Anyone experienced discarding?

[Rosa Rugosa]

Hello,

In a few posts I've mentioned being discarded my by uNPD sister (almost 4 years ago, she's my only sibling). My uNPD mother may have discarded me too, but it might still be the silent treatment (1 year, has been longer in the past).

I'm calling it NC, but I'm not sure if NC and discarding are really the same thing? Same result, different game?

Has anyone been discarded by their PD person, people, family and feel comfortable sharing? I haven't found any threads on this yet.

My non PD father still talks to me. Not very often, maybe three times this year. He has to be alone to call me so I don't push for more contact with him.

Thank you in advance for any insights or sharing your discarding experiences.

[easterncappy]

Yes. I have a relative who I'm 99% sure has NPD. I'm usually squeamish about armchair diagnoses, but I'm confident enough in this one to say "uNPD". I didn't really know her well until I was a young adult, I mostly just grew up with her kids and was close with them. They were always weird kids, and looking back, I see how much of their behavior was typical abused kid behavior (especially of the "my parent is a narcissist" variety).

She was a nightmare, though. When I started to get close to her as a young adult, she showered me with all sorts of weird affection, cheap gifts*, etc. and tried really hard to foster a sense of obligation towards her. She used to call me literally in tears about posts I made on social media, none of which were particularly offensive (a lot of it was teenage emotional posting or just weird things I thought were cool). She demanded I take them down and apologize. She'd show up to our house frequently demanding apologies for various transgressions. If I didn't reply to one of her texts quick enough, I got another passive aggressive text about how I only know about her when I need her.

Due to my closeness with her kids (namely her daughter that is the same age as me), and the fact that I was like 17 years old, didn't know any better, and was used to being manipulated, I bought into it for a long time. Eventually, I was really tired of picking up the phone just to hear someone crying about how I hurt their feelings by doing something no one in their right mind would get upset by. I didn't want anymore "gifts". I didn't want to be treated "just like one of her own kids" anymore. I just sort of stopped apologizing, stopped picking up the phone, stopped replying... One night, I got a notification that she unfriended me off of our social media website of choice, and the texts stopped. Her kids refused to speak to me from then on. I wanted to get back in touch a year and a half ago, mostly with her daughter (who I hope realizes what's going on with her family one day), and the letter was either never received or was ignored.

Oh well. I've come to terms with it. I assume it would hurt a lot more if she was my mom. I was confused about it for a couple of years, until I found websites like this. It makes sense now. I miss the friendship I had with her daughter but with families like this, the chance is higher that they turn out like their PD parent than that they break away.

*I'm not complaining about her gifts not being expensive. I feel like I have to clarify this because my own parents always made me out to be a spoiled brat who wants luxuries in life (the closest I ever got to an apology from them is "sorry that we didn't have enough money to buy you nicer things" - it's just projection from them since I live a financially modest life now and that has never been one of my complaints about them). It's just that every time she showed up to the house, it was with weird things like opened bags of coffee, cheap or heavily used clothes that didn't fit anyone, etc. One Christmas she put like 10 boxes under our tree and they were full of random Christmas decorations from Dollar General. I guess the point was so that we'd say "gee, she sure buys us a lot of stuff, guess I can't ever have boundaries with her". She was a bit of a hoarder, too.

[Amy-Rose]

My discards by a "close friend" are usually temporary, but can go on for months and it's pretty much silent treatment until she wants something again.  Sometimes I wonder if she's more BPD than anything. But she doesn't seem to suffer with abandonment problems so not so sure.

My sister definitely is NPD and haven't spoken to her in years but I was the one who picked the split. She can't hunt me down as she used to because I moved and didn't tell her where.

[Starboard Song]

At Out of the FOG, we generally use these terms differently:

• No Contact - A relationship status in which a person, for healthy reasons, decides that No Contact is appropriate with a toxic person, usually to provide them with a level of emotional peace or physical safety. No Contact is often indefinite. When it is temporary, just to take a break, people often describe it as "taking a break," rather than saying "I went No Contact."
• Silent Treatment - A temporary status in which a person refuses to interact, doing so to punish the other party for some transgression, or otherwise for unhealthy reasons such as anger or spite. It's a sort of temper tantrum.
• Discard - A long-term relationship status in which a person stops interacting with another indefinitely, doing so to punish the other party for some transgression, or otherwise for unhealthy reasons such as anger or spite.

That's my summary. It doesn't come from a rule book. And there is no rule book. But you get the idea.

