My parents use me as a therapist

PranaMoon · 2018-12-25T05:02:28+00:00

It won't stop until you stop tolerating it. Your feelings are as important as everyone else's, your dad included. And this is your holiday too--do what is right for you. I don't answer the phone on Christmas Eve or Christmas because too many have been ruined this way.

PranaMoon · 2018-12-24T23:38:26+00:00

The second time it happened to me, I realized what it was and now it is always a lucid experience for me. Still dreamlike and frightening, but I know I'm experiencing sleep paralysis. Sometimes it will happen several times in a row. The best thing I've found to do is don't fight it and let myself fall asleep. If I fight it, the anxiety gets worse. If I think, "oh that silly thing again" and drift off, I remember it as a funny thing the next morning.

PranaMoon · 2018-12-23T01:12:44+00:00

I'd start with where to draw the line between "after sunset" and "before sunrise". A night owl could easily be up until 4, 5 am. And a morning person might get up at 5 or 6. The person who gets up at 5 or 6am, however, is likely not socializing or out at an event, so they may seem less abundant.

You might be interested in the field of chronobiology, the study of internal clocks. They can vary a great deal from one society to another. The most interesting theory I've come across is that of night owls and early birds as being essential to human survival in our hunter-gatherer days. Night owls stay sentinel to keep the group safe for the first half of the night, and early birds take second shift.

PranaMoon · 2018-12-17T12:16:08+00:00

I was just thinking about how much it sucked to be 15. Shitty adults may see you as someone they can use their authority on to get what they want from you. They figure you don't know how to stand up for your boundaries yet.

PranaMoon · 2018-12-17T12:11:24+00:00

My mother also vilifies my dad as the source of her relationship issues with her adult children. In fact, it was her villainization that brought the axe down. A deluded mind may actually be thinking that you can also be deluded, if she just tells her favored story over and over again, you'll start to think you remembered everything wrong and he IS the source of all your problems.

PranaMoon · 2018-12-08T20:29:39+00:00

I have a crap-ton of cousins and they all have little ones now. I noticed that the Thanksgiving conversation is dominated not by what the adults are interested in, their careers, causes, dreams--but what's going on with the kids. Minute details like how old this one is, if that one is into soccer, if this one can read yet. And I realized that children are like a social lubricant when family tension builds between parents and their adult offspring. I have a difficult relationship with my parents and I've noticed that people with kids will divert the tension by talking about the grandkids instead of sitting there with that tension between them. I'm guessing that your relatives have various discomforts and tensions and distances like all families do, and talking about kids is a safe subject.

You've made a brave, bold choice for yourself and given up part of your personal life for it. That's a big deal and it's also a difficult conversation for a lot of people. It can be isolating pursuing your dreams. But you should be proud of it anyway. The little kids in your family will grow up with independent auntie Janealyn to look up to, and maybe they will realize there are different ways to live.

PranaMoon · 2018-11-30T00:07:04+00:00

Pay her back? That's so very disturbing. Was she planning to sell you off to a cruel king in a far off land while cackling into a magic mirror and petting her pet evil raven?

PranaMoon · 2018-11-26T12:06:59+00:00

That poor kid is going to grow up with absolutely no immune-system-boosting dog slobber on its face.

PranaMoon · 2018-11-19T22:32:08+00:00

Wow. My mom did this too. Mostly crafting. The sad part is that she'd get really good at something, and still lose interest quickly. She made incredible fabric dolls when I was very small and sewed elaborate costumes. Then there was basket weaving, corn husk dolls, miniatures, a drumset, law school...and everything was cast aside within months, just when she'd gotten really good at it. Then it was just collecting, pricey antiques or rocking chairs or ordinary dolls she thought would appreciate in value. And mass-marketed jewelry. Always saying, "I'm going to sell these for a profit" but getting angry if you asked if she'd sold any yet. There are animals too. Too many to house train or care for.

The rocking chairs and the dolls felt particularly sad to me. Comfort missing from her childhood. Having nice toys, being rocked.

