How do you protect yourself from being hurt by your parents' toxic comments?

[Anonymous]

My parents are immigrants and their parenting style involved control, emotional manipulation, and shaming. I grew up trying to gain their approval and fighting with them to get them to see my side and treat me better.

Even now, we're stuck in a toxic cycle where I try to set boundaries and they keep pushing me, so I snap at them and they blow up due to my rudeness. Examples would be insisting on packing my car for me "their way" when I visit them, guilting me about when I am allowed to leave, telling me they need to borrow my car because it's easier for the kids (despite no insurance and a history of 8-10 minor accidents).

The challenge is that they have cleaned up their act with my kids and are model grandparents. My brother has always kept emotionally distant from them so they have a functional relationship with him. Same with mine and my brother's partners - never got close enough to be toxic.

They are convinced that the problem is my rudeness, and that I should just accept them as they are (since clearly everyone else has no issues with them). They don't notice that they shame me and control me in a way they don't do with anyone else. They don't realize that our history means that their comments cut me in a way they don't cut others, who can laugh it off as crazy immigrant parents behavior.

Many conversations and attempts to get them to therapy have gone nowhere. They just keep repeating that we can't change others and must accept others (i.e. them) as they are. But I'm not ready to cut them off because (a) they're good grandparents and (b) they're the only parents I have, we don't have other family, and 75% of our interactions are totally fine.

I told them that if they want to blame me for our problems, fine. Can we please just agree that when we interact too much, we fight, everyone is very upset, and sometimes the children see behavior that no child should ever see? And as a solution, I will not stay at their place in the future and generally will limit interactions so that I can stay calm when they start up the manipulation.

Here's my problem. I feel like I'm stuck in a permanent grieving process. They act so nicely again and again, and I kind of drop my guard, but then they start in again. For example, they'll say, "Oh, why not stay at our place this time? It's just one night and you'll save $300!" Or "I miss you so much, I wish you would call more!" or "When you're older, you'll understand the error of your ways."

I know I should just politely deflect and move on, but I am just so, so hurt that they will not treat me like they do the others. I am so hurt that they will not acknowledge that I'm taking the responsibility of ensuring that we don't fight. Since I have to keep interacting with them, I don't see how I will ever get over this pain.

PS I tried therapy and it wasn't very helpful besides advising me to set the boundaries and limit contact.

[Anonymous]

OP, your parents are who they are, and are unlikely to change. Gently...you're stuck in the grieving process because you haven't been willing to accept that about them. But once you do (and that's where the grieving really comes in), you won't feel as stuck, you'll see their choices/words/behaviors as their own (and yours as your own), and it will all seem less personal, and therefore less antagonizing. Then boundaries become more effortless and you can calmly and simply (and maybe even with some humor) state what you want and what will work, and what won't.

In short, let yourself truly grieve (what you wanted and didn't get), so you can start to truly move forward. You owe yourself that, and your family now will also benefit immensely.

[Anonymous]

How? With boundaries. When you visit, stay at a hotel. Visit less frequently. Visit for shorter amounts of time when you DO visit. Talk to them less frequently. Tell them less about your life.

[Anonymous]

I have emotionally immature immigrant parents too who were also abusive, and I have had a couple years of therapy that has been helpful.

At some point, I realized I'm not a child anymore, and I don't have to let their words and actions effect me in a negative way. It required some emotional distancing in a way that I can still love them, care about them, but deal with the problematic stuff in an objective way that is more about being the adult, and solving a problem.

You have to know what you can handle, and what you cannot.

I also had to accept my parents' flaws and learn to forgive them and empathize with them. And that part was especially hard, because of years of deep seated resentment, but I was able to do it, and ultimately it was freeing for me.

And then I was able to lovingly set boundaries without anger.

[Anonymous]

My mother is like this. I had it out with her in my late 20s, early 30s. It coincided with additional nasty comments on my parenting. It woke me up, I have to say, because it's one thing to criticize me or my spouse, but another to go after my kids.

So I cut off contact with them for 6 months, and they learned what I'm ready to do if they don't behave. For years now, it's been going so much better!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
My mother is like this. I had it out with her in my late 20s, early 30s. It coincided with additional nasty comments on my parenting. It woke me up, I have to say, because it's one thing to criticize me or my spouse, but another to go after my kids.

So I cut off contact with them for 6 months, and they learned what I'm ready to do if they don't behave. For years now, it's been going so much better!

My father hated me. Very abusive physically and mentally and I was referred to as fat dumb and lazy since a young age. Mother was abused and helpless. She was an addict as well. Left to go to college on athletic scholarship at 18 and entirely on my own since then. . Did well at a highly competitive school, and even better in graduate school. In some sense it was easy for me to ignore the endless stream of insults because my parents had so many deficiencies I never took them seriously
But no matter what the voice in your head has to control. My father died two years ago and I hadn't heard from him in decades. Emotional separation from parents is hard, even with my parents, but is worth the work.

[Anonymous]

The question is why are you the one who is emotionally enmeshed with them? How did your brother manage to escape that?
I would look there. It’s not uncommon for a toxic person to single out a victim and the rest are just mostly oblivious to the issue. Ask yourself why it was you.
Good luck! Most therapists don’t think outside the box and it takes time to find a good one.

[Anonymous]

You really need to deal with this in therapy. Maybe you had a less than stellar therapist. Okay, so find another one. Or maybe you thought all of your problems would magically be resolved without you doing the work. Newsflash: it doesn’t work that way.

Seeing a good therapist will help you set some small goals and work through visits. It will take time because clearly you’re stuck in a cycle with them. And there’s something you’re getting out of being a victim here. It’s familiar, and comfortable on some level. You have to do the work with a therapist to undo these patterns.
Good luck.

[Anonymous]

Boundaries are not about you prescribing what they are allowed to do and enforcing that. They are about you committing to what you are going to do to protect yourself *when* your parents try to cross those lines.

That includes whatever you need to do to protect your mental peace.

You don’t really have boundaries yet, is the takeaway. Al-Anon might help. I realize you’re not saying that alcohol is a problem, but I have seen lots of folks trying to break culturally encouraged codependency that doesn’t involve alcohol in AlAnon meetings. And—they’re on Zoom now!

[Anonymous]

OP you're enmeshed and you need to separate yourself from them. You need to be so independent of mind and body that you literally no longer care what they think or say.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How? With boundaries. When you visit, stay at a hotel. Visit less frequently. Visit for shorter amounts of time when you DO visit. Talk to them less frequently. Tell them less about your life.

This, this, this. You aren't going to change them.

[Anonymous]

Limit your time with them to 2 hours

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

You don’t really have boundaries yet, is the takeaway. Al-Anon might help. I realize you’re not saying that alcohol is a problem, but I have seen lots of folks trying to break culturally encouraged codependency that doesn’t involve alcohol in AlAnon meetings. And—they’re on Zoom now!

There is also CoDa - Codependent Anonymous, which is similar to Al-Anon. Their website has meetings listed (many online) and affirmations for yourself. Good luck! Families are tough!!