Vent about my cruel immature mother

[Anonymous]

OP I have posted before, but I think I may understand deep down what you are feeling with the relative too. You have no support. You thought maybe you had some connections in your family, but in reality they all are part of the dysfunctional dance and if you don't play your part then you are nothing. Nobody defends you or stands up to the abusive nut for you.

That is what I found in my own family so maybe i am projecting. I have an abusive mother. Sure there are these big beautiful photos of extended family and our family fake smiling at events, but it is a loose quilt being help by loose thread and the thread they all have in common is abuse tactics, pieces falling off (those of us who distanced, but still have contact) and holes (those who are estranged). It could all fall apart completely so easily because there isn't any love there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP I have posted before, but I think I may understand deep down what you are feeling with the relative too. You have no support. You thought maybe you had some connections in your family, but in reality they all are part of the dysfunctional dance and if you don't play your part then you are nothing. Nobody defends you or stands up to the abusive nut for you.

That is what I found in my own family so maybe i am projecting. I have an abusive mother. Sure there are these big beautiful photos of extended family and our family fake smiling at events, but it is a loose quilt being help by loose thread and the thread they all have in common is abuse tactics, pieces falling off (those of us who distanced, but still have contact) and holes (those who are estranged). It could all fall apart completely so easily because there isn't any love there.

Thank you for this. You are correct in your assessment of our family. I think we had that "looks happy from the outside" family until ~30 years ago, when the few sane people died young and the loose threads that held us together were gone. Now the only outsiders who might think we have a functional family have probably not met anyone beyond one of the people who is very deeply invested in keeping up a fantasy that we even have some sort of interaction with each other. We've had recent family funerals with just 4-5 attendees. It's sad and messed up, and I guess I thought that if I played along I could magically convert it to something else. But when you don't have anything else, you cling really hard to the scraps you have and know.

I really miss the one relative who understood me and who called people out on their crap. They died when I was an adolescent and I often wonder what direction our family might have taken had they survived. There has been a lot of trauma in our family (military deaths, cancer, etc.) that I see other families rally around. Ours just fell apart and I don't know what made us less capable of surviving it all than others.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My mother has been cruel to me since I was in elementary school and critical about my appearance, behavior, etc.

I have extremely firm boundaries around my interactions with her, but agreed to a very brief FaceTime session because she was hosting a relative who I rarely see. While the call was connecting, my mom “didn’t realize” I could hear them yet and listed everything bad about my appearance to this relative by saying things like “it’s really obvious, but don’t say anything about how bad her hair or her face looks now” and went on from there before it was obvious that we were connected.

My hair and face are normal and look like that of a 40-something woman who is happy to live 2000 healthy miles away from her mother. My mom giggled in a tee-hee, aren’t we chummy way to the visiting relative. I said to my mom and the relative that I could hear them and my mom acted like a mean tween getting caught by an adult.

I’m seething with how my mom can still make me feel like an unwanted child and how she manipulates relatives into going along with her behavior. It’s insane to me that I’ve grown up and my mom is still the same unevolved parent she was 30 years ago.

I’m a mom. I don’t understand how a mom could ever be amused by being unkind to their own child. What did I do wrong to be treated like this?

My mother was exactly like this.

It took me until I was 51/52 and some hard therapy to realize it wasn't about me at all. It's not about you, either. We were born tabula rasa, and then programmed with bad software by broken people. Our mothers are narcissists, and narcissists devour other people to feed their fragile and boundless egos. They especially love to eat their own, the people who they have programmed to fawn and beg for their love.

I'm so sorry your mother was not capable of loving you the way you deserved as an innocent loving child. It wasn't about you. There are a lot of resources out there for the children of such parents that can help a lot with shifting mindset. Please, stop asking what is wrong with you. The only thing that was ever wrong with you was that you thought there was something wrong with you - and someone else's brokenness programmed you to feel that way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm sorry you have this in your life.

Why are you still in contact with her? If she brings nothing positive into your life, cut her off.

This is my question. I don’t understand why you would keep her in your life? Seems like you truly had boundaries then you wouldn’t have stayed on the line after telling her you heard her?

My dad is long dead and my only living relative under 60 lives even further away than me. I feel guilt and shame as well as an obligation to maintain a minimum amount of contact because I am stuck with power of attorney and some other legal stuff for my mother. I’ll be the one the social worker calls one day.

