When they claim not to know what they've done wrong

[blues_cruise]

I actually believe NF to a certain extent when he says he doesn't know what he's done wrong. I think he compartmentalises all the awful things he does and he's so antisocial, narcissistic and entitled that he truly doesn't believe that social rules should apply to him.

I wouldn't even know where to begin if I were to write him a letter trying to explain my reasons for no contact. I don't think I'm qualified to offer up guidance on introspection to someone with no emotional intelligence whatsoever. I think even a trained professional with specialist expertise in his personality disorder would struggle.

There was no single thing that he did either, just a couple of straws that broke the camel's back (after decades of the camel dragging itself along the ground and begging for some kind of respite). It was a culmination of years of intense stress, anxiety and trauma from dealing with his ongoing behaviour. A letter could pretty much just be shortened to: "Your behaviour is/has always been consistently disrespectful and hurtful and I don't want to be subjected to it". This level of self awareness is so straightforward and basic though to the point of being laughable - how on earth does anyone need to have that spelled out to them?

Being mean = people not wanting to be around you. You've fallen out with dozens of people over the years and your other two children aren't keen on knowing you either. I don't get what is so hard about this, it's just basic socialisation.   

[JustKat]

I think they know but at the same time they think we deserved it, so they don't understand why we're so upset. In my case, it was my mother who was the N, though she definitely knew what she had done to deserve NC. She always acted like she had amnesia and couldn't remember the conflict between us, but after I went NC she sent me a multi-page screed in which she suddenly remembered every detail. She did tell everyone in her orbit that she had no idea what she had done wrong and turned people against me with a smear campaign, so I never made any attempt to send a letter. She knew.

My father is a different story. He was her enabler and believed every lie he was told about me. After my Nmother died he disinherited me for having "hurt" my mother, and made sure I knew the reason. I went NC with him after that but I really sense that he has no idea what he's done to deserve it. I've thought about writing a letter telling him how hurt I was when he sided with her, but I really don't think he remembers any specific events. I'm sure he thinks he was parenting a "problem child" and probably doesn't get why I'd be traumatized. But a revenge disinheritance is pretty brutal. As you said, "how on earth does anyone need to have that spelled out to them?"

So I really understand what you're saying. While some specific events are more traumatizing than others, narc trauma really is something cumulative that builds up over many years until our bodies come undone from all the stress.

The other problem with writing a letter is that an N is likely to weaponize it and use it against you by showing it to others as proof that you're a mean and vindictive child. Sending a letter probably won't get through to your father at all, but might be used to cause you further pain. If you're NC you may not care, but if you still maintain relationships with other family members anything that can be shared could end up hurting you. You might feel better to write it all down with no intention of showing him. Share it here, or with your therapist, but not with him. 

[doglady]

Hoo boy, can I relate to this!

My uPDm has openly told me 'we [she and enuPDF] just don't know what we're supposed to have done wrong.' 
I know this because they spread this view through our small local community and it has got back to me. Plus this is exactly the cringey, martyrish, histrionic way my uPDm speaks.

The thing is: I did tell them. They just would. not. hear it.

First, about two years ago, I tried to speak to them about the long-standing and more recent issues that broke that poor overwhelmed camel's spine. Their response when I tried to talk with them was to stare about the room, smile oddly and pretend I wasn't speaking (uPDm), and rage and scream irrational gibberish at me (enuPDf). What I was able to understand amongst all the insanity was that I was being gaslit, dismissed, invalidated and bullied for speaking up at all. Hardly surprising but to have it so in my face was retraumatising in the extreme for me and I certainly do not recommend it. Especially as I had previously spoken with my siblings - who had vented extensively for years about our parents, as had enuPDf about uPDm - and they (with the exception of uPDGCbro) had said they would support me stepping into the breach - but were (surprise!) nowhere to be seen when it counted and, with the exception of my youngest sister, offered no support to me following this unpleasant scene.

That was when I tried writing the email. I explained that I was writing as a follow up because I had things I needed to say and I hadn't been listened to when I tried to speak with them.

