resisting the enablers and codepedents who keep pulling you back in

[Depression = 72% of members]

Hi all... .in addition to my mom being uBPD, my sibling and father are major enablers, and whenever I put down boundaries they are both there to "help" me to bring them down so they can be crossed again.  I have told both of them this, but they don,t stop and enable to the maximum.  My mother, instead of hanging up the phone on me will simply drop it and tell my father to pick up and then shout in the background and he will repeat what she says to me... .Last time he did this I told him "she can tell me that herself otherwise it doesn't count"... .he just laughed, which is his classic dismissive response.   They are all very unhealthy.  What am I to do about this?

[caughtnreleased]

Hi all... .in addition to my mom being uBPD, my sibling and father are major enablers, and whenever I put down boundaries they are both there to "help" me to bring them down so they can be crossed again.  I have told both of them this, but they don,t stop and enable to the maximum.  My mother, instead of hanging up the phone on me will simply drop it and tell my father to pick up and then shout in the background and he will repeat what she says to me... .Last time he did this I told him "she can tell me that herself otherwise it doesn't count"... .he just laughed, which is his classic dismissive response.   They are all very unhealthy.  What am I to do about this?

[beefree]

Caughtnreleased... .

They can only help you bring your boundaries down if you allow them to... .have you ever ended a phone conversation when Dad picks it up, saying, "sorry, as long as mom is yelling in the background, I am unable to talk to you. And if you are repeating everything she says to me, I will end the conversation"? You can't change their behavior... .only how you react to it and what you allow from not just your mom, but also your sibling and father.

[caughtnreleased]

Hi thanks. It's a good point. He will go back and forth on doing that.  He and I will have conversation, and she's sitting there listening.  Then she'll get angry about something she hears us talkign about and will hiss at him and then he'll laugh at her... .the thing is that it's not CONSTANT - it comes and goes. But you're right. I need to put an end to this stuff. And be even more firm.  It really is about walking away from a situation, and that includes ending conversations with everyone in the family.  Ugh... .what stress.

[bethanny]

caughtnreleased,

My uBPD mother's incredible mastery at recruiting others in my life to exert pressure on me to accommodate her when I became emboldened enough to push back (which took so much energy and courage for me already so there was not always enough left when she sent in the second string of manipulated advocates) was incredible. 

Often she would fog up the situation of her being "tyrannical" with such over the top emotionalism and feigned hurt -- weeping hysteria -- that significant others who were often far away or like my father nearby would plead with me just to "give her what she wants if it means so much to her." Like a toddler throwing a never ending tantrum she was.

They didn't see the context of what her ALWAYS getting from me what she wanted had done to my self-esteem and my psychological health.

They were responding to her wailing as fellow human beings not wanting to see someone suffering and not getting of course my real side of the story, and/or they were also enthralled to her and desirous of having the scary hysterical uBPD return to her safer Dr. Jekyll role. Most people had never seen her full Ms. Hyde, or they, like me, tried to minimize it and excuse it as stress caused by someone else, my alcoholic father usually.

I was expected home each weekend when I went away to college. It was an understood contract and went with the miracle of my mother actually letting me be a resident at college which I was stunned by and gloried in. Especially when it meant getting some support financially from her though I was on student loans as well.  That I had time off the leash so to speak. When something extra special was happening on the weekend at the college I would call up and say I could not make it home that weekend. 

My mother would try to talk me out of not coming to their home. Then she would put my father on and/or my grandmother to beg me to come home. I often felt so guilty and selfish for not coming home with them being so nice and flattering but guilt-mongering that I changed my mind or if I prevailed felt torn and selfish.  Those were the times when my mother was not using other forms of intimidation with me, often a sudden iciness was often quite effective.  I think Lawson in her book describes these shifts as "the turn."

You know, as I write this I realize my mother exploited me and my enabling often to make others accommodate her will.  Used me on my father and on my brothers to elicit guilt and attention for her. I see how frustrating to be the victim of such enabling and so sorry I succumbed to that enabling role before I woke up and got a major taste of being its victim myself.

How great you are calling out your enabling father honestly about her pressure! Stay strong!  Even if he can't.  That helps him break through some denial, though don't wait for it. Sigh.

