Mystification and catastrophizing

[Depression = 72% of members]

Mystification is when something is attributed to you as being beyond you and you buy into it.

This was done to me effectively at times by my mother. One of the things she needed me not to be able to do was use the washing machine.  She wanted me to handle the clothes drying. To hang them on the clothesline or put them in the dryer when we finally got a dryer.  But there was an understanding that the washing had to be done by her, she could handle it and not me.

When I went to college, I did not do my laundry on campus, I brought it to my parents' house each weekend. My friends did their laundry, usually on weekends when I wasn't there. But there was an unspoken understanding that for me to get her blessing to go to a college when I lived on campus I had to come home every weekend unless I had a darn good reason not to. I was so amazed my mother had given me a blessing to go away to school I kept the contract.

I brought my laundry home to my mother.  She did it for me. At least the washer part. I put it in the dryer since that was something it seemed I was regarded as capable of handling.

So after college I was hanging with a work friend and we went to a laundramat and she threw everything into one machine, colored clothes and whites, opened the box of laundry powder, threw some coins into the machine and turned it on.  She didn't sort. She didn't measure. She was so cavalier about this mystified household duty.

I was dismayed and said to her, "Is that right?  What  you just did?"  She laughed at me and said, "What are you?  The laundry police?" But from then on, thanks to watching her those few minutes and her ease and casualness, I felt totally empowered to do the laundry.  It was so weird how blocked I had been. It had been "mystified" for me. My mother made a point of me never doing the laundry for years and I went along and decided it was beyond my ability. Never offered or challenged.  Not talking laziness by me.  I don't think so.  Just this incredible passivity when cued by my mother's will and assumptions.  :)id she deliberately intellectually plot that out?  I have no idea.  But it was part of my enthrallment.

My mother cooked well, as did my grandmother and great aunt who lived with us early in my life.  I rarely cooked growing up.  :)id I not express an interest in it growing up? Or was cooking my mother's thing? I don't know. I don't think it was mystification, though I wasn't encouraged to learn at my mother's elbow.

But years later she was talking to someone about a certain dish and I was listening and I suddenly said I didn't know how to make it and she piped up and said, "Of course you do. You have seen me making it."  She turned back as if I had made a mistake.  I was stunned.  There seemed a magical symbiosis she assumed existed that seeing her making a recipe meant I knew how to make it automatically somehow.  An expectation of me having knowledge that did not recognize the learning curve necessary to learn something.

I think BPD and npd parents have a profound inability to appreciate learning curves required for their children. My father used to recruit me for home maintenance jobs like painting from an early age and I was always reduced to tears for not doing it as perfectly as him, the adult. He would end up shrieking at me if a splotch of paint ended up on the wrong spot. Once at some relatives' home, I turned on the faucet and tried to turn it off and the water kept flowing. My uncle came up and was kidding around and said, "you broke my faucet" and I burst into tears and was inconsolable for a time.  He got all upset and said, "I was just kidding.  it is not your fault!"  Had that been my father, it would have been my fault and would have made him near homicidal.

Catastrophizing was a big deal with both my parents. Over-reaction to anything that was inconvenient and especially having to do with money.  An overdue library book for one day or two months brought about equal levels of hysteria from my mother and disappointment and near homicidal rage again from my father.  Leaving the lights lit in a room you exited also brought super rage from my father. Yes, don't waste electricity. But the intensity of the rage was so inappropriate.

When I moved home after college I had student loans and my mother became suddenly hysterical as if I had done something terribly stupid and wrong and I had to pay them immediately and was even bad for having them even though she had helped me arrange to get those same loans.  She said it meant living with my parents until every penny was paid off even though there was a monthly payment schedule pretty reasonable back then.  

I knew deep down that hysterical insistence was more about her mandate for me to live with my parents than about the actual loan repayment, though I got the message that I was incapable of being financially responsible and independent in the world.  That was a big mystification. Parentification happened at times by her, to be her parent or to take care of other people she told me to help, but also some things I was infantilized about. Like anything financial.  It leads to real identity confusion.

I did move in with two college friends at their graduate school for half a year at one point just after college. I tried to get work but couldn't.  When I moved back to my parents' home my mother went into a rip-roaring witch mode whenever we were alone that spiraled me into a clinical depression it was so strident and shaming and merciless.  She declared that it was my DESTINY as the oldest and only daughter at that point to stay with my parents and never marry (again, my destiny according to HER and her GODLIKE WILL) and help them with their pain since the alcoholism of my father was such a trial. It was true, the incredible stress that generated. But my mother's contempt for me and her suddenly becoming like my life jailer and bully.  I didn't point out that she had married and had children even with an alcoholic father. When my mother was in witch mode, I went into freeze mode.

She said icily that this duty of mine should have been recognized by me without her having to say it out loud and how disappointed and betrayed she was by me abandoning them for that time with my friends. Also that I had had college and she had not.  How selfish in life was I intending to be?

I think I recognized then that my joy from the freedom and sense of developing adulthood on weekdays away at college was expected to end permanently. I was moving back in time instead of forward. I was trapped in my parent's marriage, a hostage, forever!  

I was expected to be a devoted worker and success but my personal time was now to be primarily devoted to helping the family, helping my mother.

For years my mother had insisted I was the only person in the family who could get my father to stop drinking. Then everyone would be happy.  

I guess I assumed if I could do that, only then could I have an independent and adult life.  So I became obsessed with trying to fix my father so my mother would get off my back. You can guess how successful I wasn't.  It was like trying to swim in quicksand.

[bethanny]

Mystification is when something is attributed to you as being beyond you and you buy into it.

This was done to me effectively at times by my mother. One of the things she needed me not to be able to do was use the washing machine.  She wanted me to handle the clothes drying. To hang them on the clothesline or put them in the dryer when we finally got a dryer.  But there was an understanding that the washing had to be done by her, she could handle it and not me.

When I went to college, I did not do my laundry on campus, I brought it to my parents' house each weekend. My friends did their laundry, usually on weekends when I wasn't there. But there was an unspoken understanding that for me to get her blessing to go to a college when I lived on campus I had to come home every weekend unless I had a darn good reason not to. I was so amazed my mother had given me a blessing to go away to school I kept the contract.

I brought my laundry home to my mother.  She did it for me. At least the washer part. I put it in the dryer since that was something it seemed I was regarded as capable of handling.

So after college I was hanging with a work friend and we went to a laundramat and she threw everything into one machine, colored clothes and whites, opened the box of laundry powder, threw some coins into the machine and turned it on.  She didn't sort. She didn't measure. She was so cavalier about this mystified household duty.

