Wow! Thank you so much for featuring me on your channel, Maximino. This was the LAST thing I expected to see today. What an absolute honour. I look forward to seeing more of your work. Stay remarkable
Thank you so much for the work you've been doing It was incredible to see you willing to go into the trenches that is the estranged parents chats and reveal the things they say in private I hope you continue to share your insights
What gets me about Diane specifically is her display of self-reflection. “I think back on all the times I didn’t give her a candy bar or let her go to a birthday party.” No, you don’t. Why would you when your kid wrote you a detailed letter explaining why she went no contact with you? It’s all part of Diane’s attempt to control the narrative and paint herself sympathetically. She knows good and well that Haley didn’t leave her over not getting a Twix in 1998.
I think there is more behind the candy bar story. I think Haley has had eating disorder issues (go figure) and I'm edu-guessing that she had asked Diane to bring home something specific and it was like that "one thing" she knew she could eat and keep down and Diane 'forgot'. Abuser parents do those sorts of things and then act like their bad act was either accidental (as in that case) or meant in a good way like the parent who told me, "My daughter estranged because she's mad I looked after her health by giving her vitamins." and I said, "Just because you were giving her vitamins for her 'health' doesn't mean you weren't overdosing her and trying to hurt her. I only ask because otherwise why bring up vitamins at all. Have you heard of Munchausen Syndrome?" These people do tell on themselves. Everyone needs to learn to listen critically and translate their insanity.
My mom claims I left at 15 over a mango and I was a "spoiled brat." She always omitted how she never hugged me, said I love you, told me to kill myself over my sexual traumas like it was a hobby, how she blamed me for my dad going to jail on CP charges because "we were poor now," mocked every word out of my mouth, threatened to call a noise complaint to the police if I ever made more than a whisper or cried at any volume, constantly put me in contact with stuff I was extremely allergic to because she never cared about my health, would insult me and put me down all-day everyday, tried to throw me out of a moving car ... need I go on? Oh, and the mango situation was her kicking me out, mocking at me, screaming at me, and whipping things at me in the front yard because she asked me to cut up a mango and I told her it was rotten. A child doesn't choose to live the rest of her childhood homeless in frozen Canadian winters, with zero love and support, the mountain of prejudice that comes with being a homeless youth, and the trauma this actually leaves on your brain and can be seen on CT scans, on top of being trafficked and being at the constant risk of sexual exploitation because they're "spoiled." A parent makes that the safer option for their child. And that's fucked up.
Nope, definitely just the mango. Man, that's so fucked up. I hope you're doing better these days and have built a community for yourself where you feel safe.
I keep telling people that much of the homeless people on the street have either been kicked out or they’re running away from molestation “ no they’re all just addicts” ugh
That's been my mom all my life. She worked nights at a relatively isolated airforce hospital when I was born, and "couldn't find" any babysitter willing to stay up nights. I've had prisoners cinema (a type of phosgene) for as long as I can remember, which is a clear sign of severe understimulation, but the doctors would rather enable the abusers, and say I have a list of diseases, rather than accept that one human parasite and the med side effects from misdiagnoses explain it all. I assume, because most of them are also parasites, and any who weren't were trained to accept the official word of high status parasites as gospel.
Sometimes the parent's actions speak for themselves. I shouldn't *have* to chance another interaction with a dangerous woman to explain to her that the reason I went no contact is because she abducted me and attempted to traffic me to a different country. That wasn't the only reason, but it should be enough of one that even she should understand that she crossed a line.
@@kismetcaffet9862my mom knew my SA molester was abusing my cousin before me and still allow him around me . She still have a really strong relashionship with him. But she can't understand why I am so selfish and have no contact with her.
@@kismetcaffet9862I can think of a bad reason for that (money), and a good reason for that (escaping a dangerous family member, probably your father). I assume it was the first and not the second? 🤔
@@misspat7555 sadly, my dad just sat and drank after their divorce when she wouldn't let him move on with his life. He was actually the healthier of my bio-parents and he passed from alcoholism when I was a teenager. She abducted me just for control - there was no money involved nor threat to her. She was the only threat to me at the time as I was getting married. So, she was going to be officially loosing control over my life, which was unacceptable to her. Had she been in a situation where she was desperate enough that the only solution she could think of was selling me off, I'd be more open to hearing her out. But even the uncle who called my fiance to try to convince him to "just let her take [me]" explained that it was about 'her knowing what's best for me.' These parents' lack of normal logical reasoning is one of the aspects that makes them so dangerous and unpredictable.
Saying your child is mean and then calling them batshit crazy and saying you're happy they're infertile right next to it is a type of dissociation I'll never comprehend. What a massive mask-off moment.
As someone who used to struggle with dissociation, it’s not the good word to use here. I mean no offense but it’s actually a very stigmatizing use of the word because dissociation is basically the freeze response to trauma. Callousness, evil, inhumanity, horror… are much more fitting. But yeah it’s def a mask off moment. My dad was like that too. Called me batshit for holding him accountable for the seriously reprehensible shit he subjected us to (including producing and distributing CP of me). Then he claimed I was the abusive one and the reason he cheated on my poor mom and left us for his secret mail order bride he kept at a house nobody knew about. It’s abhorrent to hear how he thinks about my mom, brother and I. I don’t get how he still thinks the victim.
This. It's so painful as the child in this situation. I blamed our kids once to a guest for an unflushed toilet and 10 years later I still feel guilty for saying that about them like that. It's crazy that some people make a whole life out of painting their kids in a bad light.
@@ladvita32 that speaks a lot to your willingness to go there. my parents still treat me with disdain and contempt and disregard to this day which is why i don't contact them anymore. they're still fighting, still proud imo. have not made the leap you have
I hear it whenever my mother speaks to me. I am NC with my immediate family. My twin sister is just as bad as she is. I was the family scapegoat. They don't realize that most ppl with empathy can see what they are doing to their kids.
@@grawakendream8980 I'm so sorry. It took my mother dying and all her friends and a lot of our family now suddenly OPENLY throwing things in my face that they clearly got my mom's side of for me to completely let go of trying to get their approval. I still ruminate and try to find a way to get someone to see, but it's completely useless. I think for people like us, we either still have a good relationship with those abusive parents and blindly repeat the cycle with our own kids, or we separate from them and don't have a real relationship with them anymore and it allows us to start over (for better or worse), and think from the ground up how we want to treat others regardless of what was done to us. My bro was still close with my mom.. guess what that dynamic is like. Let's just say he's doing his best to keep her mission going..
I work in community mainly with elderly people, whenever someone says oh my son/daughter doesn’t speak to me for some reason, after being in their home for 30 mins i can normally see why, demanding, passive aggressive, rude, self absorbed but with absolutely no clue of how they come across or in complete denial about their behaviour
"Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things."-Terry Pratchett. I truly believe that there is a subset of parents who want their children to be automatons rather than fully formed people.
Not all mothers whose children have estranged from them are demanding, rude, self absorbed, etc. This is more you deciding that all mothers are like this. Not true. But glad you admit to making a judgement after just half an hour.
@@Puzzles-Pins that person is clearly agenda-driven and here only to promulgate it. they're all over this comment section with apologia for shitty abusive parents.
These cut-off parents love telling on themselves. "wHy DiD mY kIdS cUt Me OfF??? Anyway, lemme just say a ton of vitriolic hateful inflammatory outlandish stuff about the humans I created and raised instead of introspecting for literally any amount of time"
I agree, they raised them right? So it would go back to them? I don’t think going no contact is evil of makes a person evil. Ofcourse it’s hurtful, if, it’s telling they get angry, instead of being sad. It happens and sometimes it’s good to take a distance.
I'm in my 40s. I have a mother with comorbid autism/NPD. Yay!! She's so much fun...not. Everything and everyone is only seen in black and white, good or bad. NO grey areas, no nuance or variation. I lived through people believing the awful things she said about me.... to this new era (internet isn't all bad)... in which mothers like mine have been unmasked. I never thought I would see the day. It is incredibly HEALING and validating. I thought I was the only person/child in the world dealing with/suffering with....this. It had no name, I was alone.
"...teaching these brats that they have rights..." There it is. Right there. According to some (many?) parents, children do not have rights. Like pets. Or property. They are something that is to be owned and controlled by the parent, only an extension of the parent, never their own person. Always compliant, always submissive.
Yep. Exactly like a car, a dog, a horse. A thing to be controlled and used for one’s own purposes. Not an immature, but still separate, person. This was exactly my parents’ problem; I have said I made it to age 18 with the emotional/social maturity of an 8 year old as a result. I never went into a store or fast food place alone until the summer I was 17, when my camp counselor training group went to Wal-Mart and Wendy’s. 😳
its not just some parents. im convinced that even an okay/good parent can end up absorbing 'children are not humans/thier own person' ideas bcs its so prevalent. its everywhere. good parents are the ones that unlearn that. unfortunatly, most dont
@-toriizaka46 Oh, absolutely. Even decent parents can be taken inby the idea they have complete control and authority just by being parents - even when their kids are adults.
This is what happens when biased women hating family courts hand custody to the abusive father. He turns the kids against the mother. And it lasts for life.
The snoring one smacks of the adult child saying something like "I was literally having anaphylaxis on the living room floor while you snored on the couch" and shitty parent goes "I DON'T SNORE" like that makes the rest of it fine
I had that happen with my own mother. Both of my parents were crappy parents. My mom does exactly that. You spell out the entire story and she zeros in on the smallest issue and decides to make her stand there. My dad on the otherhand fully acknowledges his fuck up and the first time he heard my unfiltered opinion about his Ex GF he had when I was a kid he was super apologetic for not recognizing the signs because he was too far in the drink. It's telling how kids who have crappy parents can still have good relationships with their kids later in life if they acknowledge the mistakes they made and the harm it caused. These parents don't get that. They believe they are entitled to a parent child relationship for popping the kid into existence.
I was going to estrange when I turned 18 and all my friends parents bought them their first car. My dad did buy a nice new car.... for the woman he left my mom for. At least I got to enjoy others enjoyment. I mean I got to sit in these new cars sometimes...even got some lifts!!!
Hey, estranged daughter here. I research the authoritarian personality and I might be able to shed some light on what’s happening. Many people think of authoritarianism as a political thing but really it also describes a method of cognitive structuring. Part of it is hierarchical thinking and parental dominance, but one of the things Theodor Adorno noted is that people with such personalities live slightly adjacent to reality. Their reality is an incredibly angry, uncomfortable one where their very existence is constantly at stake. Another element of the authoritarian personality is an inability or fear of introspection, so they can never actually get to the root of why they feel or act the way they do. They just know they’re uncomfortable and want to lash out or blame others. One of the things I discovered was that my mental health is sadly better when my family is not in my life. They did actually go so far as to have me diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which no other clinician ever saw, because the idea they caused my severe PTSD was not something they could handle. All my successes were “family successes”, the outcome of their positive influence, but all my failures were mine alone to carry. It was really difficult dynamic that was the downstream effect of multiple cycles of intergenerational trauma coming to a head and their complete refusal to do any introspecting or take any responsibility. I’ve done almost ten years of therapy at this point and continue digging. They believe people don’t have boundaries with their families and going to therapy ruined my relationship with them. Excellent video. I greatly enjoyed watching it and hope you have a good week!
I think that is interesting because it was pretty common knowledge on the type of parents that exists, through Jr. high and high school. It was even reinforced in college in many of my psychology and criminal justice classes. I find jt odd that it isnt common knowledge anymore and is only focused on the political side
"born to be your lover, forced to be your mom" has to be the most revolting thing I've ever heard. Until i heard her quoting the person saying some of the 20 kids colonized the west like that was a good or normal thing. Jesus, maybe we should consider the possibility that these shitty parents emerge as a systemic phenomenon.
That quote was so vile. My sons are adults now and we all have pretty good relationships because I know my role and stay in my fucking lane. Shocking, right?
That quote was so vile. My sons are adults now and we all have pretty good relationships because I know my role and stay in my fucking lane. Shocking, right?
Well, when the systemic mindset for AGES regarding the indigenous or POC is that they're less human and therefore its okay to subjugate them, yeah, I feel like it's gonna create people who view their kids as less than human instead of as autonomous beings. Plus there's that whole "go forth and multiply" mindset of colonialism in general, that is our godgiven right to go take over other people's land, lives, etc. So no surprise that the idea of ownership is kind of built in to stop many generations. Or the people who only have kids because it's what society expects of them, but not coz they GENUINELY want them. So like, in the broader view of society, yeah, I think it IS a systemic issue. And it's really only now that we're staring to really reckon with the way we've viewed other people as less human and how that's affected every single part of society, including parenting
My mom can recognize that my brother is a psychopath who tried to murder both of us multiple times but she cannot recognize the abuse that she did to both of us. She does not understand what I will not speak to her and why I refuse to speak to her husband who is worse. They decided to talk about me and my husband so negatively around my son when he was 3 that he started crying in a Wendy's and went non verbal. He is on the spectrum and they know this. They brought him home instead of taking him to the museum for a dinosaur event because he went nonverbal and cried because of what they said. I remember my mother's husband angrily telling me I told him i love you and he ignored me. We did get him to tell us some of what he was upset about. That was the end. I was abused and degraded for over two decades he will never experience that. He has family that adore him for him.
Autistic person to parent of an autistic child: it sounds like he's very lucky to have you. A parent who cares and understands is worth their weight in gold and I would've paid as much to have that when I was younger.
I was going to share my story about my abusive mother but lots of us have the same stories. My mother apologized for being mean to me 7 months before she died. We all knew she was dying. I never told her it was ok. I only answered "don't think about that stuff". She could take that for an acceptance if she chose. Her apology was too many years too late. I don't regret not telling her it was ok. She died in July 2016 and I just finally let the anger go of how she treated me a few months ago. I had tried to let it go but held onto it. Finally I realized that I couldn't force myself let it go. That's when I was able to let it go.
thanks for sharing this! i've been mulling over a letter to my mom before i move to another part of the country partly as want to kind of feel like leaving my past behind me & don't plan on telling her where i'm moving but i do feel sorry for her as she's understandably alone after a lifetime of selfishness, entitlement, etc so want to let her know i don't hate her & get she has faced a lot of challenges which keeps tempting me to say "i know you did your best" however it's been so validating & empowering to refuse to let myself do that as i absolutely don't believe she did anything (much like diane, she might buy a book or join a group but if it recommends actual accountability she'd rather create her own echo chamber instead 🙄) anyways, i'm sure she'll misinterpret what i write as "i know you did your best" but i'm pretty sure i won't care as she's never really listened or tried to understand me anyways, lol, plus i don't plan on ever knowing what she thinks (i'd already sort of accidentally transitioned from low contact to no contact during a major depressive episode & just never reconnected but hope this will help give me some closure) stories like yours help strengthen my resolve to prioritize my self respect over guilt others try to put on me 💚 i'm glad you've been able to honor your feelings & find peace
I actually had a like 5 minute talk about apologies in this video that i ended up cutting out But I do a bad job of accepting them I'll nod my head and say okay don't do it again But rarely say something about actually accepting the apology unless it's something trivial like if you bump into me or say something that hurts my feelings that didn't actually hold any harm I'm not sure what it is But I think I'd do the same thing if my mother apologized I'm glad you were able to let go And I hope you're in a great place now
Thank you for sharing that. I’m currently LC with my mom but I am so angry at so many things. I keep trying to let it go because “it’s only going to hurt you” but damn how can I let go if I’m still hurt? That’s why I’m angry. The idea that pain and the secondary emotion that tries to protect you from that pain can disappear at will is starting to sound like telling people to “stop being depressed”.
@@wiggilytaco7570 i've always struggled with letting myself experience anger partly as was so unsafe to growing up but one time a roommate did so many things that were so egregious that included taking off without paying rent then continuing to mess with us knowing i was the single parent of a preschooler & on disability that was likely to become homeless again based on their actions so i literally couldn't afford to just be depressed about it at the time but also had zero desire to try to "get over it" but a strange thing happened, as i let myself be incredibly angry, cussing as i sort through the massive amount of crap she'd left in her room then after a couple of days doing that felt a weird sort of... idk... lack of intensity start to wash over me, lol. i still think she's a horrible person who acted unforgivably but i haven't ever had the same sort of strong reaction i do when talking about other experiences i've had & i never tried to gaslight myself into "understanding" her perspective (the main thing i do besides get depressed instead of angry) anger is often a *very* valid response that protects you from continuing to subject yourself to situations or people that harm you & when it's about the very people who are responsible for bringing you into the world that you were forced to depend on for your very life it is absolutely legitimate to *fully* experience your anger until it loses its intensity or *you* otherwise feel ready to let go of it! many are fortunate to not understand what you're going through so their "advice"/etc might be well intentioned but should *not* be allowed to invalidate your experience 💚 thankfully there are also plenty of people who *do* understand where you're coming from & can encourage you to do what *you* need to for *your process* which could very reasonably be remaining angry for quite some time. i've only really experienced that one example with a roommate who was horrible but only impacted me for a few months overall so i can't imagine how long it'd take to have any similar occurrence regarding my parents or other people who "owed" me far more & did far worse
🔔🔔🔔 always and forever. It's the motivation behind supply, it's why they behave with prejudice, it's closer to the root of the problem than usually goes uncensored.
