Finally realized that mom has been triangulating my sisters against me for years, which destroyed our relationships and made me the outcast. My sisters are definitely toxic, but mom made everything worse. This has been going on all of my life, so it can't be senility.
I became her caregiver and social outlet for 28 years and I think she did it to keep me dependent on her and at her beck and call because nobody else in the family liked me. I can't even look at her now. Her social worker told me to get away from her and let my sisters take over her care. Validation and knowing it's probably a personality disorder isn't making me feel any better.
Old habits die hard and I don't think my sisters are interested in repairing the relationship because they still have each other and their kids. They just said "yeah, mom lies." I don't know where to go from here. Yes, I am getting therapy, but it won't change my family and the therapist doesn't have anything to say except validating me. Still no help moving forward.
The answer is NO. Not because of the 50 years, but because your sisters don't want to have a relationship with you. I know it must hurt to be an outcast all these years. I honestly can't imagine how hard it must be for you.
Can you clarify what you mean by "Still no help moving forward"?
Moving forward to where? What are your goals? No more hurt? Acceptance? Finding new relationships?
Perhaps once you contemplate what and where you want to move forward to, you can ask your therapist to help you get there. If the therapist can't help you, it's time to find a better therapist.
But it can also lead to extremely unrealistic expectations.
It might not be a bad idea to start a discussion with your therapist about WHY you want a relationship with members of your family who have mistreated you in the past. If your sisters indeed are "toxic", as you have described them to be, it might not be in your best interests to pursue mending the broken relationship(s) with them. Maybe it's time to start cultivating other relationships that can help fill in this void you seem to be feeling. There are many of us here who have toxic relatives; and in response, rather than trying to "fix" them, we have forged other relationships with people that become as close as family members, and let go of the toxic relatives.
I hope you can find some peace.
As I said, the unknown is terribly frightening. Be patient with yourself. This will be a brave, brave move and will take everything you have. I wish you the very best. Be good to yourself.
I think in families there is one child who seems to be the one they hone in on. Maybe the child is more layed back. Maybe can be intimidated. Made to feel guilty. In my younger years I leaned this way. If I went out with friends, I just went along with the crowd when it came to what we were doing. I really didnn't care. I had a guilt complex. Always thinking I must have done something wrong. But, I found it was not always me. It was others and they usually didn't think it was them. I found that my feelings weren't important to them.
Your looking for love that isn't there. Bet Mom does not even know what the word means. She is probably self-centered. I had a MIL with a personality disorder. After a few lies she said about me, I stopped visiting her without my husband. We visited her about 2x a year after she moved 2 days away. Our visits went well, a week was enough. When she didn't get her way, is when the personality disorder came out. I would have never cared for this woman.
You need to get a life of your own. Find people that lift you up. Love you for who you are not what they want you to be.
I am sorry for the deep pain and hurt you feel about your family. I too long for a Hallmark family. Wanted so much to have the support of my mother, father and sisters. But like you, I too feel like an outcast. I tried so hard to please everyone and gave of myself unconditionally.
I know I feel anger and resentment that no one can support me or care about me in return the way I want.
Others have given good advice. I know it's hard. But sometimes we cannot get blood from a stone. We have to find new ways. Value ourselves first! Put our own needs and wants first. It takes time but I know you'll find the right people to love you and care about you.
Thinking of you.
"Still no help moving forward" refers to the therapist. She's validating the way I feel, but I still don't feel like I'm making any progress. I want the pain to stop and to find healthy relationships. I'm in a CoDA group, which helps because it's a group of people who don't act like I'm the crazy one.
Right now I'm doubting anyone who is nice to me. I knew Mom had "issues" but I didn't realize how much she needed me to suffer. I'm also recently divorced because my ex cheated on me and lied to me throughout our 36 year marriage. He always cheered up when I got upset and when I pointed it out, he seemed proud of it. So, I was having a tough time trusting anyway.
