Guest guest Posted September 15, 2011 Report Share Posted September 15, 2011 Hi everyone, I joined the list a few days ago but have been putting off saying hello. Lately writing about my nada and her crazy antics doesn't help me as much as it used to and instead I just sit and feel conflicted. I apologize in advance if my message is rather rambling; I tend to disassociate a little when recalling my past (since I spend so much time otherwise blocking it.) A little background about me: I'm 27, married with a great husband and a dog, no job atm and a type one diabetic. Think diabetes is hard? Try it with a nada who threatens to kill you and her if your blood sugars don't improve. She handled everything the wrong way... well don't BPs tend to handle *everything* the wrong way? heh. My current therapist is the first person who validated and told me my mom's behavior was unacceptable. Everyone else seemed to buy into her stories and tell me that if I just took care of myself my mom wouldn't have to worry about me and would approve and leave me alone. This current therapist understands about BPD and was the first person to have successful family therapy with my mom. She knows the BP " traps " and how to navigate through them (calling my mom out while still emotionally validating her.) My mom thinks she is a saint (amazingly since all my other doctors are satan.) People tend to ask if my dad is still in the picture at all. Well amazingly he and my mom are still married and we are on good terms. The thing is he has never made any family decisions. He just goes to work and asks my mom if things that need to be done have been taken care of. After learning about BPD I am wondering why my dad didn't protect me better. He never told me that my mom wasn't ever serious when she would drive off threatening to kill herself... He has a somewhat paranoid/distorted view of the world as well so he sticks up for her weird views of the world. My brother is 6 years younger than me and is still letting her control his life. She decides what he's going to study, washes his clothes, signs him up for his classes, does research on what jobs he should apply for, etc. He has always been much better at setting boundaries for himself and not seeming to care if they get into arguments so maybe that works for him. Also him being a boy makes her worry less because the worst he can do is knock a girl up whereas if I was even just alone with a guy I was automatically going to be raped. I was raised with the idea that a woman's virginity was a substantial part of her worth (there's an interesting book on this if anyone is interested I can try and find the name.) Thankfully our relationship has gotten much better since I moved out and became financially independent of her (but financially dependent on my husband *sigh*). She would use money over my head to force me to do what she wanted. She convinced me that I shouldn't take jobs that I was " too smart/good for " but the constant reinforcement of a negative self-image left me with no self esteem to apply for any of the jobs that were " good enough for me. " So now the most frustrating things I have to deal with from her are sitting through dinners where she talks about how she has to " fix " my brother's life because he just doesn't do it on his own and he's going to get sick/flunk out of school/etc if she doesn't. So I have to sit there and grit my teeth as she justifies doing the exact same things to my brother that caused me to have no motivation or skills to problem solve in my own life. Perhaps the reason why I don't talk/write as much about her as I used to is because things have gotten *sooooo* much better that do I really have any right to complain now? My only motivation in life was a)get praise b)not get yelled/nagged at. What do I do now that I can't rely on grades getting me praise and my mom can't yell at me any more? I need to get her tapes out of my head. How do I do that? Where do I find motivation and self-worth? Is it true that normal people don't just leave you if you have a fight or disagree? Just because I have depression and she doesn't have an official diagnosis of anything doesn't invalidate me does it? Thanks for listening. -Lars Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted September 19, 2011 Report Share Posted September 19, 2011 Hi Lars, welcome to the Group. You've found a bunch of people here who understand what its like to have grown up with a personality-disordered parent or parents; we " get it. " Listen, emotional abuse is abuse: it does damage. It leaves scars. Healing is a process, and it simply takes as long as it takes. Each of us has to find our own path to healing and peace, we each have to discover what we can and can't tolerate, what makes us feel better and what makes us feel worse or re-traumatized. This is the place to share what has or hasn't worked for you, to get some insights from others who are in the same boat when you feel " stuck " , to get validation for your perceptions and experiences, and get some cheers when something nice happens for you and some consolation when something isn't going well. I almost always suggest that new members check out the reading list of books at the home web site of this Group, and delve in to the information there is now about borderline pd, and how to handle/overcome feelings of co-dependence, how to set boundaries, etc. But it sounds like you already have some in-depth knowledge about bpd, which is great. Anyway, welcome. -Annie > > Hi everyone, I joined the list a few days ago but have been putting off saying hello. Lately writing about my nada and her crazy antics doesn't help me as much as it used to and instead I just sit and feel conflicted. I apologize in advance if my message is rather rambling; I tend to disassociate a little when recalling my past (since I spend so much time otherwise blocking it.) > > A little background about me: I'm 27, married with a great husband and a dog, no job atm and a type one diabetic. Think diabetes is hard? Try it with a nada who threatens to kill you and her if your blood sugars don't improve. She handled everything the wrong way... well don't BPs tend to handle *everything* the wrong way? heh. My current therapist is the first person who validated and told me my mom's behavior was unacceptable. Everyone else seemed to buy into her stories and tell me that if I just took care of myself my mom wouldn't have to worry about me and would approve and leave me alone. This current therapist understands about BPD and was the first person to have successful family therapy with my mom. She knows the BP " traps " and how to navigate through them (calling my mom out while still emotionally validating her.) My mom thinks she is a saint (amazingly since all my other doctors are satan.) > > People tend to ask if my dad is still in the picture at all. Well amazingly he and my mom are still married and we are on good terms. The thing is he has never made any family decisions. He just goes to work and asks my mom if things that need to be done have been taken care of. After learning about BPD I am wondering why my dad didn't protect me better. He never told me that my mom wasn't ever serious when she would drive off threatening to kill herself... He has a somewhat paranoid/distorted view of the world as well so he sticks up for her weird views of the world. My