Everything in a narcissist's life is external to themselves. They view themselves as perfect beings who live in an imperfect world. If something good happens, it's because they are perfect and deserve it. If something bad happens, it's because someone imperfect got in the way of their happiness. They cannot be the cause of anyone's problems -- least of all their own -- because that would make them imperfect in some way and that is impossible. If you try and tell a narcissist that they are wrong, it triggers a fight or flight response in them. Changing the narrative around those mistakes is why you see narcissists create rumor mills or gangs of flying monkeys. If they can make other people believe their version of events, that version becomes "real" and they are no longer the villain, but the victim, and thus the world returns to it's balance in their mind. So it's easy to say it's about control, but it's not just control of the people around them, it's control of the whole fabric of their reality. That's why it's impossible to break an adult narcissist out of their tendencies. It's not just a desire, it's a need, a compulsion. They would stop being themselves if they were able to stop being a narcissist.
I have an actual success story! Th÷re are obvious reasons for the difference. Some time ago my sister in law informed me that her oldest child had decided to go no contact. She expressed her sadness but she didn't speak about the situation or make any excuses or blame anyone. She didn't ask me to maybe talk to them or be a go between. She, with therapy and love accepted her adult child's need for space. She never once blamed "this generation: or culture or anything. She was strong enough to step back. I burned with curiosity because I had always seen her as this amazing supportive accepting mother. But I had to stay away and also allow space. And last month they posted a picture together. Our family is celebrating the holidays together! Not all estranged parents are monsters. Sometimes humans need a reset. I can't wait to see my nibbling!
This has been a journey of several years and thousands of miles. I couldn't be prouder of my family for thier continued navigation of this incredibly difficult relationship. But it's so diametrically different to what we see with Diane and these similar groups.
Most estranged parents aren't monsters, they are just overgrown toddlers who are way too full of themselves to see anyone else as anything other than NPCs in the background of their own "Hero's Journey", including their own children. An extreme case of "main character syndrome", if you will. Your sister was able to turn this around because (quoting) "she was strong enough to step back". She understood the assignment, even if it took years of therapy for her to get to that place. I'm so proud and happy for her and for your entire family although I promise you, nobody is as happy and proud of her as your nibling.
I actually laughed a little. Like, shock laugh. Because there were kids who basically ran off in hopes of fleeing poverty or were basically sold/kidnapped so the parents might escape poverty.
Part of my estrangement from mine was my adopto mom trying to arrange a marriage to me with "a good xtian man" while I was still dating my current husband 3 years into our relationship... After we got engaged 4 years that stopped but the pressure to have an heir for our maternal line started... Its not okay. I'm okay now that I'm free from her.
I can't imagine wanting so hard for my child to end up with someone based on religion, or race, or anything other than just a deep deep willingness to love them I'm happy you found your person
she never earned my respect to lose but it was clear almost immediately she wouldn't earn my respect, definitely by the time she misrepresented her daughter's letter
The fact that her wickedness and cruelty is also political in nature does not mean our reasoning is "just politics." Like you say, her politics are unethical and immoral. She is steeped in cruelty and inhumanity.
@@Fauntleroy.Of course she is, she's a trump supporter. Every single one of them is filled with hate and vitriol. They are the reason we are leaving country.
I think her political views and her views as a parent are intrinsically linked honestly. I think one supports the other. Political views are no longer just political imo theyre moral failings steeped in hatred and bigotry. Id hazard a guess that narcissism in parents like this is coocurring with conservatism more often than not. Its a self serving cycle of BS
My grandmother deliberately alienated my sister from my mother. If my mother had seen (or understood) what was going on I’m sure she would have removed my sister from my grandmother’s orbit. So, the woman who said her daughter was jealous because she had a better relationship with her grandkids than the daughter was upset that her daughter caught on to the mother’s tactics.
When I started working with PFLAG, I met a transgender woman who stopped talking to her dad because he tried to have her life ended by another relative, and other relatives were trying to get her to FORGIVE her dad. Just awful. Imagine your own father trying to arrange your passing and then your brother tells you that YOU’RE overreacting.
One of my parents was in an unusual situation where they got disowned by their abusive mom. My parent regularly apologized to me for the fact that I couldn’t have a normal relationship with that grandmother (all three other grandparents passed either before I was born or shortly after). The most baffling thing about that is why would I even WANT to have a relationship with that POS grandma? Ever conversation I had with her as a kid was just her interrogating me over how my parent was doing. Like bitch? I was 5!
This video is so utterly and deeply triggering. AND I had an epiphany while watching. I was physically and emotionally abused by two parents, a step parent and a brother. As a result, I was not a well behaved child. I acted out in ways I didn't understand then, of course, but I learned later that my behavior was directly related to the trauma I endured. Every single time there was an "incident", every call from the principal, every school suspension (cigarettes, skipping class) just EVERY-single-TIME I misbehaved, my mom would first scream at me, tell me I will ever amount to anything, beat me, pull my hair (she loved to beat my head against solid objects)... THEN she would hop on the phone to tell everyone she knew what I had done. Everyone. She would be on the phone for hours. I grew accustomed to entering any party, picnic or gathering knowing every single person in attendance had been informed of what a terrible person I am. In my adulthood, I always walk into groups of people with the feeling that THEY ALL KNOW. They all know every bad and embarrassing thing I've ever done and it's the only thing they see when they see me. I've developed a "SO WHAT" response to it and have fine tuned my feelings to not be bitter. People might like me or not, respect me or not. Oh well! I turned out pretty freaking awesome considering my circumstances. I carry on with my head high and a good heart NO MATTER WHAT. (I even took care of mom when she was at the end of her life. I also took care of my father... after breaking away from both of them for years). But this video, oh my god. I finally connected the dots to the overwhelming sense of embarrassment when I'm around people I've known for ages who have seen me at my worst. Some of them are truly judgmental a-holes, so be it. Most of them are not thinking about any part of my past, though. In either case... SO WHAT? I've got life to love and stuff to do. I have to keep pursuing deep and real happiness, which includes digging through the PTSD and naming each part of it, sorting through it, it's rewarding work, but exhausting sometimes... these videos really help. Thank you.
I grew up exactly like that with the same shame/trauma response. I feel shame even in a room full of unknown people. Like "they all know". The smear campaigns were and continue to be next level, although I have been 30 years NC.
I don’t even know you, but it hurts my heart to hear you bemoan your self awareness. I hope you can cherish who you are. You are doing important work here.
When my dad left my mom for another woman it enabled his three kids to cut him off without cutting out our mom. He’s told several people since that she turned his children against him because he wouldn’t give her support money (until the judge forced him) like he never, you know, physically attacked his own children or put them in fear for their lives...
My sister and I are extremely low contact with our Dad. My Dad told me "I'd rather have a dead kid than a kid like (sister)". He's said much much worse, but he still thinks we hate him because politics. When I brought up one of the most traumatic incidents of my childhood he went straight through the entire narcassist's prayer. Recently I mentioned that he stole a $400 appliance from me a few years back and he had the audacity to ask me why he did that. As if I know???
The video I watched right before this was about walkaway wife syndrome, you know when men say she just left out of nowhere! And there was a comment that I think was really good and it was ‘it’s not that they’re surprised that we have been dissatisfied the whole time, it’s that they’re surprised that we are actually doing anything about it.’
I find it really disturbing when people see love as a competition and something than can only be given out in stingey ammounts. These ideas of someone loving their mum more than their wife or their grandkids loving them more than their mum. It's really grosteque and turns relationships into competitions for power ('love') instead of interactions of enjoyment and support. By the way, the first time I went no contact with my dad he said it was over a glass of coke. He was always rude to me and spoke to me either in agressive or condescending tones whenever I went to his house, he had yelled at me for pouring too much coke for him when he only wanted half a glass and I'd had enough of being spoken to like I was a piece of shit. Every time he spoke to me it was derogadtory, abusive, yelling or condescending. I'd had enough. But in his head it was about the coke. 30 years later, I'm the only one of his 4 kids who talks to him and he doesn't understand why. He asked me to explain to him and I said 'Because you're an arsehole.'. He still didn't get it. In recent years he has acknowledged he hasn't been a good father but I still think he doesn't understand what he has done that made him be a bad father.
Welp, this was my dad in a nutshell. “Ungrateful, cruel, stupid” etc. After his death, I had a couple of his friends approach me, saying that they felt bad we couldn’t manage to have a relationship with one another, and practically lectured me on not making time in my life for him. It was a mic drop moment when I told them all about the times he allowed his girlfriend to drive us around drunk, and one time kicked us out of her house, only for my dad to have me walk a good three miles in the winter in pajamas to a hotel, only for him to leave me there so he could go find drugs. Cops got there before he did. Or the time years later when my mom allowed him to come over to Thanksgiving, only for him to show up high as a kite, and holding again. Or the time when I was a full-blown adult and tried with him again with him promising he was completely sober, and he ordered a Bloody Mary at lunch. That man had so many chances in all sorts of different stages in my life. He refused to understand that my reasonings for not wanting him in my life weren’t influenced by my mom or sister, but by his own repeated actions, and his own repeated ignorance of the boundaries I clearly set for him in print, and were bare minimum of what you hope from a parent.
I'm very close with both of my adult children and some of the things these parents think they have a right to blows my mind. Our children owe us nothing. If they love us, that is a grace.
6:42 It's definitely a real phenomenon of these types of parents treating their children more like a romantic partner. It's kind of a controversial term because it's still somewhat loosely defined, but a lot of people refer to this as "emotional incest". After I was able to finally get away from my covert narc ex wife (which is a very common type of partner for people to end up with when they've also been raised by one), my mom swooped in again, and after a while I came to the bizarre and disturbing realization that she was treating me and expected me to act towards her exactly like my ex wife did (which was the only long term relationship I had ever had, even though my mom tried hard to break us up in the beginning). Among many things, I had to spend an inordinate amount of time (basically any free time I had) with her, talk to her on the phone for hours when we weren't together, and try to explain away any time I needed to be apart (if she didn't agree with the reason she would get very angry or act "hurt" etc.). It was like I had just replaced one with the same person again. What's also weird was that there was a moment when I was married that I was forced to accept to myself that, despite all my promises to find a partner who was the exact opposite of my mom, I had somehow married the exact SAME person instead. When my mom showed back up after that relationship was done, it was shocking and incredibly hard to accept that my mom's behavior towards me felt almost the same. Was it always like this? I assume so, its very strange and almost sickening to think about because I don't even like looking at her, let alone having to think about her in those terms. It's a real thing though, just one more bizarre aspect of these deeply weird people.
That's crazy, I'm sorry you had to go through that. It is weird how it seems to be so accepted that women behave like that with their son. Whereas if it was a man with his daughter, people would be disturbed by this kind of behaviour and I bet a lot of rumors would be going around. Really strange. 🤔
Yes, emotional incest is surprisingly extremely common unfortunately. The term "boy mom" or "toxic boy mom" basically refers to mothers who have an emotionally incestous relationship with their sons, and you can see that these moms are EVERYWHERE on tiktok, youtube, etc. There's also many fathers that do the same to their daughters. I'm glad awareness of all this is rising, because it was so hard for children to get help in the past, no one would believe things like this happened, but it happens way too often
That is such a wild story to hear I'm glad you came to the realization of it all but that must've been such a shock to put together I hope you're in a much much better place now
I realized a bit ago that I am handling my mother very much like I have learned to handle my son’s father/ex-husband; gray rock. 🪨 I need her around because I am now widowed as well as divorced (I am SO winning at life! 🥴), so I’m a single mother AGAIN, and don’t have a better emergency mother substitute available, but I seek no support of any kind from her, ever, because her money comes with SO many strings attached, and her emotional support is non-existent at best. 😑
8:33 “we don’t get to decide a child’s nature” It’s literally a parent’s job to nurture their child, correcting any troubling nature, into a good person! That’s a complete denial of responsibility!
I mean broadly thats true. I don't get to chose if my children are drawn to sport, or art, or nature. I don't get to chose if my children are easily upset by loud noises or the feeling of fabrics. I do get to chose how I react to that. All behaviour is communication. We get to chose if we listen or not.
@@justine8387i believe they were referring to their children as just being born mean enough to leave them. Which just isn’t possible. No kid just has some innate trait that makes them leave their parents.
Given that around half of current/recent parents of minors still spank, and the stat was more like 3/4 in prior generations, yes, I’d say some amount of childhood trauma is “normal”. 😵💫
@@MaplesonI had to explain to my 5-year-old son TWICE that if I didn’t send him to “see Daddy”, he could end up living with Daddy as much as or even more than he was currently living with me to punish me for not doing what the judge told me to, because it was hard for him to understand why I wasn’t protecting him. He’s 15 now. He says his father and I were both foolish to have a child together, but also says it has been clear I wanted to be a parent, while his father just wanted to own a human being. 😔
Yes, I saw a comedian talking about her kids being soft because they didn't see people being r***d, dying, beaten, etc. I was so disgusted I can't watch her anymore.
My mother is a hoarder and my dad enabled her, very much codependent. She put up signs in the apartment "the neighbors can hear everything you say" (we lived in a townhouse with paper thin walls) when she was the one screaming at me to wake me up literally every single morning. She took my door off and then refused to tell me why she did it even when I asked her to her face. She kept that door off for 7 years. I moved out and it was still gone
"Estrangement is never the first option." Wrong. I had decided that I would escape when I was 17, then tried to justify why I shouldn't until I moved across the country at 28 and completely cut contact. I didn't have former discussions about how to fix the relationships because they made it clear they wanted people like me to go extinct. I never even told them who I was. If I attempted to fix anything, I know they would have just lied and used details about my real self against me. It would have put me in danger, so it wasn't worth attempting.
Same. In a way. Sort of. I've not given any reason this time for going no contact. No reason, no warning. Simply because I don't know how to explain to my dad that anger and fear are not the correct way to handle a 2yo. Which he had also done to us. There's no conversation to be had there. I also don't know how to explain to my brother that he's disturbingly self-centered and that he should care for other people, so I didn't. I'm done being* told I'm too sensitive, and I'm done being guilt-tripped.
I'm 57 and am estranged from my family of origin. Decided when I was a child that I wouldn't have children myself because I couldn't bear the thought of someone feeling the way I did...suicidal since my teenage years. Human beings either have empathy or they don't. Neither condition can be cured💜
I think empathy can, to a certain extent, be taught. I'm not sure how though. Maybe through compassion? I'm fairly sure I can credit my mother with saying just a few of the right things my brain needed to "spark my compassion learning", even though she hardly ever has extended that same compassion towards me or heck, even herself. I guess I'm just too close for comfort for her.
@@darkcreatureinadarkroom1617 we can nudge people towards the direction but i think what the original poster meant is that, at the end of the day, _they_ are the only one who can decide whether they want to empathise or not. we cannot control (cure) that.
@@darkcreatureinadarkroom1617i think empathy can be grown of there's a seed of it to begin with. And for a lot of us, those seeds are grown and tensed to with a unique combination of a few moments of our parents fostering that empathy, but also, enduring enough pain that at some point we have the thought "I don't ever want anyone else to have to suffer like this"
I appreciate the fact you honored that there are decent parents who exist struggling with adult children who have become part of a cult. Parental Alienation during a divorce is not the same dynamic as estrangement, and it is a worldwide problem. Thanks for differentiating there are troubled adult children just as there are people of all roles.