The bright spot is my two adult children. I feel that they care for me, even though we aren't together very often. I'm careful not to put any burdens on them and ask for too much support. I'm trying to be as different from my parents as possible.
You have plenty of time and lots of insight and determination. You can do this. There's no time limit. And you are allowed to make mistakes. You are even allowed to sink into the sofa and eat bon bons and listen to sad music and cry.
Just don't give up. New year coming. Try new things in this new year. And please be sure to get moving, exercise and walk. Hard as it is it does help.
When we are made to be the family scapegoat, black sheep etc., we are often left desperate to gain the love of our family. We know we are not a bad person, but everyone else buys into the stories and we are left unloved and rejected. Often our families will enlist others, extended family or close friends into their warped world view. It hurts.
I have one younger brother, he has completely bought into Dad's view that I am damaged and have been since birth. If Dad had had his way he would have had me institutionalized as a toddler. My crime? Just being born a red head, with a stubborn personality.
It is ridiculous how far those two men have gone and will go in the future to discredit me. The most recent was telling me I did not know what I was talking about when I told them the fridge in the cabin is not working. The mold should have been a clue.
My mother is the world's biggest gossip. All she cares about is telling people stories that put me in a bad light. When my marriage ended, she was too busy burning up the phone lines to think about calling me to see if I was OK. She decided with my EX that I should move out of the house and into an old RV.
I found out later that she had been meeting my EX while I was at work (I worked 6 days a week) and knew some of what he was up to. This was before the break up, after she went to my house and went through my mail, phone messages and relayed what she learnt to my EX. She also went through my belongings and took things that she did not think I deserved to have. I had the locks changed, but much damage was done in the 4 months before I found out.
These people are incapable of loving us. And we will just cause ourselves endless pain trying to earn their love.
I have worked hard to create a community around me that has no connection at all to my family of origin. People who have become my family of choice.
You can do it too. Covid has made many things harder, but join a club or group that has nothing at all to do with your family. I joined a quilting guild in a city an hour away. No one there knew the story of my marriage or divorce, no one knew any of my family members nor their friends, nobody had been indoctrinated by my parents. I was just me.
It takes time, but you are worth it.
My mother had Borderline Personality Disorder, my father was an alcoholic and my sister has something similar to mother, worse in some ways as she is colder and more calculating. So my family was a toxic mess. I realized very early in life (preschool) that there were serious problems in the family and also that I was not the cause. Life became a matter of facing the realities of my family, developing coping skills and support and mother figures, non blood sisters etc. outside my family and hurting from the dysfunctional behaviours. My father, at least, was affectionate.
Agreed - getting therapy won't change your family. Your only option is to change yourself if you want your life to improve.
"Still no help in moving forward". This is some of what I had to do. and found necessary to move forward. I found literature about codependency, and being the child of a borderline mother helpful.
1) accept that they were/are are they were/are and were/are not going to change
2) grieve the lack of the family that everyone needs but not everyone gets.
3) find support for myself through friends, extended family and therapists
4) learn about the disorders foamily members have and the effects they have on you and the family as a whole
5) set healthy goals and boundaries and work at keeping them.
None of this is easy nor does it happen without messes, as we learn and grow. I still, at 84, am a work in progress.
After mother died I finally cut contact with my sister. I had thought/hoped for years we could have a decent relationship but finally realized that wasn't possible. I went n/c for my protection.
Wonderful that you have 2 adult children from whom you feel love
Alva mentioned that another therapist may suit you better. I always felt free to change therapists if one was not working for me. Have you asked this one what, in her/his opinion, you can do to move forward?
Many here can identify with you and your issues and are good at giving support. I was a distance caregiver for my mother for years (could never have done hands on due to the toxicity) and found the support here invaluable. I hope you find the same. ((((((((hugs))))))))
Why would you want to?
As a scapegoat, treat yourself 'as if' someone in recovery-don't go near the toxicity. Go through the withdrawal.
Come out the other side a whole, recovered person, with a good chance at being happy.
Someone cannot lie about you if they haven't even seen you or talked to you for years!
