EveningRose

The extended family gets together over Thanksgiving weekend, and this year, for the first time, I felt a cool distance from many of my relatives, instead of their normal warm hugs and inquiries about the kids. I wonder if I imagined it, but then, I've noticed in the past that they all tend to post on my siblings' pages on facebook but rarely interact with me.

I've been wondering why, considering I don't think I've done anything to warrant it, and all I can come up with is the realizations, in recent years, that 1) my mother has thought I'm a liar and an all-around general trouble-maker since I was quite young (although I've lived a very straight and narrow life and am honest to a fault, tending to overexplain, in fact, to make sure I haven't inadvertently given a false impression) and 2) my mother spreads her opinion around, like vermin spread lice, to absolutely anyone who will listen. My children, best friends (MY friends, not my mothers' friends), and people at my church have all told me the things she says to them about me.

I also have fragments of memories, of things an adult did that he shouldn't have. I'm beginning to wonder if I told what I saw and was labeled a liar and trouble-maker from the age of 3 or 4, because it was easier than her having to deal with the truth.

So it's like looking at a puzzle where I finally understand I'm missing dozens of pieces, and the picture doesn't entirely make sense without them.

Am I crazy to fill in those blanks and think she has quite likely been saying negative things to my relatives about me since I'm quite young? (We lived far away most of the time, so for most of these 40+ years, they've had her word far more than their experience of me.) Am I crazy to think that in the past years since I went NC she's drastically stepped up the trash-talking till they finally believe it.

Or was it just an off weekend? Are they just not as close to me because I didn't live near them, while my younger siblings did? Should I continue driving myself crazy trying to figure out what I may have done to cause this, when I have had no unpleasant interactions with any of them? Or should I just assume it's more family craziness, that my family of origin has affected my ability to have good relationships with my extended family, toss my hands up, and say, "Oh, well?"

What I really want is to know others' stories: how has your immediate family's alcoholism affected your relationships with your extended family members?

dollydo

I can tell you that my mother did everything in her power to polarize my brother, my step sister and I. Everything had to filter through her, she did not like "us" having a relationship with each other. Well, since my step sister and I no longer speak to her, the three of us are really enjoying each others company. My brother is in the contact, yet avoid as much as possible mindset, he is good at ignoring her.

She has been playing the three of us against each other for years, we finally have smartened up.

EveningRose

Do you think it was deliberate intention to separate the three of you and remain in control?

Do you think she felt she was gaining something from this divisiveness among you, and if so, what?

I see very clearly that it's a power play in which, if my parents and siblings are saying these ugly things behind my back, it behooves them to be all sweetness and light and fun to my kids. Then it looks like obviously I'm the one with the problem...since look how happy THEY all are together. But I ask myself how deliberate this is. I have never wanted to believe they're that calculating.

Also, I think to an extent they really BELIEVE these things about me. They've reinforced themselves and each other in believing them for so many years that it simply will never occur to them that I could have any valid point, ever, and therefore need not be listened to or considered.

dollydo

My mother did it with malice and forthought. It was all a matter of control and her own abusive nature. She was always putting the other one down behind their backs, and, we did not share the words, because we did not want to hurt each other. We all know the truth now, took 40 years, but, we are now enjoying the honesty we share, our future together looks bright...in fact we are all celebrating an early Christmas together in 2 weeks...my mother? Sitting by herself, her power is gone.

We were not calculating, we were just abstractly stupid, we didn't understand.

GingerM

My sister got labeled the "useless" one at an early age. She's coming up on 50, and still is stuck with that label.

Rose, you had an 'off' weekend. Your family is not sane. Why should the opinions of crazy, mean, venomous people matter to you? Sure, you share some DNA with them, but that doesn't mean you have to give one whit what they think about you.

We all have 'off' days. From the ACoA Bill of Rights stickied above:

9. I have a right to “mess up”; to make mistakes, to “blow it”, to disappoint myself, and to fall short of the mark.

It's okay. It doesn't mean you're a horrible person, it just means you're human. If your family wants to pretend that they're all perfect and your sub-human for having an off day? Well, you and I can snicker behind our hands at them for being so ludicrous that they're entering the theatre of the absurd.

