me to be there.

After that incident, I started staying in a hotel when I came to town.   It seemed to me that it would make everyone feel more comfortable.  The hotel was very close to my family's home and, while I slept there, I spent most of the daytime with my family.

Every time I would come over to the house on subsequent visits, I was still treated as if I wasn't wanted.  My NPD father, the person I most wanted to see, would always schedule overtime during my visits.  I invited him out to eat many times and he always have an excuse. Once, I flew in around father's day because I had planned to take my father on a day trip.  He sent my NPD stepmother to go with me after telling me flat out that he wasn't interested in going.


After that visit, I began spending less and less time with my family when I came into town.  I would come in for a week, but see them maybe twice...for dinner....and then go back to the hotel or out with friends.  Still, every time I was treated rudely and hostilely, even if I was only there for two hours they managed to get in a heaping helping of nastiness.

The final visit was when I was around 25.  I had been visiting them for 8 years and there were other opportunities for me to travel that I wanted to take advantage of.   I asked myself:  'Why am I spending so much money and using all of my vacation time to visit people who treat me like garbage?'

My poor, naive younger self.  I actually called NPD father and told him what the last eight years of visits had been like for me and that I just wanted everyone to be nice to me when I came to town that week.

When I visited the following week, everyone in my family was SUPER nasty to me.  They either glared at me, rolled their eyes, or completely ignored me like I wasn't even there.  It was such an incredibly painful experience.  When I went to the hotel that night, I cried until I fell asleep.  I felt even worse than unloved, I felt deeply hated. 

I vowed that I would never again waste my time or money to visit them.  I have never gone back.

Fast forward to that recent conversation, where my NPD father was accusing me of not wanting to be a part of the family.

I told him that I stopped visiting because I was treated badly when I stayed at their home.  I was still unwelcome even when I stayed at a hotel.  I was even completely ignored on my final visit.

He then blamed me for being ignored.  He said that before that visit, he told my family that if they could't say anything nice to me than they should say nothing. 

The way he said it, seemed to imply that I had done something to deserve this treatment.  It was a reflection of me, not them.

That doesn't even make sense.  They couldn't say anything nice to me and yet, in his mind, it is evidence that I am somehow a terrible person.

Obviously, I am the scapegoat. 



How do you deal with the fruit cocktail of emotions that comes with being blamed for the abuse?

[all4peace]

KD5FUL, I am so sorry for what you have suffered. You have been treated quite badly by your family and continued to make significant efforts to still remain a part of the family. I would say you very much wanted to be part of the family, but they created an intolerable environment for you.

This is the way DH's family has treated him, me and our son (but not our daughter). It's easy to tell someone "You just don't want to be part of the family!" (I was told this by one of my SIL's; another one told me she "wouldn't be made to feel uncomfortable" at family gatherings when their treatment had partly led to significant anxiety and depression and I was struggling to be my "normal" self at family gatherings, instead quiet and subdued).

I do not think you will ever convince your family of how ugly they have been to you. They don't seem to be people who have empathy or the capacity to understand how their behavior would make another person feel. They seem invested in the narrative that THEY are fine and YOU have the problem. Sometimes you have to just drop the rope and go live your own wonderful life. And I love that your life is one in which you'd like to make trips that actually bring you joy and energy!

We believe you. Your story is very clear and articulate and very believable. We know that some families behave this way, that the SG is often the person who has it most together in the family, and that when you try to protect yourself in any way you will get lashed out at.


So, to your question. How to deal with the tangled emotions? I started observing ALL my other relationships. Normal issues with my teen kids, resolvable problems in my marriage, excellent working relationships, beautiful friendships of which many have lasted decades. The only place I was having confusion, serious instability and unsolvable problems was with DH's parents and my parents. They were the only people unable to hear and accept basic boundaries, unable to understand the basic foundations of a trusting and healthy relationship, unable to move forward in any way.

I still had tremendous guilt and anxiety, but that helped me over and over again to think that really maybe it was more about them than me.

I'm sorry for how badly you have been treated. It is a truly terrible thing to have an entire family shun someone in this way, forcing them out through bad behavior and then denying it. I hope you have surrounded yourself with people who see you, understand you, accept you and love you. My best to you.

[TwentyTwenty]

Very sorry to hear what you are foing through.

It’s taken me a while to come to my foundational view and wresting through the emotions to get there, as you mentioned, is tough.

Personally, I had to train myself not to be taken off-guard by some hateful, demeaning abuse. If you expect mentally ill folks to act mentally ill, then it’s no surprise when they do it.

Unfortunately, there are mean, selfish, hateful people in the world.

Unfortunately, sometimes they are your parents.

None of them have an influence or impact on my life; I’m in control of that.

I’ve 100% disconnected from any and all of them - my happiness and we’ll being comes above each and every one of them.

I hope you find the peace & happiness that you deserve!!

[Call Me Cordelia]

  If that's the way they feel about you, after making years of cross-continent flights, after they THREW YOU OUT, in my opinion you will never be able to improve things. "If you can't say something nice," indeed! I suggest you follow your father's advice. And I can't imagine what nice things you'd have to say to such people. 