I was dismayed and said to her, "Is that right?  What  you just did?"  She laughed at me and said, "What are you?  The laundry police?" But from then on, thanks to watching her those few minutes and her ease and casualness, I felt totally empowered to do the laundry.  It was so weird how blocked I had been. It had been "mystified" for me. My mother made a point of me never doing the laundry for years and I went along and decided it was beyond my ability. Never offered or challenged.  Not talking laziness by me.  I don't think so.  Just this incredible passivity when cued by my mother's will and assumptions.  :)id she deliberately intellectually plot that out?  I have no idea.  But it was part of my enthrallment.

My mother cooked well, as did my grandmother and great aunt who lived with us early in my life.  I rarely cooked growing up.  :)id I not express an interest in it growing up? Or was cooking my mother's thing? I don't know. I don't think it was mystification, though I wasn't encouraged to learn at my mother's elbow.

But years later she was talking to someone about a certain dish and I was listening and I suddenly said I didn't know how to make it and she piped up and said, "Of course you do. You have seen me making it."  She turned back as if I had made a mistake.  I was stunned.  There seemed a magical symbiosis she assumed existed that seeing her making a recipe meant I knew how to make it automatically somehow.  An expectation of me having knowledge that did not recognize the learning curve necessary to learn something.

I think BPD and npd parents have a profound inability to appreciate learning curves required for their children. My father used to recruit me for home maintenance jobs like painting from an early age and I was always reduced to tears for not doing it as perfectly as him, the adult. He would end up shrieking at me if a splotch of paint ended up on the wrong spot. Once at some relatives' home, I turned on the faucet and tried to turn it off and the water kept flowing. My uncle came up and was kidding around and said, "you broke my faucet" and I burst into tears and was inconsolable for a time.  He got all upset and said, "I was just kidding.  it is not your fault!"  Had that been my father, it would have been my fault and would have made him near homicidal.

Catastrophizing was a big deal with both my parents. Over-reaction to anything that was inconvenient and especially having to do with money.  An overdue library book for one day or two months brought about equal levels of hysteria from my mother and disappointment and near homicidal rage again from my father.  Leaving the lights lit in a room you exited also brought super rage from my father. Yes, don't waste electricity. But the intensity of the rage was so inappropriate.

When I moved home after college I had student loans and my mother became suddenly hysterical as if I had done something terribly stupid and wrong and I had to pay them immediately and was even bad for having them even though she had helped me arrange to get those same loans.  She said it meant living with my parents until every penny was paid off even though there was a monthly payment schedule pretty reasonable back then.  

I knew deep down that hysterical insistence was more about her mandate for me to live with my parents than about the actual loan repayment, though I got the message that I was incapable of being financially responsible and independent in the world.  That was a big mystification. Parentification happened at times by her, to be her parent or to take care of other people she told me to help, but also some things I was infantilized about. Like anything financial.  It leads to real identity confusion.

I did move in with two college friends at their graduate school for half a year at one point just after college. I tried to get work but couldn't.  When I moved back to my parents' home my mother went into a rip-roaring witch mode whenever we were alone that spiraled me into a clinical depression it was so strident and shaming and merciless.  She declared that it was my DESTINY as the oldest and only daughter at that point to stay with my parents and never marry (again, my destiny according to HER and her GODLIKE WILL) and help them with their pain since the alcoholism of my father was such a trial. It was true, the incredible stress that generated. But my mother's contempt for me and her suddenly becoming like my life jailer and bully.  I didn't point out that she had married and had children even with an alcoholic father. When my mother was in witch mode, I went into freeze mode.

She said icily that this duty of mine should have been recognized by me without her having to say it out loud and how disappointed and betrayed she was by me abandoning them for that time with my friends. Also that I had had college and she had not.  How selfish in life was I intending to be?

I think I recognized then that my joy from the freedom and sense of developing adulthood on weekdays away at college was expected to end permanently. I was moving back in time instead of forward. I was trapped in my parent's marriage, a hostage, forever!  

I was expected to be a devoted worker and success but my personal time was now to be primarily devoted to helping the family, helping my mother.

For years my mother had insisted I was the only person in the family who could get my father to stop drinking. Then everyone would be happy.  

I guess I assumed if I could do that, only then could I have an independent and adult life.  So I became obsessed with trying to fix my father so my mother would get off my back. You can guess how successful I wasn't.  It was like trying to swim in quicksand.

[claudiaduffy]

I am groaning, shaking my head, and occasionally sympathy-chuckling along with you as you tell your story here. My mom infantilizes herself more than me - for example, as soon as I become skilled at something, she immediately forgets that she was the one who showed me how to do it in the first place (cooking a particular dish, for example) and has to call me up to find out how to do it. But the rest of your story is very familiar.

Do you ever find yourself doing shadow-versions or opposite-versions of these behaviors with your friends? I occasionally find myself not letting someone help me with a task because my mom always wants help. It's like I have a fear of being her that comes out in the most casual of ways. I have to actively fight against it and let my friends just be friends, not an occasion for me to prove I'm not my mom!

[bethanny]

Claudia!

Thanks so for responding!  How interesting with after training you she pulled back to lean on you to do what she had taught you to do. Crazymaking but not surprising.

My mother could pierce me in witch mode by declaring after all she had given to me in child, I wasn't there for her ever during my adulthood. EVER!  Another of those punches to the gut since she had leashed me in adulthood to her so mercilessly. Kept ever-shortening that leash until NC.

I am haunted by the fear of repeating my mother's behaviors as well -- and I am sure I repeat them more than I am conscious of with others as well as still repeating my trained people-pleaser role though I am better -- and I am also fearful of being enthralled by my mother's behaviors -- or me interpreting them as such -- from others to me. 

I am a knee-jerk "no thanks" person, so afraid of if I receive help then I will have to surrender my will to that person, that I will owe them too much back since the conditional love growing up was so heavily underlined.  Except it was my mother spelling out what she needed to take, and giving what she needed to give, and "choice" was removed from me in the contract.  To really bond with someone meant somewhere in my wounded belief system that I would have to be "handmaiden" to their will and their needs like with my mother. Growing emotional intimacy with people scared me.  Since I didn't trust I could be honest in the relationship and if I were they would run away with their hair on fire.

I felt safer (or misinterpreted the familiar with being safer -- it wasn't) with more narcissistic men and men who were not as sensitive or smart as me.  I felt less vulnerable in a way, though surprise those relationships thankfully didn't last. That category has a lot to do with both parents' traumatizing me.

One of my brother's was extremely jealous and self-protective of stuff he was good at and hyper-discouraging about especially me excelling at the same things. We had attended the same school, were in some of the same classes and my grades for those classes were always lower than normal for me, as if I were accommodating him by reining myself in or just feeling day after day stupid because of his generous feedback of my flaws. I had to egg shell walk around him and expect not validation for my attempts at stuff in his orbit of interest but wetblanketing or scalding impatience.  It was this irrational competition and even today, though he has mellowed so much, there is a special defensiveness in him I suspect still willing to sabotage me, though maybe not consciously on his part. That is sad.