Explore in therapy why you feel people don't like you. Is it true? Maybe you need less validation, and more confrontation. Using Cognitive Therapy, or CBT,
Cognitive behavioral therapy may help change your thinking. Maybe there are errors in your thinking. Everyone has them, it does not make you crazy. But work hard, you can change yourself, but not your family.
Feel better about yourself soon.
You talk of a final realization, old habits dying hard, your mother's social worker advising a break from your mother and a change of perspective.
So - what led up to what sounds like some kind of painful personal epiphany?
Mom outright told me she lied to them and that they were complaining about me and that I shouldn't worry about it. She was LAUGHING about it. She got me upset and terrified for absolutely no reason because she never actually did say anything to them and they weren't complaining about anything.
In the past she has triggered me, because if she is upset about something, then she wants me to feel worse. Her social worker heard her admit it and told me to get away from her.
I thought things were getting better and was starting to spend more time with her and now she pulls it again. She hasn't changed and never will, except her lies are getting worse. I pulled away from my sisters because of her lies and now the damage is done and they don't care.
I can't spend time with someone who actively wants to hurt me. I've been gaslit for so long and I can't recognize the truth anymore. When people are nice to me, I keep waiting for them to turn on me, because that's how I was raised. I'm away from her now and I don't know if I will ever want to be near her again. Yet, I still feel guilty about pulling away.
You need to back off. Let mom figure out how to get the help she needs.
Let your sisters take over if they wish. But if they are not helping then they have set the boundaries. They probably know that whoever is in the role you are playing will then be in the "target zone" and they are wise to not breach that area.
I get it that you want your kids to have a relationship with other family members.
That can happen. You can drop them off, or your sisters can come pick them up or drop their kids off. The "rule" should be though that your sisters do not talk about you to your kids and you do not talk to their kids about them. If that begins happening you have every right to not let your kids play with theirs unless you are there and it is in a "neutral" place.
Maybe one day there will be a truce, maybe an uneasy one.
In the meantime back off, No need to subject yourself to people that damage you.
My mom raised me from birth to believe my dad and his family were wicked and she was my only defense from them. I feared and avoided them all. I only started to question my reality at nineteen and even then it took several more years to understand my mom had mental issues and my dad and his family were just normal people. By that time I’d missed out on twenty-five years of building relationships with them. I missed weddings, funerals, birthdays, gatherings. I’ve never become close to them.
In my late twenties my mom turned her gaze at her own family. Even though they lived thousands of miles away and I rarely saw them I’d say we were fairly close. Once my mom began her relentless attacks on them contact completely stopped. (For example, she would say awful things, make horrid accusations and file frivolous lawsuits against them.) I was cut out because of my connection to her.
I moved across the country in part to separate myself from my mom. But the damage was done. I’m not a part of either side of my family’s lives. We’re not hostile. We are strangers to each other.
I made my own life, made my own friends. That was fine while I was young. Now I'm in my late forties and I’m finding that people my age are drawing into their families. Children and aging parents take more and more of their time (as it should). I can see where this road ends.
I don’t think there is anything I can do but to be strong and accept it with grace. No therapist is going to ‘fix’ this. Not all problems have happy solutions.
All I can do is remain active. Make friends, be a friend, remain social.
Facing what your mum is really like is huge and very hurtful. I get that you want the pain to stop. For me a big step was accepting that she was what she was. Not that that is easy as we all want and need a nurturing mother. But, no one can change it when they aren't.
Have you tried an antidepressant? That can help while you are learning to better deal with your family. Another (((((((hug))))) Its a tough road to travel.