Blaming the victim is pretty universal among abusive people. They will never get it. And it's terrible and sad, but there is nothing on God's green earth you can do to change it. "There are none so blind as those who will not see."

I do think that getting away from the abuse is the best way to be able to really work through it. Just get away. If they want to believe that you discarded them and they are innocent, well bless their hearts and may their delusion keep you safe. I wouldn't blame you if you felt the need to lay out exactly how this is all their doing, but if your parents are already blaming you this much, it's likely to backfire on you. I second a4p's advice to simply drop the rope and live your own life.

[athene1399]

I am really sorry you went through this, KD5FUL. You went out of your way to be a part of your FOO and let them be weird and mean to you for a long time before finally deciding you had enough. It sounds to me that they only want you around so they can be mean to you. That's not good at all. 

As frustrating as it is, they will probably never understand how you felt during all of this or the part they played in any of it. I am sorry for this as well.

When I was younger, I hated myself for the abuse. I thought there was something wrong with me and if I could just fix that, the negative comments wouldn't happen anymore. When I hid what they didn't like about me and the comments still occurred, I drank a lot to bury the feelings further. I eventually realized the problem isn't with me, it's with them. They made me feel defective which led me to hate myself. So I started being self-compassionate. Now I am okay being myself for the most part. I still have days where I get frustrated, but it's so much better. I've basically stopped drinking too. I've also learned not to over-share with my FOO. The less they know about me the less abusive they can be with their words.  I still talk to them, but keep it to chit-chat. I don't tell them anything important if I can help it.

I still get angry over a lot of what happened. Sometimes I grieve that I didn't have a supportive family. But what's important is letting myself experience those emotions becasue growing up I wasn't allowed to have them. Sometimes I am randomly pissed off at them for a day. Like we weren't talking, I just think of something and get mad. I let myself be mad. It gets better. It helps me to process it, by feeling the anger I wasn't allowed to have. Or the disappointment. Or the depression.

I want to get more into journalling. Many say it helps a lot. I do work on self-care. I schedule time each day to do something small just for me. I work on mindfulness. Try a bunch of different things and see what works best for you.  It takes a lot of work and it's a long journey, but it feels so good when you look back and see the progress you've made.

[scapegoatnumerouno]

 

[Cat of the Canals]

If that's the way they feel about you, after making years of cross-continent flights, after they THREW YOU OUT, in my opinion you will never be able to improve things. "If you can't say something nice," indeed! I suggest you follow your father's advice. And I can't imagine what nice things you'd have to say to such people. 

I can't say it any better than this. It's funny how often their logic cuts both ways, isn't it?

I hope you've had enough time and space to realize that there was never anything you did to deserve this treatment. One of the lingering effects of PD abuse is constantly wondering if you did something to bring it on yourself, which is rarely the case. To have your own father imply you're somehow responsible must be extra painful.

When I start to doubt myself, I will go over my expectations and behavior and ask whether they are reasonable or not.

You made a tremendous effort to spend time with your family, and it seems they made very little effort in return. You adjusted your behavior to try to make them more comfortable during your visits, in hopes that it would improve things. It did not. You were honest with your father and told him you felt unwanted, which led to even harsher treatment.

Through all of this, the one thing you asked for was to be treated with kindness. And they refused! The only reasonable response to that is to remove yourself from the situation and stop spending time with those people.

[Starboard Song]

I'm a guy, and as a standard issue Typical Male I sometimes don't give emotions their appropriate due. So forgive me.

But if your father came up to your desk at the engineering firm where you work and said the bridge you were building ought to be made of chewing gum instead of concrete and rebar posts under iron girders, you wouldn't have to ask anyone about the cocktail of emotions. Why not? Because you would KNOW he was wrong. Also, because -- if you were wrong even about such a fundamental engineering fact -- you wouldn't feel guilt, or otherwise worthless or bad. You'd learn a little about the hitherto unknown properties of chewing gum as abridge material, and move on.

I just think two things are in play in these situations: we doubt ourselves and feel directionless, and we deeply want this relationship to work and be what it is supposed to be.

For the first, all4peace already gave the correct answer. She looked across all her life and found that everywhere else relationships "worked," even through the challenges. For my part, not only were my in-laws the only place we had this issue, but we could easily see that they had this issue everywhere they looked, almost. This provided an arrow for us, like it did for all4peace, pointing towards reality. You deserve to know that this is not your fault. Following the lead of all4peace can help you do that.

The second one is harder. If you suspect a deep and severe PD here, you probably need to accept a loss: you simply will never have the father you want. He's gone. You have the one you have. My wife had to process this one hard, and I really never saw the key moment when the gears crunched through it. But she accepted that the mythical role of mother and father were not being played by the male and female parents she had been given, and wouldn't be. She says that the book Radical Acceptance was the key to accepting this crazy reality.

Good strength to you.

[Recreatingmylife]

This situation breaks my heart. There is great insight and clarity in the above posts. You have done everything possible to remain connected to your dad. I admire your strength, character and authenticity.  You did not create this craziness. It has taking me a very long time to realize that I have to create my own family. Also... distance is a blessing!