In case you are not aware, the entire concept of “Parental Alienation” in the context of parents breaking up/divorcing is problematic. The now-deceased man who coined the term used it to explain away allegations of seggs-related improprieties against biological/legal fathers in certain of these situations. His “solution” to this “problem” was to give the accused father full custody and completely exclude the mother from the child’s life, at least for a period of months. This sometimes “worked”, in that the child would stop making accusations. Yes, it’s exactly as sick and twisted as it sounds. 🤢 This needs to be distinguished from the typical “I don’t know, why don’t you ask your father?”, “Well, if your mother didn’t start screaming at me every time I say more than hi to her, maybe I could talk to her about it!”, “So, is (other parent) seeing/dating someone else yet?” type comments that commonly occur in the weeks and months following the end of the parental relationship, and those AGAIN need to be distinguished from comments like “Where’s all the money I give your mother going?” (from father), “You stress me out, that’s why I can’t get pregnant!” (from stepmother), and “I don’t agree with your father spanking you every time he sees you like this, but he isn’t breaking the law.” (from me, mother) that occurred in my actual situation several YEARS after my marriage to my son’s father ended. Unfortunately, ALL these situations; from standard mild bad-mouthing and nosiness in the months immediately following the breakup, through basic bullying/bad parenting and the reactions of the other parent to that, up to and including the most extreme cases of dangerous parents, can all be lumped together as “Parental Alienation”, and used to justify things like joint custody for convicted violent criminals, or switched primary custody to whoever has the money for a lawyer that will claim this. 😬
My in-laws are completely divorced from the reality of why we're no contact with them. They actually convinced a relative to come up to my husband *at her own son's funeral* to try to persuade him to "make amends" with his parents. She kept at him and kept at him until I finally put my foot down and said there was WAY more to the story, and that "making amends" is for the person who did wrong, not the victim. We told her everything they'd done, all the reasons why we were estranged, and she was completely shocked (though she still wanted us to "make amends" because she's one of those people who can't stand conflict). I'm pretty sure they have everyone convinced I'm the reason he went no contact, and quite frankly, I wear that as a badge of honor -- I'm GLAD I helped him see they were abusive, got him into therapy, and gave him the support he needed to get away from them. He's much happier without them.
Notice how so so so many of them blame their daughters/daughter-in-laws. Notice how so many of them belittle them as silly little girls that don't know the world and will regret their choice to go no(/low) contact. Worse are the ones that specially attack sensitive or tender vulnerability that their child may have. Maybe, just maybe that's the surface of the answer to all of the 'why's.
Once my mom told others that the reason I was upset at her after she got drunk and tried breaking into my room for 3 hours, was "Because she didn't want to be told to clean her room". These parents lie, and lie, and lie. I don't get hurt over people telling me to clean my room.
Parent - "I've done absolutely nothing to try to fix my estrangement and I'm all out of ideas. There's nothing more to do." (they SAY they've tried "everything" but when you ask specifically what they did the real answer is nothing so I skip to the end there) World - "Have you tried..." Parent - "Nothing I say! They're just horrible entitled brats!" World - "That negative judging and name calling isn't helpful." Parent - "I have no idea what I could be doing that makes them not want to be around me." World - "I just told you." Parent - "I just don't understand!" World - **bangs head into keyboard** and begins to grasp why parent is estranged. That's the sum-up of my experiences with trying to explain to these types.
Once my son was born I thought it would allow me to understand my mother better. All it did was make me realize how f'd up she really is. I could NEVER imagine treating my son the way she treated me. I went no-contact in 2021 after she made a rude comment about him, I'll be damned if she turns her BS on him. My son just turned 19 and we have an amazing relationship, because I've always treated him with the same respect that I expected from him, and like an actual human being. Not my emotional punching bag.
@11:00 This sounds exactly like my father. Exactly his kind of language. He called me a c*nt & a b!tch at 13 & under. Everyone who disagreed with him was “scum” & “psychopaths.” He was always such a hateful person, masquerading as a charming, loving person. His narcissism was so extreme that he believed disagreeing with him was just “being an asshole.” So, there was no room for self-reflection. I listed his abuse of us multiple times (dw we’ve been NC for years), but it’s pointless. They don’t want real relationships with us- they want the same f*cked-up, abusive dynamics they’ve always known, because it’s familiar & easy. They don’t want to be any better. I understand they probably don’t believe they CAN BE any better- that would require being able to accept that they’d done wrong, but that doing wrong doesn’t doom them to forever being evil people- I believe they really don’t know that they can *change.* Deep down, they’re very insecure people (as narcissists are), who probably lacked emotional support, mirroring etc in childhood. So, they missed out on developing empathy & learning what healthy attachments felt like. They developed maladaptive mechanisms for surviving their own abuse, & never realised that those behaviours aren’t actually helpful to keep around. For a long time, mental health wasn’t even a conversation, so I see why they didn’t change before we were born… But now, they’re grown adults, & they have access to that information; they have the option to learn & be better… & they don’t. What a limited & sad life they’re living. My mother changed. She’s nearly 60 & on this incredible emotional journey of healing her own trauma & breaking generational trauma etc. But the thing is, she’s always been more emotionally intelligent, more open to hear what we had to say… she always saw us as people. So, I see why she grew- she never stopped growing & never will! It’s why we have such a good relationship. But… I don’t know if there’s any saving the parents who never could see their kids as their own people; & not just an extension of themselves. My father will never know what real love looks & feels like, because he’s never humbled himself & taken responsibility for himself. He refuses to believe he’s mentally ill, that his behaviour is abusive, & that all his failed relationships are failed because of the common denominator- HIM!
My bio mom told me to my face that it's "probably for the best" that I can't have kids. Meanwhile, she made me her parent when I was a child. Make it make sense.
My dad thinks I'm just a spoiled kid who was mad she got in trouble, and that's why I ran away. It's not. When he got custody of me, one of the first things he said about me was "IT came with manners." He let my stepmom treat me seriously differently, and any extracurriculars I wanted to do, would shit on it. I had a friend die in high school, and he used that time to tell me that I look like my mom when I cry, and it makes him "love the hell out of me and want to choke the life out of me" while he was choking me. He told me if I were gay, he'd shoot me in the head (im pan). He kept me from my siblings on my mom's side for 5 years just cause they were my mom's kids,s, but he loved comparing me to them. If I was good, he'd congratulate me for being better than them, and when I wasn't, he'd complain about why I couldn't be successful like them. He kept me from getting glasses bc I look exactly like my mom with them on. He punished me for having symptoms of a disease from HIS SIDE of the family. So when I couldn't stay awake in class cause a thyroid disorder was slowly killing me, he'd make me stack 3 textbooks in each hand, duct tape them to me so I couldn't drop them, and make me do wall squats for hours. When my disorder was so bad, I didn't have muscles, so I couldn't do a pushup. He looked at me, got mad that I was super skinny, made me get down and try to do pushups, and to try to "motivate" me, he beat me with a belt for not being able to push up til my stepmom had to stop him (she WATCHED the whole thing). He told me never to talk to him or "his family," so we had no contact for 7 years. He has out of the blue wanting to "just talk to his daughter" but winded up blaming me bc he was so mad when I left that he took it out on some kids and threatened them with his gun when they played music outside his house. He also used my youngest brothers (his kids) to lure me out bc the last time I saw them, they were like 3 and 5. He didn't even let me talk to them. He just wanted to be forgiven. This isn't even everything. He thinks it's just because I got in trouble.
Speaking as someone who's no contact with both parents--SO MANY parents don't believe emotional incest and emotional enmeshment are abuse. But then you grow up and you're 30 and you're standing in your parents shoes and you realize how incredibly fucked up they are. The level of disgust and grief and rage is overwhelming. And you can't keep banging your head against a brick wall. You realize that your parents are abusive and at this point, you're subjecting YOURSELF to their abuse. So you cut them off because you realize you deserve to be happy. And your parents don't see you as a real person, so they throw tantrums when you finally stop being their little puppet.
13:22 hit me like a freight train. “Just hope to god we burnt out before we are big enough to do anything to anyone” Being the youngest, and the most different in my family, I got the brunt of the volatility in my household. Everyone was always so angry and it would funnel down into me and I just didn’t have any way to disperse it. I spent a lot of time alone, breaking things. But all that gets you is alone, and surrounded by damage. So I did the work and they didn’t.
Estrangedment from parents isn't some new or modern thing. Abraham Lincoln "honest Abe", never had "anything favorable to say about him", and Abe refused to go to his fathers funeral, and never regretted it.
I saw another theory recently that many immigrants to the US were people who wanted to escape their families. It's crazy to think that there was a time that moving half a world away was an option and you didn't have to worry about secondary accounts or flying monkeys ringing you at all hours of the day. If you wanted to contact you had to pay for a stamp and wait half a year for the possibility of a reply.
When I was 28, I went no contact with my aunt, who helped to raise me in my parents' absence. I spent TEN YEARS trying to reconcile with her. Then I gave up. All through my childhood she called me a heartless monster. She told my friends not to trust me and told me not to trust my friends, usually when we were right in front of each other. That we would use and manipulate eachother. When I broke myself out of a cycle of abusive relationships, and found a partner that actually loves me, she went out of her way to spin every conversation into him and how he'll never love me and will just take advantage of how "kind and caring I am". And then in the same conversation spin back into me being unloving, manipulative, and hateful. Now she acts like my going no-contact was out of the blue. - It hurts that I'll never see her again, but it hurts more to see her. I have more things to do than spend every minute of my life fighting for myself.
I have an okayish relationship with my mum, but i can imagine something like this happening where it would read "i asked her about a blood test and she cut me off?!". Leaving out the years of denying me medical care, infantalising me, openly judging my body, me politely explaining many times i dont want to discuss my health etc with her.
So, I’m estranged from both my parents. I can tell you at least why abusive parents tell outrageous lies: because it’s not quite best understood as lies, it’s best understood as catastrophization. Almost no abusive parents will admit to being abusers. Almost all will admit to being “a bit much at times.” They all hang themselves by their soft language, not hard language.
3:19 So you have acknowledged that your daughter was jealous at the attention her brother was getting growing up and that the brother's wife also says that mom is too attached to her son, and yet she refuses to acknowledge that she favored one kid and acknowledge it as an issue. She knows what the problem is, she just refuses to see it as a problem.
My mother once said to me in a very surprised voice “ your children seem very attached to you! They really seem to love you!” That was such a telling statement. She assumed everyone would see me as unloveable and “difficult” because those were the reasons she gave herself as to why she and I werent close. We have been very low contact for years now. She was one of those Grandmothers that needed to be the grandchildren’s favorite. She would say terrible things about me and their other families members to them when they were small. As soon as I found out that was it. It was just the last straw in a big pile of straws but I found the strength to go low contact when it affected my children.
I'm estranged from my parents. The straw that broke the camels back was when after two years there still wasn't significant effort after I came out as trans. The straws that gave the backing weight that broke everything was the abuse I faced as a child at my mothers hands, abuse that anytime it was brought up I had to coddle my mom and walk on eggshells around those topics.
My parents disowned me once they were told that I was in a relationship with my now husband because of his race. My mother took down all pictures of me in their house and forbade my younger sisters for mentioning my name. I found out from my sister what my mom did as I was not living with them and was on my own. My husband and I started as friends, fell in love and then ended up in a relationship. Fast forward we have been together for over 30 years. I believe they had thought that by their actions that I would choose them. After all of these years and counting, instead I look forward to growing old with my husband and children.
@maximino you would make a fantastic mental health practitioner! As a therapist, I am enthralled with these dynamics and as bothered as you. Your ability to succinctly unpack so many layers of these type dysfunctions is remarkable. Keep up the good work!
11:06 " when you're mad enough to show us who you are in public, you're probably pretty calm being that person in private " my GOD dude you hit that right on the head. ABSOLUTELY correct
I talked publicly about being molested by my brother as a child (he's now deceased). My mother accused me of being unkind to her and named all her individual friends who I was being unkind to by talking about my SA. (??!!) She became paranoid and accused me of being the reason people weren't talking to her (delusion). She really turned monstrous. Now she says, "I don't know WHY she won't talk to us!"
I left bcuz my mom was in a cult, narcissistic, wouldn’t allow me to differentiate as an individual, couldn’t respect my boundaries, was emotionally abusive, and my own kids asked me to cut contact with her. There’s nothing I can do about any of that.
for a long time, my parents had convinced my fiance that i didnt have a good memory because anytime id confront them about something theyd gaslight me. they were so convincing at calling me delusional, i had to set a trap, and even then, it was only after happening to my fiance did he believe me
Oh my god, I had to deal with that bullshit too! It’s so incredibly frustrating, and I got to a point where I began questioning my own sanity. They’d argue with me on the stupidest shit, like whether or not we were in our yard or the neighbors yard during a particular event, or over what happened in a past conversation they weren’t a part of?!? Like, any opportunity to call me a liar/have a bad memory was taken. And they were always the ones to say “you’re wrong” and fight me on something I said, never the other way around. Glad I left that dumpster fire.
@@justalittleturtle5600 I had undiagnosed hypothyroidism and had brain fog and was trauma blanking out memories. I never questioned past the gaslighting. Im on meds now, but severely traumatized because I COULDNT let my trauma fade. It is still as fresh and painful as the day it happened because I refused to forget any detail, and because of the memory loss, that meant carving every detail into my mind in its full and unbridled horror and rage. They could gaslight things I said, but I refused to be gaslit about my abuse, and I eventually went no-contact because of their attempts to cover it up. Im in therapy and processing 2 decades of suffering all at once has been hard, but Ive chosen to be proud that I held it all, even as my body collapsed, out of pure spite and rage. We all deserved better. And our parents deserve criminal charges for the suffering they caused.
My family always calls my memory into question. In high school I started randomly recording some conversations and now when they say "that never happened" I can say "should I check the google drive?". Entire conversations that deeply impacted me that conveniently don't exist until I find proof of them. It's funny how I don't actually need to play the audio for them to suddenly remember the conversation once I mention that I have a recording. It's almost like they don't want the details to get any sharper.
Not wanting to take care of him is one of many reasons I've gone low contact with my dad. But it's not because I'm some heartless monster who refuses to help someone they love. It's because I've discovered helping him is at the detriment of my mental health. For example: the last time I had to help him he'd badly broken his leg. Our only toilet was upstairs, which he couldn't do, so he was using a toilet chair. Then one day as I was emptying it, it was kinda smelly and I instinctively made a face. He proceeded to yell at me for like an hour about how I was making him feel bad.
Sounds like you aren't a nurse or professional home health care provider. We don't suddenly become this just because our parents get old! Do not provide this aid for him and do not feel badly about it. He needs to avail himself of a service so someone can do it who is trained and getting paid.
Its pretty common for narcissists to be very kind to very small children but just flipna switch and start being awful around age 6 to 7. Narcissists like to be the only person in the room and they view toddlers as adorable objects but once they show personality they are seen as competition.
My mom tells people that I took my own life, that I want to take hers, that I've joined forces with satan..... etc. She doesn't mention her drug use, schizophrenia, stealing from me while I was in the hospital, beating the crap out of me, lying about so many things etc Going no contact hurt, but it was the best decision. My life is so much nicer without that stress.
My mom would get this evil look on her face all the time and say.... the WORST things to me. She also attacked me with knives on multiple occasions. Once i remember sobbing in the bathroom screaming in fear as she tried to break in. She died recently. Im almost scared that i feel so little regret.
25:01 - The entire video sounds so very familiar. But this is where I had to pause it. When I ran away for the final time at 17, my mother and her first husband told everyone that they knew about how I tried to seduce and sleep with him. The very same man who repeatedly behaved inappropriately with me; kisses on the lips where he would suck my bottom lip into his mouth, kissing and sucking on my earlobes, kissing on my neck, giving me hugs that went on for far, far too long, shoving his hands down the back pockets of my pants, etc. Yes, they told everyone that I tried to sleep with him. I went NC with my mother until a few years back when my grandmother (my dad’s mother) kept nagging about me not talking to my mother. Finally I caved and got back into contact with her. It lasted three phone calls. The final call my grandmother wanted to know what she had said because the conversation sounded so weird to her and when I told her, she *immediately* apologized to me for nagging me about getting back in contact with my mother. Despite me telling her about how horrible of a person she was, regardless of being my mother, she always thought that I *had* to be making some of it up but for me to tell her as soon as I ended the call what she said… m’hmm. I will never in this world or the next, get back in contact with that woman who believes that her children should worship the ground she walks on regardless of how she treated all of us. Oh, and I’m not making that “worship” part up. That’s what she told me when I asked her why she decided to have me at such a young age. She wanted someone to worship her. Parents if your child goes low NC or NC with you; do not contact them! Take a step back, re-evaluate your life, and go to therapy! No child wants to go NC with their parents. It’s always the last and final straw in our arsenal. If they choose that… then you really really messed up. To be fair, however, there are children who will go NC with their parents for other reasons; an abusive spouse (usually the NC will include everyone) or they are having their own problems. But for the most part… the NC is due to everything that you put them through during their lives.
20:32 it’s not that the parent wants attention necessarily…it’s that the parent can’t stand that the child has a new safe space. The parent probably built their entire identity on being the best place for their child (and probably toxically) so they find whatever negative aspect and run with it. I’m almost 40 and have my own parent I’m not speaking to right now. She was not like the parent I’m commenting on really,but there are DEFINITELY tendencies.