My mother when she gave her blessing about something and took pride for herself in my accomplishments, that road had a green light.  If she did not green light something, there was no blessing and indifference or chronic discouragement. She was also fearful for me whenever I took risks in my job environments. Very negative that things would not turn out well and that I was not capable of pulling them off. Also, she was always obsessed with me being overly proud of my accomplishments.  I remember when I went to kindergarten she would chirp at me as I was leaving, "Now don't make the other kids feel bad that you are a better artist!"  I was such a shy and insecure kid, there was not much danger of me lauding it over anyone.  But why would she be so concerned with the other kids feeling bad in comparison to my talent with art?  Kind of a don't succeed messaging, and a confusing one.

My first career was as a teacher and that was huge for her ego with her friends. It was not a job for a person with ferocious mood swings and clinical depression but my mother refused to let me quit and I obeyed for way too long. I figured I would quit teaching and resume teaching when I was less scarily messed up. This was shortly after college.  But my mother's belief system was you never got a second chance with anything in life and if you failed, you failed.  You sank deeper into inopportunity, into permanent failure. 

I was in denial of what was causing my psychological misery then. Living in my parents' home was already a major blockage to energy and serenity demanded from that new career.  My mother also had always told me I would be a perfect teacher.  Teaching is not easy, especially for the newbie. My mother had such resentment it wasn't all super easy for me to be perfect and to find it automatically easy since she had given me so much praise growing up that I would be a great teacher  -- that should have ensured it, all the praise she had invested in me.

I also didn't want to lose that sure thing praise that my mother had stuck with despite all the other invalidating crap about me all my life. But I realize that me being teacher was something her ego depended upon for its sake, for bragging rights I guess.  This is normal for all parents to a degree with their kids. Wanting to be proud.  But not when the child or adult child is suffering, then hopefully the ego need has to be surrendered for the sake of the sanity of the child.  This doesn't work with a needy uBPD.  Your sanity and serenity is thrown under the bus.  My reality and struggle was an inconvenience to her and an ego-downer. My suffering was an affront to her as if I were in control of the growing depression and growing number of crying jags. When I was sobbing she would sometimes stand at the doorway and scold me for being weak and embarrassing to her. Mostly she just ignored the horrible crying phenomenon i was going through. They say depression is rage turned inward. I see that looking back.

I felt like if I gave up teaching my mother would emotionally or totally abandon and reject me since it was the role that mattered, not me as a human being who was her daughter. She cherished that career of me in it, and me not in it was inconceivable to her and she would guarantee lose ALL respect for me if I quit I perceived.  Then I would be in for total condemnation and disgust and abuse.  It is so hard to carry our own ego monkeys on our backs, as well as our parent's.

I held on too long to the struggle. And I loved teaching on my stronger days and was good with great potential I saw but I was too wounded then and distracted by the enormous crises and pain within my family to get into my stride and attain a sense of mastery.  If I am really honest, I lacked the self-esteem to be a reliably good and resilient teacher.  I had been raised as a "false personality" and the real me and the false personality me were struggling against each other. The real me was blocked by the impression management false personality me though at times the teaching gave me opportunities to stretch myself and grow stronger.  But my ego was too infected with perfectionism and shamed me mercilessly over every challenge and mistake or shortcoming I struggled with. I blamed myself too much for things that weren't my fault, too. I also suffered I am sure from ADD which was not good for the work duties discipline needed by a teacher.

The cooking thing -- I don't know if I pulled back because of her or it just wasn't my thing still. 

Finally, with the mystification, what is such a gobsmacking phenomenon with this is that the crazy choices of will my mother made with me, each one I would try to rationalize it to my own esteem's detriment.  My mother won't let me use the washing machine. She must know something about me and it that it will be beyond me. Ding.  She must have a loving reason why pathetic me can't handle it. Ding. For me to actually defy her and do it meant me having to face down how creepily disturbed and hostile she was with me. I kept fighting to not face that, even if it meant so much self-doubt and low-self-esteem and it bottom-line willed such seeming voluntary stupidity on my part.

I felt some shame writing this post to confess that washing machine stuff. Let me lobotomize myself to avoid facing down the horrors of my mother's real thoughts and feelings.  To keep functioning and assuming there is real love and compassion coming to me from her. She had compassion for others I saw. She was smart.  But in a symbiotic relationship you lose your self and become consumed by them into their projected selves they reject so they try to FIX you to satisfy their own cruel egos now using you instead of themselves to punish and shame and control.

Thanks again for commenting, Claudia!

Best,

Bethanny

[goingtostopthis]

Bethanny,

       I think it's really interesting about what you said concerning the mystification of things., like doing laundry. Im like your freind, I just throw what ever in, add some soap and turn the knob. But anyways, I consider it like a spell that is put on you and really what I think is behind it all is control.  

         I want to thank you for sharing your story. It has woken me up to several things my mother does, she is actually in league with my older sister and I really think this mystification thing is a form of intimidation. Through time it causes you to become in many respects timid.

        Im an adult now but in a certain ways have kind of moved back home. I live next door to my mom and sister and live on property that was my late Aunts. I forgot how manipulative these two can be until I came here. Big wake up call!   Ive taken a look at myself and have been astounded at how my self confidence has fallen in a 6 month period of time and large part of it is due to this mystification thing. Im glad you named it. It explains a lot. I also have to say that sometimes this is done to you in ways you can't see. It can be really subtle, yet through time builds up on you.

        It seems to me your mother wouldnt allow you to do the wash because this was her way of feeling superior to you by engendering a sense of helplessness in you, she in turn felt powerful. It's a form of using another person. My mom and sister have been trying to use me in this way because this has been apart of the pattern with  them growing up. Now, I wont have anything to do with this. Ive resisted and it's been trouble because they dont want to respect me. They try to help me in a patronizing way all the time when its obvious I dont need help. This isnt really helping at all. They are trying to be helpful to help themselves feel more powerful then me. It's sick. In between the lines it becomes a form of belittlement.  People sometimes need to use other people as a kind of cruch to feel good about themselves and avoid dealing with how they really feel about themselves, which is helpless.    

           Anyways,  Ive been walking around with this shadow over my head (them) and this over all feeling of insecurity, which now I starting to see more then ever as just being an illusion. Ive watched top notch equestrian riders give instructions as to how to do some maneuver on a horse and purposfully leave out crucial information needed to make the move successful. I discovered this once after continously failing at it over and over again. When I finally discovered the missing key, it left me mystified as to WHY?  this instructor left out this information. I wanted to seek him out and choke him.    It just makes you wake up to life and realize that , yes, you "can" to anything you want in life, you just have to be aware that some people are like this(like mothers) and you need to all ways trust your instincts and that inner voice.   

[bethanny]

Goingtostopthis,

Love your screen name!