*snicker*

Jur123

My extended family knows about my mother, but I don't think they know the extent of her abuse. I remember my cousin saying "I'd kill myself if I had a mother like yours", but still they make hints that I'm exagerating. My mother's sister couldn't spend an hour with my mom without getting into a fight, but still thinks that I'm exagerating. It makes me sad, but they never were supportive. They live in a different country so I don't see them often.

Kialua

We sibs were all at odds with each other and didn't socialize even at holidays. I'm sure my Mom told stories to each one of us. I don't think anyone cared or believed her but we are just too fragmented to be a part of each others lives now. Sad really. But the two that were favored blame us for being beat and we blame them for not caring. It's all so crazy. But really we are kind of relieved to not have to dance anymore.

GingerM

Sometimes being a wallflower is a perfectly reasonable response to getting our toes stepped on. I'm kind of relieved that I don't have to deal with my dad this holiday season.

EveningRose

It's interesting to watch my progression as these questions occur to me. I tend not to think my mother does it with malice and forethought when it comes to me, my children, and my siblings...even though I know it was with clear malice when the same behavior was aimed against my grandfather. She was forever telling us how awful he was, with clear bitterness, hatred, yes, malice, on her face. So why in the world would I think her attitude is any different with me?

She deliberately tried to turn us against certain of our relatives. Why wouldn't she deliberately try to turn my children against me? Why would I ever have believed better of her than what I have seen and known my entire life?

Yes, my mother would also tell me all my older brother's problems. I don't recall her telling me the faults of the younger siblings, but it's why I assume she has spent years telling all the siblings what she thinks of me, too, and you're right, this is why I don't believe they are as calculating. I believe the older one is, moreso, but the younger ones, I see them as victims in their own way, taught from infancy to believe these things, till it's difficult for them to break free of such thought. They don't understand.

EveningRose

Thanks for a laugh!

Actually, it was my kids who had the off day; it's just that as usual, I'll be blamed for it.

I think the reason their presumed gossip and trash-talking bothers me comes back to the fear that it's destroying my ability to have good relationships with other people, because of what those people erroneously believe of me.

EveningRose

Thank you, Jur. I think this is what happens in my mother's family. They all know she talks endlessly and bitterly, never forgets, never lets go....yet I think, like me until only several years ago, they have also believed that there's at least truth to her ugly stories about her father in law, even while they wish she would shut up about it and let it go.

I suspect that if they've heard endless stories about what a trouble-maker and liar I supposedly am, they have come to believe there's some truth there.

GingerM

This is an either/or or black/white statement. Have you considered a third possibility? Perhaps it's both - she is not consciously spewing venom, rather it is well below her level of conscious awareness that she behaves this way?

As I've learned more and more about both people with dependency issues, my own family, and myself, I've come to see that many of my own behaviors were below my conscious awareness - I would perpetuate a behavior I learned as a child, but have no idea why I was doing it even when I wanted to stop behaving that way. And if your mom has no desire to stop behaving that way, she will not seek out the therapeutic intervention needed to change the behaviors.

If I had to guess you mom's answer to "why do you treat your daughter like this" her answer would not contain one shred of intentional forethought. She would not answer "because I think she's evil and I want to warn the world about it," rather it would be "because she deserved it." And if I were to ask her "Why does she deserve it?" her answer would be "because she just does!" Those kinds of answers reveal that she has no real understanding of her own motivations or where they're coming from.

If she was raised in a family where scapegoating one member was the norm and all Bad Things were ascribed to the designated scapegoat, then she would subconsciously perpetuate that cycle.

For me, I've found that if I can find a way to generate sympathy for a person, their vicious verbal attacks bear less weight for me. I feel sympathy for my dad - he is incapable (truly incapable at this point in time, and possibly forever) of seeing how his own actions lead to the natural consequences that he is now experiencing. Therefore he will be forever unable to change the outcomes of what happens to him in his world - he is miserable now, feeling hurt, abandoned, alone, not to mention that prison is a really miserable place to be. And since he's not capable of seeing how his own behavior influences the behaviors of those around him, or incorporate new facts into his per-concieved version of reality, he will be constantly running into problem after problem with no way of self-correcting. For this, I can have sympathy.

