Hi
I just read your other post - this woman your mother was allowing to do such disgusting sad things to you - I never had a stranger in our weird crap, but my own mother did the bowel/illness/"proof" stuff if you tried to tell her you were sick. Cramps when my periods started, literally vomiting but you still had to eat your cereal (any other morning I swear she didn't give a damn) etc -
I was made to deal with younger siblings' bathroom trips too :'( the dynamics that sets in motion forever... . I don't mean just "helping" when one of the younger ones went and needed some sort of toddler-aged assistance, I mean having to report back to her at length - i.e. she could've helped HER OWN child more appropriately than me if she needed all that.
But about self-boundaries -
You are so much younger than I was when I finally got on board with FOG and my family having been so terribly deformed as a working unit. I had been married and a mother for years before I came to grasp that my mother, that woman I defended and doted on and pacified and catered to - she was at the bottom of so much of my fear and heartaches.
You sound like you've already reached the "it's me or her" stage where I was pushed and pushed until I honestly wondered if I'd survive. Then the idea that someone was going to make me be less of a mother ("make me" as in the sense bringing so much pain into my life when my small children needed me so much, and my *allowing* this because it was the pattern and the way we all lived within my FOO) was what really seemingly suddenly - to me most of all - helped me jump ship.
Your boundaries would be - I won't answer any more personal questions. This is maybe the very hardest because that is where so much of our issues with these mothers/parents begins - they march right across our sense of privacy and autonomy and we give them the tools to do so with private information.
No more personal questions answered. "I'm sorry, I'm not going to talk about that." Stick to it. You will get such resistance. But you will gain freedom from that inner dread of being watched, dissected.
No more financial help. At all. Take it from almost anyone else but her.
No more gifts of any kind. No means no - you have to dredge up resolve to not accept anything they swear you needed or that they worked so hard to find.
These are strings they use to hogtie your will.
Don't discuss these people with a 3rd party. Not another sibling (don't think you mentioned other children in your post) not extended relatives. Nobody. Cut the information off. Cut off the triangulation that you've lived with for so long where someone rats you out to her, and then turns and guilts you into what they want.
No more guilt trips. It is absolutely okay for you to have your life. It is so very okay to follow your heart and make your own decisions and pay your own way. NORMAL parents *want* those very things for their children. Disordered parents want their children tethered to them forever because THEY cannot stand on their own.
On days where you are really fighting your past, don't answer the phone or emails or texts. Just because technology has made you instantly available to them - the beauty of it is you don't have to be. Take a day to answer an email - or don't answer it at all. You don't not owe them your time.
Really cool concept - panic on their end does not constitute an emergency on yours. Wow, was my late mother amazing at sucking us in when we were trying to detach from her. And I mean detach like in our late 30s. I saw it with each and every sibling.
She'd stir the pot and create havoc and chaos and then honestly digest and fatten on our panic and fear and stumbling into line.
Boundaries mean you are not only saying to them and to yourself, "Here is where you will NOT be a part of my life." They haven't earned it, in fact, they lost it all de facto doing what they did to us as children.
Boundaries are finally about telling OURSELVES, "You know, that was so out of line what she just said/did, I do NOT have to be affected by someone behaving like that anymore."
It takes name calling and verbal warfare out of it. They cannot play their game if you step right off the chess board.
They cannot worm their way into your head if you've closed all avenues of approach.
Boundaries let us boot and evict these people who are living in our head space rent-free.
Emotional vampires. See what i mean? You are cutting off the supply with YOUR boundaries.
You have been programmed to respond the minute there is an invasive question or action. So it takes alot of thought and planning to hold strong.
And the minute they sense resistance, it can really get difficult to stand your ground.
When you try to topple decades-old habits and patterns, you are tearing away how their world operates. What they need to survive. The problem with children of abusive parents - we can't and won't survive their self-preserving needs and demands. Not mentally at least.
Caller ID lets you not pick up your phone.
A big sturdy front door with a lock keeps them out of your physical personal space.
Teh ability to walk away if you are suddenly confronted with them in a store or at work is so basic but we never think we can do that - just walk away.
Boundaries, and when we start maintaing our own, are the key to freedom on so many levels.
This is a great thread. I have instilled boundaries in my own children about either family coming at them (Facebook was a real piece of work), that they can choose who to contact or not (1 child is in contact, other 2 no), that they never have to answer friends' or co-workers' pushy questions.
We have a right to our own skin. Boundaries are like emotional sunscreen.