I think it's time you allow yourself to be free from ALL of the toxicity and move forward for yourself. The best thing you can do is be healthy for you. I have thought for a long time that the only way my husband and SIL are ever going to be free from their dad is when he is gone because alive he has a hold on them that they can't break because he is FAMILY. Just that word has such a strong connotation of debt and ownership and it is supposed to be about love and strength and comfort! When I think about my FIL I know that my husband and SIL take care of him out of a sense of obligation...if he wasn't their father this isn't a man they would give the time of day to(long history of abuse). But because he is their dad so much of their own self-worth is wrapped up in what he thinks of them and it is difficult to counteract that even with 30 years of my own love and attention invested. It's heartbreaking that a parent can do that to a child and very difficult to overcome. But you can do it step by step. I can see them making slow strides towards freedom. But you have to put yourself first and invest in you and decide if your mental health is more important than pursuing that relationship with your remaining family and whether they will ever move on from the walls that your mother built. There are people in our family who don't talk to us because of FIL's lies and that's their loss. They never took the time to know their own family. And there are plenty of people that just rolled their eyes about his lies and knew it was total crap because they knew better. That's what you have to weigh in the end.
Good luck to you. In the end you have to decide how much of yourself you are willing to risk before you protect yourself and if you are just going down the same path with them that you went down with her.
My mother has scapegoated, abused, and gaslighted me my entire life since I was a little kid. She bad-mouthed me as well to anyone who would listen and has endlessly instigated trouble to see what family members (my own siblings included) to turn on me.
I didn't have her at either of my weddings because I knew she would find a way to ruin them and of course none of it would be her fault.
I'm her caregiver now but there are serious boundaries and I would not help her if it wasn't worth my while to do so. The gaslighting and instigating is at a bare minimal for a long time because she knows I'm the only thing standing between her and a nursing home. She knows that I will feel no guilt or second thoughts whatsoever placing her in one. She also knows that if she exhibits even the slightest signs of dementia I will place her. I will not help her if there's dementia. You can be a caregiver and also take back some of your life. You do not have to tolerate abuse. No one does. People like our mothers get worse with age. If any dementia sets in, they become impossible.
As for your sisters, write them each a letter explaining your side of things. Ask them to really think about what it would be like for them to be in your shoes. Remind them as I did, that you are the person who makes their lives possible. If you were not the one mom scapegoated and abused all these years it would have been them and their relationship with her would be what yours is and has always been. If you were not mom's caregiver and companion all these years, that also would have been one of them. Explain this plainly to them in your letter without being a martyr or sanctimonious. They will think about things. Its worth a shot.
In the meantime I want to say without using therapy talk that you have value and your life isn't worthless because your mother is a heartless abuser. You are not obligated to her either. If you continue to be a caregiver to her, that is fine. Do not continue to be her companion though. Hire someone. If that's not possible then let her be lonely and give yourself no guilt or grief about it.
Since my years in the Navy and after, I only saw them in small doses once or twice a year. In 1997 I was diagnosed with PTSD by the VA and have been in therapy ever since. I stopped working for health reasons. (The stress was causing panic attacks and an ulcer.) In 2001 I went on full disability and at age 47 my DH and I moved to a lovely retirement community in Florida. I never had kids and I was looking forward to a calm peaceful retirement. Then ... my father retired at age 80 and my folks moved 1200 mile to the same community. With my disability I should have never been forced into a caregiver role. My brothers were estatic they didn't have to deal with any of it. Out of sight, out of mind.
My life was completely hijacked for over a decade. Then mom died in 2018, leaving me to deal with my insane father, while at the same time battling liver disease, metabolic syndrome, a failed eye surgery AND the SSA declared me dead by mistake. I was overwhelmed and had a major PTSD relapse. Not only did I not get any help or even moral support, one SIL posted horrible cruel things on Facebook about me not being able to adult or accept responsibility. WTF? I took care of everything for our parents, they never lifted a finger. The stress took a huge toll on my health. I ended up going No Contact with my father before he passed at age 96. I never shed a tear. Needless to say, I do not miss any of the family drama. I wrote letters to my brothers to let them know I was done and attached their inheritance checks to them. Good riddance. I am finally doing better now and moving past the anger and hurt.
Please do whatever it takes to free yourself from the toxicity. It's not too late. The best revenge is a life well lived. You deserve peace in your retirement years. Walk away and go live your best life. Good luck to you!