I am 7 years NC with my in-laws. Our pattern is one you see a lot around here: over time the relationship had gotten rough. Periodic Siltent Treatments from them, from a couple weeks to a few months. As she got really ornery we took more and more conversation topics off the table, making the relationship thinner and thinner. Eventually, we had a crisis: Silent Treatment provoked by a major family issue involving end-of-life decisions. We could not compromise or sacrifice that person's integrity, so MIL lost it and announced she was discarding us! We battled with that for 6 months and tried to establish workable boundaries before declaring NC for our home, ending her relationship with our DS13 at the time.

This happens a lot: one silent treatment too many turns into NC forever.

By the way, we often call it the Silent Treat. That is a snarky way of observing that one should make the most of your peace when a toxic person chooses to temporarily not be in your life.

[moglow]

It can be hard to delineate between no contact - discard - silent treatment, and sometimes it's helpful to define the differences even if only to ourselves. For me:

No contact - deliberate cessation of contact, typically when all avenues of sustainable decency have been burned off. Every attempt at even the most superficial contact has been a dismal failure, with more abuse being heaped than we are willing to allow. Self preservation and healing are the goals;
Discard - one party is of no further use to the other, possibly never were but the discarder no longer pretends otherwise and erases the discardee entirely;
Silent treatment - strictly punitive, proving a point [whether real or imagined]. May start and end abruptly, rarely [if ever[ any explanation or apology and it's swept under the rug as "figment of your imagination" if ever addressed directly.

So yeah, not a whole lot of difference other than perceived intent. I believe at this point mother has discarded me - we've never had much of a relationship and it took a hard dip south when I started standing and speaking up for myself, stating my views whether she agreed with me or not, not backing down just because she disagreed. I'm still the same person whether I have her approval or not, ya know?

Due to the way she talked to and about me, I backed off on contact then backed off some more, had some periods of no contact with her but more of her silent treatment when I'd done [or not!] something with which she was displeased. I found that when I stopped reaching out, so did she. She would only mirror mine - if I sent a neutral Christmas card, I'd received one from her within days. If I call, she'll return a call [then show not one whit of interest in me, but ask about any and everyone else, ending the call abruptly for no apparent reason other than she'd said all she had to say. Never mind that maybe I called because I had something to tell her - didn't matter].

We're at an impasse - I have nothing to say and don't care to be sniped at, so I don't call. Because I don't call, she doesn't. First time in my life it doesn't eat at me and make me feel less than for her to push me aside. I feel relieved and at peace.

[easterncappy]

By the way, we often call it the Silent Treat. That is a snarky way of observing that one should make the most of your peace when a toxic person chooses to temporarily not be in your life.

I love that. My grandma loved the silent treatment... it worked very well on my mom from when she was small to this very day, but whenever she did it to me, I would just think "wow, that's nice, at least she won't be mean to me today". Except, from my experience, silent treatments come from a place of really, really wanting you to beg for them back, apologize profusely, etc... which I never did, so she would end the silent treatment early just to verbally abuse me some more. My mom tried it a couple of times, too, but was left with no choice but to start speaking to me again, because after a while, I learned to stop apologizing for things I didn't actually do wrong. I also had boyfriends who did that when I was a teenager. The same tactic worked on them... don't approach, don't apologize, don't beg... "wait, why isn't she trying to get me back?"... because you're manipulating me and it's juvenile, cruel behavior! I didn't ask to play this game with you.

I think that's a huge distinction. Discarding is more "you're not a good supply of whatever psychological nonsense I need, bye bye". Silent treatment is more "I'm going to make you feel terrible until you're literally on your knees begging for me back, but I don't actually plan to stop talking to you permanently". If you've been discarded, not talking to them won't make a difference. If they're trying to use the silent treatment, they're literally counting the seconds until you say "sorry'.

[Pepin]

Yes!  I was discarded for 4 years by NF.  He couldn't stand it that I had broken free without him knowing in advance.  He dropped me nastily over the phone with one of his commonly used disgusting tones.  During that time I flourished.  I later learned that he had hired a PI to keep tabs on me. 

We resumed communication at his retirement.... No apologies from him and I of course offered nothing either.  I allowed him to be a part of my life for several years with strict boundaries.  It pissed him off so much that he couldn't get to me and he retaliated.  As a result, I went NC with him and it will be that way until his end...he just tuned 91   

[Rosa Rugosa]

Thanks so much everyone.