I know the drumbeat on this board is in favor of cutting people off completely, but it’s much more difficult in reality than angry blogs and self-help books would suggest.

Agree. It's not the solution people make it out to be. I hold my awful mom at arms length but the truth is that if I cut her off completely, I'd still feel a deep sadness and hurt every day of my life. I'd still have every cruel memory living in my head.

I find it easier to maintain contact but strong boundaries, go to therapy, and simply accept that my mother will never be the mother I want or need. Whether I cut her off or not, I will never have a loving, kind mother. This is simply the fact of it. I can't escape that by pretending she doesn't exist.

Hi. Estrangement isn’t about pretending they don’t exist. It also doesn’t erase anything. It is about cutting an abuser off from an avenue to further abuse me, after all other options were exhausted or failed to staunch the flow of ongoing abuse. I still have the cruel memories. I still do not have any form of a safe mom. What I no longer have are new, additional cruel experiences thrown on top of the already giant, crushing, pre-existing pile. This has made the pile finite. Thanks.

[Anonymous]

I’m sorry OP. My mom kind of sucks too. Was so emotionally cruel for years (never physically) and now in her older age she’s mellowed out and we have a polite but distant relationship. But I got on the phone with her yesterday and she launched into this random racist rant and I was just like “nope, not talking to you about this” then she doubled and tripled down then I got off the phone. Said to my dd and dh who overheard how amazed I am that I turned into a reasonably normal person. We aren’t our parents. Thank goodness for that.

[Anonymous]

My mom grew up in truly dire circumstances. She is damaged goods. She has always sided with others against her own family, and it sounds like that's what your mom is doing with this relative. It's a way to bond with others, to throw someone else to the wolves. I think this kind of reaction is based on serious, SERIOUS trauma and the person can't bond with anyone in a normal way. If she could, she'd have bonded with you AGAINST the outside world, and not be attempting to bond with others by sacrificing you.

Sorry your mom sucks. Contact people directly so you don't have to rely on your mother to stay in touch.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My mom grew up in truly dire circumstances. She is damaged goods. She has always sided with others against her own family, and it sounds like that's what your mom is doing with this relative. It's a way to bond with others, to throw someone else to the wolves. I think this kind of reaction is based on serious, SERIOUS trauma and the person can't bond with anyone in a normal way. If she could, she'd have bonded with you AGAINST the outside world, and not be attempting to bond with others by sacrificing you.

Sorry your mom sucks. Contact people directly so you don't have to rely on your mother to stay in touch.

Not OP, but I agree and in dyfunctional families too often you have to go through the crazy one to keep in touch. The problem OP might run into getting in touch directly is dysfunctional people will go back to her mom and say "Oh guess who contacted me? We spoke with hours. I had no idea X.y.z" and then your mom blows up because you never told her that or she wants to be the disseminator of all info and next thing you know that person is still close with your mom, but not someone safe for you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My mom grew up in truly dire circumstances. She is damaged goods. She has always sided with others against her own family, and it sounds like that's what your mom is doing with this relative. It's a way to bond with others, to throw someone else to the wolves. I think this kind of reaction is based on serious, SERIOUS trauma and the person can't bond with anyone in a normal way. If she could, she'd have bonded with you AGAINST the outside world, and not be attempting to bond with others by sacrificing you.

Sorry your mom sucks. Contact people directly so you don't have to rely on your mother to stay in touch.

Not OP, but I agree and in dyfunctional families too often you have to go through the crazy one to keep in touch. The problem OP might run into getting in touch directly is dysfunctional people will go back to her mom and say "Oh guess who contacted me? We spoke with hours. I had no idea X.y.z" and then your mom blows up because you never told her that or she wants to be the disseminator of all info and next thing you know that person is still close with your mom, but not someone safe for you.

OP here- I appreciate these thoughtful replies. This and the PP right above you describe my mom exactly. I basically don’t have direct access to my remaining relatives on my mom’s side because of how she controls me and the others, but I never fully noticed that or understood why. For a long time I beat myself up for this. I’m grateful to have some outside insight that helps me describe my situation better and feel less guilty about my inability to maintain healthy extended family relations.