The hardest thing for me was realizing that my mother's motivation was power and control. She just wanted to possess me. I moved out of state and started to really look at what was going on once I had the space and peace (lack of constant crisis). If you read true crime, you know that those motivations never end well for the target.
20:05 regarding starting rumours about the adult child being in a bad way and needing people to check in, etc… My sister and I have discussed this to death. In our case, it was clear that since I was the first one of my siblings to start pulling away from our mother… she simply wanted spies and flying monkeys. Alleging abuse is the fastest (and no questions asked) route to gain spies and a sense of still “knowing” a child whom is starting to get fed up and considering NC. It’s a convenient excuse for why the pulling away might be happening (because it couldn’t possibly be the perfect parent who is lovely and infallible and made of spun sugar and rainbows), because spousal abuse, or other tough life struggles like finances, can sometimes legitimately be a reason that someone might isolate themselves from family. So it sounds possible, right? To everyone. And that’s the point. They get what they want. They get info they otherwise wouldn’t, they send a message to the adult child that they are still in control of them and will play dirty to keep it, and they send a message to outsiders that they are such goooooood people and they’re just “sooooooooo worried!!!1!1!!!11” Of course we will never really know for sure, but we think this fits with everything we have experienced of her. (Also, sometimes she used to have this ‘smirk’ whenever you’d confront her with her bad behaviour. The smirk meant you were right about her motives, and she thought she was clever for pulling it off. Ignoring that she was literally being confronted in that moment. That smirk is wild. I think others know the smirk.)
in the 90s and early 00s we used to call this "concern trolling," and it is nasty and effective as DARVO until it's pointed out and explained (as you just did very ably). call it out when it happens to strip it of effectiveness and point up the underhanded attempt at manipulation by the originator.
20:10 There’s a type of toxic parent that’s threatened by the success of their adult children. It’s like a sick competition. It’s very common in toxic mother/daughter relationships. They can’t function in a reality where their child is doing well so they distort things and make stuff up. They need to perceive their child as failing so they can feel better about themselves. So if a dish is in the sink, they’re eager to view it as the whole house being filthy. If their child has a single hair out of place, they’re quick to see their child as an unkempt slob. The child could pull the moon from the heavens and the parent would call them a failure for not taking the sun.
i stopped talking to my mom for a year after leaving for college because she was so brainwashed by the cult she raised me in that she refused to accept my sexuality, not to mention how she was emotionally neglectful and most interactions she had with me and my sister in my teens was screaming and swearing and smacking us across the face. when i ended up in a psychiatric ward after an attempt following her cult's public statement that couples in same sex marriages were to be considered apostates and the children of same sex couples would have to disavow their parents should they seek to convert, i told my roommate not to tell her where i was and that i would speak to her on my own terms. i called her from the ward after a week and she told me the feared the worst. i told her she was right to. once she realized that if she wouldn't support her child she simply would not have one, she started to clean up her act. years later she's an outspoken ally, loves my partner like she's her own daughter, and has been doing a lot of self-reflection and has made several apologies and working to be a better mother. she's not perfect and no amount of reparations will erase the past, but i see the human in her and have been on my own journey of forgiveness as she's proven she's willing to put in the work to be better. parents CAN change and realize their wrongs and make amends. these parents are clearly incapable of such self-reflection.
Im battling with this right now. Enmeshed ex husband and his very abusive dysfunctional family. They want to continue the culture of abuse and you srent allowedbto defend your children because they cjew your children as their property and unfortunately the system supports these people in continuing the abuse. I tried for over a decade to work with them. They don't want compromise. They want CONTROL. im fighting to protect my children. Sad thing is when the children grow up and develop their own autonomy and sense of self, the grandparents want nothing to do with them.
13:26. This part is pretty true. learned emotions. Our newer generations grew up with masses of information presented to us and some of us even learned how to discern things. My parents tried to be good parents, I atleast know that. A majority of the time, they tried. but their own lives were pretty awful in their own right. At the same time, they were my first bullys ever. One of my earliest memories is helping my mom not cry. I remember my step brother skidding his knee down to the bone and instead of taking him to the hospital she tried to fix it at home. He was bleeding tons. He had a scar for his entire life, and every time I saw him on the weekends id see it and get reminded of the time she cared more about the fact my brother got blood on one of her outdoor plastic chairs than actually helping her own son. She was so mad at him, but he was the one who got hurt. I remmeber my mom and my dad were my first bullies. They told me I had no home, my mom threatened to abandon me when I was like 12 and leave the country. She regularly gaslighted people around her. It even made my stepdad more emotionally reactive. when she was around he would react more to things he norally wouldnt care about. and his yelling was scarier. Now im working to recovery and my dad is also working on being nice. His father was abusive to him when he was young. So Im not too worried. but I grew up listening to fighting and horrible things being said, literally being right in the middle of fights and knowing its useless. whatever.
Estranging from a parent is like death by a thousand tiny cuts. Like she says, it’s never actually overnight like these delusional parents claim. It’s after years and years of abuse and being emotionally beaten down. It’s basically giving up the hope that you’ll ever have a loving parent. It’s like a death. I’m suspicious my mother actually enjoys it because it gives her a reason to cry to her friends and be the ultimate victim because of what a terrible unfeeling daughter I am to just cut her off for no reason. She loves the attention. Her friends used to call me or show up at my house to tell me how awful I was for not letting her see her grandchildren. She could not actually give 2 sh*ts if she sees her grandchildren. She even recently gave back every picture of them we ever gave her because they were just “cluttering up her house” and she didn’t have space for stuff like that. My kids are the reason I cut her off. When she started treating my daughter the way she treated me, I was like “Absolutely Not!” These parents are ridiculous.
Yes. I do think it legitimately hurts them. For some this is true sadness, for others it's more like being denied their favorite toy. But I also think that, for most of them, the silver lining is that they get to play the victim to their friends and family forever after. Even if they reconcile with their child, they can always say, "OMG she didn't talk to me for a year and it was the worst thing that ever happened to me and I still don't even understand why!"
Listening to the unhinged things estranged parents wrote to that psychologist, reminds me hard core of my own estranged mother. She was physically, verbally and psychologically abusive towards me. The older I got, the worse she got, although the more extreme physical violence towards me happened when I was a toddler and in elementary. Like these people, she could never take responsibility for her own actions, and it was always someone else’s fault or she would grossly exaggerate her own innocence to her enablers. Like these people, she also makes up stories to villainize me while omitting all the details of her vast abuses. I have been no contact with her for a decade, and I can tell you it didn’t just happen out of nowhere. The last message I got from her was threats of being punished by karma. These people don’t learn, won’t learn and will only cause more harm.
My dad who abused me so bad I needed several spinal surgeries and my nose reconstructed but he still doesn’t understand why I went no contact. The cognitive dissonance is astounding. He doesn’t understand why he can’t be a part of our lives but I could never trust him around my kids.
My mother in law told my husband our daughter with multiple disabilities was in fact not disabled, but possessed....and needed an exorcism. She told him to do it and not tell me. She talked about witches, curses, masonic lodges and other things. When we said that was unacceptable and would be going low contact ( it was the last straw) she blamed me, blamed covid, just trying to help, they are great people, how dare I turn their son against them etc etc. They started harassing us and stalking us. We got protection orders against them. While in court and the judge was chastising them for their disgusting behaviour, my in laws actually continued with that they didn't know why they were there/ they didn't do anything/ IM the one who is abusing THEM. Even laid out in front of them, in a legal setting, they STILL played the victim card. Estranged parents will NEVER understand because they don't want to.
The “I put cream in the food” one really bothers me. I have a weird allergy and my mother constantly shames me for not eating food she makes or being upset when I’m told specifically she’d make something for me and then I can’t eat it because of the allergen. It is extremely upsetting not just because of the guilt tripping but because the fact my own mother can’t remember even the most basic information about me is messed up. I remember more about her food preferences than she does about food that threatens my life
She remembers. Sorry but she does. If you can say that you remember more about her food preferences that she does about a life threatening food allergy, she has a blindness that requires a mental health professional to sort out.
I actually am that case of “suddenly with no warning”. My niece cut my mom (her grandma) and I out of her life in a flash. We had always been very close and never had any issues. My dad (her grandpa) got cancer and was dying. She offered to help anytime but I said I only wanted to do that for emergencies and would rather she spend the time with her grandpa. She hugged and thanked me for that but said the offer stood. All fine until the day my mom asked her for a ride to the hospital (2nd time in 3 months). The response was cold and completely unlike my niece. Unfortunately that morning my mom had a stroke we didn’t notice until later. She sent a text back that was harsh and nothing like anything she ever wrote before, nothing like her at all. She has no memory of that and we’ve been told the stoke had affected her greatly at that point. We tried to explain the stroke and it’s affects. But that was it. I was blamed as the one who texted. She has not spoken to us since and it’s been 3 years. It did not help that Covid precautions limited visitors to my father so I had to enforce the rules and coordinate visitors. I made sure my mother could see the love of her life everyday so that left only one spot open each day. I gave that to my niece many times even after she cut us out, missing seeing my dad so she could. But I further infuriated her when I wouldn’t give my mother’s spot to my nieces partner of less than year. I tried to negotiate another way (visit outside) but she wouldn’t accept that. At this point, I still have no idea how 21 years of a close and loving relationship could be destroyed so utterly and completely by a text. And one sent while someone was not in their right mind. And I am left to explain it to a woman who misses her beloved granddaughter and has no memory of the events. If she came back now…I don’t think I’d welcome her. So, it can happen. Its rare. But it can happen.
Anything is possible. But, we note that you are not calling your niece nasty names or claiming she cut off the family because you wouldn’t buy her a candy bar when she was 6. You understand the step-by-step of what happened, and are understandably hurt, but not saying things like “I hope she has a child who hurts her like this some day!”. That is the distinction. I am sorry to hear this situation happened in your family. A thought; is it possible your niece is in a controlling relationship? She may need help escaping one day if that is the case. 🤔
@@misspat7555 I still love her dearly. Just don’t think I could trust her. I might not understand what happened but I’d never call her names or put her down. She made a decision and I have to respect that. I wish I had noticed the signs of stroke earlier and taken my mom’s phone away, but I can’t turn back time. And sadly women can often present differently during a stroke, not as obvious. I just thought she was tired and stressed. There has always been questions about if her partner was behind it as she changed so completely. If there was control involved. But I don’t know. I keep the channels open and send simple wishes on holidays and birthdays. Just so she knows I’m still here if she ever needs me I will be there, but I’d be very cautious. I hope she is happy in her life and wish her the best, I just would love to share it with her. If I can’t…I just hope it’s good and she at least can remember the happy times with us.
The first time I cut my dad out of my life (The day I turned 18, and moved after graduation) he would constantly try and get me to answer my phone, that to this day I will not answer numbers I don't know because of him. At 24 I went to my brother's wedding and he was there, had a panic attack, but got through. Had somewhat of relationship because of financial help. But at ~28 when it came out he was touching my 3yr niece, I ghosted him. I was his victim at age 4/5.....it was reported, trials, etc. Now he's a convicted felon, not much good it does because he's free and only was in jail for less than 3 months and "too old" (mid 70s) to show up on a public registry search. My step-mom, brother, and sister, don't believe me nor my niece about him. He has not tried contacting me since. He knows the truth.
9:43 I listen to all of these complaints from entitled parents about how ungrateful and evil these kids are... and I'm not surprised that the number of childfree-by-choice adults is growing. Think about it: If you grew up constantly hearing what a burden you were, would *you* want to have kids?
One time my Aunt made me change clothes because the clothes I was wearing made me look ‘unflattering’ i was an adult at the time, but it hurt so bad. I can’t imagine how that would feel if it was my mom or grandma who said that. Big yikes 21:49
There is an African Proverb that always comes to mind in the discussion of no contact and these parents acting like they don't remember any of the abusive stuff they've done. **"The axe forgets, but the tree remembers."** They do damage as a matter of course, but as soon as the moment is over, they've put it out of their mind and seemingly from memory at all. I had many arguments with my mother over it before she passed, on Thanksgiving Day 2011. And when I started explaining, out came "I was just the worst mother ever, I guess" and similar statements meant to guilt me into taking it back. I've been no contact with my step dad for about 8 years now because he kicked me out of the hospital when they took my mom into the last surgery that ended her life, among a laundry list of physically and emotionally abusive and traumatic events during childhood and early adulthood. My brother started running away and the blow up my parents had after the cops told them they couldn't do anything about him leaving home or force him to come back if he didn't choose to, went on for 2 days.
Parents like this seem to be acting out due to no longer having control over the kids and this is their way of regaining that. Idk, at least that's how it is in my experience. That and the thought,"I can't be hurting my kids bc only bad people do that and I'm not a bad person."
Yes. The thinking is broken. We need a convenient, easy term for this kind of thinking. "What I do can't be wrong because I'm a good person" rather than "Maybe I'm not such a great person, look at this crappy stuff I did." Kind of like in politics: "It doesn't matter what my guy did because my guy is on the good side" when it should be "I really need to start evaluating people by what they actually say and do."
One common denominator I have found in these woeful tales is the mothers who refer to the grandchildren continuously as *_MY_* grandchildren as though the they are own the birthright of these children.
19:20 That's when you call the cops. Get a family therapist so you have a record that the family is fine and THEY can notify DCFS that the grandparents are toxic and the kids are fine. Make the cops aware that the parents are harassing the family; that's step one to an order of protection against them.
Wow! Thank you so much for featuring me on your channel, Maximino. This was the LAST thing I expected to see today. What an absolute honour. I look forward to seeing more of your work.
Stay remarkable
Thankful for the work you and Max are doing. It's really validating.
Youre both doing such important work thats SO validating to those of us with parents like dianne. Thank you ❤
thanks for having work to be featured! grateful max linked you as binged your videos after watched his & subbed 💚
Thank you so much for the work you've been doing
It was incredible to see you willing to go into the trenches that is the estranged parents chats and reveal the things they say in private
I hope you continue to share your insights
👏👏
What gets me about Diane specifically is her display of self-reflection. “I think back on all the times I didn’t give her a candy bar or let her go to a birthday party.” No, you don’t. Why would you when your kid wrote you a detailed letter explaining why she went no contact with you? It’s all part of Diane’s attempt to control the narrative and paint herself sympathetically. She knows good and well that Haley didn’t leave her over not getting a Twix in 1998.
A queer, neurodivergent, non-binary adult child obviously is upset by their mother's refusal to give them a Twix.
I think there is more behind the candy bar story. I think Haley has had eating disorder issues (go figure) and I'm edu-guessing that she had asked Diane to bring home something specific and it was like that "one thing" she knew she could eat and keep down and Diane 'forgot'. Abuser parents do those sorts of things and then act like their bad act was either accidental (as in that case) or meant in a good way like the parent who told me, "My daughter estranged because she's mad I looked after her health by giving her vitamins." and I said, "Just because you were giving her vitamins for her 'health' doesn't mean you weren't overdosing her and trying to hurt her. I only ask because otherwise why bring up vitamins at all. Have you heard of Munchausen Syndrome?"
These people do tell on themselves. Everyone needs to learn to listen critically and translate their insanity.
@@ellyk8834 Hard to prove, but definitely sounds plausible.
Ya but youre forgetting about the great snickers disaster of 2006. 😅
@@kittyroxsI cackled at that 💀
My mom claims I left at 15 over a mango and I was a "spoiled brat."
She always omitted how she never hugged me, said I love you, told me to kill myself over my sexual traumas like it was a hobby, how she blamed me for my dad going to jail on CP charges because "we were poor now," mocked every word out of my mouth, threatened to call a noise complaint to the police if I ever made more than a whisper or cried at any volume, constantly put me in contact with stuff I was extremely allergic to because she never cared about my health, would insult me and put me down all-day everyday, tried to throw me out of a moving car ... need I go on?
Oh, and the mango situation was her kicking me out, mocking at me, screaming at me, and whipping things at me in the front yard because she asked me to cut up a mango and I told her it was rotten.
A child doesn't choose to live the rest of her childhood homeless in frozen Canadian winters, with zero love and support, the mountain of prejudice that comes with being a homeless youth, and the trauma this actually leaves on your brain and can be seen on CT scans, on top of being trafficked and being at the constant risk of sexual exploitation because they're "spoiled." A parent makes that the safer option for their child. And that's fucked up.
Nope, definitely just the mango. Man, that's so fucked up. I hope you're doing better these days and have built a community for yourself where you feel safe.
I keep telling people that much of the homeless people on the street have either been kicked out or they’re running away from molestation “ no they’re all just addicts” ugh
I’m so sorry you went through that
Similar story. Thanks for sharing
@@Happinesslover99similar to mine too. Sad I’m not alone in this.
