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Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012

Kief Richards posted:

It bothers me that I know this intellectually but even after almost twenty years of therapy I still can't emotionally absorb it.

I spend a lot of time worrying that I'm a narcissist because of a possibly faulty statistic I read one time in a single scholarly article about children of narcissists and now my brain sticks on that. It is what it is, I guess.

I have exactly the same fear. When I asked my therapist about it she said "If you were a narcissist, you wouldn't be able to ask that question"

So every time you worry about it, you are confirming that it isn't true.

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Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012

John Murdoch posted:

Currently on the cusp of a shitstorm, so I need to vent.

For years now my mother has inflicted her mental illness on me - she has paranoid delusions or some kind of extreme deep-set phobia of me dying in my sleep. I have no idea where it comes from. It's not based on anything from me. I may not be in perfect health but I'm certainly nowhere near deathly ill either. What happens is that if I'm not awake after X hours of sleep based on whatever arbitrary standards she pulled out of her rear end that day/night*, she will come into my bedroom to make sure I'm not dead and sate her panic. This generally involves noisily opening my door and even turning the light on in the dead of night so she can properly gawk at me and make sure I'm still breathing. Weirdly enough this tends to wake me up and is pretty goddamn upsetting.

At this point getting angry with her doesn't faze her at all. She will literally smugly say "go ahead and yell at me" because she's internalized it as the cost of doing what her diseased mind tells her she's perfectly justified in doing.** So the previous time she pulled this poo poo my father took her aside and had a more thorough conversation with her that not everything is about her and about her comfort and her need to be invasively in control of everything. He also gave her an ultimatum: If she pulled this poo poo again, she would have to leave the house and move back in with her parents. Because it simply was not acceptable behavior at all and, at that time, she had been hammering on the same nerve for a week straight by doing other lovely things.

Well, she went back to it again tonight. And now my father is beside himself because he clearly doesn't want to take the very step he threatened to take (he's actually threatened it before and obviously never actually followed up on it), and it's clearly very painful for him to do it. I think on some level he really did hope she would grow the gently caress up and just stop inflicting this on the household, but tbh I knew it was going to happen again eventually because she's simply not right in the head and there's no getting around it. This week has already been stressful for other reasons, so emotional exhaustion is already high. Naturally she has zero capability to read the loving room.

*It's flimsily based on things like if she saw when I went to bed to start with (often she's still asleep herself so she has no clue) and things like how often I get up to take a piss. This creates a self-defeating act because she's infinitely more likely to think I"m dead if I'm having *an actual good night's sleep for once in my loving life*. She also obviously has no conception of whether or not I was fighting through insomnia, if I just decided to sleep in that day, or literally any other perfectly normal reason why someone might not spring straight out of bed after 7-8 hours. As long as my bedroom door is closed it is a black box that she simply cannot tolerate not knowing the inner workings.

**She tells herself that this is normal mother behavior that all mothers do. She's claimed that all of her friends with kids act the exact same way. Emotional availability? Interest in my life? Support for my LGBTQAI+ poo poo? Nah, it's all about utter emotional neglect punctuated by random flare-ups of intense, crippling Worry and paranoia. Would you guess that her mother is a similar kind of overly pushy, smothering and constantly hovering type? Would you guess that she loving hates her mother and tries to avoid her at all costs? Would you guess that she also tells herself that she's nothing like her mother and that she isn't a bother and everything is totally normal and her children love her?


I'm 100% on your side here, but this really sounds like OCD, and is treatable with therapy. Of course that would require her to realise that she is doing something wrong, which will clearly will never happen, but "get therapy or get out" is a reasonable ultimatum here.

Good luck either way.

Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012

Clitch posted:

Aren't people with OCD generally capable of knowing their compulsions are irrational?

This is through the lens of my own life, but I get the vibe that there's a big power element to what she's doing.

Often the compulsion isn't irrational. Obsessively checking that all the doors and windows are locked is OCD, but if they live in a bad part of town where murders have happened, they do have a good reason. You won't be able to convince them that checking 10 times before bed is too much.

Similar for hygiene OCD, if they live in a country with poor public sanitation. Often the problem behaviour is good and rational, it is just happening too much.

I agree with you, this sounds like a combination mental illness and lovely person. The smirk gives it away. If she genuinely believed in what she was doing, she would be confused when people tell her to stop.

Plus, what could she do if he were dead? She can't bring him back to life, so leave the body until morning.

Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012
I appear to have started an angry conversation with my suggestion for therapy, because it sounded like I was sympathetic to the mother, which I am very definitely not. My favourite answer is :murder:. This situation gets me quite upset due to my past experience, so I think I overcompensated and sounded much to calm.

In my case, my mother would spend the evening drinking until something set her off, at which point she would come running down the hall, kick my door open, drag me out of bed and around the house while screaming incoherently in my face. My father would go around the house the next day, repairing holes in walls and the other damage she did.

Once I was too big to throw around she upped the abuse to try and get me to snap and do anything against her. If I had, I would have been dragged out of the house in handcuffs. I spent my 20's staying awake for 30 hours or more because I couldn't fall asleep without a lot of drugs or alcohol.

I really didn't have a lot of options. If I fought back nobody would ever believe I was a victim. I got through by promising myself I would get out when I was 18, and never allow that to happen again. It did, of course, but that is a different story.


John Murdoch hasn't said if he is under 18, but I think from his story that he is. His only real hope is to convince his father to help him. So tell your father how much this is hurting you, and how you need his help. Tell him he can have the woman he married back if she goes to therapy. Tell him you want to do a carpentry project for some-father son bonding, and help him install locks on the doors properly.

And if you are 18, you are allowed to have some agency in your life now. Jam a chair under the doorhandle, put some earplugs in and enjoy your sleep.

Or buy an airhorn and use it on her every time she wakes you up. Chase her around the house with it to vent some of your frustration. Or just make sure that you are masturbating every time she comes in. Give her some mental scars of her own.

Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012

John Murdoch posted:

So for the record, I'm in my 30s. And between various difficulties of my own and *gestures at everything* moving out has never really looked like a viable option. The only friends I know with the kind of space to maybe support another person live across the country. This past year or so I've certainly thought more about it than I ever have before, but it's still a big leap into deep waters. Part of it is a degree of learned helplessness caused by, surprise surprise, my parents being neglectful.


It's tough, but maybe you could do it in small steps? If you have income, you could rent the tiniest possible room somewhere in your city(maybe from a friend), and go sleep there when the situation at home gets unbearable? So you are still officially living at home, but you have some space to yourself. That would give you a chance to get used to living on your own without fully committing to it.

Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012

John Murdoch posted:



No income, no license, and pretty much no local contacts (just a younger cousin who literally just got engaged and we're not particularly close so it'd be super weird to intrude on her life). gently caress I don't even have my own cellphone. I'm somewhat near a university, but probably not conveniently close enough. :/



You're in a tough spot, but you do have a few things going for you. Free food and rent is huge advantage for you, and you (probably) have lots of free time. You know that you want a different life and you're starting to work on it.

Ask your Dad for a cell phone. Convince him, maybe like "Dad, it's really time I had a job, and I need a phone to get that. Can you put me on your plan?". The cell phone is vital. Nobody is going to hire you if you say "call my Mom and she'll pass on your messages". And you need to be able to respond to texts and emails to have a social life.

Then head out and see what's in your area. Not just job hunting, go to places and be social. Join a sports club, or a games club, anything that is happening. Do meetups. Are meetups still a thing? You might be able to make some friends and everything goes better when you have a few friends to help.

Going to university or college or something is a great opportunity, if you can. Anything that gets you meeting people. Put yourself out there, and you might be surprised how far you can get.

And a warning: I know I don't know much about your situation, but I'll bet money your mother will try to sabotage your achievments. Especially be careful if you get a cell phone, she'll "confiscate" it, or accidentally drop it or something. Don't let go of it. Tuck it into your underpants at night, because it will disappear it you leave it next to your bed. Not even joking on this one.

Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012

John Murdoch posted:

Hah hah hah. Yeah, no. My dad lost his job a couple years back and isn't quite retirement age yet, so he demanded I pay rent from my savings account to help cover expenses until he can start getting benefits. Food is included in that, which means I'm probably getting a pretty good deal all things considered, but it's not free to live here.

Re: phone, yeah it's not necessarily a huge hassle or a huge expenditure. It's more just a matter of when and not if or how. My mom actually has a cheap yet fairly nice seeming tracfone herself; that's probably the type I'll end up with.

OK, this completes the picture. They're keeping you captive while you pay for their lifestyle. I assumed you were actually getting a benefit from living there.

Stop paying rent. Say "I'm too tired to pay rent, I'll pay it after I get a good night's sleep". Also note that since you are paying rent, they can't kick you out, they have to go through eviction proceedings. Which they won't because they won't get any more money after that.

