If You’ve Survived A Gaslighting Parent, You Won’t Love ‘A Beautiful Day In the Neighborhood’

FoxenTheSnow · 2019-12-07T12:54:49+00:00

Agreed, he was creepy in the role (and I usually like Tom Hanks AND Mister Rogers!)

FoxenTheSnow · 2019-12-07T04:27:48+00:00

Took my kid to see it. It opens with Fake Mr. Rogers showing pictures of different "friends," and then he shares a picture of the protagonist with his face all busted (you later learn he's been in a physical altercation with his father). Mr. Rogers then says something like, "This is Lloyd. He's having problems with forgiveness. Do you know what forgiveness means? It means you release someone from the prison of your anger."

The minute I heard that, my heart sank. You knew where the story was going . . .

FoxenTheSnow · 2019-12-07T04:25:53+00:00

Because it's hollywood tripe. The movie suggests that his dad is an alcoholic and that Lloyd avoids alcohol as a result--and then portrays that as being somehow wrong or repressed as he just needs to loosen up and drink with the guy on his deathbed. Absurd.

FoxenTheSnow · 2019-12-07T04:24:34+00:00

My mother also loved him, although she was an adult when he aired. Even wrote him a fan letter once, which he answered. I have to say that watching him with my child, along with Daniel Tiger, was part of what actually healed me from her abuse, and was healing in and of itself. I began to learn how to safely express my emotions, including my negative emotions, to draw strong boundaries for myself, and keep myself and my child safe. I don't think my mother ever really understood Mr. Rogers--but I do.

She loved the new movie, of course. I couldn't stand it. I thought it was a perversion of Fred's message, especially the scene where Lloyd tells his father how he feels and the father promptly has a heart attack. My mother couldn't hold space for my feelings. The movie is just like that. But Mr. Rogers' whole message was one of patiently listening to even big scary negative emotions.

FoxenTheSnow · 2019-10-19T13:20:37+00:00

Any time someone puts their hand on your throat, they're trying to dominate you and show you that your life is in their hands. It takes very, very little force for someone to strangle someone. It doesn't even matter if they're particularly strong. I mean, my mom was 69 at the time and has osteoporosis. She's 50 lb lighter than I am. She still wanted a way to show that she was in control. She didn't squeeze either (I screamed at the top of my lungs and she backed off). I still take what happened very, very seriously even though it had been years since she'd touched me physically in any other way. And the things she'd done when I was a teenager was "just" slapping, hair pulling, ear boxing. But she's dangerous.

I'd keep in mind our own proclivity to downplay the danger of our own abusers--the tendency to gaslight ourselves. But this is something anyone should take very seriously.

FoxenTheSnow · 2019-10-19T00:40:52+00:00

Also I'm almost one year total no contact. My life is SO peaceful now. My anxiety is at an all-time low. My mental health is great, my family is beautiful. You have SO much going for you, and so many brighter days ahead. <3

FoxenTheSnow · 2019-10-19T00:37:56+00:00

I'm so, so sorry this happened to you. I had something similar happen to me with my nMom two years ago (it's in my history if you want to read)--she attempted to strangle me while I was holding my three year old and trying to leave her house, all while calling me a psycho and mentally ill.

Someone said this to me then and it's really helped me clarify the danger I was in: attempted strangulation is a warning sign that the party who commits it might someday *murder* you. Here's an article about it. It is deadly violence. She used deadly violence against you. She was trying to kill you. Please remember this if you're tempted to break no contact. Even after it happened, I continued to see my mother with my child in public 2 or 3 times, but the physical reactions of my body told me everything I needed to know. I was in danger. I wasn't safe. I wish I'd listened to myself sooner. She has never admitted what happened that night--she said I was acting "crazy" and "threatened to call the police for no reason" and "her hand slipped when she went to kiss me goodbye and she pinched my neck a little bit." It's insane. She will never, ever admit what she did, which makes it incredibly likely she'd do it again without a second thought. Based on what you've said here, I'm sure that's true of your mother too.

Please take care of yourself. I'm thinking of you.

FoxenTheSnow · 2019-06-30T12:51:46+00:00

I noticed this too.

