My parents codependency is difficult to witness

[Spirit in the sky]

I'm writing again because it helps me process what's going on in my head.

I've realised I'm deal with my parents codependency and my dad's dying from three different perspectives. I hope this makes sense

1. The Wounded Inner Child. I still feel hurt and neglected by my parents. I still like a lost lonely little girl and the grown ups are screaming and yelling all around me and I'm helpless, voiceless, powerless. I make myself small and invisible but I still dream of one day my dad is going to wake up and acknowledge me, protect me, accept me, love me unconditionally and I'll be safe.

2. The Adult Child in survival mode thinks I need to take control and manage the situation. I need to find a way to make everyone see sense, be the peace maker, do whatever it takes to avoid conflict, confrontation or expressing my true feelings. I must not cry, I must not cry. I can support everyone's needs, I don't matter.

3. My Higher Self knows the other 2 perspectives are fear based. I know I can't rescue or save either of my parents. I know they are codependent and dysfunctional and all my rationally thinking isn't going to change that. I have to accept they aren't capable of loving me unconditionally and all I can do it love myself. As an empath I can witness the suffering and I can pray and send them love and light. I know I'm only witnessing their journey it started before I was born and it something they need to resolve and maybe they won't resolve it and I need to accept that too. I must surrender the need to control, micro-manage or take responsibility for what happening.

My inner child needs me to emotionally detach from my parents. I can't keep living in hope that one day they will be different, they won't. I need to tell myself I'm safe and I don't need to be afraid. I'm here for myself. I'm listening and it's not my fault. They behaviour was and is unacceptable and I didn't deserve to be exposed to their trauma.

My adult child needs to know it's ok to cry, I don't have to out a brave face on everything. It's ok to feel emotions like anger, resentment, fear, guilt, disappointment it's ok to express and talk about HOW I FEEL and HOW THINGS EFFECT ME. I understand my parents are safe people to talk to, they can't help me because they never helped themselves. I don't need to people please, it's ok if everyone does like me. There nothing wrong with ME.

Yesterday I took the day off work and felt all of it, I sat with it, I walked and I rested. I used my self care list and I didn't neglect myself, I was a parent to my inner child, a friend to my Adult Child and a Divine Light to my Higher Self. I spoke kindly today myself and loved myself, I understand what's happening, I meditated and prayed and found peace within.

Now I just need to find the strength to put it all in practice, see my dad as a man who is dying without judgment. He has no power over me anymore, I chose to be kind and compassionate not out of fear or guilt but because I have faces my inner demons and I can witness he's still lying or dying with his.

[bloomie]

Spirit in the sky - Wow! These are such important insights. How beautiful the care and love you are showing yourself and others from a firm foundation that you have worked very hard to establish. As I read through your post it really reads like you have turned a very important page.

I simply want to bear witness to this sentinel moment in your healing journey and applaud you!

Thank you for sharing this with us!

[Spirit in the sky]

Thanks Bloomie

Being able to post here has helped and supported me so much on my healing journey.

Spirit in the sky - Wow! These are such important insights. How beautiful the care and love you are showing yourself and others from a firm foundation that you have worked very hard to establish. As I read through your post it really reads like you have turned a very important page.

I simply want to bear witness to this sentinel moment in your healing journey and applaud you!

Thank you for sharing this with us!

[DreamingofQuiet]

Wow. Thank you. I needed to read this. And reread it. I relate very strongly.

DoQ

[GettingOOTF]

For me a big revelation has been that there isn’t a “good” and a “bad” person in these relationships. Both parties are damaged in their own way. I know most people don’t want to see or hear this. It’s what I’m working on in therapy and more than anything it’s helped me understand myself, my relationships and my FOO a lot better. I brought my own issues (severe codependency, lack of confidence and self worth, rigid black and white thinking) to my marriage. While I didn’t deserve the abuse, I put myself in that marriage and made choices I wouldn’t today having done the work I’ve done. 

Some of us are resilient and come to see the relationship as being unhealthy and choose to leave in the ways we can. For some that’s Grey Rock/Medium Chill, for others it’s simply knowing the behavior is unacceptable. Others choose to physically leave.

It’s been very difficult for me to look at my parents and see them as people with their own limitations. I see now how bad my upbringing really was. How deprivational, vicious and abusive it was. I also see how it taught me how to interact with the world and that I exhibited many of those behaviors myself. Here they call it “fleas” but I think they are learned behaviors vs what I think of as more inherent “PD” behaviors that cannot change.

