How do you surrender?

[drpepper]

Super complicated dynamics of intergenerational trauma but bottom line and after further consult with another elder family member regarding a more long term view of MIL's patterns of behavior, I truly believe MIL (and likely her sister) has BPD.

After this past weekend with MIL and said flying monkey sister behaving with general disinterest towards our toddler, open contempt towards myself and brazen emotional violence directed towards DH (badgering him repeatedly about our housing situation clearly being obtuse and accusatory but ultimately leaving him feeling questioned and mocked regarding his ability to provide for our family) DH has given up on extending invitations to build trust and rapport. The emotional toll on both of us and the dissociative effect it creates for both of us simultaneously is wildly unhealthy for our young son, so that is that.

When I have a family member who has been reaching out to MIL with love, care and empathy for over 30 years tell me that MIL's deep woundedness continues to show up as it always has but now WORSE and that NOT ONE family member (other than flying monkey) have any positive rapport with her and experience the same mistreatment that I described was both validating and infuriating.

I keep having this misguided idea that maybe one book recommendation, one podcast link, one thoughtfully worded card noting radical acceptance or even apologizing for my role in our conflict (I do acknowledge I absolutely have taken a snarky tone or roll my eyes at her and furthermore I have not made any independent attempt to get to know her, woman to woman rather I am at times probably used as a conduit for my husband's sadness that manifests as anger in me due to my own Mother wound!) BUT my husband says ABSOLUTELY NOT because there is nothing that will impact her unwillingness to seek help or change.

So since I can only focus on myself... how does anyone else just, "forget about her" I suppose? Or surrender my emotional investment in this dynamic (even though that feels so... not me?) I think I'm done being angry and have accessed more empathy for her experiences... until I think about how she snapped at my son to pay her attention with the same urgency in her voice as I have literally observed other caring adults respond when he is about to touch a gas stove. She won't ever be a real Grandma and sadly she did such a number on her boys, I would never allow him to spend any time alone with her.

Welp, her visit served her purpose - She's living in my head rent free, anyone have any good eviction advice?

Of note: MIL is aware I am a MH clinician by training despite not functioning professionally in that role currently... and I do believe she finds me additionally suspicious due to this + more enjoyable to mess with if that makes any sense? The way she said goodbye to me as though she was a high school beauty queen waving from a pageant car was nauseating. Miserable woman this one.   

[Andeza]

Hmm, I might examine more closely the why. Why is so very important. So, why is she in your head? Why do you focus upon, or ruminate over past and future interactions? Identify the why and you should be able to trace the roots of it to something you can work with.

For instance, I had to examine my why for why I was still in contact with my own uBPDm over a year ago. My why was ultimately because I was simply stuck in the rut of the way things had always been and hadn't accepted I had an alternative. Like a dog running the fence, I had created a rut. But the walls were so steep I forgot to look up and realize I had a whole dang yard to play in! I had to shake off the usual, take a drastic step, and go NC in order to change myself. I can't change her. No one can force her to change, or improve, or seek any kind of help. She's happy with her misery.

I'm not saying you should go NC. That's a personal choice. I'm just offering an example. Perhaps she's in your head because you feel like you ought to be able to fix things. That is something I think you were trying to convey to some degree here. But the truth is as your husband says. She won't change for you. What she will do is continue to abuse you and your family. Of that, I have zero doubts. What you can do is arm yourself with ironclad boundaries. Assemble the list in your own mind, but don't inform her. If she does X, then she has to leave. If she says Y, then you will leave. If she's mistreating you or your family, then you remove yourselves from the mistreatment or she gets kicked out. Also, medium chill. Your DH got grilled, so he needs medium chill too. They start in about housing, you can legit say "Everything's fine." Change the topic. "That's not your concern." Change the topic. "We're not discussing that." Change the topic. Rinse and repeat. Because they will poke, and prod, and cajole, and try to get you break the broken record response.

Your mission, should you choose to except it, is to be the most darn boring person on the face of the planet.

[Cat of the Canals]

I keep having this misguided idea that maybe one book recommendation, one podcast link, one thoughtfully worded card noting radical acceptance or even apologizing for my role in our conflict (I do acknowledge I absolutely have taken a snarky tone or roll my eyes at her and furthermore I have not made any independent attempt to get to know her, woman to woman rather I am at times probably used as a conduit for my husband's sadness that manifests as anger in me due to my own Mother wound!) BUT my husband says ABSOLUTELY NOT because there is nothing that will impact her unwillingness to seek help or change.