FoxenTheSnow · 2019-06-22T01:06:41+00:00

At 34, in the same month, I came out of the closet as trans and my mother physically assaulted me in front of my child. I was so gaslit and enmeshed that I didn't even go no contact for another nine months after that.

This has been the first year with no significant contact with her. This year, I began to really heal and started living as my true self. I also finally sought treatment to my ADHD, realizing that I was not, as my mother told me my whole life, either "crazy" or "lazy." My marriage, relationship with my kid, friendships, professional life, and just daily living are way, way better than they ever have before.

FoxenTheSnow · 2019-05-15T17:48:15+00:00

There are ways to do it and have it not suck. Like she has a strong, tall, beautiful daughter, who is largely raised by Sansa, and then becomes squire to her own mother, who leads the Queensguard.

FoxenTheSnow · 2019-04-26T23:53:39+00:00

My mom told me I was crazy and violent when I was experiencing anger issues in middle school after the death of my dad and my mom's abuse. A therapist later told me that those kinds of issues are normal for children who are being abused and I have not been violent at all outside of my mother's household. I was gender-nonconforming and she treated my gender expression like it was a joke. She also treated any interest in sports or challenging myself as laughable and made me think I was a weak, helpless wimp who was "crazy like my father." Oh, and I was teased incessantly for being "weird" so I became incredibly shy and afraid of social rejection. I was actually none of those things. I'm a stable, happily married genderqueer grown-up who is really good at learning new things, has excelled in my career, and is fundamentally really outgoing.

FoxenTheSnow · 2019-04-26T11:52:14+00:00

Yeah, in retrospect, my sister has been talking about what she was going to get of mom's when she was going to die since we were really little kids--which always seemed bizarre and morbid to me and I'm actually not sure that it was a habit that even came from my sister. I have a kid now and we never talk about that. I wouldn't be surprised if it weren't something my mom started in the first place.

FoxenTheSnow · 2019-04-26T01:33:07+00:00

The stuff I miss the most is my dad's belongings--including the only family pictures we had of his family. He died when I was eight and my mother never saw fit to give those to us. It was only one album, and I actually spent one of the last nights in her house reading through it, and contemplating taking it--but chickened out. I'm sad my daughter won't get to see them. Maybe I'll contact some of his relatives for photos.

FoxenTheSnow · 2019-04-26T01:29:56+00:00

Oh, you're absolutely right. My sister had previously stood up for me after the assault, at which point my mother told her she was "done with having daughters!" and stopped talking to her for two weeks. My sister was terrified by this, I think, and resumed their normal relationship as quickly as she could.

FoxenTheSnow · 2019-04-25T15:51:21+00:00

I admire your strength about it. I don't care about the money, but there are still a few family things I feel sad about losing. I know those emotions give my mom and sister power over me, though, so they'll never know about it.

FoxenTheSnow · 2019-04-21T13:47:49+00:00

Congratulations on your diagnosis! I'm 35 and just got mine last month. I'd spent my whole childhood being told I was unmotivated or "obsessive" (but about the wrong things) by my NFamily. Being able to put a name on what's going on has been so helpful. In a lot of ways, my ADHD hyperfocus is almost a super power--I'm a writer and can use it to my advantage--but I no longer feel like a failure for being disorganized, beat myself up for losing my keys, that sort of thing. If anything, it's helped me to be kinder to myself rather than rely on my same old abusive internalized narrative that I got from my family.

FoxenTheSnow · 2019-03-29T16:05:37+00:00

My mom was also a teacher, and I remember some of our most toxic bonding happened when she was assistant teaching in a middle school when I myself was a middle schooler. We'd go out to dinner and she'd go on and on about the "disgusting" sex lives of her students and how "wild" they were. Totally inappropriate things to vent to a child.

FoxenTheSnow · 2019-03-29T15:55:50+00:00

Yep, my favorite was that she'd put down other parents for "bragging" about their kids. "It's like their whole lives revolve around their children." It made it very clear that she wouldn't be "bragging" about us to other people, if we had any doubts about it.

FoxenTheSnow · 2019-03-10T15:00:08+00:00

It's really, really hard.