Thanks for following up on the mystification game that the uBPD plays terrifyingly well and too crazymakingly often.  All under the guise of "helpfulness".

The laundry example showed my getting almost hypnotized into not believing I was competent of operating a user friendly piece of equipment because my mother went so obviously out of her way to discourage me and with the uBPD one gets used to not even asking why, not doing a reality check, for fear of unleashing an ambush of confusing but profound anger. 

You get stuck in confusion ... .which means "fused with."

There is also a book I read long ago about the "traumatic bond" in which you bond with someone all the more tightly who puts you on a roller coaster of unpredictability, quick-silver closeness and kindness and then annihilating anger (Lawson's words) and rejection.  You might want to check out the book by Lawson, Understanding the Borderline Mother. I read it non-stop, my head nodding over each page practically.  Talk about exiting the FOG!

I recognize that chronic invalidation and shaming and that infantilizing one minute and parentifying one the next makes one feel so ungrounded and self-doubting and shame-based.  Some of us become pathologically shame-based. I think I am and that is tough to turn around. 

I think John Bradshaw maybe wrote about the difference between specific self esteem and global self esteem.  Specific self esteem is when you get an ego rush from doing something well or competently at a given time or in a given area of expertise or someone likes you clearly over something specific you did for them.  You were nice.  You are good with computers.  Good at cooking. Good at a sport.

But global self esteem is so much more useful and precious.  When you respect yourself unconditionally and if you make a mistake by not being perfect, a trap door does not open beneath you and you do not plunge down and succumb to scalding shame and self disrespect and frustration.  You are grounded in self-acceptance because you have enjoyed enough respect and acceptance mirrored to you by nurturing others.  You were not mandated to be PERFECT.  Un-humanly perfect.  Our parents had wounded egos that vilified them and they conditioned our egos to bully us as theirs did them. Our self talk became the worst messaging of our disordered parent's or other toxic people's voices.

One brother seemed to shame me incessantly growing up. My mother would minimize his cruelty.  My father was out of it and clueless.  But my mother laughed it off.  They both had similar temperaments and he was the family hero.  He was so consistent in putting me down, I wonder if he was encouraged privately by my mother and my shortcomings were discussed. He would at times explode at me in exasperation for not being more sensitive to her needs while he ignored some of my very basic ones.  My mother kind of made the bullets so to speak and had sympathetic others go on the front line to fire them for her. Like me with my father regarding his drinking. I did that for her with others. Eventually I got mine back. What a wake up.

I was the mascot. The cheerer-upper.  I think I was the mascot of the family to avoid being the scapegoat if I had been feistier. 

When I went NC I became the lost child and the roles got switched around among my siblings.

I am talking about 4 roles of siblings in a dysfunctional family, hero, mascot, lost child and scapegoat. Sometimes one child has more than one role.

I put so much blame on my father and he was physically scary not only when drunk with his temper but I was so afraid to admit my mother scared the heck out of me.  I did notice that I never fully exhaled around her.  What was that about? It was too dangerous and even treasonous to be healthily willful and physically grounded around my mother to basically and FULLY and self-nurturingly BREATHE?  To take those extra few seconds to exhale a breath and prepare for the next.  Too self-indulgent of me? WOW!  That is primal sustained fear.  Also reduces amount of oxygen to the brain. Convenient for numbing out and being the Stepford daughter, I guess.

My mother needed predictability, absolutely and accessibility immediately at times. In the meantime, one had better be "on call" or it was looked on as abandonment! Rejection or punishment would follow.

There were two Scott Peck books that especially helped me. One was Road Less Travelled and the other was People of the Lie.

In the second he is very firm calling out personality disordered people. I particularly appreciated his labeling some people necrophilic, in that they encourage all those about them to freeze in a subservient and predictable manner, and biophilic people who encourage others to expand and grow and are not threatened by the vitality of others and the will-asserting of others.  My not exhaling showed how I contracted when I was near my mother.  Physically and my spirit as well.  I remember I had an aunt who was very nurturing to me and when I entered her home I actually felt my chest expand with relaxation and anticipation and safety.

In the first book I think Peck talked about our primal need for a family as base camp in climbing the mountain of life. Some of us, he counsels, have a dysfunctional base camp. In those cases, we need a base camp for the base camp. I felt like for a great part of my life I was not allowed to even leave the dysfunctional base camp, or not without a certain degree of guilt. I was codependently bound to stay there as my role. Now here I want to say, that I learned from my primary family base camp and my parents role modeled some really important stuff for me.  But when they lapsed into what Eric Berne calls the "pig parent" ego state, the child ego state pretending to be the responsible parent but the opposite, that was devastating.

When I asserted finally and firmly to leave I was locked out of the base camp immediately by my mother with manipulated others which was also traumatizing. Then I did have to reach out for other base camps. I found the 12 step rooms.  I found this website.  I have found friends and some relatives and groups IRL and on line that have provided me with healthy base camp support, but I am still very wounded and vulnerable after so many years.

I relate to your feelings of startling disempowerment over a six month period.  That period after college when I had my breakdown after moving back into my parents' home again and losing so dramatically my college support friends and structure.  And my mother so unexpectedly hurt and vengeful when I thought I had miraculously finally gotten her blessing to be an adult. I was such a mess. 

My esteem had grown healthily in college and I was suddenly being re-programmed.  My spirit had to be broken.  Again.  I also felt around her and my brother so often like that cartoon character who runs off the cliff and my mother say or that brother eagerly calls up to me to tell me there is nothing substantial under me and I am about to crash downwards.  And I do.

Was I really off a cliff with no ability to ground myself?  Or was I being propagandized into low-self-esteem so I am needy and dependent and won't abandon my mother but stay and serve her needs.

That "let me take care of your LITTLE brain" game needs to be rejected.  It is crippling as you say.  It is a crutch for the uBPD. 

Thanks for mentioning that teacher who withheld key info.  Are people deliberately malicious or stunningly narcissistic and obtuse about things at times I wonder? Overcomplicating things so much instead of gently leading people.  Some teachers are judges more than teachers with BIG EGOS and want to puff up themselves by feeling superior.  Icky when teachers and counselors -- even ickier -- have that flaw ... .and parents -- who have so much access and early access to young minds and spirits. 

One of the worst crimes -- sins -- I think one human being can commit on another is to sabotage their self-trust. To jam their personal God-given radar for negotiating the world.  To be told to think and feel and respond like someone else.  That is not responding.  That is being made into a puppet.  I am an intuitive and feeling oriented person. My mother was not.  I got tased every time I tried to follow my feelings and intuitions.  She was confused and threatened.  Instead of saying no she often said, "I don't understand" which was code for NO because I don't understand.