When my mother was dying she was actually easier to get along with. When my father thought he was dying he was worse. He really ramped up the abuse. Like he wanted to make sure he got it all in. My mother seemed to want to make peace. I’ve spoken of this before, of how we thought it was my mother and all felt sorry for my father. I now see my mother was the “victim”, though she chose to stay and raise her children in that environment. I guess similar to you, my father’s “dying” made me see him for who he really is. It’s a terrible time for that as there are so many emotions anyway that there’s hardly any room to process this.

I like the way you have broken down your feelings and needs into the various developmental stages. I’ve been reading a lot on the Higher Self and part of me thinks I don’t have one. That the damage is so bad that there isn’t something better and aspirational inside me. I’m working on this too.

The death of a parent brings up so much. It’s a lot to deal with. I’m sure it’s never easy but for those of us who have fraught relationships with our parents I think it’s harder because not only are we losing a parent we are losing the chance (which was never there but we all hold on to) of having a loving, real connection with them.

[hhaw]

GettingOOTF:

We all have higher selves, including you.

The trick is to remember who we were before the world and PDs installed their judgments and filters in our brains.  Before we developed beliefs about ourselves.

Remembering is something the brain strives to do.  It's efficient at processing emotions and sensations, even if trauma overwhelmed our brains at a point.....the brain waits for a chance to finish processing stuck memories.  That only takes a millisecond....its easy if we learn how to feel safe and give our brain the chance.

Trauma informed Ts are helpful, ime. 

[Spirit in the sky]

I agree with Haww we all have a Higher Self.

Different people discover it in different ways. Yoga helped me and meditation and I found a spiritual path that worked for me. I know not everyone has a faith or a belief system and I didn't when I started out. But even just walking in nature helped me connect to myself.

Maybe you must haven't discovered how to connect with yours yet.

[nanotech]

I feel a link with you Out of the FOG.  We thought it was all mum controlling dad. Dad always let mum be the boss in the home. In return, mum acted out his narcissistic traits so much that he really didn't have to do much. Dad put mum on a pedestal because of this, which she loved.
Big change when mum was dying. Not straight away, but in the last ten days of her life, while in the hospice, mum actually gave  us unconditional love.  She just did.
I think she just realised that she no longer had to act out for my dad. She returned to herself. It was lovely,  yet so sad that it was at that stage of her life.
Dad and UNPDN brother had no idea how to handle it. They normally triangulated everything through her.
Spirit in the Sky what you've written in your first post is just amazing.
I'm getting better with yoga and mindfulness too, and walking!
Good luck and thanks for the help. Everything you've written applies to me and my dad too. My dad isn't dying but every time he's I'll he thinks he is!  He hates being old. I'm trying to detach with love and to view him objectively. I've stopped hoping for the kind of love I know he just can't give me. I continually  forgive him for favouring the GC and I no longer hope that will change.
I'm LCwith him and more or less NC. with UNPD siblings. ( funerals/ weddings only). I'm so much healthier since I did this!
HHaw, thank you 🙏🏻 for making me consider the higher self. Yes it's so important to realise it and remember about it.

[WomanInterrupted]

I agree that we all have  a Higher Self - and it's the one who realizes   there's no  "helping" the situation other than to stay out of it and let professionals deal with our parents.   

Our parents live in a dysfunctional microcosm, where they expect to replay the old dynamic that was present when we were growing up - all-powerful PARENT, with a child or children who lived in  fear,  always willing to please, could never get it right, and knew when to make themselves scarce until needed again, in their ever-fruitless attempts to please the all-powerful parent.   

They expected us to remain as we were - scared children - not realizing we grew up and became adults. 

Yes, they may SEE the adult us, but I don't know if this is just me, or if this is normal on Planet PD:  unBPD Didi and unNPD Ray had pictures of me in every single room - ALL of them from Jr High or High School!   

There was ONE large collage of my wedding to DH - in 1983 - and that was it, even though there were plenty of pics of DH and me taken since then!

You'd walk into Didi and Ray's house and think some terrible tragedy happened shortly after the wedding. 

Maybe seeing me as a child reinforced their unreasonable demands.  A child *would not DARE* to say no to their parents!   

But like all of you here, I'm not a child.  I have my own life.  I have things I'm responsible for.  I didn't see it at the time but separating out the things I had to do - not wanted to do, but HAD to do (self-care, care of the home, doing my own job, caring for our pets, being an equal partner in the marriage and not just a ghost who occasionally came home from being hectored and browbeaten, only to cry until I fell into a fitful sleep, then get up the next day and do it all over again ) - I believe that was my Higher Self asserting itself and saying, "No matter what they think, you're an adult.  You didn't make their bed for them.  They chose to do that, all by themselves.  Now they can live with the consequences." 

