Coronavirus guilt

[p123]

Just when you thought NC during the pandemic/lockdown was bad enough you now keep hearing about those poor elderly people in a care home in Spain abandoned in their beds, with many already dead. Just feels horrific knowing that and knowing they have probably heard about it but still not breaking NC.

The way I've been thinking about it is that I've fully recognised that my dad is not the same as me. He's like a cat in that I just can't talk to him. I can pet him, feed him etc but my cat will never be able or interested in listening to me. In the same way that my cat doesn't give a stiff who feeds him and isn't interested in why someone who used to feed him hasn't turned up so long as someone feeds him. Trying to communicate about his behaviour would be akin to the futility of talking to my cat about things I'd prefer him not to do. And that's what I keep coming back to. The whole futility and pointlessness of any contact. I've got nothing.

❤️❤️

Yep. Dad is treating CV like my cat does too.....

Wife having an Op/streets locked down - "so when are you coming to see me then because I'm stuck in the house"

[blues_cruise]

Dear Sidney37,

I just want to send you some love from my little place in the world. I read your post and I see that I am not the only one suffering. I relate and from my spirit to yours I send you peace.

My instinct about everything right now is that this is when we really need to practice self-compassion. I find the serenity prayer helps. But also standing outside of ourselves and looking at ourselves, lovingly, and acknowledging how hard this is. This is unprecedented and it is scary. 

Things we can do with the nervous, frantic energy:

1. Try to stay away from the news.
2. Practise more self-care than ever - tea, deep breathing, conscious, constructive praying. Baths. Water is calming.
3. If you have a skill that you can use to help, try it. (My friend has a sewing machine and she is sewing masks.) For me, I have picked one neighbour that I care about and offer her help. But also, I find keeping hands busy, moves the nervous energy. (I have started playing guitar.) My friend knits.
4. Take these days second by second, minute by minute and tell yourself: This is really big, but I can handle it. I can handle this is my new mantra.
5. Check in with the little child inside of you and see how she is. Mother her like a good mother would have during difficult times.

I think we can all handle this. But I know we will have moments where it feels out of control. That is not great for PTSD. So our PTSD must become the place where we exercise the most mindful compassion.

Some really great advice there!

I would add that it's important to acknowledge all your feelings without necessarily acting on them (meditation is amazing for helping you with this). Reflect and rationalise. I have felt pangs of guilt here and there, but then I recall what brought us to this place of no contact and envision going back to exactly the way things were before. The idea of it horrifies me. Now more than ever I would be expected to slip back into a role of being at uNF's beck and call with my boundaries not being respected (or acknowledged whatsoever). I won't allow this anymore, meaning he would rage, meaning that we would be back where we left off three years ago. There's no point. When I examine why I feel guilt it comes down to me thinking that others might look down upon, resent and judge me for not doing the 'right thing'. It's not because I genuinely want him back in my life. I do care and I don't want him to get sick, but it's time for others to step up and look out for his welfare. I tried for years and was never good enough or given any love and respect in return, so people who have more distance and are not automatically shoved into a scapegoat role are better placed to do it.

He says he can't understand why I've distanced myself from him and now he's got all the time in the world to reflect on it and come to some conclusions about himself and his past and ongoing behaviour. He could easily look up the term 'estrangement' on the internet and look at both sides of the coin. He could order books online the way I have done countless times to understand the situation and could learn so much. He won't of course, he will take the path of cowardice and delusion and choose to smear me to all who will listen. The operative word there being choose, because we are all adults here and mentally we all have free will. 

The three Cs:

I didn't cause it.
I can't cure it.
I can't control it.

[xredshoesx]

thinking of you sidney37

our job right now is to survive.  if that means the homeschooling needs to take a backseat then that's ok.    our area is the hardest hit in the state i'm in right now and people are just ignoring the protocols which makes me very angry because DH and i have been locking it down to one trip out a week for like a month now and people are saying we are snowflakes, etc.  because of that i get your rationing-  we are having similar issues with exposure from every vector here and nothing seems safe.


i serously told someone this the other day.  f*ck a fraction.  let's just get out of this alive.   so if that means your kids don't do homeschool until things are less severe in your area,  then that's ok.  you know what they need and can modify as you feel is appropriate because of the disability.  if you taking a break in your room helps keep doing it, esp if that's the only way you can get your H and kids to do stuff for themselves.   

if it helps, give yourself permission to put your parents on the bottom of the list.  you have your plate full as it is.  i'm also having to distance myself from the media as well as reminding myself of my WHY that i don't talk to my biological mother. 