In the email I was rational and detailed but pulled no punches about the decades-long pattern of dysfunction. My parents' response was to ignore it for weeks and then try to turn up with donuts at my house as if nothing had happened. They were told to leave and that's when the shit really hit the fan. I was vilified, and my uPDm acted as if it was a life-threatening tragedy that I hadn't just continued to take it up the butt for FOO. And my father did nothing. Because unless he's 'forced' by her to rage that's what he does: nothing - except incessantly complain about her but never actually to her. Neither took any accountability for their behaviours. And they never will.

I am now NC with them and three of my siblings. GC made no effort with me except to try and bully me into submission, which is his general MO. Two other siblings, who I'd formerly been close to, made no contact until months later when they suddenly decided they were missing me. Yeah, no. And youngest sis lives on the opposite side of the planet and is basically in the same situation as me with regard to our FOO.

Now, regarding the whole idea of them professing to not know what they've done wrong: I believe it is more the case that they simply do not ever think they actually are wrong, ergo they have no wrong-doing to admit to.

Regarding whether they actually know: well, my uPDm certainly  knows when anyone else has ever done something wrong, so it's not as if she doesn't have her extreme morality radar ranging the terrain at all times, so there's that.

Regarding whether they 'forget' what they've done wrong, ah yes, the old selective amnesia. Given that uPDm has a mind like a steel trap and can remember exactly what everyone else has apparently done wrong going decades back, I don't think memory, per se, is the issue here. But selective memory, most definitely.

As to their weaponisation of letters/emails: mine definitely did this. It was head-shaking stuff. My uPDm's response was to eventually say that a friend of hers had noted the grammatical errors in it. Yep, that's it. A couple of typos here and there. Because that's what's important. Sigh. But did she address any of the actual issues? Nopeity, nope, nope.  And I say weaponise, because myuPDm also knew that's exactly where she thought she could hurt me, because she knows that I do a lot of writing for a living and it's pretty important for me to be on point with my grammar and expression. My father weaponised my email by complaining that it was 'too long,' ie. it said stuff that he didn't want to read about and he just wanted to shut me down. No other comments, though. But then again, he's never wanted to hear me. So they both knew how to weaponise and trigger me there.

I write my 'too long' story mainly as a cautionary tale. I'm now fully NC and feeling far better than when I was in contact with FOO.

Like you, Blues Cruise and Just Kathy, the cumulative effects were just too much to sustain anymore and took a major toll on my health.

[SunnyMeadow]

My mom does the same thing. "I wish someone would tell me what I've done wrong"!

Does she really want someone to list it out? Does she know what she's done to people? Do the comments people make to her about her behavior sink in? I truly don't know.

I personally would never list it out on paper. I went NC for a while and when she finally got ahold of me, she asked for an email listing all she had done wrong. Maybe it's some weird self-punishment thing.

There is NO WAY I'd do this because in a week or so I'd get a novel sized reply from her. She'd break down each and every point I made and turn it into someone else's fault. She's like a dog with a bone when tasked with replying to someone. She loves it and it sustains her for months. It's absolutely sick. I said "I'm not sending you an email, but I'll tell you why I stopped talking to you". She flipped all of it around to be the victim so there's no winning with them.

I still don't know if they know that they've done wrong. I know my mother is always RIGHT so I can't imagine she actually feels like she's done wrong.

[JustKat]

I know my mother is always RIGHT so I can't imagine she actually feels like she's done wrong.

I'm sure that part of the reason my Nmother never felt she had done something wrong was because, in her mind, I deserved it. She had a rotten kid that needed to be punished for her bad behavior, therefore her actions were justified.

[Adria]

My narc sister told me one time that she learned from my narc father, "This is what you say when you are caught, or when someone questions something awful she did, "I don't know what you are talking about." 

I guess that pretty much sums it up.  So cowardly and cheap, but hey, it works for them.

[moglow]

I wouldn't even know where to begin if I were to write him a letter trying to explain my reasons for no contact. I don't think I'm qualified to offer up guidance on introspection to someone with no emotional intelligence whatsoever. I think even a trained professional with specialist expertise in his personality disorder would struggle.