My Higher Self didn't want to see them suffer,  but my Higher Self also knew their answer to any problem:  "Get WI over here and make her take care of it!" - was unrealistic - at BEST.

My Higher Self wasn't operating from a place of  fear - it was operating from a place of understanding and self-compassion.  There was NOTHING I could do for either Didi and Ray, who had people  lined up who actually *wanted to help them* - yet they refused, thinking their problems should be mine.

When fear didn't work, they'd try to lure me with money - if I did all this stuff, think of the rewards I'd reap later was *strongly* hinted at - which meant I'd be spending OUR money (DH and mine), in the hope of some sort of payback I'd/we'd probably never see. 

A brief aside - many years ago, we bowed out of a wedding that was going to wind up costing us over $35,000 to attend.  Yes, the bride was unNPD and after reading my email (yes, it may have been cowardly, but I couldn't get her to listen on the phone.  She couldn't interrupt an email), wrote me back an incredibly nasty and insulting email that questioned my sanity, but also said, "If you needed that money for your pets, you'd find it!"

Oh, logic, WHY does it elude you!?   

If we spend that money on the wedding, we won't have it for the pets!

That was something I saw, in my mind's eye - a pet needing care and us having not only no money, because of Didi and Ray, but no time to see to that pet's needs, again, thanks to Didi and Ray who DID seem to think it was some sort of competition. 

My Higher Self decided it  is NOT wrong to put a pet who loves you unconditionally above a person who sees you as a means to an end.   

My Higher Self was NOT going to act as a mediator in the marriage of two people who acted like life was a non-stop schoolyard fight, with each of them constantly "picking on" the other.   

After Didi died and a social worker tried yet *again* to get me involved in unNPD Ray's care - he'd fired a team  because they started sending men after he'd been verbally and physically inappropriate with female aides  - I hung up the phone, knowing that wasn't going to be the last of it, but I'd handle it as needed. 

I was stronger than that - and Ray needed a LOT more help than just a couple of people, for a few hours a day.  He really needed to be in AL, and the only way to facilitate that was to remain HANDS OFF.

My Higher Self knew it.  It wasn't about punishment for Ray being a terrible father - it was forcing the issue to get him the care he insisted he didn't need, and I could do it all.

I couldn't - for any one of a hundred reasons, including, "I don't want to!"

My  Higher Self helped me acknowledge that's VALID - because it makes you look beyond the words to find the REAL reasons.  It's a lot more complex than, "I don't want to!" - while those words are coming from your lips, probably dozens of hundreds of images are flitting through your mind's eye - things like bathing a parent, changing a diaper, trying to get them to take meds while they insist they don't want to, trying to get them to eat while they're screaming that your cooking is disgusting - all those things you just *know* are waiting for you if you  allow the FOG to engulf you.

The Higher Self won't allow that to happen.  It's seen too much and has come too far. 

[Spirit in the sky]

I was talking to my therapist yesterday and we were talking about me refusing to let anyone see my vulnerability. I feel very exposed when I show my emotions and then I realised I have control issues.

The more I talked the more I realised I sounded like my mother and everything that I was resisting in my mother I recognised in myself. I started to see all the things I judged as negative were things I wasn't facing up to in my own life.

I could see why she stood her ground with my father because if she didn't he would have drained the life out of her. The more I spend time with my father the more drained I feel, I have no idea how she has survived. I judged and condemned my mother because she couldn't accept my father and I now see I was trying to change my mother.

Over the weekend I've stepped back and I see maybe my mother and I were too alike and I haven't seen that before. I kept trying to fix and rescue my mother and in truth she didn't need saving. I think she just needed acceptance. After all the things I have written about my mother, truthfully I think I was projecting a lot of my own insecurities.

I'm learning to just accept my parents for what they are, my father will always be self obsessed and pessimistic. My mother has always tried to do her best but somehow lost herself. I'm discovering a new level of respect for her I never thought I would. When I stopped judging her as a mother and seen her for the first time as a woman struggling with life things changed.

[Spirit in the sky]

 The craziness started up today again. No idea what my parents were arguing about just the usual dysfunctional behaviour.