[Call Me Cordelia]

Hey Sidney, how are you doing today?

I wanted to offer you some safe, socially distant hugs. And echo others that it's perfectly fine to just survive right now. You have double trauma at the moment. You're already processing and defending yourself against the personal crisis of NC, and now Coronavirus. It takes courage just to keep getting up in the morning. So well done.

That said, I'm finding it good to have some goals for the day for myself and children. On the outside our life isn't that different, since we homeschool anyway. But the social isolation is KILLER. (Insert joke about unsocialized homeschool kids.) We all relied on sending kids to play with their friends. My state has waived homeschool evaluations for this year so if even the state says screw it, well then for us today my boys getting outside and digging in the dirt is more important than checking off a math lesson. We can catch up on math, relationships are much harder to fix. All that to say you can drop homeschooling from your mind for now. Everyone's in a tough state of adjustment. Not very conducive to learning.

What we are doing is lots of reading aloud. Audible has children's books available for free. Singing and daily prayer. Lots of time in the yard. Board games. This may or may not work for you right now but we're working on some house projects. It feels good to have something that stays done. You know what I mean? Today I'm going to do some planting. And probably not mop, because more dirt will just get tracked in. Adding beauty to my life is a lifesaver.

I ration the food too, and am getting draconian about finishing what's on your plate before you get something else.

Not a very organized response but I hope some of it helps and brings you just a smidgeon of peace. We can't control any of this. It was always true, but CV puts it in sharp relief.

[SunnyMeadow]

Thanks Liz
I have tried every SSRI and SNRI over 15 years with worse and worse side effects,   They think i suffers from serotonin syndrome.  My old physician would prescribe Valium or klonopin for extreme situations, but my new one won't.   Frankly at this point I'm not even able to take care of my children without screaming at them, so I've been locked in my bedroom for since yesterday before I cause them PTSD.

I'm sorry you're going through this Sidney. When I feel I'm about ready to jump out of my skin and yell, I get outside and walk. Are you able to do that? Walk slowly or quickly, doesn't matter. Get outside and walk for miles. I use earbuds and listen to upbeat music or a  podcast about something interesting. It helps get me out of those thought patterns. I also found explaining to my kids that mom is feeling stress or sad right now helps me feel that I won't snap at them. 

I agree with the others, forget homeschooling right now. Like xredshoesx wrote:

i serously told someone this the other day.  f*ck a fraction.  let's just get out of this alive.   so if that means your kids don't do homeschool until things are less severe in your area,  then that's ok.

It's ok to do what you can do right now. If homeschooling and fractions take a backseat, that's ok. All these parents with kids at home now didn't magically turn into teachers. I wasn't trained as a teacher and I know I wouldn't have been able to do it.

Deep breathing, walking, yoga on YouTube, watching a silly show, some trash tv? Try any of these things to get you into a different mindset. Is there an internal mantra you can repeat to yourself. Something like drop the rope, they aren't worth it, they are coping just fine.

If you think about it, your parents don't have to worry about taking care of special needs children, homeschooling, living with an ADHD husband and a barking dog. They are probably coping quite well. They are fully grown people who caused this NC. I cope by feeling anger towards my mother. Any concern and caring I had for her is replaced by anger at her boundary stomping, chaos causing and general mean and nasty attitude.  She's not worth a lot of my mind space.

[Sidney37]

Thank you all.   I know this is someone else's post, so i don't want this to be about me.  The PTSD  got worse.   It was the worst PTSD episode I have ever had.   I was convinced that DH and kids were trying to kill me by bringing "infected" mail, packages and grocery deliveries inside the house without sanitizing them properly.   I don't remember several days of last week/weekend.   I'm no on a different type of anxiety med and feeling better.  That has never happened before and hopefully never will again. 