The energy these parents give is "Well, I've tried nothing, and I'm all out of ideas 🤷🏼♀️"
like diane admitting she bought a book on how to help reconnect with her daughter but wouldn't read it as too much accountability was recommended
"Well, I tried nothing, and I'm all out of ideas " This needs to be on shirts. Then sent to these estranged parents. Every. Christmas.
@@jessiee2115omg I would pay good money for that!
That’s so my approach to any and all home repairs 😂 If I can’t fix the issue by turning the faucet off, it’s beyond my ability. Lol
That's been my mom all my life. She worked nights at a relatively isolated airforce hospital when I was born, and "couldn't find" any babysitter willing to stay up nights. I've had prisoners cinema (a type of phosgene) for as long as I can remember, which is a clear sign of severe understimulation, but the doctors would rather enable the abusers, and say I have a list of diseases, rather than accept that one human parasite and the med side effects from misdiagnoses explain it all. I assume, because most of them are also parasites, and any who weren't were trained to accept the official word of high status parasites as gospel.
"They didn't give me a reason"
Yes they did. You just choose to not listen.
Probably over the course of decades.
Sometimes the parent's actions speak for themselves. I shouldn't *have* to chance another interaction with a dangerous woman to explain to her that the reason I went no contact is because she abducted me and attempted to traffic me to a different country. That wasn't the only reason, but it should be enough of one that even she should understand that she crossed a line.
@@kismetcaffet9862my mom knew my SA molester was abusing my cousin before me and still allow him around me . She still have a really strong relashionship with him. But she can't understand why I am so selfish and have no contact with her.
@@kismetcaffet9862I can think of a bad reason for that (money), and a good reason for that (escaping a dangerous family member, probably your father). I assume it was the first and not the second? 🤔
@@misspat7555 sadly, my dad just sat and drank after their divorce when she wouldn't let him move on with his life. He was actually the healthier of my bio-parents and he passed from alcoholism when I was a teenager. She abducted me just for control - there was no money involved nor threat to her. She was the only threat to me at the time as I was getting married. So, she was going to be officially loosing control over my life, which was unacceptable to her.
Had she been in a situation where she was desperate enough that the only solution she could think of was selling me off, I'd be more open to hearing her out. But even the uncle who called my fiance to try to convince him to "just let her take [me]" explained that it was about 'her knowing what's best for me.'
These parents' lack of normal logical reasoning is one of the aspects that makes them so dangerous and unpredictable.
Saying your child is mean and then calling them batshit crazy and saying you're happy they're infertile right next to it is a type of dissociation I'll never comprehend. What a massive mask-off moment.
As someone who used to struggle with dissociation, it’s not the good word to use here. I mean no offense but it’s actually a very stigmatizing use of the word because dissociation is basically the freeze response to trauma.
Callousness, evil, inhumanity, horror… are much more fitting.
But yeah it’s def a mask off moment. My dad was like that too. Called me batshit for holding him accountable for the seriously reprehensible shit he subjected us to (including producing and distributing CP of me). Then he claimed I was the abusive one and the reason he cheated on my poor mom and left us for his secret mail order bride he kept at a house nobody knew about. It’s abhorrent to hear how he thinks about my mom, brother and I. I don’t get how he still thinks the victim.
@@noidea4254 I think Brit might have meant dissonance, like in cognitive dissonance.
@archervine8064 Oh yeah, I didn’t even think about that!
you can inadvertently hear the hatred of the parents for their children in their commentary
This. It's so painful as the child in this situation. I blamed our kids once to a guest for an unflushed toilet and 10 years later I still feel guilty for saying that about them like that. It's crazy that some people make a whole life out of painting their kids in a bad light.
@@ladvita32 that speaks a lot to your willingness to go there. my parents still treat me with disdain and contempt and disregard to this day which is why i don't contact them anymore. they're still fighting, still proud imo. have not made the leap you have
@@ladvita32 No parent is perfect, the difference is in how you go about mistakes.
I hear it whenever my mother speaks to me. I am NC with my immediate family. My twin sister is just as bad as she is. I was the family scapegoat.
They don't realize that most ppl with empathy can see what they are doing to their kids.
@@grawakendream8980 I'm so sorry. It took my mother dying and all her friends and a lot of our family now suddenly OPENLY throwing things in my face that they clearly got my mom's side of for me to completely let go of trying to get their approval. I still ruminate and try to find a way to get someone to see, but it's completely useless.
I think for people like us, we either still have a good relationship with those abusive parents and blindly repeat the cycle with our own kids, or we separate from them and don't have a real relationship with them anymore and it allows us to start over (for better or worse), and think from the ground up how we want to treat others regardless of what was done to us.
My bro was still close with my mom.. guess what that dynamic is like. Let's just say he's doing his best to keep her mission going..
I work in community mainly with elderly people, whenever someone says oh my son/daughter doesn’t speak to me for some reason, after being in their home for 30 mins i can normally see why, demanding, passive aggressive, rude, self absorbed but with absolutely no clue of how they come across or in complete denial about their behaviour
"Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things."-Terry Pratchett. I truly believe that there is a subset of parents who want their children to be automatons rather than fully formed people.
Not all mothers whose children have estranged from them are demanding, rude, self absorbed, etc. This is more you deciding that all mothers are like this. Not true. But glad you admit to making a judgement after just half an hour.
@@JOHNTHEWHISKWow did your kids leave you for being rude and self obsessed because you seem to be taking this personal
@@Puzzles-Pins that person is clearly agenda-driven and here only to promulgate it. they're all over this comment section with apologia for shitty abusive parents.
These cut-off parents love telling on themselves. "wHy DiD mY kIdS cUt Me OfF??? Anyway, lemme just say a ton of vitriolic hateful inflammatory outlandish stuff about the humans I created and raised instead of introspecting for literally any amount of time"
I agree, they raised them right? So it would go back to them? I don’t think going no contact is evil of makes a person evil. Ofcourse it’s hurtful, if, it’s telling they get angry, instead of being sad. It happens and sometimes it’s good to take a distance.
I'm in my 40s. I have a mother with comorbid autism/NPD. Yay!! She's so much fun...not. Everything and everyone is only seen in black and white, good or bad. NO grey areas, no nuance or variation. I lived through people believing the awful things she said about me.... to this new era (internet isn't all bad)... in which mothers like mine have been unmasked. I never thought I would see the day. It is incredibly HEALING and validating. I thought I was the only person/child in the world dealing with/suffering with....this. It had no name, I was alone.
"...teaching these brats that they have rights..."
There it is. Right there. According to some (many?) parents, children do not have rights. Like pets. Or property. They are something that is to be owned and controlled by the parent, only an extension of the parent, never their own person. Always compliant, always submissive.
Yep. Exactly like a car, a dog, a horse. A thing to be controlled and used for one’s own purposes. Not an immature, but still separate, person. This was exactly my parents’ problem; I have said I made it to age 18 with the emotional/social maturity of an 8 year old as a result. I never went into a store or fast food place alone until the summer I was 17, when my camp counselor training group went to Wal-Mart and Wendy’s. 😳
The best way I ever heard it put is "children have rights parents have responsibilities"
its not just some parents. im convinced that even an okay/good parent can end up absorbing 'children are not humans/thier own person' ideas bcs its so prevalent. its everywhere. good parents are the ones that unlearn that. unfortunatly, most dont
@-toriizaka46 Oh, absolutely. Even decent parents can be taken inby the idea they have complete control and authority just by being parents - even when their kids are adults.
This is what happens when biased women hating family courts hand custody to the abusive father. He turns the kids against the mother. And it lasts for life.
The snoring one smacks of the adult child saying something like "I was literally having anaphylaxis on the living room floor while you snored on the couch" and shitty parent goes "I DON'T SNORE" like that makes the rest of it fine
Ohhh shit you're right
Selective hearing and bad comprehension analysis to the extreme!
I had that happen with my own mother. Both of my parents were crappy parents. My mom does exactly that. You spell out the entire story and she zeros in on the smallest issue and decides to make her stand there. My dad on the otherhand fully acknowledges his fuck up and the first time he heard my unfiltered opinion about his Ex GF he had when I was a kid he was super apologetic for not recognizing the signs because he was too far in the drink. It's telling how kids who have crappy parents can still have good relationships with their kids later in life if they acknowledge the mistakes they made and the harm it caused. These parents don't get that. They believe they are entitled to a parent child relationship for popping the kid into existence.
"My daughter recently estranged me because I didn't buy her a can of monster energy ultra back in 2009"
Or i only bought her one even though monsters were two for $5 back then /:
@@Maximmmino Truly sickening. The University Industrial Complex will pay for this
I was going to estrange when I turned 18 and all my friends parents bought them their first car. My dad did buy a nice new car.... for the woman he left my mom for. At least I got to enjoy others enjoyment. I mean I got to sit in these new cars sometimes...even got some lifts!!!
Hey, estranged daughter here. I research the authoritarian personality and I might be able to shed some light on what’s happening. Many people think of authoritarianism as a political thing but really it also describes a method of cognitive structuring. Part of it is hierarchical thinking and parental dominance, but one of the things Theodor Adorno noted is that people with such personalities live slightly adjacent to reality. Their reality is an incredibly angry, uncomfortable one where their very existence is constantly at stake. Another element of the authoritarian personality is an inability or fear of introspection, so they can never actually get to the root of why they feel or act the way they do. They just know they’re uncomfortable and want to lash out or blame others.
One of the things I discovered was that my mental health is sadly better when my family is not in my life. They did actually go so far as to have me diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which no other clinician ever saw, because the idea they caused my severe PTSD was not something they could handle. All my successes were “family successes”, the outcome of their positive influence, but all my failures were mine alone to carry. It was really difficult dynamic that was the downstream effect of multiple cycles of intergenerational trauma coming to a head and their complete refusal to do any introspecting or take any responsibility. I’ve done almost ten years of therapy at this point and continue digging. They believe people don’t have boundaries with their families and going to therapy ruined my relationship with them.
Excellent video. I greatly enjoyed watching it and hope you have a good week!
I think that is interesting because it was pretty common knowledge on the type of parents that exists, through Jr. high and high school. It was even reinforced in college in many of my psychology and criminal justice classes. I find jt odd that it isnt common knowledge anymore and is only focused on the political side
Very interesting
This. Is. Exactly. It.
"born to be your lover, forced to be your mom" has to be the most revolting thing I've ever heard. Until i heard her quoting the person saying some of the 20 kids colonized the west like that was a good or normal thing. Jesus, maybe we should consider the possibility that these shitty parents emerge as a systemic phenomenon.
So many things that are so off here....
@pebblebrookbooks4852 I know. There's something really off about Europeans thinking that robbing the rest of the world at gunpoint is somehow normal.
That quote was so vile. My sons are adults now and we all have pretty good relationships because I know my role and stay in my fucking lane. Shocking, right?
That quote was so vile. My sons are adults now and we all have pretty good relationships because I know my role and stay in my fucking lane. Shocking, right?
Well, when the systemic mindset for AGES regarding the indigenous or POC is that they're less human and therefore its okay to subjugate them, yeah, I feel like it's gonna create people who view their kids as less than human instead of as autonomous beings.
Plus there's that whole "go forth and multiply" mindset of colonialism in general, that is our godgiven right to go take over other people's land, lives, etc. So no surprise that the idea of ownership is kind of built in to stop many generations.
Or the people who only have kids because it's what society expects of them, but not coz they GENUINELY want them.
So like, in the broader view of society, yeah, I think it IS a systemic issue. And it's really only now that we're staring to really reckon with the way we've viewed other people as less human and how that's affected every single part of society, including parenting
It's because they sense they have lost control, and they are unwilling to accept responsibility. So they try to regain control through rumors
This makes a lot of sense
I don't get how they can see it ending in a positive way for anyone as the person starting the rumor
I disagree with this "correction" idea, but I think kids tend to grow up well if they're treated well albd nurtured.
@@nineteenfortyeightwho said anything about "correction"?
Exactly, if they can't control you, they will try to control how others perceive you.
@@ladvita32 I think they replied under the wrong post, there's someone else in the comment section talking about correcting bad behaviors
At 37 years old, I have been telling her since I was 12 how hurtful she is. I'm tired of repeating myself.
What? 😂
Now's ur time dude. Get out there and do something
She hasn’t listened for decades, she won’t listen. Take care of yourself
My mom can recognize that my brother is a psychopath who tried to murder both of us multiple times but she cannot recognize the abuse that she did to both of us. She does not understand what I will not speak to her and why I refuse to speak to her husband who is worse. They decided to talk about me and my husband so negatively around my son when he was 3 that he started crying in a Wendy's and went non verbal. He is on the spectrum and they know this. They brought him home instead of taking him to the museum for a dinosaur event because he went nonverbal and cried because of what they said. I remember my mother's husband angrily telling me I told him i love you and he ignored me. We did get him to tell us some of what he was upset about. That was the end. I was abused and degraded for over two decades he will never experience that. He has family that adore him for him.
Autistic person to parent of an autistic child: it sounds like he's very lucky to have you. A parent who cares and understands is worth their weight in gold and I would've paid as much to have that when I was younger.
I was going to share my story about my abusive mother but lots of us have the same stories. My mother apologized for being mean to me 7 months before she died. We all knew she was dying. I never told her it was ok. I only answered "don't think about that stuff".
She could take that for an acceptance if she chose. Her apology was too many years too late. I don't regret not telling her it was ok.
She died in July 2016 and I just finally let the anger go of how she treated me a few months ago. I had tried to let it go but held onto it. Finally I realized that I couldn't force myself let it go. That's when I was able to let it go.
thanks for sharing this! i've been mulling over a letter to my mom before i move to another part of the country partly as want to kind of feel like leaving my past behind me & don't plan on telling her where i'm moving but i do feel sorry for her as she's understandably alone after a lifetime of selfishness, entitlement, etc so want to let her know i don't hate her & get she has faced a lot of challenges which keeps tempting me to say "i know you did your best" however it's been so validating & empowering to refuse to let myself do that as i absolutely don't believe she did anything (much like diane, she might buy a book or join a group but if it recommends actual accountability she'd rather create her own echo chamber instead 🙄) anyways, i'm sure she'll misinterpret what i write as "i know you did your best" but i'm pretty sure i won't care as she's never really listened or tried to understand me anyways, lol, plus i don't plan on ever knowing what she thinks (i'd already sort of accidentally transitioned from low contact to no contact during a major depressive episode & just never reconnected but hope this will help give me some closure) stories like yours help strengthen my resolve to prioritize my self respect over guilt others try to put on me 💚 i'm glad you've been able to honor your feelings & find peace
I actually had a like 5 minute talk about apologies in this video that i ended up cutting out
But I do a bad job of accepting them
I'll nod my head and say okay don't do it again
But rarely say something about actually accepting the apology unless it's something trivial like if you bump into me or say something that hurts my feelings that didn't actually hold any harm
I'm not sure what it is
But I think I'd do the same thing if my mother apologized
I'm glad you were able to let go
And I hope you're in a great place now
I am glad you are able to have some peace.
Thank you for sharing that. I’m currently LC with my mom but I am so angry at so many things. I keep trying to let it go because “it’s only going to hurt you” but damn how can I let go if I’m still hurt? That’s why I’m angry. The idea that pain and the secondary emotion that tries to protect you from that pain can disappear at will is starting to sound like telling people to “stop being depressed”.
@@wiggilytaco7570 i've always struggled with letting myself experience anger partly as was so unsafe to growing up but one time a roommate did so many things that were so egregious that included taking off without paying rent then continuing to mess with us knowing i was the single parent of a preschooler & on disability that was likely to become homeless again based on their actions so i literally couldn't afford to just be depressed about it at the time but also had zero desire to try to "get over it" but a strange thing happened, as i let myself be incredibly angry, cussing as i sort through the massive amount of crap she'd left in her room then after a couple of days doing that felt a weird sort of... idk... lack of intensity start to wash over me, lol. i still think she's a horrible person who acted unforgivably but i haven't ever had the same sort of strong reaction i do when talking about other experiences i've had & i never tried to gaslight myself into "understanding" her perspective (the main thing i do besides get depressed instead of angry)
anger is often a *very* valid response that protects you from continuing to subject yourself to situations or people that harm you & when it's about the very people who are responsible for bringing you into the world that you were forced to depend on for your very life it is absolutely legitimate to *fully* experience your anger until it loses its intensity or *you* otherwise feel ready to let go of it! many are fortunate to not understand what you're going through so their "advice"/etc might be well intentioned but should *not* be allowed to invalidate your experience 💚 thankfully there are also plenty of people who *do* understand where you're coming from & can encourage you to do what *you* need to for *your process* which could very reasonably be remaining angry for quite some time. i've only really experienced that one example with a roommate who was horrible but only impacted me for a few months overall so i can't imagine how long it'd take to have any similar occurrence regarding my parents or other people who "owed" me far more & did far worse
Diane: I'm not even that political!