There was no single thing that he did either, just a couple of straws that broke the camel's back (after decades of the camel dragging itself along the ground and begging for some kind of respite). It was a culmination of years of intense stress, anxiety and trauma from dealing with his ongoing behaviour. A letter could pretty much just be shortened to: "Your behaviour is/has always been consistently disrespectful and hurtful and I don't want to be subjected to it".

See that's just it - looks like several of us have been subjected to "put it in writing" and it rarely ends well. As you point out, there's no one thing, no final tipping point, no last hurrah so over the top that it can't be ignored. It went out with a whimper rather than a bang, and no one can stomach that. They want PROOF! of how awful it is and would no doubt counter everything you say with an excuse, justification or lay blame firmly at your feet.  Anything you say can and will be help against you/me, and anything somehow left out doesn't count.

And as Doglady pointed out above:

...My uPDm's response was to eventually say that a friend of hers had noted the grammatical errors in it. Yep, that's it. A couple of typos here and there. Because that's what's important....

Seriously - your mother shared that letter, you pouring your heart out about your relationship, with someone else???! I can absolutely see mine doing this with a "see this is the kind of thing I get from my daughter ..." never mind the history behind it or her many demands that I put it in writing. To what purpose other than her to pick it apart for "errors" while missing the whole picture. HERS is the only stuff that counts, is the message I've been sent as far back as I can remember.

My mother, like yours, is firmly of the belief that 1) as the mother she can do whatever she wants and I'm to lap it up and 2) there's always always justification for her mistreatment of anyone, never any explanation or apology, much less simple admission that she made a poor choice in her behavior and can do better.

Blues, if you decide to write anything, keep it simple and to the point. Details would likely be nitpicked and if he's like mother, about the time he disagreed with something [or you make one statement he can refute] he'd shut down and that's all he sees. You're wrong, he's right and that's all she wrote. You can always go back to JADE: Don't justify, argue, defend or explain. You don't have to, really, no matter what he might say.

[TwentyTwenty]

My abusive narc parents didn't know what they did wrong, because they 'didn't do anything wrong'.

In fact, they still saw me as a child that must obey them, that they were entitled to punish, discipline and correct as well as order me around and demand where I live with my FOC. I was 50 years old and this was still their reality - They did no wrong, because as my parents, they were always right, and you better not correct them because God would strike you down.

So, I really believe they don't believe that they see it as they have done anything wrong, so naturally they'd say  'We don't know what we've done wrong."

And, I don't care if they ever know if they have done something wrong or not.

Because when I explained what they did wrong, well of course I am evil and unforgiving.

I just know I'll never ever let it badly affect my life again. They have had their last rodeo with their clown, and they'll have to find another to chew on.

[Hilltop]

Yep I use to get asked what was wrong, note not what had they done that was so wrong, no my parents have never once thought they have done anything wrong, they have made it crystal clear in their minds its all me.  I find it amusing slightly, that they won't talk about it, no this is never done in discussion its only ever asked in writing via a letter or text.

Like others I 100% believe and in some cases have been proven right that this information given to them is shown to other people.  It is simply to show how they are the victim, I can hear my mother now, I try so  hard, I reach out and this is what I get in response, all these accusations which simply aren't true, blah blah blah.

I haven't for a long time replied to any of the "concern" texts asking what is wrong.  I ignore them completely.  It is simply a game that we play for too long.

[Leonor]

Hello,

Another mysteriously upset child here!

My alcoholic father didn't understand anything. He had "children who didn't follow the rules." That's why they didn't live with him or want to see him much, all those awesome "rules"! He came from a long line of aging alcoholics who would answer a friendly call from their adult children with, "What, is your hand broken?"

My mother believes that I have been isolated by an emotionally abusive husband and a unethical therapist who has planted false memories in my brain and was so expertly manipulative that she managed to convince *her* therapist that I may have been abused. She comes from a long line of "abandoned mothers" who have been cut off by their "lost daughters."

My in-laws forget things only when their children express anger; when their children express sadness or plead, they remember but justify their behavior by complaining about their own horrible experience as children and how difficult it was for them during my husband's childhood. They use it to try to bond with their kids about how awful it all was.