Seriously, you are paying someone to torture you. Stop paying until the torture stops.

Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012

John Murdoch posted:

I don't think it's quite that black and white. Bare minimum, I would like to clarify that my mother has zero access or control of any kind over the finances. This whole arrangement is purely between me and my father. And he's giving me a sweetheart deal where I'm paying a hell of a lot less than I would have to anywhere else, considering everything that's included. Otherwise I can't really say what kind of margin we're living on or how he's operating things. I don't think I'm being taken advantage of. :shrug:

I do see your point, though. I wouldn't keep paying for an apartment where twice a month the landlord just let themselves in in the middle of the night so they could watch me sleep, then proceeded to take a dump on the floor, and finally swung by the fridge to steal a beer on their way out. I will keep that in mind and use that argument

Fake edit: I spent a lot of time writing and re-writing this post. I stepped away after writing that last bit in particular to go have lunch and mull things over and during that period I no loving joke discovered that my mom had in fact managed to poo poo on the floor of the bathroom. This is also something that's happened more than once. 🙃

:gonk:

I admire the way you rationed out the details over the last few pages. If you had put everything in one post I think the reactions would have been a bit different.

Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012

Classic Comrade posted:

i still have no idea how im going to come out to my mom and siblings as trans (well, coming out again; i tried the first time at age 16 and it was horrible)

i don't like the idea of doing it over the phone or zoom but on the other hand i live more than an hour away from my mom (and quite a few hours away from one of my siblings) so the only way we'd meet up in real life would be for something like mother's day or my mom's birthday and then i'd feel like i was ruining a chill event

this isn't stopping me from transitioning or anything; i have my first appointment for setting hrt up in a few weeks. i just know coming out is going to be extremely bad and i don't know how to make it any easier for myself. this thread (and a book on c-ptsd, and moving out of my mom's house) has really helped me realize how toxic things with my mom have been for years (i used to mainly focus on my dad because he was more obviously abusive) and also helped me work thru a lot of that trauma so there's that at least :unsmith:

Why tell them? Will it help you?

Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012

Pookah posted:

Mormon Nailer is a beyond god-tier username. gently caress....

Anyway, I've been reflecting for the last few months on my own family situation, and it's really confusing. It's not literally abusive as so many of you have had to deal with, it's more about the absences.

Never getting brought to the doctor, or dentist past early childhood.
Never feeling safe or reassured or knowing 'you can come to me, I'll support you, no matter what' the absolute opposite in fact. It's always been the fact that if I've had a big problem, I have to work out a way to communicate it to them in a way they can handle so as to not make them completely freak out.
I never get to break down and get supported, I have to keep it together so they aren't overwhelmed. I have to manage my own trauma so as to not be a bother.
My father ignores everything as long as there isn't the slightest whiff of criticism directed at him, and my mother has two reactions - ignore the problem, or scream at the problem until it goes away.

It's surprisingly effective!

We all learned to be toxically incapable of accepting help or support because hahaha accepting help always ends up meaning paying back a debt you never saw coming.

Neglect absolutely is abuse. This is beyond neglect though, because you have had to provide emotional support for your parents, rather than the other way around.

I hope that you can get away from it soon

Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012

Pookah posted:

Thank you, that is 110% the plan. Covid makes it harder but also in a weird way, easier, because the lockdowns made poo poo more obvious. Just how many of my stressors are family-related is INSANE. Rents/house prices here super suck, but I really want to get me and my brother out. He's a really good guy who deserves better :unsmith:

Keep us updated, and best of luck with it

Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012

Pookah posted:

What I can never understand is that, I get that my mother probably got her issues from my grandma, who got sent away from home to childless relatives when she was little, so definitely had huuuge trust issues. But I was raised all weird and my reaction is to protect my dog (rescue, many many trust issues) from being afraid and to help him feel safe and loved.
Like they were hurt, and they do the same thing, I was hurt and I really loving don't want to pass it on because it's awful. Goddamn you idiots, dont keep doing the same poo poo, it's awful :(

It sucks, but the the world is getting better. Thanks to the internet, this might actually be the first time in history that people are sharing and experimenting with wild ideas like "maybe we shouldn't get drunk and abuse our children"

The future might end up good, if we don't completely destroy the environment first.

Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012

ohnobugs posted:

Narcissists really love that time when you're small and dependent, and the narcissist parent is your whole world. And when you start to change, and grow up, and grow away they have a problem with that. .


Definitely this. One of my mother's favourite things to say is "You were much nicer before you learned to talk"

Or it would be if we ever talked.