Obviously whatever my father said, my mother was still reeling when the district nurse came and my mother called him out on his behaviour in front of the nurse. He moans constantly and makes everyone's like a misery but when the nurse arrives he's all sweetness and light. Mother wasn't having it and told the nurse she couldn't cope anymore.

The nurse actually didn't care and just ignored her, but when she left my father went mad calling my mum for everything. Of course bad timing for me I walked into the middle of it. And quickly left again, things really are getting worse.

My mother can't cope but refuses to admit it, obviously a control thing. My father just demands 24/7 and it doesn't matter what anyone does it's ever enough.

I'm witnessing, acknowledging my discomfort and letting it go, it's not easy.

[Spirit in the sky]

Totally understand what you are saying WI

There's still a small part of my brain that tries to understand the madness, but thankfully I'm getting better and better at recognising my triggers and detaching.

I identify with the childish need to pick on each other and trade insults. They can't have a civil discussion without resorting to name calling or plain nastiness. They have been having the same conversation on a loop for 48 years and nothing ever changes. My mother still expects me to take her side, she doesn't like anyone be objective or impartial. My father is jealous that I have any type of relationship with my mother because he wants the same level of attention now, even though he ignored me for years.

He refuses to take responsibility for anything including his health and passes it over to my mother who agrees to do it but only with her rules (she's a control freak). He breaks the rules, he always has and she withdraws her support but not completely because she won't give up control. She's hoping he'll get back in line, and he pretends to cooperate so he gets what he needs.

It's an endless cycle of cat and mouse. One minute I think it's her fault and then I think it's his fault and I'm being asked to take sides when I know they are both to blame.

They need to be apart but neither one will make the decision. It's like they wouldn't admit defeat because each one always wants to win

I agree that we all have  a Higher Self - and it's the one who realizes   there's no  "helping" the situation other than to stay out of it and let professionals deal with our parents.   

Our parents live in a dysfunctional microcosm, where they expect to replay the old dynamic that was present when we were growing up - all-powerful PARENT, with a child or children who lived in  fear,  always willing to please, could never get it right, and knew when to make themselves scarce until needed again, in their ever-fruitless attempts to please the all-powerful parent.   

They expected us to remain as we were - scared children - not realizing we grew up and became adults. 

Yes, they may SEE the adult us, but I don't know if this is just me, or if this is normal on Planet PD:  unBPD Didi and unNPD Ray had pictures of me in every single room - ALL of them from Jr High or High School!   

There was ONE large collage of my wedding to DH - in 1983 - and that was it, even though there were plenty of pics of DH and me taken since then!

You'd walk into Didi and Ray's house and think some terrible tragedy happened shortly after the wedding. 

Maybe seeing me as a child reinforced their unreasonable demands.  A child *would not DARE* to say no to their parents!   

But like all of you here, I'm not a child.  I have my own life.  I have things I'm responsible for.  I didn't see it at the time but separating out the things I had to do - not wanted to do, but HAD to do (self-care, care of the home, doing my own job, caring for our pets, being an equal partner in the marriage and not just a ghost who occasionally came home from being hectored and browbeaten, only to cry until I fell into a fitful sleep, then get up the next day and do it all over again ) - I believe that was my Higher Self asserting itself and saying, "No matter what they think, you're an adult.  You didn't make their bed for them.  They chose to do that, all by themselves.  Now they can live with the consequences." 

My Higher Self didn't want to see them suffer,  but my Higher Self also knew their answer to any problem:  "Get WI over here and make her take care of it!" - was unrealistic - at BEST.

My Higher Self wasn't operating from a place of  fear - it was operating from a place of understanding and self-compassion.  There was NOTHING I could do for either Didi and Ray, who had people  lined up who actually *wanted to help them* - yet they refused, thinking their problems should be mine.

When fear didn't work, they'd try to lure me with money - if I did all this stuff, think of the rewards I'd reap later was *strongly* hinted at - which meant I'd be spending OUR money (DH and mine), in the hope of some sort of payback I'd/we'd probably never see. 

A brief aside - many years ago, we bowed out of a wedding that was going to wind up costing us over $35,000 to attend.  Yes, the bride was unNPD and after reading my email (yes, it may have been cowardly, but I couldn't get her to listen on the phone.  She couldn't interrupt an email), wrote me back an incredibly nasty and insulting email that questioned my sanity, but also said, "If you needed that money for your pets, you'd find it!"

Oh, logic, WHY does it elude you!?   

If we spend that money on the wedding, we won't have it for the pets!