Another thing I think Peck said was that it was EVIL to try to "tit suck from" and "control" the same person at the same time.  That person wants it both ways -- to enjoy the rights of being nurtured as a child and still have authoritarian control as a parent.  Crazymaking and presumptuous and toxic!

We are only asked by these very disturbed people to stop being who we are and play a Stepford person.  ONLY? 

Even after all the consciousness raising that I have done, I have some hardwiring in me that can easily set me up for self-abandonment and to become enthralled to others.  I am fighting to stay awake on this stuff.  Knowledge is important. But there is emotional courage that needs to be exercised and I want to be willing to be less avoidant.  I also must watch the denial and I turn to that saying, "Recovery is learning to let go of what you never had."  Sometimes it is hard to let go of the denial because it stings. When others treat me with sustained respect and affection I feel frightened and mournful because it illuminates for me what I pretended was there growing up and seeing what should have been there is hard to bear. 

There is a great quote from William Blake, "And we are put on earth a little space,  that we may learn to bear the beams of love."  Growing up in a borderline and/or alcoholic home makes it all the more challenging in this beams of love bearing experience I'm thinking ... .and feeling. 

Good luck with your journey.  I hope you share about the challenges here as I will mine and we can learn from each other and support one another. 

Best, Bethanny

[enlighten me]

My exgf used to make out I wasnt capable of doing things. It made me laugh if it was something technical as im an aeronaughtical engineer. I can strip and rwbuild a gas turbine engine but the washing machine was beyond my limits .

The catastrophising of things baffled me. I once used a new mobile handset before it had been charged for 24 hours and I had apparently ruined it. She screamed and raged and said "arent I allowed to have anything nice in my life!" Theyre still working two years later.

Everything that broke became a disaster and my fault. I must have done it on purpose. Even when I was four thousand miles away I was raged at for things getting broke even though her kids did it. It was my fault as I hadnt put them somewhere safer or I hadnt done a job properly.

[goingtostopthis]

Goingtostopthis,

Love your screen name!

Thanks for following up on the mystification game that the uBPD plays terrifyingly well and too crazymakingly often.  All under the guise of "helpfulness".

Thanks!


Yes,   I should had a weird episode over the riding lawn mower. My mother was a way on a trip and so I asked my sister in a text if she knew how to start it.  She ignored the text, or just didnt answer. Finally a couple days later she and my mother came over here and my mom took the thing out and started mowing the part of the lawn I thought I was to mow. It has now become my job. The only thing my mom failed to show me one switch to turn to inorder to get the engine to turn over. So there she was out there mowing the lawn with my sister standing out there and I couldnt figure out why my sister didnt mention to her that I hadnt done it myself because I couldnt get it started.   I felt that I was being irrational but the anger in me was building anyways. They knew I was in the house but said nothing to me. I felt like I was being set up to look like I dont do anything around the place to help, which I do a lot.  Finally they left,  I went out side to try to start the mower myself to continue figuring that it "can" start, so maybe now it wont be hard. When I got in the shed the key was gone!  This is just an example that between these two they do weird unexplainable things all the time.  

             Why take the key? it goes with the mower  and the mower is over here.  I got frustrated so called over there and said why did you take the key?  I need the key! My mom came up with this lame phoney answer. Oh I get so used to taking the key and putting it on the hook. Im thinking hook?  There's no hook over here, the mower is over here!   the keys been in it the whole time why take it now?  I need to use the darn thing. I didnt say this but was thinking it.   Then she says,  Oh  its out of gas anyways... . I had just checked it, it was full to the rim. I told her this.  It doesnt need gas. There was no way it was out of gas, I went out looked anyways and it has only gone down about an inch.

                So they both come back over here to give me the key and there is my sister with this huge gas container for the mower, and as I walked out of the house I put my hands to my mouth to project my voice (Im a camp counsilor now for kids so it just happened naturally) and I said: " It doesnt need Gas!"  and my sister stopped and got all defensive. What! What! In this really ugly tone.  Oh man.  it finally hit me for real now. She is mean... .  Why are you Yelling at me!  I said, I was only projecting my voice.  It doesnt need gas you didnt need to bring the gas container over here.  

                    The thing is that my mother lies.  I figured she just didnt want to have to come back over here so she said it was out of gas.  What does she take me for. a moron?  I got angry with her and confronted her about a lying to me. Because all you had to do was look in the tank and it was so obvious. I know she didnt even ook herself. It was full! So what is it?  My sister has to bring the gas container over anyways to make it look like the mower needed gas after all to cover my mommies lie and disregard that I had just said on the phone it didnt need any gas!   Reality check.   What was put in the tank?  A little splash... .ok done.  Wow, they really did something!

To some this up everytime I tried to talk to my mother my sister would barge in and interupt me, everytime. Finally I said I was frustrated because I left her a text asking if she knew how to start the mower and since she tells my mom everything I say to her, she does, why didnt they come up to the house and tell me when they got here they were starting the mower?   Well,  my sister flipped out!  I know now. She has a serious raging problem. She gets really aggressive and scary,  Its like she's out of control. She said.  "You never text me anything! about how to start the mower!"  and then she got out of the car with her phone stomped over to the other side of the truck and stood there with me showing how it was NOT there.!   And then started ranting at me about how I judge her.  Judge her how? when?  I didnt get where this was came from. The only thing I could come to is that this is all in her head and she is the one judging herself and throwing it on me as the source of it.  Sure I say things about her all the time on threads and my journal, private stuff, but never to her face.  Are you kidding me!  

She's a raging bully.  I want the least amount of this treatment as much as possible.      

              Anyways,  I checked my own phone and sure enough the message wasnt there. What do you do when you know for sure that I "did" send it.  I remember,  I remember waiting for her to answer and wondering why she didnt.  I was looking at it.  Then I played around with my phone a bit and learned how easy it is to delete any message in a text. simple as pie.   Did she delete it? And if so why?  I mean I suppose sometimes messages just dissappear as a kind of glinch sometimes,phones arent perfect.  But why did she has to over react so much in proving to me it wasnt there? Im surprised she didnt smash the dam phone in my face.

      This is an example of the craziness I go through with these two and can anyone blame me for feeling suspicious that the whole episode was set up to upset me on purpose. To play a little game at making me feel helpless to do anything about mowing the lawn which they both knew I wanted to do as soon as I could because the grass was growing and taking this away from me as they both knew as being "my job".  

        Or is this just me connecting dots and incorporating it all into my belief system and emotions as to how it "appears" to be,  but really isnt.  Maybe in truth the idea of them trying to keep me from moving the lawn was the furthest from their minds. Maybe I should have just allowed my mom to mow all she wanted and take this invisble guilt trip I was getting from it(because I should have been doing it) and thrown it out the window.