I think this is a stage we all go through. Right as I was finally starting to acknowledge how completely dysfunctional my relationship with my mother truly is, I had this powerful urge to try *one last thing*. Maybe if I laid it all out for her, she would change. If I sat down and wrote her a letter, maybe I could find the magic words that would fix everything.

My husband talked me out of it, thankfully. And it was only later that I remembered how several of the books I'd read about having PD parents mention that you need to grieve for the ideal version of your parent that you'll never have... and I realized, "Ohhhh, I was bargaining!" So even though this is your MIL and not your mother, I imagine there's a feeling of loss. For you and your husband and your child(ren).

I still sometimes get little twinges of thinking that maybe there's something I can say/do/read/etc. But then I sit myself down and remind myself that I can only ever be responsible for 50% of any relationship. So even if I did scrounge up some magic words or a podcast or whatever, that would still require HER to do the other half of the work. Has she ever done that? Has she ever once taken responsibility for HER part of our relationship? No. She has only ever expected me to do all of it. Any shortcomings are my fault. The lack of closeness is something I've withheld from her. In fact, the notion that she shares responsibility is something I'm quite certain she'd be offended by. She would take it as an accusation that she was not the PERFECT mother.

So my advice would be to let yourself off the hook. It takes practice, honestly. I have to remind myself frequently that I can't fix my mother (or my MIL, for that matter). That they both have very real limitations when it comes to maturity and empathy. That it is, in many ways, unfair of me to expect them to behave like rational adults. That because of that, I have to be very conscientious about setting and maintaining boundaries.

[treesgrowslowly]

 

Me personally. I can't wrap my brain around the surrender feeling when it means give in to them. But I don't think that's what you mean?

But if you mean surrender as in surrender to the fact that this is how things are, then yep. I get that question you're asking from wondering it myself.

Accepting that this is how it is takes time. Give yourself time. Surrender to the fact that it takes time to really absorb this as your reality.

It takes time to re-do the "vision board" when there's someone some relative who is PD. We all have visions of what we wanted during family time. Then we realize their PD is going to prevent us from getting what we wanted. Then we feel guilty for wanting what we wanted. It's a process.

Other people without PD MILs will have this and that ...and we won't. It sucks.

They don't see their part in it like you said, just pointing out her role in this would offend her.

Once someone is at the point where they are "offended" when we try to talk about reality with them...its time to leave them alone.

[Leonor]

Oh, Trees,I like that idea: "to leave them alone." It makes me think about c as *my* way if not bugging them: for more understanding, for greater insight, for another chance to work it out.

People cannot give what they do not have.

From this point of view, we can think of our own NC as being kind ... We stop demanding people transform into someone else, accept who they are in reality, and work from there.

[treesgrowslowly]

Leonor

You totally nailed it! This might be what we are surrendering to?

As you said it is an act of kindness in its own way.... to stop expecting people to change and quietly leave them alone.

Thanks for writing that. It really helped me too!

Trees

[drpepper]

Thank you all for your powerful responses, this has helped me immensely.

It is cruel to attempt to force someone to do something they are incapable of doing.

I surrender my guilt and shame for not being able to create healing for my husband and my son.

I surrender feelings of failure and will not allow my co-dependency tell me this rupture is my fault or duty to repair.

[treesgrowslowly]

Hey drpepper,

Good on you for writing this for yourself. Its not easy. It takes time and it happens in layers.

This sort of healing from a PD MIL is not linear.

PD in a family is powerful. We feel like there had been a cataclysmic failure. In a way there has. The older generation is "supposed to" bring care and love to younger ones in the family. When they instead bring abuse and fear and chaos and drama it is deeply upsetting to the order of things in a family.

In a workplace with a PD boss people can always hope for new management some day. But in a family, PD in the oldest generation is really upsetting. It is a real sense of loss. I've had so much anger that were stuck protecting children from someone who is supposed to love them.

And our codependency can work overtime to tell us to clean up the mess that was made by their narcissism.

What I think we can do here as an online community is help one another to see that there is life after this kind of forced rupture in a family. The narc will never take responsibility and will likely never change.

As we surrended to that we feel this awful stuff inside. We feel like they stole something that we valued - and how dare they....

There is life after narcissism. For us and for those who love us.

For the narc - their future holds only more narcissism. We will never be able to heal them. We can only heal ourselves.

Trees