That was something I saw, in my mind's eye - a pet needing care and us having not only no money, because of Didi and Ray, but no time to see to that pet's needs, again, thanks to Didi and Ray who DID seem to think it was some sort of competition. 

My Higher Self decided it  is NOT wrong to put a pet who loves you unconditionally above a person who sees you as a means to an end.   

My Higher Self was NOT going to act as a mediator in the marriage of two people who acted like life was a non-stop schoolyard fight, with each of them constantly "picking on" the other.   

After Didi died and a social worker tried yet *again* to get me involved in unNPD Ray's care - he'd fired a team  because they started sending men after he'd been verbally and physically inappropriate with female aides  - I hung up the phone, knowing that wasn't going to be the last of it, but I'd handle it as needed. 

I was stronger than that - and Ray needed a LOT more help than just a couple of people, for a few hours a day.  He really needed to be in AL, and the only way to facilitate that was to remain HANDS OFF.

My Higher Self knew it.  It wasn't about punishment for Ray being a terrible father - it was forcing the issue to get him the care he insisted he didn't need, and I could do it all.

I couldn't - for any one of a hundred reasons, including, "I don't want to!"

My  Higher Self helped me acknowledge that's VALID - because it makes you look beyond the words to find the REAL reasons.  It's a lot more complex than, "I don't want to!" - while those words are coming from your lips, probably dozens of hundreds of images are flitting through your mind's eye - things like bathing a parent, changing a diaper, trying to get them to take meds while they insist they don't want to, trying to get them to eat while they're screaming that your cooking is disgusting - all those things you just *know* are waiting for you if you  allow the FOG to engulf you.

The Higher Self won't allow that to happen.  It's seen too much and has come too far. 

[goofycrumble]

Spirit, this reminds me of the online video Dysfunctional Families 'Eat Their Own' from Jerry Wise.

"There's still a small part of my brain that tries to understand the madness, but thankfully I'm getting better and better at recognising my triggers and detaching"

One minute I think it's her fault and then I think it's his fault and I'm being asked to take sides when I know they are both to blame

Your mother and father have had these negative mental and personality issues for a long time, probably before you existed and you get dragged into the crazy by association.

Just by being around you are involved against your will

My parent's difficulties have existed before I was born. It's now old age and illness that has caused these negative elements and consequences to become more amplified. Then when catastrophe strikes you are expected to be, psychologist, doctor, taxi, cleaner, friend, punching bag or any other role they feel entitled to expect you to be. You are just consumed. Whether its your finances, time, emotional energy or whatever. You are eaten and it only stops with physical absence. It's very sad I know how you feel

Our parents are starving and when a person is desperate, they will use whatever they can to get their needs met

There is an old saying in my island where my family are from "A un clavo ardiendo se agarra el que se está hundiendo" loosely translated as A drowning man will clutch at a burning nail

[Spirit in the sky]

Hi goofycrumble,

Trying to understand it with a rational mind would drive you crazy. They had another world war 3 yesterday over some minor thing, I walked into the middle of it by mistake and left again very quickly.

This morning they acted like nothing had happened, I actually said to my mother, I never know if I'm walking into a war zone or a love in when I come here. She was very put out and asked what meant. I told her I've been witnessing this behaviour all my life and I find it very strange. She replied that I was making it out to be worse than it was and obviously it hadn't done me any harm 

I just laughed, what can you say.

I've just started reading But it's Your Family by Dr Sherrie Campbell

Spirit, this reminds me of the online video Dysfunctional Families 'Eat Their Own' from Jerry Wise.

"There's still a small part of my brain that tries to understand the madness, but thankfully I'm getting better and better at recognising my triggers and detaching"

One minute I think it's her fault and then I think it's his fault and I'm being asked to take sides when I know they are both to blame

Your mother and father have had these negative mental and personality issues for a long time, probably before you existed and you get dragged into the crazy by association.

Just by being around you are involved against your will

My parent's difficulties have existed before I was born. It's now old age and illness that has caused these negative elements and consequences to become more amplified. Then when catastrophe strikes you are expected to be, psychologist, doctor, taxi, cleaner, friend, punching bag or any other role they feel entitled to expect you to be. You are just consumed. Whether its your finances, time, emotional energy or whatever. You are eaten and it only stops with physical absence. It's very sad I know how you feel

Our parents are starving and when a person is desperate, they will use whatever they can to get their needs met

There is an old saying in my island where my family are from "A un clavo ardiendo se agarra el que se está hundiendo" loosely translated as A drowning man will clutch at a burning nail