                  I finally called my mom after they left and asked her what am I missing when starting this mower. I was on it with my cell phone. It was one simple switch she didnt really show me in the beginning very clearly at all.  So I find it. Ok great! its started. I said , thank you, Im fine now, I got it.  And she kept on insisting,  no maybe I better come over there. and Im like no! Im fine.  Her:  OH  I better come over. Im coming over there.  and iM like why? no, IM fine. and I hung up on her.   ahhhh ha ha.    Now, this big voice comes down from the sky and says:  SHE DOESNT WANT YOU TO MASTER THE MOWER,   Mr. MOWER HAS POWER,  POWER YOU CANT HAVE.    Its a voice of an Indian chief of course.  Then this eagle flew dwon over my head and said: Oh Hell.  Go mow the lawn.  and so I did.  thee end.                                              

[bethanny]

Enlighten me, thanks so much for following up on this. Sorry I didn't get to this on the first bounce.  My work schedule is uneven and also dredging up this stuff is helpful but there is always a backlash from the industrial strength honesty when I summon it up and especially when I publicly share it even with others anonymously so to speak.  A bunch of tapes get set off in my head.  Maybe the new wiser tapes duking it out with the old toxic ones.

You clearly understand how mystification is like drops of water on a rock, it just keeps on eroding one's image in the eyes of others, the uBPD believing their own hostile magnifications more and more, and you yourself because of the intensity or repetition of the fault finding.  It has remarkable negative results given enough time. 

Imagine when that mirroring is done on a vulnerable child or teen or young adult so dependent on a parent that is not rational and balanced.  Infantilization.  Come into my parlor or let me take care of your little brain from games people play.  But it really must suck in a supposedly adult to adult relationship.

My Dad when he got back from military service and his new marriage chose to study finance.  Though he didn't like it enough to stay with it he learned it, BUT my mother handled ALL the money and he had the image stoked by her of being incompetent with money.  He was cheap with money.  Who knows if he had been given more respect about it that would not have been. He was the chief bread winner most of my childhood and was very organized when he put his mind to it. He got angry at my mother for at times over-enabling the children with money and that made him seem a threat to us.  But my mother's fluctuating attitude and also sense of entitlement for asking for too much accessibility with her children and attention especially as they got older tied in to the financial codependency I have no doubt.

My mother was good in finance and got a job in that area when her children became teens.  But she had little capacity or will to share her knowledge and often used money to bond in a benign mode or hysteria and resentment about money to punish in her witch mode or even child hysterical mode. She also liked to play rescuer as well as messenger that authority people or institutions had zero-tolerance and zero-mercy.

Someone shoves a menu under my apartment door in NYC and I immediately think it is from the landlady demanding my eviction.  Conditioned I am to catastrophize.  That is the legacy of growing up with a catastrophizer and mystifier. Little sense of existential or economic security.

It has played havoc with authority figures for me at times on the job. I tend to over accommodate superiors especially when I first start a job, walk on egg shells even when the superior seems trustworthy, but later on if there is conflict i over-react in fear that resolution is futile especially if I reveal any anger.  that was so not forgivable in my mother's eyes and I project that brittleness and her vengefulness onto the superior. 

I have confused more than one, and I have lost jobs because of my own irrational terror that I was not safe. Quit without even seeing what the fall out is. After teaching I was a temp worker for a long time.  It seemed perfect for a skittish person like me. Though as time went on re benefits and job security I did hang onto permanent jobs as best as I could. But the temping years offered an escape hatch.

There was such little proportionality in expressing anger from either parent but with my uBPD mother there was always a gunnysack of accumulated grievances over time that exploded and you had to gasp to catch up with all the things that had been stored up and had putrified with resentment.  Some things I had no idea why they caused such rage. That added to my shame, not only did I not feel adequate guilt but I didn't know I had done anything guilt worthy.  That added to my terror of triggering her anger because it didn't stay specific it recycled so much old stuff and shamed with new dimensions of my supposed immaturity and selfishness and vast degree I had disappointed her who had thought so highly of me was the message but who insisted I be impossibly perfect and excessively self-denying.

I had a lot of compassion for both my parents. Hard childhoods, their marital discord, the times they were fun and generous and kind.

But with time and chronic invalidation, a major loop of a never-ending roller coaster keeps traumatizing, your self esteem becomes so pathetically and extraordinarily battered and you become avoidant of intimacy with practically every body.  Intimacy has all the promise from the uBPD and npd people in your primary orbit of being just further opportunities to be the mole in further and escalating games of whack-a-mole. 

Best, Bethanny

[bethanny]

Goingtostopthis,

Thanks for further sharing.

I am so sorry for the triangulation by your mother and your sister! Ever see that movie gaslight or hear that expression? That key business certainly sounds like "gaslighting".  Having someone do something irrational and inconvenient and then denying it to disorient you and question your emotional feelings.

You bring up something very true.  To challenge the anger and ugliness coming at you often escalates that anger and ugliness and makes things harder it feels than if you just keep walking on the egg shells and ignore the mine field you just stepped on though that is hellish on your self-respect and dignity.

Sounds like LC with both of these women is best for you. Especially when they are together.

When people are so defensive it sounds like a case of "protesting too much" and revealing some projected guilt outward as anger.  Like your sister.

The final crazymaking stuff with your mother. I would trust your own gut.  She may not know her own motives and sure isn't ready to cop to them. Neither is your sister. You have to parent your inner child so their inner children don't bully yours. 

It is crazymaking.  On the outside it seems they want to help you but not really.  That deal about if you give a person a fish you feed them for a day, if you TEACH them how to fish you feed them for a lifetime.

Thanks for offering such interesting insights unfolding in real time from your own life.  Trust your intuition.  Sounds reliable. 

One last thing I read in a book, "our willingness to be wrong was abused as children."  That accounts for us being self-doubting or even overly defensive and at times not great listeners and admitters when we ourselves are wrong as well.  We trusted our parents that they knew more than we did and they basically cared about our needs.  When we doubted them it was too scary, easier to blame ourselves, with their help. Their wounded egos and inner children acting out pretending they were acting for our interests.  Spinning it.  Not mirroring let alone praising us when we were right. They wouldn't often let us be and enjoy it.

Take care, my friend.  See you later on this important campus for important classes in the school of life we definitely missed -- some, anyway -- growing up!  :-)

Best,

Bethanny

[enlighten me]

Hi Bethany

yes it does knock your self confidence. Luckily for me it was easy to shake as im very good at my job. I can see how FOO issues would multiply these feelings. Ive been working with my sons on consequences. If they do somethingg wrong but own up to it i discuss it with them. If they lie about it they then receive a punishment. They are learning that by facing up to their actions its not as bad as they think it might be.

[GreenGlit]

Hi Bethanny,

Once again I'm so thrilled to see one of your posts. You're so insightful and package ideas in a way that are so relatable - thank you for your insight.

Your thoughts on mystification have led to my reflection on the idea for the past few days since your post. I had never thought about my uBPD mother's behavior in that light, but it puts so many things into perspective.