Also Diane: The Holocaust wasn't even that bad. (she actually said that)
"why would they spread rumors"
Control. It almost always comes back to control.
🔔🔔🔔 always and forever. It's the motivation behind supply, it's why they behave with prejudice, it's closer to the root of the problem than usually goes uncensored.
Everything in a narcissist's life is external to themselves. They view themselves as perfect beings who live in an imperfect world. If something good happens, it's because they are perfect and deserve it. If something bad happens, it's because someone imperfect got in the way of their happiness. They cannot be the cause of anyone's problems -- least of all their own -- because that would make them imperfect in some way and that is impossible. If you try and tell a narcissist that they are wrong, it triggers a fight or flight response in them. Changing the narrative around those mistakes is why you see narcissists create rumor mills or gangs of flying monkeys. If they can make other people believe their version of events, that version becomes "real" and they are no longer the villain, but the victim, and thus the world returns to it's balance in their mind.
So it's easy to say it's about control, but it's not just control of the people around them, it's control of the whole fabric of their reality. That's why it's impossible to break an adult narcissist out of their tendencies. It's not just a desire, it's a need, a compulsion. They would stop being themselves if they were able to stop being a narcissist.
I have an actual success story! Th÷re are obvious reasons for the difference. Some time ago my sister in law informed me that her oldest child had decided to go no contact. She expressed her sadness but she didn't speak about the situation or make any excuses or blame anyone. She didn't ask me to maybe talk to them or be a go between. She, with therapy and love accepted her adult child's need for space. She never once blamed "this generation: or culture or anything. She was strong enough to step back. I burned with curiosity because I had always seen her as this amazing supportive accepting mother. But I had to stay away and also allow space. And last month they posted a picture together. Our family is celebrating the holidays together! Not all estranged parents are monsters. Sometimes humans need a reset. I can't wait to see my nibbling!
This has been a journey of several years and thousands of miles. I couldn't be prouder of my family for thier continued navigation of this incredibly difficult relationship. But it's so diametrically different to what we see with Diane and these similar groups.
That is how it is done, by a parent that accepts responsibility and acts to fix it. Unfortunately this is such a small minority.
Most estranged parents aren't monsters, they are just overgrown toddlers who are way too full of themselves to see anyone else as anything other than NPCs in the background of their own "Hero's Journey", including their own children. An extreme case of "main character syndrome", if you will.
Your sister was able to turn this around because (quoting) "she was strong enough to step back". She understood the assignment, even if it took years of therapy for her to get to that place. I'm so proud and happy for her and for your entire family although I promise you, nobody is as happy and proud of her as your nibling.
🔥🔥🔥
No, thats a good mom. Every parent will mess up. How you respond to that is EVERYTHING
The “kids just aren’t joining the circus these days” argument is crazy
Requires clown college these days.
I actually laughed a little. Like, shock laugh. Because there were kids who basically ran off in hopes of fleeing poverty or were basically sold/kidnapped so the parents might escape poverty.
@@esppupsnkits4560 Or it looked like a good job that got them out of an abusive relationship.
Part of my estrangement from mine was my adopto mom trying to arrange a marriage to me with "a good xtian man" while I was still dating my current husband 3 years into our relationship... After we got engaged 4 years that stopped but the pressure to have an heir for our maternal line started... Its not okay. I'm okay now that I'm free from her.
I can't imagine wanting so hard for my child to end up with someone based on religion, or race, or anything other than just a deep deep willingness to love them
I'm happy you found your person
re Diane: We didn't lose respect for her because of her political views. It was because she revealed a worldview that is unethical and immoral.
she never earned my respect to lose but it was clear almost immediately she wouldn't earn my respect, definitely by the time she misrepresented her daughter's letter
@@r_and_a Fair point. I meant lack respect. I'm thinking more from the perspective of her daughters. lol My poor word choice.
The fact that her wickedness and cruelty is also political in nature does not mean our reasoning is "just politics." Like you say, her politics are unethical and immoral. She is steeped in cruelty and inhumanity.
@@Fauntleroy.Of course she is, she's a trump supporter. Every single one of them is filled with hate and vitriol. They are the reason we are leaving country.
I think her political views and her views as a parent are intrinsically linked honestly. I think one supports the other. Political views are no longer just political imo theyre moral failings steeped in hatred and bigotry. Id hazard a guess that narcissism in parents like this is coocurring with conservatism more often than not. Its a self serving cycle of BS
"Born to be your lover, forced to be your mom" what in the fucking fuck??
My grandmother deliberately alienated my sister from my mother. If my mother had seen (or understood) what was going on I’m sure she would have removed my sister from my grandmother’s orbit. So, the woman who said her daughter was jealous because she had a better relationship with her grandkids than the daughter was upset that her daughter caught on to the mother’s tactics.
When I started working with PFLAG, I met a transgender woman who stopped talking to her dad because he tried to have her life ended by another relative, and other relatives were trying to get her to FORGIVE her dad. Just awful. Imagine your own father trying to arrange your passing and then your brother tells you that YOU’RE overreacting.
One of my parents was in an unusual situation where they got disowned by their abusive mom.
My parent regularly apologized to me for the fact that I couldn’t have a normal relationship with that grandmother (all three other grandparents passed either before I was born or shortly after). The most baffling thing about that is why would I even WANT to have a relationship with that POS grandma? Ever conversation I had with her as a kid was just her interrogating me over how my parent was doing. Like bitch? I was 5!
This video is so utterly and deeply triggering. AND I had an epiphany while watching.
I was physically and emotionally abused by two parents, a step parent and a brother. As a result, I was not a well behaved child. I acted out in ways I didn't understand then, of course, but I learned later that my behavior was directly related to the trauma I endured.
Every single time there was an "incident", every call from the principal, every school suspension (cigarettes, skipping class) just EVERY-single-TIME I misbehaved, my mom would first scream at me, tell me I will ever amount to anything, beat me, pull my hair (she loved to beat my head against solid objects)... THEN she would hop on the phone to tell everyone she knew what I had done. Everyone. She would be on the phone for hours. I grew accustomed to entering any party, picnic or gathering knowing every single person in attendance had been informed of what a terrible person I am.
In my adulthood, I always walk into groups of people with the feeling that THEY ALL KNOW. They all know every bad and embarrassing thing I've ever done and it's the only thing they see when they see me. I've developed a "SO WHAT" response to it and have fine tuned my feelings to not be bitter. People might like me or not, respect me or not. Oh well! I turned out pretty freaking awesome considering my circumstances. I carry on with my head high and a good heart NO MATTER WHAT. (I even took care of mom when she was at the end of her life. I also took care of my father... after breaking away from both of them for years).
But this video, oh my god. I finally connected the dots to the overwhelming sense of embarrassment when I'm around people I've known for ages who have seen me at my worst. Some of them are truly judgmental a-holes, so be it. Most of them are not thinking about any part of my past, though. In either case... SO WHAT? I've got life to love and stuff to do. I have to keep pursuing deep and real happiness, which includes digging through the PTSD and naming each part of it, sorting through it, it's rewarding work, but exhausting sometimes... these videos really help. Thank you.
Jesus christ I always feel like that too. Even when I have done literally nothing, I imagine what lies people may have told about me
@@CBrown86 Yep. It's trauma based. I highly recommend setting the dial to "OH WELL. Let 'em talk.". It helps.
I grew up exactly like that with the same shame/trauma response. I feel shame even in a room full of unknown people. Like "they all know". The smear campaigns were and continue to be next level, although I have been 30 years NC.
@@sixtysenseI am sorry. This sounds awful to deal with.
I have to say, I love your name on here!
I don’t even know you, but it hurts my heart to hear you bemoan your self awareness. I hope you can cherish who you are. You are doing important work here.
When my dad left my mom for another woman it enabled his three kids to cut him off without cutting out our mom. He’s told several people since that she turned his children against him because he wouldn’t give her support money (until the judge forced him) like he never, you know, physically attacked his own children or put them in fear for their lives...
My sister and I are extremely low contact with our Dad. My Dad told me "I'd rather have a dead kid than a kid like (sister)". He's said much much worse, but he still thinks we hate him because politics.
When I brought up one of the most traumatic incidents of my childhood he went straight through the entire narcassist's prayer.
Recently I mentioned that he stole a $400 appliance from me a few years back and he had the audacity to ask me why he did that. As if I know???
The video I watched right before this was about walkaway wife syndrome, you know when men say she just left out of nowhere! And there was a comment that I think was really good and it was ‘it’s not that they’re surprised that we have been dissatisfied the whole time, it’s that they’re surprised that we are actually doing anything about it.’
The content she finds is a prime example of, "when they tell you who they are, BELIEVE THEM."
I find it really disturbing when people see love as a competition and something than can only be given out in stingey ammounts. These ideas of someone loving their mum more than their wife or their grandkids loving them more than their mum. It's really grosteque and turns relationships into competitions for power ('love') instead of interactions of enjoyment and support.
By the way, the first time I went no contact with my dad he said it was over a glass of coke. He was always rude to me and spoke to me either in agressive or condescending tones whenever I went to his house, he had yelled at me for pouring too much coke for him when he only wanted half a glass and I'd had enough of being spoken to like I was a piece of shit. Every time he spoke to me it was derogadtory, abusive, yelling or condescending. I'd had enough. But in his head it was about the coke. 30 years later, I'm the only one of his 4 kids who talks to him and he doesn't understand why. He asked me to explain to him and I said 'Because you're an arsehole.'. He still didn't get it. In recent years he has acknowledged he hasn't been a good father but I still think he doesn't understand what he has done that made him be a bad father.
Welp, this was my dad in a nutshell. “Ungrateful, cruel, stupid” etc. After his death, I had a couple of his friends approach me, saying that they felt bad we couldn’t manage to have a relationship with one another, and practically lectured me on not making time in my life for him. It was a mic drop moment when I told them all about the times he allowed his girlfriend to drive us around drunk, and one time kicked us out of her house, only for my dad to have me walk a good three miles in the winter in pajamas to a hotel, only for him to leave me there so he could go find drugs. Cops got there before he did. Or the time years later when my mom allowed him to come over to Thanksgiving, only for him to show up high as a kite, and holding again. Or the time when I was a full-blown adult and tried with him again with him promising he was completely sober, and he ordered a Bloody Mary at lunch.
That man had so many chances in all sorts of different stages in my life. He refused to understand that my reasonings for not wanting him in my life weren’t influenced by my mom or sister, but by his own repeated actions, and his own repeated ignorance of the boundaries I clearly set for him in print, and were bare minimum of what you hope from a parent.
I'm very close with both of my adult children and some of the things these parents think they have a right to blows my mind. Our children owe us nothing. If they love us, that is a grace.
6:42 It's definitely a real phenomenon of these types of parents treating their children more like a romantic partner. It's kind of a controversial term because it's still somewhat loosely defined, but a lot of people refer to this as "emotional incest". After I was able to finally get away from my covert narc ex wife (which is a very common type of partner for people to end up with when they've also been raised by one), my mom swooped in again, and after a while I came to the bizarre and disturbing realization that she was treating me and expected me to act towards her exactly like my ex wife did (which was the only long term relationship I had ever had, even though my mom tried hard to break us up in the beginning). Among many things, I had to spend an inordinate amount of time (basically any free time I had) with her, talk to her on the phone for hours when we weren't together, and try to explain away any time I needed to be apart (if she didn't agree with the reason she would get very angry or act "hurt" etc.). It was like I had just replaced one with the same person again.
What's also weird was that there was a moment when I was married that I was forced to accept to myself that, despite all my promises to find a partner who was the exact opposite of my mom, I had somehow married the exact SAME person instead. When my mom showed back up after that relationship was done, it was shocking and incredibly hard to accept that my mom's behavior towards me felt almost the same. Was it always like this? I assume so, its very strange and almost sickening to think about because I don't even like looking at her, let alone having to think about her in those terms.
It's a real thing though, just one more bizarre aspect of these deeply weird people.
That's crazy, I'm sorry you had to go through that. It is weird how it seems to be so accepted that women behave like that with their son. Whereas if it was a man with his daughter, people would be disturbed by this kind of behaviour and I bet a lot of rumors would be going around. Really strange. 🤔
Yes, emotional incest is surprisingly extremely common unfortunately. The term "boy mom" or "toxic boy mom" basically refers to mothers who have an emotionally incestous relationship with their sons, and you can see that these moms are EVERYWHERE on tiktok, youtube, etc. There's also many fathers that do the same to their daughters. I'm glad awareness of all this is rising, because it was so hard for children to get help in the past, no one would believe things like this happened, but it happens way too often
This is a side of the internet i don't ever wanna stumble onto
That is such a wild story to hear
I'm glad you came to the realization of it all but that must've been such a shock to put together
I hope you're in a much much better place now
I realized a bit ago that I am handling my mother very much like I have learned to handle my son’s father/ex-husband; gray rock. 🪨 I need her around because I am now widowed as well as divorced (I am SO winning at life! 🥴), so I’m a single mother AGAIN, and don’t have a better emergency mother substitute available, but I seek no support of any kind from her, ever, because her money comes with SO many strings attached, and her emotional support is non-existent at best. 😑
8:33 “we don’t get to decide a child’s nature”
It’s literally a parent’s job to nurture their child, correcting any troubling nature, into a good person! That’s a complete denial of responsibility!
@@JayeEllisthey’re just saying their kids were born evil or something and that they just couldn’t do anything about it! It’s absurd!
I mean broadly thats true. I don't get to chose if my children are drawn to sport, or art, or nature. I don't get to chose if my children are easily upset by loud noises or the feeling of fabrics.
I do get to chose how I react to that. All behaviour is communication. We get to chose if we listen or not.
@@justine8387i believe they were referring to their children as just being born mean enough to leave them. Which just isn’t possible. No kid just has some innate trait that makes them leave their parents.
@@lelduck6388a lot of people used to believe this. I am glad that society as a whole condemns the idea.
@@justine8387Yes, it’s a get out of jail free card for terrible parents
11:34 I have to admit I agree here, everyone should be a part of the Trauma Club,, so we can collectively admit "normal" doesn't equal "healthy".
Given that around half of current/recent parents of minors still spank, and the stat was more like 3/4 in prior generations, yes, I’d say some amount of childhood trauma is “normal”. 😵💫
@misspat7555 The most heartbreaking thing is a 4 year old saying "Daddy lied. He promised no more pow pows. Can I stay here forever?"
@@MaplesonI had to explain to my 5-year-old son TWICE that if I didn’t send him to “see Daddy”, he could end up living with Daddy as much as or even more than he was currently living with me to punish me for not doing what the judge told me to, because it was hard for him to understand why I wasn’t protecting him. He’s 15 now. He says his father and I were both foolish to have a child together, but also says it has been clear I wanted to be a parent, while his father just wanted to own a human being. 😔
Yes, I saw a comedian talking about her kids being soft because they didn't see people being r***d, dying, beaten, etc. I was so disgusted I can't watch her anymore.
My mother is a hoarder and my dad enabled her, very much codependent. She put up signs in the apartment "the neighbors can hear everything you say" (we lived in a townhouse with paper thin walls) when she was the one screaming at me to wake me up literally every single morning. She took my door off and then refused to tell me why she did it even when I asked her to her face. She kept that door off for 7 years. I moved out and it was still gone
"Estrangement is never the first option."
Wrong. I had decided that I would escape when I was 17, then tried to justify why I shouldn't until I moved across the country at 28 and completely cut contact. I didn't have former discussions about how to fix the relationships because they made it clear they wanted people like me to go extinct. I never even told them who I was.
If I attempted to fix anything, I know they would have just lied and used details about my real self against me. It would have put me in danger, so it wasn't worth attempting.
Estrangement wasn't your first option, it was your ONLY option.
Same. In a way. Sort of. I've not given any reason this time for going no contact. No reason, no warning. Simply because I don't know how to explain to my dad that anger and fear are not the correct way to handle a 2yo. Which he had also done to us. There's no conversation to be had there. I also don't know how to explain to my brother that he's disturbingly self-centered and that he should care for other people, so I didn't. I'm done being* told I'm too sensitive, and I'm done being guilt-tripped.
I'm 57 and am estranged from my family of origin. Decided when I was a child that I wouldn't have children myself because I couldn't bear the thought of someone feeling the way I did...suicidal since my teenage years.