You can totally write a letter, an email, a monograph, a graphic novel, a memoir!  The act of writing is cathartic. To allow yourself to express your truth is empowering. To see it all in black and white is clarifying. And to go back and read it when the fog rolls in is supportive.

Whether or not you send it is up to you. Just stay clear in that they are who they are, and a little piece of paper is not going to make a whit of difference. They aren't going to "get it." They're not going to read it beyond "Dear ...," unless their preferred way of dealing with issues is to go on the attack, in which case they'll mount an argument worthy of a supreme court clerk.

But you don't have to send it. That's the beauty of it. The healing is in the writing for you. Save it, shred it, burn it, send it to sea in a bottle.

You didn't do anything wrong. Saying how you feel about what you experienced isn't wrong.

Why not try to write it and see what happens as you do?

[Starboard Song]

I have loved this article, talking about the Missing Missing Reasons. The basic gist is this. This guy reads estranged parents forums and consistently finds them indicating that either they've been told a reason, or read it in a letter, but they write that off as abusive complaining and return to "I have no idea why!"

This is a pattern the author sees as pervasive in his review of estranged parents forums. It is of course not true that all intergenerational estrangements are justified, or caused by the parents.

[p123]

Yep I had it a few weeks ago when I laid it all on the line to my Dad. In his head, he can't see what hes done wrong. Of course, this is followed up "woe is me I don't even know what I've done".

As with others he compartmentalises and sweeps things under the carpet. If its obvious hes done wrong it gets forgotten about.

His best one is with my wife. In his head he doesn't understand why she won't speak to him. Even when I point out EXACTLY how he;s treated her. (and that I agree with her!).
Hes got this idea in his head that she disrespects him by not phoning him on his birthday to wish him happy birthday. Why? I get on ok with my wifes mother and I dont do this. Its like he expects people to pay "homage" to him. BUT again his answer is "but I've not done anything". I gave up.... You have.

[Andeza]

You know, I have no idea what uBPDm says or thinks really. She's blocked on all avenues, and although I speak with my grandmother, she doesn't talk about my uBPDm. Ever.

Probably some sort of whining about how she doesn't understand if I had to guess. Perhaps defaming my DH as well since he always had hard boundaries with her and never gave an inch. She never liked that and frequently complained that he wouldn't let her "joke" or "tease" in the way she enjoyed doing. It was not joking or teasing, and it was not funny to anyone but her.

Despite a message that, while very gentle was also to the point, she probably pretends to have no idea. Heck, with how BPD works, she may have deleted that message and then forgotten it ever existed. Who knows? Not me. Not sure I care really either... We could bludgeon them with the truth day after day and make no difference. It's the nature of the PD in general sadly.

[Call Me Cordelia]

My experience and observations of other people in this situation:

Adult child says, "You did x or said y."
"No I didn't! Or, if I did, that's no excuse for cutting off your mother! Or you're exaggerating or plain old made it up."

To someone else: "They never told me Why."

Whatever the adult child said or tried has been denied and rugswept and devalued into nonexistence. Just like so many other things in the adult child's life. The parent doesn't agree with it, so therefore the child's point of view doesn't exist. Which is exactly how they ended up being cut off without hope of reconciliation.

[moglow]

I've also read some of the estranged parents' boards, saw a number of posts where the parent go on and on about they just don't know what happened. several talked about face to face discussions, phone calls, emails, letters where their child[ren] went into some detail about "why" and it was still all pooh-poohed off that the parent didn't understand! My pea brain was thinking "what, none of y'all speak the same language?? It's right THERE, they SAID specifically what was said and how they felt and you somehow still claim to not know??" Few if any other posters point it out or quote it back to them, no challenge to reread it or break it down, no suggestions of changing things up so they could hopefully turn it around. Everybody just joined in on the "poor you, you're so mistreated and abused, guess we'll all eat worms" train.

[blues_cruise]

The other problem with writing a letter is that an N is likely to weaponize it and use it against you by showing it to others as proof that you're a mean and vindictive child. Sending a letter probably won't get through to your father at all, but might be used to cause you further pain. If you're NC you may not care, but if you still maintain relationships with other family members anything that can be shared could end up hurting you. You might feel better to write it all down with no intention of showing him. Share it here, or with your therapist, but not with him. 