When I became estranged from my mother with NC I was broken-hearted not only to give up on the hope of salvaging my relationship with her but to discover I needed NC from other family members who could no longer support me and threatened my resolve with my toxic mother because they were so enthralled themselves. As I had been.

best, bethanny

[caughtnreleased]

Hi Bethany,

I'm glad you've been able to examine it.  It really is all a big mind f--k.  Today, I tried to have a conversation with my mother and still she pulled out all the stops: gaslighting, denial, gaslighting mostly, getting angrier and angrier as she saw it wasn't working on me.

But indeed, it was a few years ago that I realized how my father was working against me when his whole life he pretended to be my protector.  It was a very serious and mind blowing realization.  The person you idealized and thought was your protector your whole life, actually the enabler for your abuser.  My father knew everything my mother did to me, he was there for every single moment of it.  I asked him once to divorce her.  I was serious about it.  I couldn't take her abuse anymore.  I was in my teens.  He laughed at me. He watched, when I was 10, as a mildly retarded 17 year old boy almost broke my arm. The only thing that stopped it, was my intense scream of pain, as the boy twisted it back and realized he had gone too far.  My parents both watched, said nothing, as though I deserved it.  No one in my family has the ability to stop escalation.

Every time I tried to put down boundaries, I sought safety in my father, who I thought was my ally. I knew my sister was two faced.  It took me until two years ago to realize he was not, when I walked out on my mothers abuse.  My father came to me, and begged me to come back because my mother would not change.  I told him I would not.  It's still hard though not to seek support from him or my sister.  Sometimes I need it. I need to vent, and tell them how I feel, but they are false allies.  And so, I think my biggest problems with relationships actually is due not to the abuse of my mother, but to the two enablers who pretended to be on my side.  I have major trust issues as a result.

[bethanny]

caught,

thank God you are gaining such clarity and it is so hard to appreciate the "system" toxicity and backlash especially when we have taken on the main "qualifier" of our pain.

The group think that the entire system gets poisoned with.  And those roles that sometimes get passed around, when we give up our enabler role someone else gets seduced to take it on and we become lost child or scapegoat.  I am thinking of myself with my alcoholic family borderline family system... .To make a dysfunctional system limp along the group makes too many compromises for their own welfares.

I worked in a workplace a while ago with one insane tyrannical man who was like Meryl Streep in that movie The Devil Wears Prada. I tried to deal with him when I was directly involved with him as best I could but he was so vicious.  When I turned to the company management they would not stand up to him. I saw how people around him had ulcers and physical and emotional problems. When I finally quit and walked out the door with a big smile across my face I wondered why I hadn't done it sooner.  

There was a kind of bonding among all of us in coping with him, but it was a sick situation.  

People were angry at me for leaving.  It felt lonely but empowering.  I was hurt at the end that people pulled away from me and bonded more closely with each other. I was confused. Looking back I get it.

I saw my mother who had uBPD as the ultimate protector from a father who I saw was physically dangerous when drunk or sometimes not. His temper and his obtuseness to what was age appropriate with his children scared me early on.

But when my father got drunk and my parents had a screaming match, I was threatened for his physical potential for violence but I realized what he was telling my mother was deserved and so very true and how he was a victim of my mother's ferocious will as well.  For so many years I was terrified of my mother but I was so terrified I couldn't even acknowledge it was terror.  And my mother had three personalities.  And I tried to minimize the witch or the hysterical child ones. The normal and kind one kept me hooked but looking back the price of trying to keep her in that mode made me over-focus on her needs and wants unhealthily.

I remember when I joined the 12 step community I realized I had a new base camp to learn more about my situation and also to get support from people who were also willing to push through denial and conditioning.  Scott Peck said that we need a base camp to climb the mountain of life.  Sometimes we need a base camp just to get out of our toxic base camp or to recover from it.

This website is one more precious base camp.  

Re the rest of the family, remember that expression the "messenger gets killed" and also "one is never a prophet in one's native land."

Thanks for the sharing and the inspiration!  