Human beings either have empathy or they don't. Neither condition can be cured💜
That last sentence is so true ❤ I was just telling my 7yo that although empathy can really hurt, its a beautiful thing to have and makes her magical
I think empathy can, to a certain extent, be taught. I'm not sure how though. Maybe through compassion? I'm fairly sure I can credit my mother with saying just a few of the right things my brain needed to "spark my compassion learning", even though she hardly ever has extended that same compassion towards me or heck, even herself. I guess I'm just too close for comfort for her.
oh, wise words on empathy. thank you so much for sharing it.
@@darkcreatureinadarkroom1617 we can nudge people towards the direction but i think what the original poster meant is that, at the end of the day, _they_ are the only one who can decide whether they want to empathise or not. we cannot control (cure) that.
@@darkcreatureinadarkroom1617i think empathy can be grown of there's a seed of it to begin with.
And for a lot of us, those seeds are grown and tensed to with a unique combination of a few moments of our parents fostering that empathy, but also, enduring enough pain that at some point we have the thought "I don't ever want anyone else to have to suffer like this"
I appreciate the fact you honored that there are decent parents who exist struggling with adult children who have become part of a cult. Parental Alienation during a divorce is not the same dynamic as estrangement, and it is a worldwide problem. Thanks for differentiating there are troubled adult children just as there are people of all roles.
In case you are not aware, the entire concept of “Parental Alienation” in the context of parents breaking up/divorcing is problematic. The now-deceased man who coined the term used it to explain away allegations of seggs-related improprieties against biological/legal fathers in certain of these situations. His “solution” to this “problem” was to give the accused father full custody and completely exclude the mother from the child’s life, at least for a period of months. This sometimes “worked”, in that the child would stop making accusations. Yes, it’s exactly as sick and twisted as it sounds. 🤢 This needs to be distinguished from the typical “I don’t know, why don’t you ask your father?”, “Well, if your mother didn’t start screaming at me every time I say more than hi to her, maybe I could talk to her about it!”, “So, is (other parent) seeing/dating someone else yet?” type comments that commonly occur in the weeks and months following the end of the parental relationship, and those AGAIN need to be distinguished from comments like “Where’s all the money I give your mother going?” (from father), “You stress me out, that’s why I can’t get pregnant!” (from stepmother), and “I don’t agree with your father spanking you every time he sees you like this, but he isn’t breaking the law.” (from me, mother) that occurred in my actual situation several YEARS after my marriage to my son’s father ended. Unfortunately, ALL these situations; from standard mild bad-mouthing and nosiness in the months immediately following the breakup, through basic bullying/bad parenting and the reactions of the other parent to that, up to and including the most extreme cases of dangerous parents, can all be lumped together as “Parental Alienation”, and used to justify things like joint custody for convicted violent criminals, or switched primary custody to whoever has the money for a lawyer that will claim this. 😬
My in-laws are completely divorced from the reality of why we're no contact with them. They actually convinced a relative to come up to my husband *at her own son's funeral* to try to persuade him to "make amends" with his parents. She kept at him and kept at him until I finally put my foot down and said there was WAY more to the story, and that "making amends" is for the person who did wrong, not the victim. We told her everything they'd done, all the reasons why we were estranged, and she was completely shocked (though she still wanted us to "make amends" because she's one of those people who can't stand conflict).
I'm pretty sure they have everyone convinced I'm the reason he went no contact, and quite frankly, I wear that as a badge of honor -- I'm GLAD I helped him see they were abusive, got him into therapy, and gave him the support he needed to get away from them. He's much happier without them.
Notice how so so so many of them blame their daughters/daughter-in-laws. Notice how so many of them belittle them as silly little girls that don't know the world and will regret their choice to go no(/low) contact. Worse are the ones that specially attack sensitive or tender vulnerability that their child may have. Maybe, just maybe that's the surface of the answer to all of the 'why's.
Once my mom told others that the reason I was upset at her after she got drunk and tried breaking into my room for 3 hours, was "Because she didn't want to be told to clean her room". These parents lie, and lie, and lie. I don't get hurt over people telling me to clean my room.
Parent - "I've done absolutely nothing to try to fix my estrangement and I'm all out of ideas. There's nothing more to do." (they SAY they've tried "everything" but when you ask specifically what they did the real answer is nothing so I skip to the end there)
World - "Have you tried..."
Parent - "Nothing I say! They're just horrible entitled brats!"
World - "That negative judging and name calling isn't helpful."
Parent - "I have no idea what I could be doing that makes them not want to be around me."
World - "I just told you."
Parent - "I just don't understand!"
World - **bangs head into keyboard** and begins to grasp why parent is estranged.
That's the sum-up of my experiences with trying to explain to these types.
Once my son was born I thought it would allow me to understand my mother better. All it did was make me realize how f'd up she really is. I could NEVER imagine treating my son the way she treated me.
I went no-contact in 2021 after she made a rude comment about him, I'll be damned if she turns her BS on him. My son just turned 19 and we have an amazing relationship, because I've always treated him with the same respect that I expected from him, and like an actual human being. Not my emotional punching bag.
@11:00 This sounds exactly like my father. Exactly his kind of language. He called me a c*nt & a b!tch at 13 & under. Everyone who disagreed with him was “scum” & “psychopaths.” He was always such a hateful person, masquerading as a charming, loving person.
His narcissism was so extreme that he believed disagreeing with him was just “being an asshole.” So, there was no room for self-reflection. I listed his abuse of us multiple times (dw we’ve been NC for years), but it’s pointless. They don’t want real relationships with us- they want the same f*cked-up, abusive dynamics they’ve always known, because it’s familiar & easy. They don’t want to be any better.
I understand they probably don’t believe they CAN BE any better- that would require being able to accept that they’d done wrong, but that doing wrong doesn’t doom them to forever being evil people- I believe they really don’t know that they can *change.* Deep down, they’re very insecure people (as narcissists are), who probably lacked emotional support, mirroring etc in childhood. So, they missed out on developing empathy & learning what healthy attachments felt like. They developed maladaptive mechanisms for surviving their own abuse, & never realised that those behaviours aren’t actually helpful to keep around. For a long time, mental health wasn’t even a conversation, so I see why they didn’t change before we were born… But now, they’re grown adults, & they have access to that information; they have the option to learn & be better… & they don’t.
What a limited & sad life they’re living.
My mother changed. She’s nearly 60 & on this incredible emotional journey of healing her own trauma & breaking generational trauma etc. But the thing is, she’s always been more emotionally intelligent, more open to hear what we had to say… she always saw us as people. So, I see why she grew- she never stopped growing & never will! It’s why we have such a good relationship. But… I don’t know if there’s any saving the parents who never could see their kids as their own people; & not just an extension of themselves.
My father will never know what real love looks & feels like, because he’s never humbled himself & taken responsibility for himself. He refuses to believe he’s mentally ill, that his behaviour is abusive, & that all his failed relationships are failed because of the common denominator- HIM!
The "toxic boy mom" is actually a Thing and it really creeps me out!
My mother and my stepfather were both toxic boy parents. I was the only girl. I was “othered” before children are even able to understand the concept.
In actual terms, we call that emotional incest. YIKES
My bio mom told me to my face that it's "probably for the best" that I can't have kids. Meanwhile, she made me her parent when I was a child. Make it make sense.
Maybe ur mom is prettier than u
My dad thinks I'm just a spoiled kid who was mad she got in trouble, and that's why I ran away. It's not.
When he got custody of me, one of the first things he said about me was "IT came with manners." He let my stepmom treat me seriously differently, and any extracurriculars I wanted to do, would shit on it. I had a friend die in high school, and he used that time to tell me that I look like my mom when I cry, and it makes him "love the hell out of me and want to choke the life out of me" while he was choking me. He told me if I were gay, he'd shoot me in the head (im pan). He kept me from my siblings on my mom's side for 5 years just cause they were my mom's kids,s, but he loved comparing me to them. If I was good, he'd congratulate me for being better than them, and when I wasn't, he'd complain about why I couldn't be successful like them. He kept me from getting glasses bc I look exactly like my mom with them on. He punished me for having symptoms of a disease from HIS SIDE of the family. So when I couldn't stay awake in class cause a thyroid disorder was slowly killing me, he'd make me stack 3 textbooks in each hand, duct tape them to me so I couldn't drop them, and make me do wall squats for hours. When my disorder was so bad, I didn't have muscles, so I couldn't do a pushup. He looked at me, got mad that I was super skinny, made me get down and try to do pushups, and to try to "motivate" me, he beat me with a belt for not being able to push up til my stepmom had to stop him (she WATCHED the whole thing). He told me never to talk to him or "his family," so we had no contact for 7 years. He has out of the blue wanting to "just talk to his daughter" but winded up blaming me bc he was so mad when I left that he took it out on some kids and threatened them with his gun when they played music outside his house. He also used my youngest brothers (his kids) to lure me out bc the last time I saw them, they were like 3 and 5. He didn't even let me talk to them. He just wanted to be forgiven. This isn't even everything.
He thinks it's just because I got in trouble.
Speaking as someone who's no contact with both parents--SO MANY parents don't believe emotional incest and emotional enmeshment are abuse. But then you grow up and you're 30 and you're standing in your parents shoes and you realize how incredibly fucked up they are. The level of disgust and grief and rage is overwhelming. And you can't keep banging your head against a brick wall. You realize that your parents are abusive and at this point, you're subjecting YOURSELF to their abuse. So you cut them off because you realize you deserve to be happy. And your parents don't see you as a real person, so they throw tantrums when you finally stop being their little puppet.
13:22 hit me like a freight train. “Just hope to god we burnt out before we are big enough to do anything to anyone”
Being the youngest, and the most different in my family, I got the brunt of the volatility in my household. Everyone was always so angry and it would funnel down into me and I just didn’t have any way to disperse it. I spent a lot of time alone, breaking things. But all that gets you is alone, and surrounded by damage.
So I did the work and they didn’t.
Estrangedment from parents isn't some new or modern thing. Abraham Lincoln "honest Abe", never had "anything favorable to say about him", and Abe refused to go to his fathers funeral, and never regretted it.
That is true. Actually, many men resent their fathers this way
I saw another theory recently that many immigrants to the US were people who wanted to escape their families. It's crazy to think that there was a time that moving half a world away was an option and you didn't have to worry about secondary accounts or flying monkeys ringing you at all hours of the day. If you wanted to contact you had to pay for a stamp and wait half a year for the possibility of a reply.
When I was 28, I went no contact with my aunt, who helped to raise me in my parents' absence. I spent TEN YEARS trying to reconcile with her. Then I gave up.
All through my childhood she called me a heartless monster. She told my friends not to trust me and told me not to trust my friends, usually when we were right in front of each other. That we would use and manipulate eachother. When I broke myself out of a cycle of abusive relationships, and found a partner that actually loves me, she went out of her way to spin every conversation into him and how he'll never love me and will just take advantage of how "kind and caring I am". And then in the same conversation spin back into me being unloving, manipulative, and hateful.
Now she acts like my going no-contact was out of the blue. - It hurts that I'll never see her again, but it hurts more to see her. I have more things to do than spend every minute of my life fighting for myself.
I have an okayish relationship with my mum, but i can imagine something like this happening where it would read "i asked her about a blood test and she cut me off?!". Leaving out the years of denying me medical care, infantalising me, openly judging my body, me politely explaining many times i dont want to discuss my health etc with her.
So, I’m estranged from both my parents. I can tell you at least why abusive parents tell outrageous lies: because it’s not quite best understood as lies, it’s best understood as catastrophization. Almost no abusive parents will admit to being abusers. Almost all will admit to being “a bit much at times.” They all hang themselves by their soft language, not hard language.
3:19 So you have acknowledged that your daughter was jealous at the attention her brother was getting growing up and that the brother's wife also says that mom is too attached to her son, and yet she refuses to acknowledge that she favored one kid and acknowledge it as an issue. She knows what the problem is, she just refuses to see it as a problem.
My mother once said to me in a very surprised voice “ your children seem very attached to you! They really seem to love you!” That was such a telling statement. She assumed everyone would see me as unloveable and “difficult” because those were the reasons she gave herself as to why she and I werent close. We have been very low contact for years now. She was one of those Grandmothers that needed to be the grandchildren’s favorite. She would say terrible things about me and their other families members to them when they were small. As soon as I found out that was it. It was just the last straw in a big pile of straws but I found the strength to go low contact when it affected my children.
I'm estranged from my parents. The straw that broke the camels back was when after two years there still wasn't significant effort after I came out as trans. The straws that gave the backing weight that broke everything was the abuse I faced as a child at my mothers hands, abuse that anytime it was brought up I had to coddle my mom and walk on eggshells around those topics.
im glad these types of videos keep getting recommended to me. i went nc with my dad at 16 and it means the world to me that i am not alone
Awareness is the part of the trauma tgat hurt the most
I just want to say, @rainbowgirl3225, that your avatar is insanely cute and made me smile.
My parents disowned me once they were told that I was in a relationship with my now husband because of his race. My mother took down all pictures of me in their house and forbade my younger sisters for mentioning my name. I found out from my sister what my mom did as I was not living with them and was on my own. My husband and I started as friends, fell in love and then ended up in a relationship. Fast forward we have been together for over 30 years. I believe they had thought that by their actions that I would choose them. After all of these years and counting, instead I look forward to growing old with my husband and children.
@maximino you would make a fantastic mental health practitioner! As a therapist, I am enthralled with these dynamics and as bothered as you. Your ability to succinctly unpack so many layers of these type dysfunctions is remarkable. Keep up the good work!
"They have no respect for their parents/elders." You mean "they refuse to carry on the cycle of abuse..."
11:06 " when you're mad enough to show us who you are in public, you're probably pretty calm being that person in private "
my GOD dude you hit that right on the head. ABSOLUTELY correct
I talked publicly about being molested by my brother as a child (he's now deceased). My mother accused me of being unkind to her and named all her individual friends who I was being unkind to by talking about my SA. (??!!) She became paranoid and accused me of being the reason people weren't talking to her (delusion). She really turned monstrous.
Now she says, "I don't know WHY she won't talk to us!"
I left bcuz my mom was in a cult, narcissistic, wouldn’t allow me to differentiate as an individual, couldn’t respect my boundaries, was emotionally abusive, and my own kids asked me to cut contact with her. There’s nothing I can do about any of that.
for a long time, my parents had convinced my fiance that i didnt have a good memory because anytime id confront them about something theyd gaslight me. they were so convincing at calling me delusional, i had to set a trap, and even then, it was only after happening to my fiance did he believe me
Oh my god, I had to deal with that bullshit too! It’s so incredibly frustrating, and I got to a point where I began questioning my own sanity. They’d argue with me on the stupidest shit, like whether or not we were in our yard or the neighbors yard during a particular event, or over what happened in a past conversation they weren’t a part of?!? Like, any opportunity to call me a liar/have a bad memory was taken. And they were always the ones to say “you’re wrong” and fight me on something I said, never the other way around. Glad I left that dumpster fire.
@@justalittleturtle5600 I had undiagnosed hypothyroidism and had brain fog and was trauma blanking out memories. I never questioned past the gaslighting. Im on meds now, but severely traumatized because I COULDNT let my trauma fade. It is still as fresh and painful as the day it happened because I refused to forget any detail, and because of the memory loss, that meant carving every detail into my mind in its full and unbridled horror and rage.
They could gaslight things I said, but I refused to be gaslit about my abuse, and I eventually went no-contact because of their attempts to cover it up. Im in therapy and processing 2 decades of suffering all at once has been hard, but Ive chosen to be proud that I held it all, even as my body collapsed, out of pure spite and rage.
We all deserved better. And our parents deserve criminal charges for the suffering they caused.
My family always calls my memory into question. In high school I started randomly recording some conversations and now when they say "that never happened" I can say "should I check the google drive?". Entire conversations that deeply impacted me that conveniently don't exist until I find proof of them. It's funny how I don't actually need to play the audio for them to suddenly remember the conversation once I mention that I have a recording. It's almost like they don't want the details to get any sharper.
Not wanting to take care of him is one of many reasons I've gone low contact with my dad.
But it's not because I'm some heartless monster who refuses to help someone they love. It's because I've discovered helping him is at the detriment of my mental health.
For example: the last time I had to help him he'd badly broken his leg. Our only toilet was upstairs, which he couldn't do, so he was using a toilet chair.
Then one day as I was emptying it, it was kinda smelly and I instinctively made a face. He proceeded to yell at me for like an hour about how I was making him feel bad.
Sounds like you aren't a nurse or professional home health care provider. We don't suddenly become this just because our parents get old! Do not provide this aid for him and do not feel badly about it. He needs to avail himself of a service so someone can do it who is trained and getting paid.