In my home, I was the younger of two siblings. I was always "the baby." Even though I was physically larger and stronger, and in many ways, brighter than the family around me, I was never given the space to learn skills that I would need as I entered adulthood. I was told I was too young, not ready, not mature enough, not experienced enough... .there was always a reason my family ruled I wasn't prepared grow. This chronic suppression of my individuation and maturation led me to struggle for many years as I entered the adult world.

For you it was washing your laundry. I'm sure it seems almost silly when you read back on yourself talking about how you didn't think you were capable of doing it yourself. In my house, it was crossing the street. I kid you not, even until my early 20s, every time my mother and I would reach a crosswalk, she would grip my wrist tightly in her hand and pull me behind her as she peered over the curb to look for oncoming cars. I was never able to walk off the curb if my wrist was not in her hand. Even the fact that she couldn't take my hand says a lot about her power to will over me. She would tell me that I didn't have the experience to know when it was safe to cross, but she would never explain to me the process, and would never give me the opportunity to acquire this perceived special ability to correctly judge the distance and speed of a car. My sister - well, she was "independent" and wasn't as unfocused or inattentive as the baby. So as I would watch her cross on her own, I was captured in the emotional and physical maternal hand-grip.

I chose to attend a very small liberal arts school mostly because I was overwhelmed at the idea of going to a large city. I was told I couldn't handle that kind of environment - all those streets to cross! How did people manage? When I moved into my college town, I would watch as students would scandalously and carelessly toss themselves into the street, hardly a glance both ways. I would stand on the curb and look, and even when there were no cars for miles and I started to walk, my head couldn't move back and forth fast enough as I crossed the single lane one-way road to check if I had missed something, or to make sure that there wasn't actually a bus going 60 that I had somehow missed.

My sister would follow my mother's lead and shame me when I was home. "You want to be treated like an adult?" she would say accusingly. "Well, start acting like one." I didn't realize until years later that there was no space for me to behave like an adult when I was never given the opportunity or the responsibilities of one. In fact my sister and I were given specific roles by our mother to fulfill. She was the independent steadfast hard worker. I was the loving, kind, effortless bookworm who always pleased her mama. I was told that I was so smart (I always outperformed my sister academically) that I was always in a daydream, never paying attention to my surroundings, which is why I needed constant vigilance and protection from mother.

Basically my intelligence was used against me to defend my mother's figurative, and sometimes literal, iron grip. I sometimes wonder if she subconsciously feared my intellect and logical thinking would pull me away from her, so to make sure I would stay close she could take away my self-worth and independence. I couldn't even cross the street on my own - and when I would demand a second of respect or trust from my mother or sister, they would erupt into laughter and remind me the role I was supposed to play in the family - the accommodating adolescent baby who would sometimes babble something about being a big girl. When I was in college, I was a self-sufficient person, with friends, good grades, and respect and trust from my professors. But when I went home to the people who "knew me the best" - my mother would say to me, "they don't KNOW you like I do." And the self-esteem that I carefully constructed for myself would crumble. "Sabotaging self-trust" is how I think you put it.

In medical school, when an endocrine condition led me to seriously struggle during my first year and required me to repeat a year of medical school, my mother and sister used my first-ever academic struggle as endless ammunition. I wasn't the mature adult I so adamantly defended that I was. This was the proof that they needed to show me that I should have been doing things "their way" and not my own. Instead of picking me up in a very scary and vulnerable moment of my life, they destroyed my self-trust to such a degree that for the next two years I would tremble and sometimes vomit before an exam from the fear of failure. It took seeing a therapist at the insistence of a medical school dean to realize that I was so afraid of tests because my family had convinced me my repeated year had nothing to do with my medical condition, but instead was a completely independent personal failure. It was with my T's help that I was able to assert my independence not with words, but with actions. I don't ask my mother or sister for their approval anymore. I have learned I must trust myself and have started to rebuild that self-trust that was stripped from me so many years ago. Even so, similarly to how I still fear missing a speeding car at every crosswalk before I step off that curb, at every exam or every landmark in my graduate education I fear if THIS will be the time I fail again and prove that my mother was right. It's a terrifying idea compounded by the fact that my mother, a physician herself, still seems surprised every time I continue to do well despite making it very clear I have not chosen to live the restricted life she still demands of me.

[bethanny]

Enlighten me, 

Sounds great, the conflict resolution stuff you are doing with your sons.

When problems arose I immediately went into "freeze" mode or "avoidant" mode, suffering but not wanting the you know what hitting the fan for as long as possible though then living with the dread and the anticipation of whether my uBPD mother would be rational which sometimes happened or would be hysterical and enraged which more often happened when there was something unpredictable. My father inspired fear, my mother inspired fear but often an equal measure of guilt for having disappointed her by not being perfect.

Emotional intimacy is something sacred ... .it is "into-me-see"ness which is risking and being rewarded for being real and having unique and individualized thoughts and feelings and needs and wants and fears to be accepted and endured, or enjoyed, or struggled with, but hopefully to be able to be safely shared -- with someone who is supposedly significant in your life and is as committed to you as you are to her or him and with whom you share a mutual orbit of respect.  If the role is cherished rather than you the extraordinary and unique human being, that is a whole different and tragic story. That is all conditional love rather than the unconditional kind.

Feeling one must play a role designed by someone outside of oneself, and to come to feel over-responsible and even BAD in ever disappointing the role creator of that false personality role. Feeling doomed and worthy of rejection or even abandonment. As the creator of that persona acts like the injured party when what they have asked you to do is stifle your very being.

And most dangerous when you start not forgiving yourself for breaching the false personality you didn't volunteer to play but got seduced and manipulated into playing, often rewarded into playing, and which sometimes brings you a rush of great ego satisfaction, even grandiosity, but at other times drops you cruelly into despair or frustration or self-hate or shame for straying from the script or not having the capacity to deliver on the perfect character you have been assigned.  You have been separated from your own heart, mind and soul.

I think of that movie Dirty Dancing when Patrick Swayze protests Jennifer Grey as Baby "being put in the corner" by her over-controlling and high expectations father and her not deservedly soaring and fulfilling and displaying her full talent and spirit.

Best,

Bethanny

[bethanny]

GreenGlit,

I read your wonderful share and will be back to give it as thoughtful a response as I can. I related so much to so much of it!  Thank you for your kind words to me.  You are quite eloquent and clear in communicating your own plight! 

Courage is contagious as they say and we inspire and support each other here. This website is a precious godsend! 

To be continued soon.

Best,

Bethanny

[bethanny]

GreenGlit!

Thanks so much for your validation.  I wish I could walk the walk as easily as I can talk the talk after years of reading psych and self-help books and 12 step meetings and learning so much here and devouring Lawson's book on upbd mothers.

