Denying that abuse and mental issues exist as a general concept

[easterncappy]

While conversing with another member of this forum, I realized that PDs love pretending that abuse isn't a real thing that can happen. Or that mental health issues aren't real. I sort of understand why - it hurts to accept that you were born into a dysfunctional family, that you're missing out on what lots of people take for granted. And in the case of chosen relationships, it must hurt to accept that after all these years, your spouse turned out to be a bad person.

My mom is PD, married to a PD, and was raised by PDs... I used to think I must be a drama queen because there's no way so many of them are in one family, but yeah, they tend to find each other. A lot of my early relationships were with PD boys because of a combination of normalizing the behavior, not having normal parents to look out for me, and having low self-esteem and thus believing I deserved the weird, bad things that were happening. A young girl with healthy self-esteem and good role models in her family isn't going to date these boys and later marry men like them. So I see why my mom ended up with my dad, my grandma ended up with my grandpa, etc.

Some of my mom's greatest hits:

"If I was a therapist, I'd tell depressed people to get a job, so they'd have less time to think about stupid things"

"Really? What do you have to be depressed about? You have everything you could ever want" (AKA the bare minimum for CPS to not get called, plus toys and trinkets that were somehow supposed to make up for the abuse)

"You know, it's really trendy for girls to make up stories about being sexually abused for attention"

"I refuse to be an abused woman. I'm strong. Only weak women get abused."

"Everyone did it back then" "You're heartless if you judge [her mom, my grandma] for doing that" "I love my mom even though she wasn't perfect" (this is in the context of describing literally some of the most vile forms of child abuse I'd ever heard of)

"You're a fool if you think Hollywood marriages are real" "Every couple does this" (this is in the context of my parents' extremely dysfunctional, loveless, yet codependent marriage - mine looks nothing like this, by the way, I must be doing it wrong!)

"Oh, is that another word your internet friends taught you?" (any time I tried to explain to her that there is something wrong with our family)

The mental gymnastics are just mind-boggling. You can see someone live so miserably, truly have no joy in their lives, just be so bitter and mean... but they'll also do anything to not accept the reason why.

[NarcKiddo]

My mother inclines in this direction. She can accept that mental issues exist but only if they are really "serious" - like someone driven to commit murder or arson or something. Sexual abuse perpetrated on anyone nowhere near puberty even she can accept is abuse. But once anyone gets near puberty it seems to be fair game. She thinks girls, in particular, all turn into little Lolitas and the Humbert Humberts of this world are powerless against them. She has read the book. I avoided it for years because I thought it fed into her narrative that the young girl is at fault. I tried to read it recently;  it made me feel utterly sick and I couldn't finish it.

She also scorns the girls and women who "make up" stories about abuse and heartily disapproves of the me too movement. She says sarcastically that paedophiles lurk around every corner.

She also pooh poohs therapy and says the only people who might be able to give sound advice are priests. She says people who seek therapy don't tell the truth anyway, but they would not lie to a priest because they are in effect lying to God and that is pointless. She also knows a therapist who has apparently said all therapy is rubbish and he just wrote a load of garbage to get his qualification. I have taken care to find out just who this therapist is (he is local) because while I don't believe what she says I also don't want to end up seeing him if what she says is true!

And yet she is not blind to the fact that mental issues run through her family down every branch. She has recently expressed fears she might end up agoraphobic like her father, although she has shown no signs whatsoever of that. What she does not (or will not) see are the actual issues.

[easterncappy]

Oh yes - my mom accepts mental issues only if they're like, cripplingly bad. For example, she has an aunt that has diagnosed schizophrenia. That she does believe in... but I think she still thinks it's exaggerated and/or a lot more in her aunt's control than her aunt leads on. But anything like C-PTSD, depression, anxiety, etc. are all things that mean you're a big stupid dumb dumb that just needs to toughen up. She only accepted that I might have PTSD when I talked to a therapist after experiencing extreme gun violence, but the idea that parents can give their children a form of PTSD is met with an eye roll and "yeah, right".

I think my mom experienced some degree of jealousy over me getting sexually abused by her own husband. She once asked me what I did to "end up in that situation", implying that normal grown men feel tempted by toddler girls going to the bathroom or something. She's skeptical of every story of rape and molestation that she hears, even if it's between adults she doesn't know. I think the only type of child abuse she believes is legitimate is beatings, because that's what her precious husband went through, and is the universal and never-ending excuse for his poor behavior (something something I don't have a heart if I think he's responsible for being a bad person or whatever omg don't I know that he got beaten as a kid?).