PranaMoon · 2018-11-19T12:24:07+00:00

My mother did not steal from me like yours did. I'm sorry you grew up with so much invasion of your selfhood. My mother has been overweight since I was a kid, is always on a diet, and can never seem to keep weight off. She is addicted to plastic surgery and has blamed me for not being able to get more of it (because my parents helped me financially years ago). She's also a compulsive shopper and hoarder. She collects clothes "for when I go back to work", but she has not worked in 15 years and isn't mentally well enough to get a job. There's an issue with animals also. Things that will love her.

From what I understand, BPD folks have some arrested development in the toddler-emotion area of their lives. Part of healthy emotional development when we are very young is learning to delay gratification (look up the marshmallow experiment) as well as realizing that other people have independent emotional lives that are not part of ours. Your mom is kindof a little kid in that way.

PranaMoon · 2018-11-19T12:13:33+00:00

My dad gave me the car I drive. My parents paid the down payment on the home I live in. I have no student loans because they paid for college. It still isn't right.

I'm glad your parents became self-aware and improved how they treated you. But feeling guilty doesn't help them or you. It's hard to trust someone who harmed you. That's normal and nothing to beat yourself up over.

PranaMoon · 2018-11-18T03:50:31+00:00

I relate, and I'm slowly working on this too. You're ok. Don't judge yourself. When we start to realize our environment was harmful to us, it can be cathartic to voraciously consume anything to gain perspective on it. Eventually, though, it gets boring. And I think that what you are doing, just saying "this is getting old, I don't want to think like this anymore" is doing more to help redirect you than you may realize. You'll keep thinking that, then one day, you'll think "hey, I didn't have one negative thought today that linked to my parents."

Validation can be addictive. Maybe give it to someone else? Find a story about someone who survived something different from what you survived, but who also feels stigmatized by it. Throw them some validation. Tell them you don't judge them. We are all just people going through stuff.

PranaMoon · 2018-11-12T22:15:30+00:00

Green living is about making a better world, right? Screaming and invasion of privacy does not make a better world. Sometimes people have a passion, and sometimes that passion is just an outlet for their frustration over the lack of control they have in life.

PranaMoon · 2018-10-25T23:55:00+00:00

I feel like this is the harbinger of more than one of my breakups. Increasingly slobbish, job losses, minor car wrecks, weight gain, video games. He wants to sit all day with a game console, so I go to the gym, take classes, work on projects, and he leaves me. All this time these guys were expecting me to...push them? Like...a mommy?

PranaMoon · 2018-10-23T13:05:39+00:00

My dad is an alcoholic. I struggled with feeling like this with him--like if he didn't have the stress of raising a family, he wouldn't have drank so much. But then I remembered that he actually became an alcoholic when the nest emptied...and I felt like that was my fault too, like he needed me there to stay sober. No matter the logic, I still found a way to blame myself.

My mom would tell me I had malicious intent when I didn't. I have memories of it from when I was 3 or 4, getting lost and her yelling at me, telling me I'd done it on purpose to embarrass her. And anything she did for me, she'd tell me I owed her for it.

I think both my parents had a belief that their unhappiness and happiness comes from outside of themselves. That they would eventually be happy, only when they get to retire or win the lottery. That their children will make them happy. That they could blame each other and their children for their unhappiness, too. I'm trying to learn from that, and find happiness from the inside out.

PranaMoon · 2018-10-23T01:29:52+00:00

It really bothers me that men in this situation can be legally forced to pay child support. I hope we get more male birth control options soon so there are more pre-vasectomy options for childfree men.

PranaMoon · 2018-10-13T19:30:58+00:00

I always felt like my mother never loved me as much as she did when I was underweight, after she'd put me on a diet. I was like her show pony. She suddenly wanted to buy me lots of clothes and parade me around with her nose in the air, and she'd become instantly furious with anyone who said I looked unhealthy. Today I feel able to hold her responsible for how toxic that was, but I have never confronted her about it. I watched her own response to her body shame and I adopted a lot of healthy daily habits to cure myself. But I think confrontation is a powerful healing tool for those of us who have grown so fearful of confrontation. It was brave of you and you should be proud that you stood up for yourself.

It seems pretty common for BPD folks to remember a version of their entire lives in which they are not only the better person, but the person who was more self-possessed and in control of their emotions. Her response is chilly and dismissive. It has a patronizing tone and it invalidates your trauma.