Same for the "ruining my body" rubbish. Getting old must be causing her a lot of distress.

Currently checking Amazon for a cobra wallet. I want a bright pink one with sparkles.

Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012

Anne Whateley posted:

Decent chance it was someone from the rejected parents forum. They know about this thread and they're the ones who are big mad about it. The question is if any of them are internet-aware enough to dox (I don't know how good/bad your opsec is)

there's no loyalty among goons, we'll let anyone in if they stump up the cash.

:bourgeoisie:

Buy a name change and post more. I only recognise posters by their red text anyway.

Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012
Moving this to e/n won't change much. The psycos and narcissists who spend days combing every post history for dox can just buy an account and continue creeping. Nothing will stop these people, it's the core of their being.

ed: but if it makes people feel safer, let's do it. it won't hurt either

Dongsturm fucked around with this message at 15:51 on May 27, 2021

Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012
At least they haven't found the thread where we post the pictures and police reports.

Dongsturm fucked around with this message at 18:15 on May 27, 2021

Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012

BrigadierSensible posted:

Please Rubitex's mum. Calm down, apologize to your kid for what you need to apologize for, (including snooping on their internet presence), and hopefully you can heal the relationship and stop being such an arsehole.

This sets me off, although I appreciate you think you are somehow helping. You're not, you are part of the complicit society that covers up child abuse by making excuses for them. No matter what deranged abuse these people display, there's always someone like you who sprints in uninvited to cover it up with bullshit like "Mommy is just having a bad day, you should be thankful you have a mother"

It's not my place to tell you to GTFO but you definitely should GTF back 100 pages and read some of the nightmare stories about people escaping living hell and see if you still think "healing the relationship" is amazing genius advice.

It's people with your attitude who kept giving my new address to my parents after I thought I had escaped. So join in making fun of the psychos or don't, but either way shut up with the relationship advice.

Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012

BrigadierSensible posted:

Late to this, so sorry.



BrigadierSensible doesn't have DMs so I'll put this in the thread instead.

Sorry dude, my reply was too much and you didn't deserve that level of hostility for your post when you were just trying to help.

Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012

Zulily Zoetrope posted:

They all have the exact same voice where they can perfectly recall every single thing someone else said that could ever be remotely taken as a slight, but are simply incapable of ever describing anything they ever did wrong (except performative "I loved my child too much" or "I worked too hard to provide for them" poo poo) or any instance of someone else telling them "I'm doing X because you did Y." The only word I can think to describe it is alien. I logically understand that these words come from the mind of a fellow human, but I cannot understand the process that turns their lived experiences into whatever comes out the other end.

I started thinking of them as lizards. They can perform the basic functions of life like eat and reproduce, but are completely incapable of the standard mammal drives like "caring for the young", and "trusting the people around you"

According to my therapist that's supposed to make me feel sorry for them, but they fall into the same category as drunk drivers, IMO. Regardless of whatever terrible tragedy got them to this point, their current behaviour is unacceptable.

Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012

Facebook Aunt posted:

That's all true and it is valid to feel that way. At the same time it is similar to being mad at the forest fire that burned down your house. Your anger is valid, but it's not hurting the fire because fire is incapable of feeling bad.

Not all abusers obviously, but some sociopaths mental deficits show up on a brain scan. They literally don't have a normal human brain, and don't get the normal social good and bad feelings that guide human behavior and make society work. If a creature is incapable of empathy it can't feel bad for making you feel bad.
...

But it can feel good for making me feel bad.

This point of view doesn't work for me, because it condemns the abusers either way. If they are human then they are guilty for breaking all kinds of legal and
moral laws, (and then trying to hide from the consequences) and deserve contempt.

If they are incapable of self control or moral reasoning, like a fire, then we should stamp them out, like a fire*

My mental picture is an unexploded WW2 bomb (ed: instead of a fire) , sitting in the corner of the room until one day it is a bit more unstable than usual and it explodes with zero warning.

* I'm not advocating violence, but if we dropped them all onto an island, I'd watch the TV show of what happens next.

Dongsturm fucked around with this message at 05:14 on Aug 14, 2021

Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012

Facebook Aunt posted:

Yeah it doesn't provide a course of action on a systemic level for dealing with the ones who already exist. We don't have an easy way to detect this kind of brain damage, we don't have a reliable way to treat it if we find it, and I wouldn't trust any government anywhere to round people up based on an invisible disability.