I have the opposite experience in regards to priests/religion. I am religious and my parents aren't. My priest's reaction upon finding out about my family was "everything about you makes more sense now, anyway you need to move away, call them once a year if you feel like it, and maybe arrange their funerals when they die". She seems to think that people pretend to be religious to look like good people to others (projection much?). But yes, therapy is bad and for lazy stupid dumb dumbs that can't handle life. She's convinced that they put ideas in people's heads, too. Like if a professional helps you realize that something you didn't want to accept was abuse, was actually abuse, it means that she helped you create a fake story.

[Cat of the Canals]

My mother definitely has a strange view of mental health. If it's bad enough (and someone outside the family) it's "so sad." When it was me, struggling with anxiety as a teenager and college student, it was, "Snap out of it."

She is militantly hostile and unempathetic about suicide. I'm not sure why, but I've begun to wonder if my grandmother (her mother) possibly used it as some kind of threat when she was a child. From the little I've been able to piece together, my grandmother seemed to have a pretty big waif streak, but there's little talk about it because both my mother and aunt started up with the "she was a saint" routine ever since she died.

PDmil, likewise, has never shown a shred of empathy for my husband's anxiety or his brothers crippling depression. And she was a mental health professional before retirement, ironically. 

[easterncappy]

The one person I know in real life who has an educational background in psychology has manipulative tendencies. It's sort of like public schooling... it attracts a lot of good people who genuinely want to help others, but it also attracts PDs who really want to be in that position of power over vulnerable people. Which is why I understand being picky about therapists, because some of them are not very good and you are trusting a stranger with your most intimate experiences after all. But therapy itself is still a great tool overall.

[easterncappy]

Something that I remembered and will also be a part of another topic I post:

When I was in high school, we lived in an apartment on the third floor. A couple maybe in their mid-20's lived right below us. The only interactions I ever had with the woman were when she took her tiny dog on walks, she seemed nice, though her boyfriend (I think) looked aggressive from the moment I first saw him. Every couple of nights or so, the man would scream verbal abuse at her for hours so loudly that I heard it all throughout our apartment. Really vile stuff, a lot of it highly sexist and just... bad. Vulgar, threatening, dehumanizing stuff. I felt bad for her and I recorded it on my phone and wanted to call the police, because this had been going on for weeks.

As an adult, I understand that maybe calling the police would have made it worse (I have outright seen DV victims lie to the police because they were that scared of their abuser - the one time I did call the police on a DV incident), but my mom's reaction upon hearing that I wanted to do that wasn't concerned for the woman's safety because he'd likely retaliate, but rather the man's well-being. "Really? Are you willing to ruin that man's life over this?". She heard the literally hours long screaming monologues as well as I did and she had no empathy for the woman, she just didn't want me to "ruin that man's life".

Once, my aunt and uncle got into some sort of an argument, and he put his hands on her. She may not have gotten a brutal Hollywood style beat down (the only thing that Really Counts™ to some people), but from what I remember, she ended up on the floor and she had bruises and injuries to her wrist and arm the next day. Something that normal people obviously consider DV and abuse. That being said, my mom showed sympathy for a couple of minutes... when I brought it up the next day, the conversation was immediately shut down, I was treated as a bad person for bringing it up (my mom especially has this "you're crazy" gaslighting look on her face sometimes - I know it sounds insane but trust me it's possible), and "she must have done something to deserve it, you know how she is". Outside of self-defense scenarios, what the hell can a person do to "deserve" being thrown to the ground and injured?

Another time, a family friend (PD people find PD people - and non-PD people "stop being friends with them for no reason") had the police called on him by his own teenage daughter because he was throwing a violent drunken fit. When said family friend told the story (this was at a gathering), a few people seemed uncomfortable, but my dad immediately took his side. He told me that he'd "never forgive me if I called the police on him", very angry at this man's daughter. No empathy for the teenage girl who had to see her own dad throw a violent drunken fit, of course, because that was a weekly event in our household too. My dad was the worse of my two parents in terms of physical actions towards me, addiction, anger issues, etc. but my mom's the one that did more psychological warfare on me... they both seemed to believe that you're a bad person if you call the police on someone who is, like, illegally abusing you.