I think I have been calling it NC because discarding makes me think of garbage. Maybe I'm still reluctant to see my situation clearly, that to them I am disposable, not worth enough to keep. I'm still finding it hard to accept. Reframing it for myself with botanical metaphors of seed dispersal and growth seems like toxic positivity right now. It's how I want to see it and live it, but it's not what they did.

I will stop calling it NC in the forum (and IRL), sorry if I confused anyone.

So, it's all about supply?

This makes sense to me, I still think I could repair the relationship that was, if I said and did the right things for the right length of time. But I don't want to burn myself to keep them warm anymore. So I guess I'm at an impasse too.

Is discarding more common in some PDs than others?

I think they're both covert/vulnerable uNPD, but my sister can be overt if the situation is just right. If people with NPD are reliant on supply, is it more likely to result in discard when their supply dwindles?

[moglow]

Rosa, if I may, try to reframe it not as a statement of who you are but their mindset overall. They're not the same thing. Just because someone says/thinks you're a peanut butter sandwich [or liverwurst] doesn't make it so - that's THEIR stuff and will always say more about "them" than it does about you. You don't have to buy into the sad mindsets of others, not even when it's family. Yes, it stings more because those people supposedly know us best - but DO they, really?

I think many/most PDs see others through a completely different lens than what we do. I don't know that it's necessarily a conscious "less than" attitude, but possibly it's an external expression of how they feel about themselves? Overkill, if you will, to hide who they really are. BUT the expression of it is most assuredly conscious and deliberate choice. Just as we can all stop before we speak or act, run it through filters to determine if that's the hill we want to die on, PDs have those same choices, even though they don't always exercise it. Lack of impulse control is one of the issues with mine - if it comes up it comes out, spews everyone around. She can control it because I've witnessed it many times, her choking it back to answer a phone call or because strangers are around. The instant we're private again the gloves come off. Or she'll hold on to her "shame" and it'll come out weeks or months later as if it just happened.

Our job is to nurture and protect ourselves. The realization -through this and your other thread actually- that I've actually been discarded by my mother, isn't as awful as I would have thought. I've had time and distance [both physical and emotional] to look back, particularly the past few years, and I think the discard happened a very long time ago and I failed to see it. So much hurt for so many years, only to find that it was all a waste of the time God gave me. My *life* is most assuredly not the waste of time and air as my mother had hinted or said outright, but the efforts at drawing her out, trying to please or be seen by her, seeking her approval or at least recognition of me as Mo the daughter ... so much waste and heartache. She's a very sick person and she makes no effort to heal either herself or those around her. So she's alone.

You can't heal a relationship by yourself, Rosa. You might twist yourself in knots, say or do the "right" things for a while, but if they choose anger and spite it's right back where it's always been. If they're like mine, they will always choose anger over peace, will invent a mad if necessary. One thing that shines out in your posts is, this is a pattern within your family. It's NOT just about you or their relationship with you - they've done it repeatedly to many others. With that, how can it possibly be personal and hurtful towards *you* the individual? It's personal because these are our families, but it's NOT personal when we step back and see the history. That's ALL on them, honey, and our job is to find acceptance with their choices and stop whacking ourselves with it.

Wishing you peace.

[Starboard Song]

I think I have been calling it NC because discarding makes me think of garbage. Maybe I'm still reluctant to see my situation clearly, that to them I am disposable, not worth enough to keep. I'm still finding it hard to accept. Reframing it for myself with botanical metaphors of seed dispersal and growth seems like toxic positivity right now. It's how I want to see it and live it, but it's not what they did.

I will stop calling it NC in the forum (and IRL), sorry if I confused anyone.

Zero need to apologize.

These are hard things to talk about. Many of these terms are used to distinguish who is acting, their motive, and whether it is seen as long-term or not. But there are no hard and fast rules and everyone gets how hard it is to understand and to talk about. And some of us disagree, even after a long time on these boards, about when to use certain terms.

You are trying to take care of yourself now, and that takes some understanding and some healing. I'd like to direct you back to our Toolbox for more reading there, and I also recommend considering some of the links in my signature: one row is tactical stuff about dealing with toxic relationships (mine are focused on family rifts and BPD), and the other line is about personal healing and strength. Radical Acceptance was the single biggest help to my DW. For me, the Mindfulness book was the hero.

[Catothecat]

  times a thousand.  It really can be them and not you.  The discarding, NC, whatever it is they do reflects their mindset and theirs alone.  Yes, they can see you as not worth their time or effort and it's hard not to absorb that negativity because a lot of our understanding of ourselves comes from our interactions with others.  But with a PD the interaction isn't an honest one.  Who you are as a person doesn't matter to them.  What matters is what use you have to them.  At the end of the day, how you feel about it doesn't concern them.  How they feel about it is all they worry about. 