On a systemic level the only call to action is to prevent brain damage from happening to small children as much as possible. Prevent head injuries, prevent heavy metal poisoning, ensure all children get adequate nutrition -- all things we should be doing anyway.


On a personal level it's just another assurance that what happened wasn't your fault. There was nothing you could have done to make the situation better. There's nothing you can do to fix them now. They are hopelessly broken, and have been since long before you were born.

That's a nice way to look at it, and I find it much more appealing than the idea of forgiving people who haven't even asked for it.

Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012

Sisal Two-Step posted:

What do you guys do about the guilt? I feel like I can't focus on anything else except my guilt and the anxiety it makes me feel.

Do you mean guilt about not fulfilling family "obligations" , or going no-contact?

After living away from home for a while, I compared my family's behaviour to various people that I knew like housemates, romantic partners, and friends. And I realised that my family won't even treat me as decently as random strangers.

I started to feel angry that my family refused to treat me as well as strangers that they met. Any remaining guilt faded after I went no contact.

Holding my family to the same standards I applied to my friends and myself made it very clear to me who should be feeling bad, and it wasn't me.

Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012

ElHuevoGrande posted:

Honestly, not much. When I joined the Navy they sat us down while doing next of kin and emphasized repeatedly that you could choose anyone you wanted. They also went over in close detail what would happen if someone who was not next of kin tried to contact you. Then they emphasized that you could change your next of kin, told you the form necessary, and told you how to get that form both at boot camp and at your eventual duty station afterward. As I recall the JAG had form letters they sent out for people trying to contact you that weren't authorized. Can't speak for other services, but in the Navy they seemed quite familiar with parents like mine.


What did the form letter say? I don't know about the coast guard, but other government departments have a polite form letter that goes something like

"Thank you for your interest in our department. Due to security concerns we cannot answer your questions.
"

She must have annoyed the lawyer on a personal level order to get a hostile response.

Clearly she's an unreliable narrator, but now I really want to know what she said.

Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012

Me again. posted:

This thread has been helpful to me though I never post in it. It helped me to sever from my mother 3 years ago and stick to it, with the exception of a short interlude earlier this year when she learned of some misfortune that had befallen my brother and I.

This year I was able to push back strongly as soon as she started doing what she inevitably does. Now I am no longer troubled by her. I learned better scripts for doing that from this thread.

My life has been improved by reading this thread. Thank you.

:yotj:

Congrats! It keeps getting better from here.

Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012

ThePopeOfFun posted:

What kind of support would ya'll have appreciated from friends when you were contemplating limited/no contact? Friend's parents are narcissists and have been incredibly nasty recently. I'll ask my friend directly when she's not so fresh off parental verbal abuse/DARVO spree.

Just being a friend and not a flying monkey was supportive enough for me. I spent a long time in some kind of weird real life spy movie while I figured out which of my "friends" were giving my phone number and address to my family. (Spoiler: It was all of them)

I'm assuming that you are already managing that, but if you want to do more, then invite them to something normal so they can enjoy a relaxed day doing something normal, like a normal BBQ with normal people who do normal things and don't randomly snap and start screaming hysterically that they wish you had never been born.

That sounds kind of unimpressive, but when my family life was a tornado of shrieking insanity, a normal afternoon was a royal loving treat.

Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012

Ghostnuke posted:

this thread was recommended to me in one of the discords after posting about my chud parents -

Is this the kind of place where you can post about your own situation for advice? I know other threads have rules against that...

Plenty of people have, it seems to be ok.

There's also the E/N subforum, which exists just to mock help advice-seekers.

Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012

Ghostnuke posted:

I don't want to give that impression at all. She's just being cautious about doing something that can't be undone, which I'm all for.

It can probably be undone. Flip back to the beginning of this thread and there are pages of quotes from parents who detail the vast amount of time and effort they spend trying to get back into their children's lives. Reconciliation is probably going to be an option for a long time.

Or to put it more strongly: Abusers need victims much more than the victims need abusers.



You also don't need to burn the bridges yourself. You can be polite but firm when you cut (or reduce) contact, and that's probably the better choice.

Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012

mudskipp posted:

Im not sure that's true for the men - isn't it mostly mothers who are trying to maintain the abusive parent relationships? Also, if you changed your mind you might well have to do it apologetically - because they'll (probably) think it was your fault and won't accept any responsibility for what drove you to do it.

One thing to watch out for is if these people have similar minded brothers/sisters etc is that they might lie about why you cut them out, and that part of the family might start to gang up on you.