Yeah, this has always been my gut reaction to it. My post was actually triggered by him coming round to my house uninvited last week and ringing the doorbell until my husband eventually answered, then laying it on thick to him about how he's a poor old man with health issues and just doesn't know what he's done wrong. I stayed out of the way during this and was so triggered at the time that I thought, "Right, I really should consider putting this in writing to him somehow so that he can no longer claim this" but I think this comes from a place of shame on my part because I didn't explicitely give him reasons for no contact. I just dropped the rope and stopped engaging with him. I agree, I can't win either way. I sit with some feelings of shame for the estrangement but although it might feel like a weight off my shoulders to finally get my truth out there in a letter anything I say will most likely be scoffed at and shown to other people.

I'd also be playing into his hands I think. He's been in hospital recently and needs an operation and frankly I don't think it's a coincidence that since his hospital stay he's started amping up the contact attempts. Logistically I'm the closest adult child living near him, he won't be able to drive for a while after his operation and his wife doesn't drive, so yeah...after 4 years of him only bothering to send a birthday card with no genuine attempts at reconciliation in between and some passive-aggressive dumping of childhood things on my doorstep once a year thrown in, I don't think the increased, urgent desire for "answers" comes from a genuine place at all.

Blues, if you decide to write anything, keep it simple and to the point. Details would likely be nitpicked and if he's like mother, about the time he disagreed with something [or you make one statement he can refute] he'd shut down and that's all he sees. You're wrong, he's right and that's all she wrote. You can always go back to JADE: Don't justify, argue, defend or explain. You don't have to, really, no matter what he might say.

I think if I ever did send anything it would very much be for me, not him. I would only do it with greater distance from him though, as I don't want to encourage unwanted visits to my home or any return correspondence. You're exactly right, he would read through anything I send in fight/defensive mode and not see the bigger picture. When it comes down to it, I just really don't like him, think he's horrible and want to protect myself from his manipulative and sadist behaviour. In a letter I think I could only generally allude to that as, "Your ongoing behaviour was causing me distress and I continue to need space from you." Even then he'll just feel attacked and it will be poking the bear, plus with no self awareness he'll throw it all back at me, play the victim and claim that my behaviour is causing him distress. To avoid that I could try saying instead, "I continue to need space from you, if you need answers yourself then all I can suggest is self-reflection and perhaps speaking to a mental health professional to help you work through it" which would be quite funny but again, poking the bear. There's just no point, whichever way I look at it.

But you don't have to send it. That's the beauty of it. The healing is in the writing for you. Save it, shred it, burn it, send it to sea in a bottle.

You didn't do anything wrong. Saying how you feel about what you experienced isn't wrong.

Why not try to write it and see what happens as you do?

I tried writing an unsent letter once a couple of years ago and gave up two sentences in because I could just imagine being ridiculed and invalidated. But thank you, yes, I am going to try again and see how it goes. If I stall again maybe I'll write to my past self instead and validate her thoughts and feelings.

[moglow]

Blues, the unsent letter is for YOU, to get out whatever it is you need to say in whatever form it takes. I've written several here, others at home. I've actually gained some peace by writing it out then having a ceremonial burning. Something about that cleansing fire, watching it all go down to ash and up in smoke works for my brain and helps me let go of of the ugliness.

You'll get no judgment here - part of the process is learning to not judge ourselves. We're here with you.

[blues_cruise]

Thank you so much Moglow, it's really reassuring to hear that.  I LOVE the idea of a ceremonial burning as a way of letting go of what doesn't serve you, it sounds like it could be really healing.

[Hazy111]

DENIAL is the strongest tool  in the PD armoury.

[Maxtrem]

I once heard a psychiatrist mention that the brain of a narcissist does not work like ours. The blame is placed directly on others. This would be a form of defense mechanism for their fragile ego. Continually blaming others would make it very unlikely that a narcissist would ever change. Their brains are programmed so that nothing is ever their fault.