When I was a kid I lived with my dad and stepmom and visited my biological mother every two weekends. During the summer I would go to my biological mom’s house for one month. When I was around 12 years old I went to my mom’s house for the one month in the summer. During that time, my stepmom got my dad, my half brother, and her parents, took them to Sears, and had a family portrait done. She then framed those photos and had them displayed in the house.

Imagine looking at the family portrait every single day and you’re not in it. Even with all the three hour lectures that would start at 11pm on a school night and including fun things like hair pulling, slapping, hitting, and a belt, I think the family portrait thing might have fucked me up the most.

I’ve been NC for 10 years now. I’m 46. I didn’t know there was a name for what I went through or that a lot of other people had the same situation until I was in my 30’s.

Hey everyone,

My name is Jennifer and I wanted to share something important with you all today. I am a postdoctoral researcher and trauma survivor. I was raised by narcissists and suffered abuse at their hands for 20+ years. I recently ran away from them and decided to tell my story and raise awareness to help others protect themselves.

Mental abuse and the dangers of narcissism are topics that affect so many lives, and we must raise awareness about them. Remember, manipulation can occur anywhere - in relationships and professional settings, so it is essential to shed light on these issues.

https://www.youtube.com/@egonextdoor

I heard this quote recently and it really resonated with me. I went no contact with my family 3 years ago and I have enough distance now that I've grown around the pain enough to be less destabilized when I miss them. But even though I miss them and struggle to fully understand that feeling sometimes, I know that if I were to ever give them another chance, this quote will live in my head to help guide the conversations and aid my judgement.

This helped me detect that I was changing my boundaries when trying to please someone recently. That tipped me off to recognizing I was people pleasing and they were toxic.

Not sure if this will help anyone else but it definitely resonated with me and helped to keep in the back of my mind as I still struggle to learn to have healthy boundaries.

I think in my case this is a combination of 2 factors: having very self-absorbed parents (I would classify one as non-N and one as N) who really just didn't give a crap about my interests or inner life most of the time, plus one symptom of my being on the spectrum is that one very specific input wire is pulled and I have trouble 'just knowing' whether somebody likes/dislikes me assuming they have any talent at pretending to be friendly and want to hide any dislike. Like I think most people have a built-in that does that for them and mine is unplugged.

Also my parents were very intelligent, and unlike a lot of Ns or N-adjacents, they were nice enough to pretend to give a crap when they were being nice, and like .......... now I can't tell when other adults of sufficient intelligence are doing it these days? and I don't even have a warm/cold sense unless they give clues, and it takes a whole lot of effort to watch for them and doesn't come naturally?

Does this make sense? It sounds lik

A while ago Ns gave me a farewell email i think. I don't read their emails, but the header looked like that and I accidentally read part of the header. I didn't reply.

Since then, they've been spamming me like every other day, and i've replied to none of it.

They filed a missing person report. Popo called me and told me to come down to the station. I went over the police station, showed popo ID to prove i'm not missing. It wasn't too annoying, if nothing else, it's much less annoying to talk to an officer than my Ns.

I've been belittled by an officer previously over not talking with Ns. I just made up some nonsense until the popo was satisfied.

Popo; "Why did they file a missing person report?"

me; "they're racist towards the person i'm dating and it's retaliation"

Cross posting to the rbn community on Lemmy too

clearly state your case once and then leave it at that. If the narcissist doesn’t accept it and persists, walk away

Why are we arguing with someone who’s determined to see you as the cause of everything that’s wrong in their life?

X will reach out due to being concerned. X wastes a lot of time pretending to not be 100% on Nparent's side, then tells me to go back to them for more abuse.

I get drained if I spend too much time with someone negative. With less eye contact, I hold up better it seems.

I was housed recently. Lost my place and my Npartner. Had to move back in with Nparents. Npartner was bad, but Nparents are a whole other level of bad. I was in jail for 1 day. Nparents are comparably bad as the jail. The jail didn't allow me to use my prescription meds and confined me. Npartner was more about the silence treatment and immense passive aggression.