There's more and I might post it later, but it's interesting to me that any time anything like this is mentioned in circles with predominantly non-PD people, even ones who have never experienced any abuse, there's always 100% sympathy towards the victim and people just do not find excuses for the abuser. My parents come from a culture that's more sexist towards women than Western culture is on average, and you could tell from how they reacted to any situation with a male abuser and female victim. Even non-abusive ones... when my mom's favorite grocery store cashier was looking a bit down, she asked him if he's alright, and he said his girlfriend (who we knew nothing about) broke up with him (altogether weird interaction, I know). She spent the entire car ride home fuming about how "that girl must have been one of those spoiled princesses who doesn't value a hard-working man!" (we also knew nothing about the cashier besides the fact that he had some fun facts about our country of origin).

[notrightinthehead]

Gosh! You sure have a lot to process and digest! Congratulations on your clear sightedness and decision to leave the abusive system.

[easterncappy]

Thanks. Sorry if it's a lot of detail but I remember when I was figuring out that my mom and dad were the bad guys and not me, and I'd read websites like this and read the detailed accounts of PD doublethink, gaslighting, and other nonsense and go "wait... mine do that too...". I don't think I ever had a warped moral compass seeing as I was always instinctively uncomfortable and confused when my parents said things like that, but it's taking a lot of effort to like... not normalize terrible things after growing up seeing everyone in my family do just that.

[Rosa Rugosa]

My uNPD Mother has talked a little about her childhood and pointed to some things that are abusive (maybe had an NPD mother herself). If she is questioned on her behaviour it is her go to excuse.

She went NC with me a year ago. She was driving, we almost crashed, I had a panic attack (diagnosed PTSD from a previous car crash), after the panic attack I used the wrong tone of voice to her. She began the silent treatment. My sister had discarded me a few years prior so my Mother's silence hit me extra hard. I broke down and cried, begged her to stop. In the past I'd leave them alone for a while, try to talk to them when they had some time to cool down.

This time I didn't, crying, I told her it hurt, that ST can be considered abuse today (I think this was a big mistake). I told her it's ok if she's mad at me but these grudges aren't healthy, we could work on better communication (also a mistake). It was very frustrating, a huge word salad of gaslighting, pushing my empathy buttons, we went round and round in circles, how she's always done her best, been so nice to everyone, done so much for everyone, thought she had given me a good childhood, that I should care more about her physical health and how that effects her. All the things that had worked in the past, but it didn't work this time, I didn't capitulate.

Long story short... She said, 'it's because of my childhood' and 'I cant change how I was raised' - she accepts parts of her childhood were abusive but is unwilling to admit a need to change/heal. So, she decided to solve the situation with her trusty ST, or maybe discarding, it's been a while.

My Mother and Sister both suggest victim blaming for a lot of sexual and domestic violence. If it happens to a child the man should be killed, if it happens to someone above puberty its a shame/blame game for the woman, or suggesting it didn't happen all. Sorry its so gendered and heteronormative examples, I don't remember them speaking about cases that differ from this. It's hard to hear such misogamy from FOO and to know you can't get help and support from them when it happens to you. (It happened to me, I was almost a teenager and didn't think they'd believe me or they'd likely blame me, so I never told. I feel so guilty I didn't go to the police, like it would be my fault if it happened to someone else, so I took his guilt too.)

Oh, and my Mother is a feminist... 

I also went from PD family through some really bad friend and romantic relationships (possible PD's here too). I had it in my head that I must be subconsciously loving all the hurt, seeking it out. I don't love being hurt. My Mother and Sister trained me to accept unacceptable behaviour. I chose people who treated me badly because that was what love looked like for me, drama and hurt. I didn't choose that template for love.

Iv'e heard similar things about various professions, often health care, being not worth the paper the degree is written on. I always put that down to their general critical and untrusting demeanour. But maybe there is a little manipulation in there too?

My Sister and Mother believe mental health conditions like dementia are real, they think other MHC are mostly just a way to get attention. Weak, lazy, attention seeking - it would make the DSM-5 a very short read.

I have found labels of abuse are hard to pick up and take on. Like, if I don't take the label I can stay a little longer in the more comfortable part of my brain that tells me everything is fine, take the blame, move on. It must feel awful for PD's too, maybe it hurts too much to look too deep inside. It might make them 'weaker' than the people they criticise when they choose to avert their gaze from themselves.