Not that I enjoy being his scapegoat, mind you. That part sucks like a black hole. But I can also feel sympathy for a being so damaged that they cannot affect change in their own inner world. It must be a terrible existance to always have seemingly random Bad Things happen to a person, when they can't see the causal relationship between their actions and the outcome. Once I found a way to have sympathy for my dad, his barbs carried less weight. As of this writing, I find that calming my mom down after my dad rants at her is a bigger burden than anything my dad says to me personally.

Not sure if this is helpful or not, but one thing Mike/DesertEyes has finally helped me to incorporate is that most things in life are not black/white or either/or - but rather someplace in between. Now I look for that "someplace in between".

You've got my support, Rose. And nothing your mother could say to me would change that. I generally find that the opinions of vitriolic people who have nothing good to say about anyone are worth slightly less than the air molecules it took for them to say their mean things with.

EveningRose

Thank you, Ginger, for some very insightful thoughts.

I had an experience several years ago, I think the last time I visited her, the time I knew I wouldn't be going back, in which I asked her calmly and straight-forwardly why she thought I had been 'cold' to a person, pointing out (calmly, straight-forwardly) that she hadn't been there, barely even knew the person. I clearly saw the veil lift from her eyes, just for a moment, as she saw the truth in my words. She looked so confused, it was almost sad. Then she shook her head, and put herself firmly back into her belief, with no basis for it--back where she was comfortable. And of course, she never told me why she would believe I'd mistreated the person in question, because there is no answer...because I did not mistreat the person. Her belief is irrational and unfounded.

I believe my mother has always seen herself as weak and victimized--probably from her earliest years. (She's still telling stories about how she was mistreated 65 years ago.) I believe she has seen me as strong from my earliest years. I believe now that she resents that. As I mentioned in the OP, I also suspect that I witnessed inappropriate behavior by an adult when I was very young, that I said so, and that it was easier for her to brand me a liar than face and deal with the real issue.

I, too, have been on the path of learning compassion for two broken people who seem incapable of introspection and fixing all the damage they've done, and are still doing to, themselves.

(I didn't know you were the OP who mentioned sympathy when I answered the other thread! ;-) )

Kialua

In my experience the reason Moms or Dads, alcoholic or enablers, act this way is because they perceive that they have been wronged by the child, and this is how they lash out. The wrong may be talking back or leaving the sick system. So instead of facing the truth of the sick family situation they do scapegoat the child that doesn't stay in that system. It's how they justify their lifestyle of no guilt and thus no need to change.

It's all your fault, not hers, and she needs to "prove it" over and over to anyone that will listen.

EveningRose

I see a lot of truth in this. I think how I 'wronged' her was by being, at least in her perception, 'strong.' Maybe by speaking up about things that left her in a quandary if she had believed me.

At one point, she defended me when my father was wrong in his accusations, and the end result was him hitting her, yanking phones from walls, ending up in jail. I suspect it was easier to retreat back into believing I'm the problem again, than try to stand up for me or herself again. Rather than face the prospect of losing a very comfortable home and lifestyle and having to re-enter the workforce after many years out of it.

And yes, I think you're right on target about the having to prove it, not only to others, but to herself, by the constant repetition.

GingerM

I would take your theory and expand it up a couple of levels: you are a threat to her because you speak the truth. The truth you speak is not in keeping with the reality she has built inside her head. You challenge her reality, and, on some level, her reality and your truth don't agree with each other. And that is threatening to her - she built her altnerate reality for a reason, most likely as a protective mechanism.

By challenging her reality or threatening to knock it down like the house of cards it is, you threaten her very ability to function in the world (no matter how dysfunctional her functioning is). The psyche will protect itself to keep the person from unraveling - if it has to build a reality out of twigs and dust bunnies, then it does so (that is a perfect description of my dad's current state of mind). And if that reality that their psyche constructed to protect themselves is threatened, then their person-hood (that which defines us as individual human beings) is threatened.

It isn't just that you're strong and willing to speak your truth. It's that by doing so, you threaten her ability to continue to survive in the situation she's in, and if you shatter her reality with your reality, you shatter her. That's a pretty huge threat.

But it isn't because of YOU that she's threatened, not directly anyway. It's because she HAS built her reality out of twigs and dust bunnies and they don't stand up to much force. And? You can't change her. Her inner state is very fragile and she needs to defend it to avoid coming unraveled. What a sad human being. For that, I can have sympathy. Moreso, I can have sympathy for you for having to deal with her fragility.