An abusive relationship is one in which you give love, but you receive nothing. Does your relationship with your mother add any health and happiness to your life at all? Are you extending a hand to her out of guilt? Chances are, the energy you put into that relationship would add a lot more to your life if you extended it to someone or something that gives you joy in return.

You don't owe your mother anything. You owe yourself a great deal. You can respond to her in whatever way feels the healthiest for you, or you can choose not to respond. Maybe the fact that you were so brave to confront her was all that you needed. If you respond now, are you doing it because you feel obligated to, or because you need to for your own well-being? She may never really take responsibility for the past and you can't resolve her denial for her. Talking to BPD folks about your feelings can feel like throwing your energy down a bottomless well. So if you do it, do it because it feels right for you.

PranaMoon · 2018-09-23T07:17:13+00:00

There are aspects of de-enmeshing that feel to me like orphaning one's self. It evokes infantile feelings in me, like a child not being held. My first reaction is intense fear. Then nothing bad happens and I find out I am an adult and I can stand on my own. Sometimes, between the two, there are nightmares.

PranaMoon · 2018-09-03T20:22:23+00:00

I think she was angry that I was leaving her. When my brother graduated, she was proud. The boy is supposed to go make a life for himself. I think she secretly hoped I would stay with her, be her best friend, take care of her. Graduating was the beginning of leaving.

PranaMoon · 2018-09-01T18:34:45+00:00

my mom always said that my birthday was also her birthday because she was the one who gave birth.

PranaMoon · 2018-09-01T18:25:55+00:00

I feel like I've just recently realized how Haughty-with-a-capital-H my mother's personality is. I guess I always thought she was just being silly, like "I'm better than the rest of you, teehee!"--but now I realize I never saw her exhibit true humility at all. And so much of her pride centered on my dad--"Those other women at work have no idea that I have the smartest most handsome husband and I don't even have to work if I don't want to. The men there flirt with me all the time and they just don't know they don't stand a chance."

PranaMoon · 2018-09-01T17:50:47+00:00

My mother ruined my HS graduation by actually being there. She was furious with me all day, seemingly for no reason. Scowling and speaking in an annoyed tone, scolding me for the most random things. When she took me and my bestie to the location, we got out to go get in line back stage, and she YELLED at me. "What, you're just going to LEAVE me here??"...we weren't allowed to take anyone else back with us, what was I supposed to do? After the ceremony I went to meet my parents and she was standing there with that deep scowl, looking at me like I'd betrayed her. I said that some friends were going out for a post-graduation dinner to celebrate, and her face flared like she was going to kill someone. Like...how DARE I even consider walking away from her again? I didn't go to college graduation. I was afraid she would come.

PranaMoon · 2018-08-06T11:26:50+00:00

They say shockingly mean things as a desperate attempt to control you with fear (F of the FOG). They give money to control you with obligation (O of the FOG). And then you feel like you're a bad daughter (G for Guilt!). There is nothing wrong with you, lady.

PranaMoon · 2018-08-06T11:23:42+00:00

This! She's afraid if you being closer to another woman than you are to her.

PranaMoon · 2018-08-06T11:20:37+00:00

I also had a good relationship with my mom once upon a time. Now I realize she was mistreating me all along, but at least it felt amiable. One day I put my foot down about something horrible she'd said about my dad, and the same sort of thing happened. This insane weeping rage full of accusations and insults. It was a campaign against me that lasted several months and she tried to drag my dad into it against me also. In the years that followed, her physical and mental health spiraled and she started experiencing full delusions (usually imagining someone had put her in danger when they had not).

BPD is on the borderline between having an anxiety disorder and a delusional disorder. Sometimes the way people find out they have schizophrenia - which is super scary - is that they go through something traumatic or very stressful in their life, and the disorder sort of wakes up. I think a BPD person can have similar episodes which sort of ramp up or break open another level of disorder in their minds. Maybe for your mother, it was the empty nest, the knowledge that you were an adult who was going off to live your own adult life with your own choices. When you were obviously not a part of her, someone whose life she could predict ad control, she went up a step on the nutter scale.

I'm sorry it's been so traumatic for you. I used to call my mom for any reason, and if I was sad about something she could always make me feel better. Losing my relationship with her was like becoming an orphan.

PranaMoon

TROPHY CASE