Voicemails

[CinnamonBark]

Hi All,

The past few months with my Npd dad being in the mental hospital have been pretty stressful, not gonna lie. He is still refusing to pay bills or anything even though his relatives from the other side of the country are here.

He was diagnosed with Covid for the first time inside there and has been given his own personal room and phone- he's been obsessively calling me and leaving the weirdest voicemails. He gets these delusions where he's convinced he's going to die due to his self neglected health issues so he will call me telling me to go get the will, call the life insurance people etc.

 But last night he left a new kind of message where he praised me, told me how smart and vivacious I am etc. He had been nothing but angry and abusive for 21 years and it makes me really sad to hear that come out of his mouth because it's an admission that I was all those things the whole time, and that he chose specifically to abuse or ignore me every day for all those years. I wish I could believe the things he's saying, but anything that appears human with him is always just a mask or fake for attention- its not genuine.

The plan going forward is that he will be released at the end of next week and his sister and her husband will be there at his apartment until he can pay the bills/sell the properties with their help- then they will move him back to Oregon with them. This is a blessing but there's a lot of things I need to do that entails interacting with them, and I don't have a good relationship with all 3 as they were very abusive when I was younger.

I have not answered my father back the past couple days as I don't want to encourage the delusions, have any of you dealt with this kind of thing? Any advice would be welcome.

[Cat of the Canals]

Oof. That sounds immensely stressful. I'm glad there's a light at the end of the tunnel for you.

If you haven't checked out the Medium Chill guide in the Toolbox (https://outofthefog.website/what-to-do-2/2015/12/3/medium-chill), I highly recommend it. I actually printed out the list of examples for when I'm dealing with my PDmom and PDmil. It can be really helpful to have sort of a "script" at the ready for when they try to escalate.

Another thing I've found that works well is imagining myself as a scientist observing some kind of unfamiliar creature. Instead of internalizing their behavior and getting drawn into the emotional chaos, I stay a few steps removed, safely in my "observation room," taking notes on an imaginary clipboard. "Ahh, the PD has moved on from the temper tantrum and is now engaging in lovebombing in hopes that everyone will forget all the nasty things they just said. Fascinating!"

Wishing you all the strength to get through this.