I don't think it would be too severe of a response though.. they must've known you wouldn't have wanted them hitting your kid but they didn't care. Why bother seeing what they do next. (I'm assuming that didn't all result in a calm/supportive conversation about how you would've wanted them to handle it instead)

Every situation is different, but going back is usually very easy. Staying in "no contact" is the challenge. I've been going back and re-reading the start of the thread, and it's full of abusive mothers spending years trying to get back in contact with their children, and stories from the children about repeatedly letting the abusive parents back into their lives (and then regretting it). It is some amazing reading.

Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012

CuwiKhons posted:

What the gently caress, according to who? Do these loving lunatics seriously think it's 100% normal to not love your children and all the other parents are just pretending? Jesus christ. I feel nothing but burning hatred for this woman.

I'm pretty sure the answer to this is yes, she seriously believes it. One thing I've noticed with almost all the stories in this thread is that these people really do believe that they know what everyone else is thinking (and it's always something twisted and horrible).

They know that their estranged children are just pretending, and are disobeying solely to hurt the parents. It makes sense. If they are narcissists, then everything they think must be the best opinion ever, so of course everyone agrees with them. And anyone who doesn't is deliberately thinking the wrong way just to offend.

It's partial solipsism I guess. They don't believe that they are the only person who exists, but like small children they just can't imagine other people having independent thoughts.

Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012

Imagined posted:

Oh without a doubt, I just would've thought a psychopath might have the self-awareness to realize that other people aren't psychopaths and so they should probably disguise their psychopathiness. Like, how do you reach middle age without realizing and accepting that other people really loving love their pets, even if you don't?

It's lizard people, I'm telling you all. They don't have that bit of the brain, so they literally can't imagine how to do it.

I'm kind of serious, just without the lizard people bit. I was raised by a clinically diagnosed narcissist (and I'm sure there was more), who was literally incapable of positive emotions like love, and her reaction to people expressing it was a mixture of contempt, hate, and fear. She was aware that love and care existed, but only in a dictionary sense. For her, the rest of the world was deliberately being weird and stupid, obviously just to annoy her. She would try to pretend, but like being colourblind, she couldn't make colours that didn't exist in her world.

When she got it wrong, she would usually go for contempt, claiming that doing something affectionate was stupid, or a waste of money, or would clutter up the house. The examples are small and easy to explain away, it's only when I put them next to each other that the pattern is obvious.

For instance, there were never any pictures of the family in our house or on her desk at work. When I asked why, the answer was something like "I don't want that rubbish in my house". No postcards, no christmas cards in a box, no mementos from trips, and no family photo albums. If anyone bought such a thing into the house, she would destroy it and claim it never existed. For psychos, this stuff has the same emotional impact as dirt, and why would you keep a clod of dirt on your desk? That would be weird. Everyone does it? The world is stupid.

The same goes for pets. A pet cat gives them the same emotional response as a pet mosquito. She knew she had to pretend to like pets, but she couldn't figure out how. One day she casually wandered up to me and said "You should play with the cat more, I'm going to have it put down next week", and walked off with a small grin. (Edit: And then totally failed to understand my reaction to her news). Her internal landscape is so completely different to ours that she literally can't imagine how to pretend to be normal. She can follow an example she learned somewhere else, but when she has to improvise, she fails completely.

Edit: Holy poo poo I need to read more Steinbeck. He says it perfectly.

Double Edit: I worried some people because they don't like cats or cards. That's totally ok. The point of the story was that she couldn't relate to other people, or empathise with their feelings, and would react with contempt or callousness in situations that needed empathy. I am a bad poster and didn't make that clear.

Dongsturm fucked around with this message at 13:29 on Oct 9, 2021

Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012

Bargearse posted:

This. I spent the better part of a year sharing a house with a psychopath, he genuinely believed that deep down everyone is like him, and the only thing different about him is that he didn't try to hide it.

I'm sure that everyone who uses the phrase "virtue signalling" is a psychopath. It's a clear admission that the person saying it is never motivated by compassion, only by money or power or whatever.

An economist, basically.

Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012

Picnic Princess posted:

Totally agreed. It's completely normal to be altruistic and compassionate and always has been, it was once considered an innately human trait that separated us from the rest of the animals. We've since realized it actually exists all over the animal kingdom and can't be used to define us as special or more advanced anymore, and somehow at the same time a bunch of psychotic nerds have decided that it's not a valid human trait at all and never has been. Like, did they just forget how for centuries we would just be kind to others? Whole religions built off it? The concept of the Golden Rule existing all over the world for millennia?