Its pretty common for narcissists to be very kind to very small children but just flipna switch and start being awful around age 6 to 7. Narcissists like to be the only person in the room and they view toddlers as adorable objects but once they show personality they are seen as competition.
Ooff...that makes too much sense 😟
My mom tells people that I took my own life, that I want to take hers, that I've joined forces with satan..... etc.
She doesn't mention her drug use, schizophrenia, stealing from me while I was in the hospital, beating the crap out of me, lying about so many things etc
Going no contact hurt, but it was the best decision. My life is so much nicer without that stress.
My mom would get this evil look on her face all the time and say.... the WORST things to me.
She also attacked me with knives on multiple occasions.
Once i remember sobbing in the bathroom screaming in fear as she tried to break in.
She died recently. Im almost scared that i feel so little regret.
25:01 - The entire video sounds so very familiar. But this is where I had to pause it. When I ran away for the final time at 17, my mother and her first husband told everyone that they knew about how I tried to seduce and sleep with him. The very same man who repeatedly behaved inappropriately with me; kisses on the lips where he would suck my bottom lip into his mouth, kissing and sucking on my earlobes, kissing on my neck, giving me hugs that went on for far, far too long, shoving his hands down the back pockets of my pants, etc. Yes, they told everyone that I tried to sleep with him. I went NC with my mother until a few years back when my grandmother (my dad’s mother) kept nagging about me not talking to my mother. Finally I caved and got back into contact with her. It lasted three phone calls. The final call my grandmother wanted to know what she had said because the conversation sounded so weird to her and when I told her, she *immediately* apologized to me for nagging me about getting back in contact with my mother. Despite me telling her about how horrible of a person she was, regardless of being my mother, she always thought that I *had* to be making some of it up but for me to tell her as soon as I ended the call what she said… m’hmm. I will never in this world or the next, get back in contact with that woman who believes that her children should worship the ground she walks on regardless of how she treated all of us. Oh, and I’m not making that “worship” part up. That’s what she told me when I asked her why she decided to have me at such a young age. She wanted someone to worship her.
Parents if your child goes low NC or NC with you; do not contact them! Take a step back, re-evaluate your life, and go to therapy! No child wants to go NC with their parents. It’s always the last and final straw in our arsenal. If they choose that… then you really really messed up. To be fair, however, there are children who will go NC with their parents for other reasons; an abusive spouse (usually the NC will include everyone) or they are having their own problems. But for the most part… the NC is due to everything that you put them through during their lives.
20:32 it’s not that the parent wants attention necessarily…it’s that the parent can’t stand that the child has a new safe space. The parent probably built their entire identity on being the best place for their child (and probably toxically) so they find whatever negative aspect and run with it. I’m almost 40 and have my own parent I’m not speaking to right now. She was not like the parent I’m commenting on really,but there are DEFINITELY tendencies.
The hardest thing for me was realizing that my mother's motivation was power and control. She just wanted to possess me. I moved out of state and started to really look at what was going on once I had the space and peace (lack of constant crisis). If you read true crime, you know that those motivations never end well for the target.
20:05 regarding starting rumours about the adult child being in a bad way and needing people to check in, etc…
My sister and I have discussed this to death. In our case, it was clear that since I was the first one of my siblings to start pulling away from our mother… she simply wanted spies and flying monkeys.
Alleging abuse is the fastest (and no questions asked) route to gain spies and a sense of still “knowing” a child whom is starting to get fed up and considering NC. It’s a convenient excuse for why the pulling away might be happening (because it couldn’t possibly be the perfect parent who is lovely and infallible and made of spun sugar and rainbows), because spousal abuse, or other tough life struggles like finances, can sometimes legitimately be a reason that someone might isolate themselves from family. So it sounds possible, right? To everyone. And that’s the point. They get what they want. They get info they otherwise wouldn’t, they send a message to the adult child that they are still in control of them and will play dirty to keep it, and they send a message to outsiders that they are such goooooood people and they’re just “sooooooooo worried!!!1!1!!!11”
Of course we will never really know for sure, but we think this fits with everything we have experienced of her. (Also, sometimes she used to have this ‘smirk’ whenever you’d confront her with her bad behaviour. The smirk meant you were right about her motives, and she thought she was clever for pulling it off. Ignoring that she was literally being confronted in that moment. That smirk is wild. I think others know the smirk.)
in the 90s and early 00s we used to call this "concern trolling," and it is nasty and effective as DARVO until it's pointed out and explained (as you just did very ably). call it out when it happens to strip it of effectiveness and point up the underhanded attempt at manipulation by the originator.
Its all about control. These parents treat their children like property they own and get to control.
20:10 There’s a type of toxic parent that’s threatened by the success of their adult children. It’s like a sick competition. It’s very common in toxic mother/daughter relationships. They can’t function in a reality where their child is doing well so they distort things and make stuff up. They need to perceive their child as failing so they can feel better about themselves. So if a dish is in the sink, they’re eager to view it as the whole house being filthy. If their child has a single hair out of place, they’re quick to see their child as an unkempt slob. The child could pull the moon from the heavens and the parent would call them a failure for not taking the sun.
i stopped talking to my mom for a year after leaving for college because she was so brainwashed by the cult she raised me in that she refused to accept my sexuality, not to mention how she was emotionally neglectful and most interactions she had with me and my sister in my teens was screaming and swearing and smacking us across the face. when i ended up in a psychiatric ward after an attempt following her cult's public statement that couples in same sex marriages were to be considered apostates and the children of same sex couples would have to disavow their parents should they seek to convert, i told my roommate not to tell her where i was and that i would speak to her on my own terms. i called her from the ward after a week and she told me the feared the worst. i told her she was right to. once she realized that if she wouldn't support her child she simply would not have one, she started to clean up her act. years later she's an outspoken ally, loves my partner like she's her own daughter, and has been doing a lot of self-reflection and has made several apologies and working to be a better mother. she's not perfect and no amount of reparations will erase the past, but i see the human in her and have been on my own journey of forgiveness as she's proven she's willing to put in the work to be better. parents CAN change and realize their wrongs and make amends. these parents are clearly incapable of such self-reflection.
11:36 The projection is insane. Also being "happy" your kid can't concieve is full mask-off
Im battling with this right now. Enmeshed ex husband and his very abusive dysfunctional family. They want to continue the culture of abuse and you srent allowedbto defend your children because they cjew your children as their property and unfortunately the system supports these people in continuing the abuse. I tried for over a decade to work with them. They don't want compromise. They want CONTROL. im fighting to protect my children. Sad thing is when the children grow up and develop their own autonomy and sense of self, the grandparents want nothing to do with them.
13:26. This part is pretty true. learned emotions. Our newer generations grew up with masses of information presented to us and some of us even learned how to discern things. My parents tried to be good parents, I atleast know that. A majority of the time, they tried. but their own lives were pretty awful in their own right. At the same time, they were my first bullys ever. One of my earliest memories is helping my mom not cry. I remember my step brother skidding his knee down to the bone and instead of taking him to the hospital she tried to fix it at home. He was bleeding tons. He had a scar for his entire life, and every time I saw him on the weekends id see it and get reminded of the time she cared more about the fact my brother got blood on one of her outdoor plastic chairs than actually helping her own son. She was so mad at him, but he was the one who got hurt. I remmeber my mom and my dad were my first bullies. They told me I had no home, my mom threatened to abandon me when I was like 12 and leave the country. She regularly gaslighted people around her. It even made my stepdad more emotionally reactive. when she was around he would react more to things he norally wouldnt care about. and his yelling was scarier. Now im working to recovery and my dad is also working on being nice. His father was abusive to him when he was young. So Im not too worried. but I grew up listening to fighting and horrible things being said, literally being right in the middle of fights and knowing its useless. whatever.
Estranging from a parent is like death by a thousand tiny cuts. Like she says, it’s never actually overnight like these delusional parents claim. It’s after years and years of abuse and being emotionally beaten down. It’s basically giving up the hope that you’ll ever have a loving parent. It’s like a death. I’m suspicious my mother actually enjoys it because it gives her a reason to cry to her friends and be the ultimate victim because of what a terrible unfeeling daughter I am to just cut her off for no reason. She loves the attention. Her friends used to call me or show up at my house to tell me how awful I was for not letting her see her grandchildren. She could not actually give 2 sh*ts if she sees her grandchildren. She even recently gave back every picture of them we ever gave her because they were just “cluttering up her house” and she didn’t have space for stuff like that. My kids are the reason I cut her off. When she started treating my daughter the way she treated me, I was like “Absolutely Not!” These parents are ridiculous.
Yes. I do think it legitimately hurts them. For some this is true sadness, for others it's more like being denied their favorite toy. But I also think that, for most of them, the silver lining is that they get to play the victim to their friends and family forever after. Even if they reconcile with their child, they can always say, "OMG she didn't talk to me for a year and it was the worst thing that ever happened to me and I still don't even understand why!"
Listening to the unhinged things estranged parents wrote to that psychologist, reminds me hard core of my own estranged mother.
She was physically, verbally and psychologically abusive towards me. The older I got, the worse she got, although the more extreme physical violence towards me happened when I was a toddler and in elementary.
Like these people, she could never take responsibility for her own actions, and it was always someone else’s fault or she would grossly exaggerate her own innocence to her enablers.
Like these people, she also makes up stories to villainize me while omitting all the details of her vast abuses.
I have been no contact with her for a decade, and I can tell you it didn’t just happen out of nowhere.
The last message I got from her was threats of being punished by karma. These people don’t learn, won’t learn and will only cause more harm.
My dad who abused me so bad I needed several spinal surgeries and my nose reconstructed but he still doesn’t understand why I went no contact. The cognitive dissonance is astounding. He doesn’t understand why he can’t be a part of our lives but I could never trust him around my kids.
My mother in law told my husband our daughter with multiple disabilities was in fact not disabled, but possessed....and needed an exorcism.
She told him to do it and not tell me. She talked about witches, curses, masonic lodges and other things. When we said that was unacceptable and would be going low contact ( it was the last straw) she blamed me, blamed covid, just trying to help, they are great people, how dare I turn their son against them etc etc. They started harassing us and stalking us. We got protection orders against them. While in court and the judge was chastising them for their disgusting behaviour, my in laws actually continued with that they didn't know why they were there/ they didn't do anything/ IM the one who is abusing THEM.
Even laid out in front of them, in a legal setting, they STILL played the victim card.
Estranged parents will NEVER understand because they don't want to.
The “I put cream in the food” one really bothers me. I have a weird allergy and my mother constantly shames me for not eating food she makes or being upset when I’m told specifically she’d make something for me and then I can’t eat it because of the allergen. It is extremely upsetting not just because of the guilt tripping but because the fact my own mother can’t remember even the most basic information about me is messed up. I remember more about her food preferences than she does about food that threatens my life
She remembers. Sorry but she does. If you can say that you remember more about her food preferences that she does about a life threatening food allergy, she has a blindness that requires a mental health professional to sort out.
I actually am that case of “suddenly with no warning”.
My niece cut my mom (her grandma) and I out of her life in a flash. We had always been very close and never had any issues.
My dad (her grandpa) got cancer and was dying. She offered to help anytime but I said I only wanted to do that for emergencies and would rather she spend the time with her grandpa. She hugged and thanked me for that but said the offer stood.
All fine until the day my mom asked her for a ride to the hospital (2nd time in 3 months). The response was cold and completely unlike my niece.
Unfortunately that morning my mom had a stroke we didn’t notice until later. She sent a text back that was harsh and nothing like anything she ever wrote before, nothing like her at all. She has no memory of that and we’ve been told the stoke had affected her greatly at that point.
We tried to explain the stroke and it’s affects. But that was it. I was blamed as the one who texted.
She has not spoken to us since and it’s been 3 years.
It did not help that Covid precautions limited visitors to my father so I had to enforce the rules and coordinate visitors. I made sure my mother could see the love of her life everyday so that left only one spot open each day. I gave that to my niece many times even after she cut us out, missing seeing my dad so she could.
But I further infuriated her when I wouldn’t give my mother’s spot to my nieces partner of less than year. I tried to negotiate another way (visit outside) but she wouldn’t accept that.
At this point, I still have no idea how 21 years of a close and loving relationship could be destroyed so utterly and completely by a text. And one sent while someone was not in their right mind. And I am left to explain it to a woman who misses her beloved granddaughter and has no memory of the events.
If she came back now…I don’t think I’d welcome her.
So, it can happen. Its rare. But it can happen.
Anything is possible. But, we note that you are not calling your niece nasty names or claiming she cut off the family because you wouldn’t buy her a candy bar when she was 6. You understand the step-by-step of what happened, and are understandably hurt, but not saying things like “I hope she has a child who hurts her like this some day!”. That is the distinction. I am sorry to hear this situation happened in your family. A thought; is it possible your niece is in a controlling relationship? She may need help escaping one day if that is the case. 🤔
@@misspat7555 I still love her dearly. Just don’t think I could trust her.
I might not understand what happened but I’d never call her names or put her down. She made a decision and I have to respect that. I wish I had noticed the signs of stroke earlier and taken my mom’s phone away, but I can’t turn back time. And sadly women can often present differently during a stroke, not as obvious. I just thought she was tired and stressed.
There has always been questions about if her partner was behind it as she changed so completely. If there was control involved. But I don’t know.
I keep the channels open and send simple wishes on holidays and birthdays. Just so she knows I’m still here if she ever needs me I will be there, but I’d be very cautious.
I hope she is happy in her life and wish her the best, I just would love to share it with her. If I can’t…I just hope it’s good and she at least can remember the happy times with us.
The first time I cut my dad out of my life (The day I turned 18, and moved after graduation) he would constantly try and get me to answer my phone, that to this day I will not answer numbers I don't know because of him. At 24 I went to my brother's wedding and he was there, had a panic attack, but got through. Had somewhat of relationship because of financial help. But at ~28 when it came out he was touching my 3yr niece, I ghosted him. I was his victim at age 4/5.....it was reported, trials, etc. Now he's a convicted felon, not much good it does because he's free and only was in jail for less than 3 months and "too old" (mid 70s) to show up on a public registry search. My step-mom, brother, and sister, don't believe me nor my niece about him. He has not tried contacting me since. He knows the truth.
When someone gives me the smirk like that it’s immediately full consequences. Whatever game they’re playing, it’s over.
9:43 I listen to all of these complaints from entitled parents about how ungrateful and evil these kids are... and I'm not surprised that the number of childfree-by-choice adults is growing. Think about it: If you grew up constantly hearing what a burden you were, would *you* want to have kids?
One time my Aunt made me change clothes because the clothes I was wearing made me look ‘unflattering’ i was an adult at the time, but it hurt so bad. I can’t imagine how that would feel if it was my mom or grandma who said that. Big yikes 21:49
There is an African Proverb that always comes to mind in the discussion of no contact and these parents acting like they don't remember any of the abusive stuff they've done. **"The axe forgets, but the tree remembers."** They do damage as a matter of course, but as soon as the moment is over, they've put it out of their mind and seemingly from memory at all. I had many arguments with my mother over it before she passed, on Thanksgiving Day 2011. And when I started explaining, out came "I was just the worst mother ever, I guess" and similar statements meant to guilt me into taking it back. I've been no contact with my step dad for about 8 years now because he kicked me out of the hospital when they took my mom into the last surgery that ended her life, among a laundry list of physically and emotionally abusive and traumatic events during childhood and early adulthood. My brother started running away and the blow up my parents had after the cops told them they couldn't do anything about him leaving home or force him to come back if he didn't choose to, went on for 2 days.
Parents like this seem to be acting out due to no longer having control over the kids and this is their way of regaining that. Idk, at least that's how it is in my experience. That and the thought,"I can't be hurting my kids bc only bad people do that and I'm not a bad person."
Yes. The thinking is broken. We need a convenient, easy term for this kind of thinking. "What I do can't be wrong because I'm a good person" rather than "Maybe I'm not such a great person, look at this crappy stuff I did." Kind of like in politics: "It doesn't matter what my guy did because my guy is on the good side" when it should be "I really need to start evaluating people by what they actually say and do."
One common denominator I have found in these woeful tales is the mothers who refer to the grandchildren continuously as *_MY_* grandchildren as though the they are own the birthright of these children.
It's the never being believed for me. Despite having proof evidence backup witnesses. It never happened cuz she can't remember
‘What did I ever do to deserve this’ is just more gaslighting
19:20 That's when you call the cops. Get a family therapist so you have a record that the family is fine and THEY can notify DCFS that the grandparents are toxic and the kids are fine. Make the cops aware that the parents are harassing the family; that's step one to an order of protection against them.