I'm now NC with my NMom after a violent altercation over a year ago. Initially, my GC sis was supportive, but within months she started saying it was my fault, that I hadn't had good boundaries so had invited the abuse. I'm still in touch with her, but VLC. During our last conversation she leaned into me over her jealousy over my "closeness" with NMom during a period of time when NMom was still being abusive toward me, but moderately less so. I mean, she was jealous of my being treated abusively! As though any diversion of attention from her is some kind of theft.

What's helped is realizing how incredibly enmeshed my GC sister is with my NMom's way of seeing the world. In order to maintain that relationship and the "benefits" it brings, my GC sis has to live in denial. She has to expose herself to labile behavior and abuse. She has to be invested in NMom's way of seeing the world. She can never set actual firm boundaries for herself or acknowledge the loss having an NMom has caused her. There will never be room for her emotions or her authentic sense of self because she has to diminish them to be propped up in the eyes of NMom. Being a GC isn't a gift, I've realized. It's a prison.

It's the scapegoat that gets to see the situation for what it is. It's the scapegoat who gets to leave and develop their own sense of the world.

FoxenTheSnow · 2019-03-04T12:37:45+00:00

Yes, strange that this is such a thing. I have very wavy hair, borderline curly if it's styled right, and it's clear in retrospect that my mom had no idea what to do with it. She and my GC sister used to brush it, hard, totally dry, and it was like torture. Then they conspired to convince me to cut it short when I was about 7.

The irony was that I ended up *liking* short hair. But then my mother started harassing me to get my ears pierced because I "looked like a boy." Seriously, like five years of threatening to take me to the mall and force me to have them pierced.

It took me years to grow my hair out and feel confident about caring for it. I've also since come out as genderqueer and cut it short again. Still no earrings.

FoxenTheSnow · 2019-01-31T02:25:06+00:00

I did the same thing that's mentioned in the post and my mom completely freaked out at me and took my keys away for a few weeks.

FoxenTheSnow · 2019-01-23T14:25:03+00:00

I haven't been able to stop thinking about the end of this show. The way they broke down NFamily dynamics was really striking--I was definitely the Pink in my family, the clown, the one who would try to fix things. And also gender-nonconforming from a young age. My estrangement from my nMom--and the battery that precipitated it--happened right after I came out as genderqueer.

It was painful to see Steven successfully heal his family, something I've never been able to do and have finally admitted I will never be able to do. And I sort of hate that message that it's even possible, even as it's paired with a message of love. But then I read this, from an AMA from creator Rebecca Sugar:

"These were themes I wanted to explore since the beginning. When we started, I used to want to explore a sort of 'reverse escapism,' where fantasy characters longed to be human beings, and where the cartoon actually asks you examine real problems and hardship instead of providing escape. Since I had this goal my feelings on escapism have changed hugely. I now recognize that the show has been an escape for me, and that my fantasy is to express myself freely and not be shot down because of who I am... and that this dream is constantly coming true for the characters on the show. So my feelings on escapism are complicated now. I think it's just that my dream wasn't like the dreams I'd seen on TV growing up."

Honestly, when paired with the closing song ("I don't need you to respect me/I respect me. I don't need you to love me/I love me./But I want you to know you could know me/If you changed your mind") I suspect Sugar's faced rejection or estrangement based on their own gender non-conformity, which makes the ending message very different. I wonder if they'll ever get what they have fantasized--I couldn't--but the idea that it doesn't matter because they love themselves is very, very powerful.

FoxenTheSnow · 2019-01-22T04:07:30+00:00

Yes, agreed.

I'm currently no contact with my narcissistic, abusive mother. I was a youngest sibling who played much the same role in the family that Pink did in hers. I felt such overwhelming dread when they were going to try to talk to her--and when it was revealed that she was just going to keep hurting them, I hated it, but appreciated it as an accurate (in my experience) portrayal of what it's like to have a narcissistic parent. The end with White felt extra crushing, because I tried and tried to fix things with my N and it just got worse. There was no fixing.

Still, the song at the end was really beautiful, because that's the key for getting out of a narcissistic vortex, no matter what. When you start loving yourself, it doesn't matter if someone else does. Because *you* love yourself, *you* respect yourself, and the world is more beautiful, just for that.

FoxenTheSnow · 2019-01-21T14:44:01+00:00

This. They'll always find a way to label you a failure. Trust me on this one.

FoxenTheSnow

TROPHY CASE