[Woolspinner2000]

I'm appreciating this thread and the line of thoughts about the enablers in our lives. Without knowing it for so long (how could I? I was only a child), I too was an enabler of both my parents, including my uBPDm and my nonBPDf. Sometime during the past year or two I finally picked up on the fact that my dad was an enabler of my uBPDm. Rather astonishing to realize, and now that he is sick, I thought I needed to go back and try and look more at the issues surrounding my relationship with him and his contribution to my abuse.

caught's comment strikes home:

it was a few years ago that I realized how my father was working against me when his whole life he pretended to be my protector.  It was a very serious and mind blowing realization.  The person you idealized and thought was your protector your whole life, actually the enabler for your abuser.  My father knew everything my mother did to me, he was there for every single moment of it.

I don't know if my father was aware of everything my uBPDm did, and he told me so last summer. I think he was more aware than he lets on, but it has been some 30 years since he and my mom divorced. But in these past few weeks as I've been spending much time hearing from my inner child, I remembered him saying to me when he was frustrated, "Listen to your mother!" This was said to a young child who had already been emotionally enmeshed and abused. Really? Submit to further abuse? Of course I had no choice, and now his comment really bothers me. Just two nights ago I remembered that not only did I parent my uBPDm all of her life, but as a child I was quite focused on 'comforting' my father who I felt sorry for as he reeled from her verbal abuse (but doesn't excuse his physical abuse of her). Now that one really bothers me. To me it says I became a surrogate spouse to him. That remembrance causes me to want to  . I love my dad, but to be his source of emotional comfort? Where was my comfort as a child? It was non-existent. I struggle with the fact that my thoughts of analysis are dissecting this man I thought was my protector, especially when he is so sick. Those would be FOG, and I should not be going there. In the end I suppose my introspection is all for healing and my ability to travel through the steps of the Survivors Guide on the side. ---->

It certainly is painful isn't it?

Wools

[caughtnreleased]

Now that one really bothers me. To me it says I became a surrogate spouse to him. That remembrance causes me to want to  . I love my dad, but to be his source of emotional comfort? Where was my comfort as a child? It was non-existent. I struggle with the fact that my thoughts of analysis are dissecting this man I thought was my protector, especially when he is so sick. Those would be FOG, and I should not be going there. In the end I suppose my introspection is all for healing and my ability to travel through the steps of the Survivors Guide on the side. ---->

It certainly is painful isn't it?

Wools

Hi Wools,

Thank you for this. This is a powerful but disturbing statement that we were our fathers spouse.  As I think about it, the same can probably be said for me.  I remember, when I was little, feeling a little bit uncomfortable at how close I was with my father.  There was a closeness that made me feel something wasn't quite right.  It gave me disturbing dreams about him - that is why I remember that the closeness was disturbing to me.  I too think I became the surrogate spouse of my father.  In fact, I was his protector.  I was sharp and witty, and he would laugh with support when I stood between him and my mother and threw all her meanness back in her face. As a result, my mother treated me as a rival, not as her child.        Recently, I've been struggling with how it was that my mother was so able to affect me: I mean the things she says are nuts, and crazy, and even SHE doesn't take herself seriously. She is not a BAD person, it's just you can't consider her to be a normal person who you can have an adult relationship with. But as i think about it, I actually think she may have looked out for me more than my father.  In fact, I think my father would be so much more helpless without my mother than vice versa. I think she, the raging, silent treatment, manipulator is in fact a stronger person than my father. Since she's just so nuts, one could turn away from her rages, and lunacy, without much problem.  Her friends don't take her "crazy" side seriously.   I couldn't understand why I had so much difficulty doing it myself.  And now, I think I understand a bit better.  The enablers made me silence my inner child.  I can walk away from a pwBPD.  But walking away from a pwBPD, plus two enablers, one of which is the closest person in the world to me - that's a much harder thing to do.  Not only did he bring me back in everytime, but it meant that he also told me I was wrong to walk away from abuse.    I'm now coming to the conclusion that a pwBPD is actually harmless if there are no enablers around, because enablers tell you that what the pwBPD does is OK.   When everyone really knows its not.  I'm starting to wonder if my father is not in fact uBPD waif. He, more than my mother, triangulates, which I've noticed now that I've pulled away.   He also actually has a self harming habit of picking at scabs.  Of course, my being in a triangle with my parents I suppose also makes me an enabler, although I had no idea. I just wanted the abuse to stop. I've pulled out of that triangle.