The pandemic certainly triggers PTSD regarding control which many of us with PD parents have issues around.  My movements are controlled.   I'm not allowed to leave my house.  Sort of like having a PD around who controls you.  I also have PTSD from having a PD ex who tried to kill me many years ago.  I spent months in the hospital so all of the news about hospitals and ventilators I'd very triggering.

Then in the midst of beginning to feel better, FIL had a heart attack and died out of state.   Poor DH can't even go to the funeral.   We live out of town in one of the 2-3 areas where the virus is really bad.   I can't imagine having a good relationship with your father and not being permitted to attend his funeral.   For me or another child with a PD parent, it would have been the solution to the struggle about how to handle a PD funeral.   For him, it's  devastating.

And then enD called from another number like clockwork just after FIL died (he didn't know) and more news of the virus appeared on TV.   I answered.   He was in tears worried about us and the virus.  Minutes into the conversation the phone got disconnected.   Without thinking, I called back thinking it was my cell.  PDm had walked into the room.  He had hung up on me, because he isn't allowed to talk to me.     When I called back, he pretended he didn't know what was going on, who I was and that he had to take another call from his BIL.     And that says it all about talking to them in a pandemic.  He's not allowed to talk to me and lied to me and my mother when he did.    Why should I feel guilty when she is so scary to him that he has to tell so many lies?!?!   

[GettingOOTF]

I'm sorry for what you are going through Sidney37. This is a very stressful time and it's incredibly triggering for anyone with any experience of trauma. I hope you are able to find some comfort in knowing your reactions are normal to this situation.

I'm also finding it triggering. It's bringing up a lot of stuff that I clearly never properly acknowledged about my situation with my abusing BPDxH. Not being able to move freely brings up stuff around how controlled I was too and seeing my neighbors and people online moving about like they are on Summer holidays brings up his disregard for my safety.

I live in one of the hardest hit places. No one in my family has reached out, nor have friends I would have expected to have heard from. This highlights how I have surrounded myself with and put so much effort into people who don't care if I'm alive. It's hard not to have this stuff impact is mentally.

I'm glad you were able to adjust your meds. Hang in there and stay safe.

[BrightMoon]

 The feeling of guilt would make sense if there was anything to work with, like if you'd had a silly argument and hadn't spoken for a while but they were otherwise a normal person. 

I am so glad I saw your post today. Ive been struggling over this a LOT lately. Self doubts. Questioning if maybe I expected too much and maybe they werent that bad after all. Wondering if the level of emotional neglect, shaming and so on was 'such a big deal after all'.

I feel a bit clearer having read it. I just wish all my doubts would lessen.

[Gaining Clarity]

Hi Jenny,

I hope you are well. Pandemics can cause a lot of anxiety in healthy relationships. I think even more so in toxic ones.

How long have you been NC? I think if you're in the early stages, it's understandable why you're questioning whether you should break it or not.

I can only speak from my personal experience. I've been NC for two years now. I've gone through the grieving process, realizing that I never had and will never have the parents that I hoped for. I've accepted it and over time, realized that my life has improved immeasurably now that unMom is out of it (enF has been gone for many years now).

However, I recently received a letter from unMom telling me I should reconcile because of the pandemic. Not so surprisingly, there was no self-reflection or remorse for how the relationship has deteriorated. No, I miss you and want to repair our relationship. Just you need to reach out to me since you're not speaking to me and you've ignored me all this time. More blame and accusations piled onto more than a half a century of that. No sincere desire to understand my position/feelings.

Like you, I don't feel any strong urge to break NC. Despite being gaslighted for most of my life, I've finally learned to trust my instincts. When I received this letter, my first thought was that because she is isolated, she's not getting her narc supply fulfilled and is hoping to hoover me. She also lost a narc supply recently so I think she's really desperate.

I think you should follow your instincts and do what feels right for YOU. If you really believe that this pandemic has made them see the light, then maybe there's a chance at reconciliation. However, if you felt compelled to go NC in the first place, then chances are you already know that nothing will improve or repair the relationship.

Wishing you well. Take care of yourself.