Also, manners. It took me a long time to realise that some good manners are tests for narcissism and psychopathy. Not so much the ones about holding the fork correctly, but the ones about being a good loser, paying your debts, no matter how small and inconvenient, and even simple things like owning up to a mistake and apologising for it. Things that a narcissist or psychopath are fundamentally incapable of.

versus e.g. writing thank you cards. How many of those estranged parent posts obsessed over loving thank you cards and skipped over the unimportant politeness of hiding the racist wedding photos when the daughter brings her new girlfriend home for the first time?

Dongsturm fucked around with this message at 01:00 on Oct 9, 2021

Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012

AceOfFlames posted:

I consider myself to be a rather empathic person, but those two items are starting to make me heavily question that.

I think it might just be heavily pragmatic for me. I for example do not understand why people are so horribly upset in movies where animals die and yet can watch people be murdered without a second thought (my go to examples are 101 Dalmatians and John Wick. Their plots seem based on a ludicrous overreaction to me). I like talking to people about interesting topics but never understood why people enjoy talking about the weather, repeating weird phrases they heard somewhere, or just my presence (like how my dad would always insist I go shopping with him even though he would not speak and I would end up wandering off).

I also don't have decoration in my house because I don't see the point.

Am I a psychopath?

Probably not, I was only giving a few specific examples to answer a specific question. They aren't a diagnostic.
There are a lot more symptoms you would need to have, like cruelty and manipulation.

There are lots of ways to show your love for people, you don't have to conform to a list.

You also don't have to like pets, but if you feel cheerful at the thought of killing them, then yeah, that's a bad sign.

Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012
Psychologists confirming what everyone already knew - estranged parents blame manipulative spouses and mental illness rather than looking at themselves.

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2021-85856-001

does anyone has access to a journal subscription? I'd be interested in seeing if it was a basic survey report or if the researchers draw any broader conclusions.

Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012
Thanks everyone.

It looks like the paper roughly confirms what we saw on the estranged parents forum - parents blaming someone else for stealing their children. I was wondering if that was selection bias on the forum, but it looks like it is a general pattern.

Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012

deep dish peat moss posted:

18% of estranged mothers recognizing that their own issues are partially at fault is much higher than I expected

There were some posts where the estranged parent said sonething like "it's my fault for being too loving/indulgent/good/awesome" when they very obviously weren't. possibly these responses got counted as self awareness.

Also all the ones that started with "I wasn't the perfect parent, but it's not my fault that (insane abuse story goes here)", which might count as acknowledging that there is an issue

Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012

deep dish peat moss posted:

Thinking about the gifting stuff with the holidays coming up -

One of the reasons I was so reluctant to speak to my mom at any point in my life was because she would latch on some tiny thing that you mentioned as if it was her responsibility to solve that problem for you. This mostly manifested as things like if you told her one May that you were thinking about getting bar stools for your kitchen, she would spend the entire year asking you if you had found bar stools, all the while mercilessly crawling through thrift stores looking for bar stools until she found what she considered the perfect bar stools. Once she had an idea, there was absolutely nothing that could stop her. You could see the glint in her eye and follow your bar stools comment with "Please do not buy me bar stools.", and then all year long when she asks you if you've found bar stools you could reply by saying "I've decided I don't want bar stools. Please do not buy me any bar stools. I have found different furniture I like for my kitchen." and she would still spend the entire year hunting for bar stools to give you around Christmas. You could say "yes I found some, thank you" and she would still hunt for bar stools all year long and then give them to you and say "Well now you have extras" or "I just thought you might like them more".

Never at any point would any consideration go into what kind of bar stools you would want, or what color you would want them to be, or whether you would actually want cracked and beat up looking leather in your home. It was based entirely on which ones looked like they were originally the most expensive (by her wild estimation).

Of course she would get upset when you didn't want them. She would then try to pawn them off on a bunch of other people and get upset when they didn't want them, all the while getting increasingly angry that no one was praising her for making such an incredible find, wow, what value

And then of course as a teen or adolescent who didn't have the full perspective on just how weird all of that is, if I ever tried to explain it to someone they would just tell me that I should appreciate that she cares so much and what's the harm in just saying thank you they're nice bar stools and wow she loves you a lot of parents don't love their children that much, because I didn't realize that I had to explain to them that when I was saying she "gets upset" I meant she was being abusive :v:

In summary I guess that was just her "thing" in several ways, she would put absurd amounts of time and energy and effort into something that she decided you wanted, ignore everything you said about you not wanting it, and then blow a gasket when you, surprise, didn't want it. It was like she always wanted to prove that when she did it, it would be so perfect that you'd change your mind about not wanting it, so if you said you didn't want something it was almost like challenging her to prove you wrong.