I think PDs are more likely to use discard than NC, because NC implies a more conscious act, a response to a negative situation.  PDs don't seem to have that level of awareness.  To them, it's often all-or-nothing.  You are either "with" them, or not in their life in any meaningful way.  They discard because going NC doesn't make sense to them.  And at the end of the day, that can be the best outcome because when they remove themselves from your life, you're spared the ongoing toxicity that never really ends until they choose to end it.  Again, what you want or need doesn't matter to them.  It's always All About Them. 

[Unbroken1]

I was discarded by my uNPD ex many times over (as deliberate invalidation, mostly, but also through passive-aggressive behavior) the course of our 23-year relationship. The final, conclusive discard happened when she realized (subconsciously, most likely) that no matter how much effort she put into it, I wasn't going to be the one to move to end the marriage. I was so enmeshed in the trauma bond that I was convinced that the marriage could be saved so long as I kept trying (codependency at its finest).

Meanwhile the wheels were turning in my ex's disordered mind to find ways to make sure I would pay big time for my transgressions, which she was never able to verbalize. I had failed in my assigned role to read her mind to know what my failures were, so punishment was needed to make me hurt as much as possible during the process of the divorce. It was actually this behavior that I couldn't quit ruminating on afterwards and which led me to the understanding that I had been in a long-term relationship with a possible undiagnosed, vulnerable/covert narcissist. This insight was pretty much confirmed by my previous understanding of her older, overtly uNPD twin brothers and the influence they had on her in her childhood, as well as the stories she would tell of the punishments she received from her cruel, sadistic mother.

She also discarded her BFF of many years before our marriage ended, and placed the blame on her friend as a (supposed) misunderstanding. I was puzzled at the time: this friend and her husband had provided a physical and emotional rescue when my ex had (supposedly) escaped a previous relationship with a (supposedly) crazy ex. So when the friendship came to an abrupt end, it just didn't make sense. Now I know better.

I have said that my discard was the emotional equivalent of being thrown out of a moving vehicle, and then being run over a few times as the driver stops to back up and forth a few times to insure the job is finished. The intent is to inflict as much emotional pain as possible.

[easterncappy]

Rosa:

From everything you said, your mom just decided to not like you from the moment of your birth... this happens to a lot of us. They express it in different ways, like for me the "love" was always very conditional and dependent on how much I lived up to her mental picture of myself (if I ever strayed from it I was "changing" and she "didn't know what happened to me"), for you... you were just outright bullied by her. It literally sounds like what high school bullies in movies do, ridiculous. I'm sorry you had to go through all of that. And it hurts because that's your mom and you're biologically wired to want her love and approval, and she's supposed to give that to you. She isn't supposed to have a personality disorder. The parent/child relationship has significance even if it's flawed. Your interactions with your mom and dad as a child set the stage for the rest of your life (but you can re-parent yourself). It hurts. It's okay that it hurts. It'd be weird if it didn't hurt.

But ultimately, we all do need to cut our losses. Even those of us whose parents still talk to us. We can't force them to be good parents, to love us, to treat us right. Even if they decide that today is the day they go to therapy and get better, we'll never have a normal relationship with them - that ship has sailed. My husband comes from a dysfunctional family, his mother's side is pretty much entirely personality disordered. His mom is probably the closest I've ever seen to a PD parent "getting better"... years after he moved out, he can still only handle talking to her a little bit here and there. She keeps getting sucked back into PD behaviors and her weird relationship with her PD ex-husband and it's like she hits the reset button each time. And this is in one of the very rare, super unlikely, probably like 0.0001% of cases where the PD person admits to at least some of what they did wrong to you and more than likely has a desire to fix it. Yet she still can't make it through a phone call without being disrespectful in some way. I've yet to see a case where a truly happy, healthy family dynamic came out of this. These people are sick. Even if they wanted to be, they couldn't be good parents to us.

Please don't count on it. There isn't a normal person hiding under layers of personality disorder. You can't hack away at the personality disorder until you unearth a loving mom. I've tried, too. It just broke my heart. One of the worst days of my life was realizing there isn't a nice mom hiding under the abusive behavior, that she didn't just need a little push to get better. Nothing's been the same since then, but I still can't help but think I can fix her or that there's something I'm doing wrong - there isn't, though. These people are the "problem". You are not.