Nparents, I have some freedom of movement, but:

severely limited freedom of movement (I'm 30, have to ask permission, permission which may be arbitrarily withheld, not allowed to use public transport (I can’t drive, disability), have to sneakily use meds, constant insults, fat shaming (my bmi is 20), being told everyone they know hates me, constant threats of being evicted, threatening to call cops on me, pretty limited food despite there being enough food in the house, not allowed to go to food bank, soup kitchen, have previously thrown away my meds, trying to discourage me from having privacy, constant worry about the in

They'd asked 'why didn't you do that?' I'd explain, then get in even more trouble for explaining. I thought they wanted an answer? Am i suppose to just say nothing?

Me: do you think they're justified, both Nparents, in banning me from communicating with you (FM uncle)?

The reply:

They were still and always will be your parents, and I the doting uncle.. But some, seem threatened by this. I have done no harm to either of your parents. In fact your Mom had resumed communicating with me from March last year, ever since Nana came to live with me.
Perhaps they have offered their reasons to you, for this banning.

My other sisters have adult kids with whom I communicate almost daily.

Seems your parents became unhappy when I did not inform them that you were communicating with me, over element.
Naturally, I wanted to assist you as best as possible by even inviting you to come to brazil. I'm flummoxed really with their attitude.

Now that you back home, I hope that all the necessary steps are taken to get your place back.

Mom is no longer communicating with me, in fact she has attempted to vilify me with the rest of my family, here in brazil...

When I was a little kid my mother (passive agressive bipolar narcissist) opened her heart to me. Keep in mind, I am her first of two children with different fathers and she wasn't married. She told me how she never felt loved by her parents, siblings, or the men in her life. She said she thought by having a baby she would get someone who had no choice but to love her.

When my half-brother and I were 13 and 11, she abandoned us in a trailer on a dirt road. She had found a boyfriend who was also her boss at work. She went home with him at night and rarely came home.

The electricity got turned off because she didn't pay the bill more times than I can count. The refrigerator and shelves were empty most of the time. My brother and I had to go fishing, steal corn from the fields, and collect returnable bottles from the roads to eat. Some days we got nothing.

She would come home for a week or so every few months when she was fighting with her boyfriend. Then she got groceries for us.

Now

Sandy (Ngrandma) declares that the next time her grandchildren come over she's going to reiterate the house rules, point out the two rules plaques she already has up, and put up another ten. The other members cheer her on. Much later, her granddaughter chooses a university she would need to drive to, instead of getting a ride with her mother. Sandy demands to have input into her granddaughter's school choice before she'll hand over the promised money. One of the commenters escalates with a proposed plan of action so long that it spans two screens. The gist of it is that Sandy is correct to take a hard line with her entitled "pissant of a GD," and should give her granddaughter the money only if the girl agrees to get a technical or nursing degree and presents her GPA to Sandy for approval. Sandy should keep the money in her own name, refuse to pay for books and supplies in order to keep her granddaughter frugal, and send funds directly to the school rather than allowing any to pass thro

Nfam got together and spent 2+ hrs complaining about me and discussing whether they will evict me late at night. But not to me, to each other. They made sure they were yelling about it through the entire house, so i heard them. For context i'm disabled. Next day they left this note on the fridge:

They may be incapable of knowing. There are no magic words that will penetrate their defenses.

The good news is that you're free. You can stop now. If you need permission, I'll give it to you: You are hereby allowed to stop trying to get through to your wilfully deaf parents.

Please stop.

From https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/missing-missing-reasons.html

I've been paying attention over the years and have seen a slow escalation of aggression by the Ns. It just dawned on me that if this keeps going up, they might actually kill me, like stab me to death.

have no plan to ever delete these posts and am not suicidal, if it ever comes about that I died from suicide or something, you know who did it! Similarly, if my posts are ever all deleted by this account, you know who did it!

What should I do/say if they press for "what errands"?

For calls, I plan to say counselor or pastor.

I can throw in a "needed to stretch my legs" periodically

My parents are atheism lol. When i'm pestered about why i'm sorta religious, I tell them the most obnoxious statement I've heard from church. Ex, "why are you going there to pray again?" Me; "bc jesus died for our sins, which means that like the muslims, christians should be praying x times per day, bc blah blah" and they get bored and leave me alone immediately lol.