Even though I was the oldest I was assigned the "mascot" role of my alcoholic family which is like the "baby".  They say that the youngest child or the only female or male child of the siblings often gets this role. My sister died very young so I became the only female and the "mascot" people pleaser ... .or else.  The mascot is the family cheerleader. The mascot is also not a respected member of the team, but forced on the outside to entertain or to cheer the rest of the team on.

"Chronic suppression."  That really says it. I so relate.  Thanks for acknowledging how crazymaking it was with something as simple and basic as using a washing machine but when you are enthalled to a control freak -- you are forced to embrace their mindset or suffer punishment and rejection. We often didn't have a benign adult mentor to undo the brainwashing being done to us which kept getting enforced. Jack Benny used to turn to the camera and slap his cheek and give that ":)o you believe this is happening?" look. To keep one's sanity it is important to have a witness for crazymaking especially as it is happening.

When you brought up the "crossing the street" crazymaking with your mother, it reminded me of the over-solicitousness not only of my mother but a great aunt whom I and my family lived with the first five years of my life in the city.  My great aunt would take my brother and me by the hand (there was a candy store at the end of the street we were sometimes allowed to visit) to the curbside and then wait until the city side street was TOTALLY EMPTY and then she released our hands and began to scream "RUN" hysterically. My brother and I obeyed even though we had time to stroll across the street safely since THERE WERE NO CARS!  It was nuts.  Did my great aunt really see a necessity to run?  Talk about over-kill conditioning.

When I moved to NYC much later in my life with its heavy heavy traffic and my pedestrian status I heard that hysterical voice of my great aunt haunt me often at first when I was negotiating traffic.

My mother's solicitousness and fear-immediate disaster-mongering was like that of my great aunt's re that crossing the street nuttiness -- a great aunt whom I remember fondly and who offered me a sense of unconditional love along with my grandmother (but I often wondered if my mother's mother was not as accepting of her growing up as she was of me since there seemed an unspoken remoteness between them and some jealousy I sensed from my mother at my relationship with her mother).

Your mother's hand grip story gives me chills! 

Yes, thank you for echoing how that mind set of our mother's moves into our own belief system, and we self-doubt our capacity when it it would seem be regarded as ridiculous and clearly something off with our parent -- having nothing to do with who we actually are.

As I write this I remember how my mother decided I should always have my hair cut short because it was easier to take care of and I would be incapable of care-taking my own hair if it were long.  She would accompany me to hair appointments through my teen years and no matter how I had vowed to ask the beautician just to trim since I wanted it long, she and the beautician would conspire and I would end up with my hair similar to Julie Andrews in Sound of Music. The fact that she felt entitled during my teens to be at the appointment for my hair shows how much I lived under her thumb. I had had battles with my mother during my rebellious naturally adolescent years but she played HARDBALL. Like when she packed my bag when I was three and traumatized me into believing I was about to end up on the dark city street.  As my whole family enjoyed that determined as "amusing" story through the years.  the time she used psychology.

I had never had long hair except as a little girl and my mother braided it. I guess that was work for her.  But I never tried to explore her mandate though resented it the older I got.  And there was that messaging I was too incompetent taking care of my hair.  Did she know something about me I didn't?  It was insulting and creepy.  Those precious years of college, when I moved away but had those weekend visits, I had more will and let my hair grow. I even got contact lenses. Dressed more attractively and had more confidence. I remember being in a bank line behind a guy from high school.  I said hello and he didn't recognize me at first. When I told him my name he said "WOW!" admiringly. "You look great!  You look like a different person!" I think my mother tried hard to discourage me from enjoying and enhancing my looks.  That is for another future post I am thinking.

I get chills when I read about your sister colluding with your mother.  More and more I see my mother stoked one of my brother's impatience and sense of superiority with me. Wow. He was another psychic jailer! They were similar in temperaments.  My mother often condemned me by declaring "You are just like your father!"  Now he was demonized for his drinking so frequently by her, so that struck horror into my heart since she often pitted me against my Dad for his abusiveness when drunk or often his behavior even when he wasn't. So it felt like such betrayal and confusing and endangered me, her declaring us similar -- was so ominous.

My brother was praised as the smart one. I was the nice one. Similar to your scenario. I am sure my brother yearned at times to be considered the nice one as I certainly did to be the smart one. When I got to college and teachers told me how smart they considered me, I immediately said, "No, my brother is the smart one, not me."  Like an automaton I discounted myself automatically to set them straight. They looked confused. My brother was removed from my college world, thank God, but I still put myself in context with him. He was smart, very smart, but when I tried to assert my smartness in the family and assume to be heard and respected, it was rejected.  It was like whack a mole game with me as the mole.

GreeGlit, more chills!

You write:

When I was in college, I was a self-sufficient person, with friends, good grades, and respect and trust from my professors. But when I went home to the people who "knew me the best" - my mother would say to me, "they don't KNOW you like I do." And the self-esteem that I carefully constructed for myself would crumble. "Sabotaging self-trust" is how I think you put it.

That is what is so insidious about the character assassination tasing that happens with us from these such significant people in our lives. Even when we get great validation from others in our networks, there is that haunting reality -- BUT THESE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO OBVIOUSLY KNOW ME BEST, SO IF THEY SEE SOMETHING SO WRONG WITH ME IT MUST EXIST. Also encourages a fear that if we let people get too close to us they will turn into invalidators like our nearest and supposed dearest.

Your test phobia is so hard to hear about and resonates.  How amazing that you weathered the storm and kept on pushing and got outside help to fight such profound brainwashing. Sadistic brainwashing.

Again, GreenGlit, you say it beautifully and chillingly honestly -- how impossible it is to recover from a lot of this completely ... .

I have learned I must trust myself and have started to rebuild that self-trust that was stripped from me so many years ago. Even so, similarly to how I still fear missing a speeding car at every crosswalk before I step off that curb, at every exam or every landmark in my graduate education I fear if THIS will be the time I fail again and prove that my mother was right. It's a terrifying idea compounded by the fact that my mother, a physician herself, still seems surprised every time I continue to do well despite making it very clear I have not chosen to live the restricted life she still demands of me.

My mother would sometimes pronounce these words around me, "Some day YOU are going to go TOO FAR."  She had made me so timid and self-doubting, but then to keep pronouncing that. I read a poem once by Marge Piercy about a woman whose mother treated her like one of those miniature bonsai trees, and I felt like one of those trees growing up. Pruned to stay in perpetual girlhood for my mother's convenience and her projected paranoia and need for avoidance onto me.

GreenGlit, thank you for your clarity and insights. I am eager to hear more of your story. Your survival and clear recovery successes inspire me.

Thank you for validating my take on this profound challenge people like us were forced to live through.

To be continued, my friend and fellow survivor ... .

Best,

Bethanny