brother is 6 years younger than me and is still letting her control his life. She decides what he's going to study, washes his clothes, signs him up for his classes, does research on what jobs he should apply for, etc. He has always been much better at setting boundaries for himself and not seeming to care if they get into arguments so maybe that works for him. Also him being a boy makes her worry less because the worst he can do is knock a girl up whereas if I was even just alone with a guy I was automatically going to be raped. I was raised with the idea that a woman's virginity was a substantial part of her worth (there's an interesting book on this if anyone is interested I can try and find the name.) > > Thankfully our relationship has gotten much better since I moved out and became financially independent of her (but financially dependent on my husband *sigh*). She would use money over my head to force me to do what she wanted. She convinced me that I shouldn't take jobs that I was " too smart/good for " but the constant reinforcement of a negative self-image left me with no self esteem to apply for any of the jobs that were " good enough for me. " So now the most frustrating things I have to deal with from her are sitting through dinners where she talks about how she has to " fix " my brother's life because he just doesn't do it on his own and he's going to get sick/flunk out of school/etc if she doesn't. So I have to sit there and grit my teeth as she justifies doing the exact same things to my brother that caused me to have no motivation or skills to problem solve in my own life. > > Perhaps the reason why I don't talk/write as much about her as I used to is because things have gotten *sooooo* much better that do I really have any right to complain now? My only motivation in life was a)get praise b)not get yelled/nagged at. What do I do now that I can't rely on grades getting me praise and my mom can't yell at me any more? I need to get her tapes out of my head. How do I do that? Where do I find motivation and self-worth? Is it true that normal people don't just leave you if you have a fight or disagree? Just because I have depression and she doesn't have an official diagnosis of anything doesn't invalidate me does it? > > Thanks for listening. > -Lars > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted September 22, 2011 Report Share Posted September 22, 2011 what a great question on 'where do I find motivation and self-worth' I haven't figured out those yet. I am languishing without either. It is not because i was driven by them because we got above average grades and that was fine by them. narcissist fada did not want his kids to do better than he had in life and nada didn't know what was possible but now I see there is some of the 'squashing down' of her kids potential in her too. i was motivated to provide the adequat emotional support at the moment and to try my best to guess what that might be. the end. needless to say codependency has been a huge part of my life. I sure don't have any answers of my own but am interested in what other people will say. > > Hi everyone, I joined the list a few days ago but have been putting off saying hello. Lately writing about my nada and her crazy antics doesn't help me as much as it used to and instead I just sit and feel conflicted. I apologize in advance if my message is rather rambling; I tend to disassociate a little when recalling my past (since I spend so much time otherwise blocking it.) > > A little background about me: I'm 27, married with a great husband and a dog, no job atm and a type one diabetic. Think diabetes is hard? Try it with a nada who threatens to kill you and her if your blood sugars don't improve. She handled everything the wrong way... well don't BPs tend to handle *everything* the wrong way? heh. My current therapist is the first person who validated and told me my mom's behavior was unacceptable. Everyone else seemed to buy into her stories and tell me that if I just took care of myself my mom wouldn't have to worry about me and would approve and leave me alone. This current therapist understands about BPD and was the first person to have successful family therapy with my mom. She knows the BP " traps " and how to navigate through them (calling my mom out while still emotionally validating her.) My mom thinks she is a saint (amazingly since all my other doctors are satan.) > > People tend to ask if my dad is still in the picture at all. Well amazingly he and my mom are still married and we are on good terms. The thing is he has never made any family decisions. He just goes to work and asks my mom if things that need to be done have been taken care of. After learning about BPD I am wondering why my dad didn't protect me better. He never told me that my mom wasn't ever serious when she would drive off threatening to kill herself... He has a somewhat paranoid/distorted view of the world as well so he sticks up for her weird views of the world. My brother is 6 years younger than me and is still letting her control his life. She decides what he's going to study, washes his clothes, signs him up for his classes, does research on what jobs he should apply for, etc. He has always been much better at setting boundaries for himself and not seeming to care if they get into arguments so maybe that works for him. Also him being a boy makes her worry less because the worst he can do is knock a girl up whereas if I was even just alone with a guy I was automatically going to be raped. I was raised with the idea that a woman's virginity was a substantial part of her worth (there's an interesting book on this if anyone is interested I can try and find the name.) > > Thankfully our relationship has gotten much better since I moved out and became financially independent of her (but financially dependent on my husband *sigh*). She would use money over my head to force me to do what she wanted. She convinced me that I shouldn't take jobs that I was " too smart/good for " but the constant reinforcement of a negative self-image left me with no self esteem to apply for any of the jobs that were " good enough for me. " So now the most frustrating things I have to deal with from her are sitting through dinners where she talks about how she has to " fix " my brother's life because he just doesn't do it on his own and he's going to get sick/flunk out of school/etc if she doesn't. So I have to sit there and grit my teeth as she justifies doing the exact same things to my brother that caused me to have no motivation or skills to problem solve in my own life. > > Perhaps the reason why I don't talk/write as much about her as I used to is because things have gotten *sooooo* much better that do I really have any right to complain now? My only motivation in life was a)get praise b)not get yelled/nagged at. What do I do now that I can't rely on grades getting me praise and my mom can't yell at me any more? I need to get her tapes out of my head. How do I do that? Where do I find motivation and self-worth? Is it true that normal people don't just leave you if you have a fight or disagree? Just because I have depression and she doesn't have an official diagnosis of anything doesn't invalidate me does it? > > Thanks for listening. > -Lars > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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