Edit: Witnessed right now:
She’s mad at my dad because she can’t figure out how to log into her slot machine app on a different device and he doesn’t know either. He’s following her around trying to solve it for her. When she needs help she never asks for help, she gets mad at people until they start doting over her trying to help her, and dad’s a big-time enabler. She's yelling about how she doesn't care anymore and wants him to leave her alone, but he doesn't understand consent or boundaries or when to stop either, so he keeps yelling across their house to ask her a question about how she usually logs in, she yells back that she can't hear him because she's in a different room, so he goes to the room she's in and then she walks out of the room and the cycle repeats. They are both in their 70s. I guess being raised by emotional toddlers explains a lot about my trauma and childhood :sweatdrop:

:stare: I frequently get the paranoid thought that people in this thread are spying on my life and then posting the stories. It's just too accurate to be a coincidence.

Nobody in my family had an idea of emotional regulation, or any kind of coping skills at all. If they were feeling unhappy or frustrated, they would take it out on someone else. They would prowl around the house looking for a fight. Anyone relaxing was their favourite target. Even today, I still can't stretch out on my couch and relax completely because I'll suddenly panic that someone is going to walk into the room and start a screaming fight with me.

The pretext never mattered, in fact, the flimsier the pretext, the quicker the fight could start.

"What are you doing lying there? You're supposed to be doing thing."
"I'm doing it tomorrow. I can't even do it do today, the shops are shut"
"Get up and do it right now!"
"Leave me alone, I'm trying to relax"
"What did you say to me? How dare you?!?!"

Screaming, physical attacks, doors slamming, etc. Every single time.

Absolute toddler levels of dealing with problems in their life. I blame the enablers more than the lovely people in my life now. Without a cloud of enablers shielding them from consequences, I could at least enjoy watching karma catch up with them.

Dongsturm fucked around with this message at 11:27 on Oct 18, 2021

Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012
Oh wow, this.

Out of all the things my mother did, this was probably the worst. It's definitely not normal. Actually, it might be normal but it's not good.

She'd go through my stuff when I wasn't there, which was difficult because it's not like I spent a lot of time outdoors. She searched for anything personal and threw it out, then when I asked where it was she pretended that it never existed and that I was making things up. Any art projects, drawings, gifts from friends, or even things that she bought me that I liked too much. Likewise mementos from dead relatives, people I lost touch with, whatever. It was definitely a targeted action. Saying that I liked something guaranteed that if would vanish within the next two weeks. She literally couldn't stand the idea of someone else having something that they enjoyed.

The toddler connection is becoming really clear. It's a child throwing a tantrum and attacking someone else because someone else has a toy and they don't. And if they get the toy, they immediately drop it, because they didn't want the toy, they just didn't want anyone else to have it.

Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012

Dr. Stab posted:

Sup.

It was a big source of anxiety for me. I would ask her to stop and she would tell me "but it's organized now, don't you like it organized?" But no matter how I organized my room she always had to reorganize it a different way. I don't know what organization system she used and asking her about it was considered backtalk. So I had to take everything out and put it away how I liked so I could find things. I kept pictures on my phone of all my drawers to help me put them back. This also helped me figure out which of my things she threw away.

It feels silly, because I'm upset that she cleaned my room for me. But, I was always slightly on edge that whenever I came home I'd have to spend a few hours taking account of all my things and moving my furniture back. I also dreaded having the conversation where I reminded her that she promised not to do that, and take the conversation from "I didn't do it" to "I did it but you actually like it" to "I did it but this was punishment for something that I hadn't yet brought up" to the new promise not to do it again.

When I moved out it was weird how much safer I felt at home, and how much less time I spent thinking about all of my possessions. Anything important is safely where I put it and I don't have to worry about it going missing by the time I have to use it. Also, if I have a problem with something my roommates did, I can just talk to them and they will talk earnestly with me about it.

it's not silly, it's legit awful. And so many people have had that conversation that it got summarised as the Narcissists prayer :

The Narcissist's Prayer

That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.

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Dongsturm
Feb 17, 2012

Mormon Nailer posted:

The good news is... There's not any good news because it's still a monarchy.

It used to be that people would say that the British ones were ok because at least they weren't complete trash, but it turns out that they were just better at hiding their hideous crimes.

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