How to stop toxic parent from contacting people in your life

[Anonymous]

I have cut my mother out of my life a few months ago. She's always been a depressing person to be around and she's a big manipulator who loves to have people feel sorry for her. She has messed up her finances, she's been financially dependent on me for the past 15 years. I just couldn't do it anymore. I blocked her everywhere, I told her we were done.

It has come to my attention that she has started to contact my ILs, my old classmates, friends, people she knows I keep in touch with but she hasn't talked to in years. She gives them a sob story how she doesn't know where I am, how she doesn't know what she has done to me, how she's struggling both physically and financially, and she just creates the whole "poor me, my daughter abandoned me but I still love her" BS. I've had phone calls and e-mails and texts from people saying what's up and that they feel so bad for her and that maybe we will kiss and make up because, after all, she's my mom and I am the only child. I want to take legal action against her, to prevent her from contacting people and slandering me. But we live in different states. Is there anything I can do? Just the sound of her voice or anyone mentioning her name makes me want to throw up. That's how bad the relationship is. I am worn out. I am burned out. I want her to leave me alone.

[Anonymous]

OP, gossip is not illegal. If it was, this site wouldn’t exist.

I’m in a similar situation and it is awful. I just try to explain my side of the story to the people who I feel are genuinely concerned and care about both of us. The rest can say whatever they want. People do.

[Anonymous]

She'll continue to do this and there isn't much you can do to stop her. The only and best thing you can do is each time someone reaches out to you, explain that she was abusive, you had to cut her off to protect yourself and that she had constructed this story of being abandoned to gain the sympathy of friends and family like them to try and get you to reach back out to her so that she can resume her sadistic Joan Crawford maternal impersonation. Tell them that it would be best if they stopped taking calls from her.

[Anonymous]

If the people in your life know you well, they’ll know your parent is toxic and ignore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, gossip is not illegal. If it was, this site wouldn’t exist.

I’m in a similar situation and it is awful. I just try to explain my side of the story to the people who I feel are genuinely concerned and care about both of us. The rest can say whatever they want. People do.

Have you tried "cease and desist'?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:She'll continue to do this and there isn't much you can do to stop her. The only and best thing you can do is each time someone reaches out to you, explain that she was abusive, you had to cut her off to protect yourself and that she had constructed this story of being abandoned to gain the sympathy of friends and family like them to try and get you to reach back out to her so that she can resume her sadistic Joan Crawford maternal impersonation. Tell them that it would be best if they stopped taking calls from her.

In my experience, if you explain your side of the story to a couple of people you trust, it helps.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, gossip is not illegal. If it was, this site wouldn’t exist.

I’m in a similar situation and it is awful. I just try to explain my side of the story to the people who I feel are genuinely concerned and care about both of us. The rest can say whatever they want. People do.

Have you tried "cease and desist'?

That my scare her only if she's completely ignorant of the law, but from what OP says about her personality, it's unlikely a letter is going to do much good even if she was ignorant of the law.

[Anonymous]

Spend your money on a therapist instead of a lawyer. I mean this kindly. I have a different kind of difficult mother and therapy plus going very, very low contact has made a huge improvement in my life. It's tough. Focus on taking care of yourself, not your mother.

[Anonymous]

I've been NC with my mom for 2 years now. At first she was calling EVERYONE with a sob story similar to what you've written here. Some people would fall for it and reach out to me to help "put our family back together". I hated getting those calls but after a brief "No, and here's why...I'm sorry she wasted your time", they would back down.

After about a year, she seems to have either gotten bored with it or run out of people to contact. I'm hoping it stays this way but realize it may not.

And it's harassment for sure but the problem with trying to sue is that it's not direct harassment, so it's harder to prove. If this is part of a larger pattern where she is directly harassing you AND you have documentation where you've asked her to leave you alone...you may be able to sue. I never went down this route because I was concerned that suing would add more fuel to the fire and my end goal is to be left alone.

[Anonymous]

It is very unlikely to be successful. She isn’t contacting you, and you can’t raise the rights of other people in court.

If friends reach out, just calmly say her mother is difficult and you are sorry she reached out. She will stop when it doesn’t work.

[Anonymous]

Any reasons are person will know she’s insane and politely get off the phone.

[Anonymous]

You can't take legal action . Do block her on all social media so she can't see who your connections are.

[Anonymous]

I had to go no contact with my parents a few years ago. I hated those calls, because it felt like a bunch of busy bodies gossiping about me and trying to manage my relationships for me. Those were some of the habits that pushed me away from my parents. I’d usually allow them 3 strikes. If someone called to say I need to be nice to my poor mother, I’d say something like “there’s more to the story, leave it alone, it’s between me and them.” The second time, I’d say they were abusive or give an example of why I stopped contact, and let them know I was uncomfortable discussing it further so they shouldn’t bring it up again. If it happened again, that was my sign that they weren’t any more respectful of my boundaries than my parents were, so it was probably not going to work out with people still tight with my parents. I didn’t cut everyone off completely, but I would go very low contact/gray rock after the third strike.

One really hard thing for me was to stop feeling like my parents were a reflection of me. I don’t control them. When they’d do something embarrassing, I had to learn to ignore it like I learned to ignore the homeless guy yelling at people on the sidewalk.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I had to go no contact with my parents a few years ago. I hated those calls, because it felt like a bunch of busy bodies gossiping about me and trying to manage my relationships for me. Those were some of the habits that pushed me away from my parents. I’d usually allow them 3 strikes. If someone called to say I need to be nice to my poor mother, I’d say something like “there’s more to the story, leave it alone, it’s between me and them.” The second time, I’d say they were abusive or give an example of why I stopped contact, and let them know I was uncomfortable discussing it further so they shouldn’t bring it up again. If it happened again, that was my sign that they weren’t any more respectful of my boundaries than my parents were, so it was probably not going to work out with people still tight with my parents. I didn’t cut everyone off completely, but I would go very low contact/gray rock after the third strike.

One really hard thing for me was to stop feeling like my parents were a reflection of me. I don’t control them. When they’d do something embarrassing, I had to learn to ignore it like I learned to ignore the homeless guy yelling at people on the sidewalk.

This entire post is excellent.

[Anonymous]

They will only get worse OP.

I preferred to keep in touch with my gossiping narcissist mother so I could feed her the info I wanted her to know.

I also moved to another state and only see family on rare visits home a couple.of times a year.

Cutting her off completely will make her go berserk with gossip that is even worse than it was before. "Gray rock" is so much better.

Let others know your mother is trying to control you life. You can't control those other people either, they may believe what your mother says. Google narcissist and "flying monkeys": it's a known thing they do. The only person you can control is yourself.

Know all this from experience. Good luck OP.