Is my mother turning my family against me?

[klystron]

In October of this year my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer – I’m not sure how severe, or any other details other than the fact that she has cancer. When she first got sick, my phone blew up with phone calls and text messages from my Aunt and Grandma (mom’s sister and mom’s mom) none of which I answered. Since I wasn’t answering their calls or texts, they proceeded to message me on all of my social media accounts and continue harassing me, just trying to get ahold of me. They were bombarding me, telling me that I needed to get into contact with my mom because she’s sick and things are really bad. My response to them was that if there was something that my mom wanted to tell me or wanted my help, she would need to reach out to me herself.

My mom eventually texted me and asked if I could have dinner with her and that she had something important to tell me. I told her I wouldn’t be comfortable with having dinner with her, and that whatever she wanted to tell me she could either call and leave a message or text it to me.

From then on almost everyone in the family on my mom’s side has removed me from social media, blocked me, or blocked my phone number. My cousins removed me from all social media, my grandmother has blocked my phone number, and I haven’t been invited to any holidays or anything at all on that side of the family since then.
 
My fear is that my mom is giving them false information as to why we aren’t communicating with each other. I have a feeling that my mom is painting me out to look like “the bad guy” and the rest of my family has no idea what actually happened between myself and my mom. I don’ think they have any clue at all what she has really done to me in order for me to cut all ties with her. However, I believe that she’s told her side of the story to them, which has kind of all turned them against me. Something along the lines of "She did something awful to me, won't talk to me, and now I have cancer and she doesn't even care." 

Is it worth even defending myself and trying to repair all of those relationships? It's essentially me against the whole family and I don’t think they will be able to understand the significance of my mom’s actions and how much they’ve actually affected me. I also think the fact that she now has cancer is making them even more sympathetic towards my mom.

[pursuingJoy]

klystron, thanks for sharing. I know this is tough to deal with.  I've been NC with my dad and I often wonder how I would feel if he got sick. It sounds like you've made a pretty realistic assessment of what's happening.

You've been NC since July 2019, right? I hate to guess at motivations, but it is not unusual for pwBPD to use an illness to bait someone into contacting them again.

Considering that one of your goals is to work on your individuation, how are you feeling, and what do you want? Perhaps this changes nothing? Perhaps you want to learn more about the severity of the cancer? Perhaps there family members you feel would genuinely listen to your side of the story and are worth talking to? You're safe to explore your thoughts here. We get it.   

pj

[Gir5]

I could’ve written this myself although I’ve been through it so many times now that I have no idea what my family think of me any more. It doesn’t matter what you do, good or bad, you’re made out to be the bad guy, anything positive gets instantly forgotten about.

It sounds like your relationship with your family is different to mine in that you seem to be able to speak to them outside contact with your mam? Perhaps it may be worth fighting your corner if your relationship is usually quite good with them. My family on the other hand have an undying loyalty to my mam and will fall at her every whim. I’ve given up the fight in trying to convince them otherwise of their belief in her and am currently deciding whether it’s worth even trying to carry on a relationship with any of them. It doesn’t sound like you’re at this stage with your family so I wish you luck in rekindling your relationship with them.

[Harri]

Hi and welcome.

What you describe here is fairly common unfortunately.  People who are not in the close relationships we talk about here usually can not understand the dynamics involved for both parties, nor do they see all of the behaviors.  It is natural to want to defend and explain as it really is so unfair to be judged without even being asked our side. On top of that there is often the idea of motherhood and the myths and societal expectations that surround that concept that can influence people when they hear you do not want to see your sick mother.  It is hard and painful when on the receiving end of this behavior.

We have had a lot of people talk about this over the years.  Some tried to set the record straight and had some success, others found speaking up made things worse.  My mother talked about me and what a bad 'child' I was, all my life really but she amped it up after I "betrayed her and the family" and moved out (my mid to late 30's BTW).   It hurt and was frustrating.  I knew though that trying to explain and defend myself was pointless and would only make me look like the 'troubled, selfish and crazy child who caused heartbreak wherever I went'.    so I kept quiet and simply went about my life.  On occasion, I would run into people and they would make comments or ask telling questions and try to involve themselves in my life or get info out of me.  I kept it simple and avoided.  Sometimes I would reply with things like "do you really want to involve yourself in this?" or "oh, I see.  thank you for sharing" and move along.  With some people who knew me fairly well, I would smile and say "that's my mom for you".  More often than not, people got it and eventually came around to seeing that I was not the primary problem.  Those who did not come around?  That was on them.  Unfortunately it is not something we can control and is usually not something we should try to control as it often makes us look bad.

Is any of that helpful for you? 

[klystron]

Considering that one of your goals is to work on your individuation, how are you feeling, and what do you want?
pj

This is something that I've been working through with my therapist because I can't decide or figure out what I want exactly. I keep getting stuck weighing the pros and cons and trying to make the "correct" decision. It's a difficult situation because my aunt on my mom's side was fairly close with me. When I found out that my mom wasn't going to be the mother figure that I needed, my aunt sort of became that mother figure for me. I even lived with her for quite a bit. However, my aunt has sort of turned a blind eye towards me and has "taken my mothers side" if you will, without even asking for my side of the story or getting any further information. When I wasn't responding in a way that my aunt thought I should, she responded by calling me names and telling me that I was heartless, selfish, and only ever used people to get what I want. (My mom has uBPD, and I now looking back on things that have happened in the past I can see bipolar tendencies among both my grandmother and aunt.) This was extremely eye opening to me because not only was it painful, it was the second mother figure that had emotionally hit on me, and the trust between us was completely broken.

Another factor in all of this is that my mom's side of the family doesn't use any sort of conflict resolution at all. If one upsets the other they don't talk for a while and then all of a sudden one day it's like nothing ever happened and everyone is friends again. If I brought the topic up I don't know as if they'd be open to actually listening and trying to resolve things - I think it would be more like "it's done and over with, let's move on". Therefore giving no validation or awareness to my feelings or being able to have closure of things within myself.

More often than not, people got it and eventually came around to seeing that I was not the primary problem.  Those who did not come around?  That was on them.  Unfortunately it is not something we can control and is usually not something we should try to control as it often makes us look bad.

Is any of that helpful for you? 

I think this is helpful - especially pointing out that it's not something within my control sort of separates the issue in a way. People basing their assumptions about me on secondhand information that they got from someone else is their problem, not mine. It's on them to determine if they want to get an accurate representation of me or not, but I guess it just hurts a little that they aren't interested in doing that at this moment. I almost interpret it as they almost don't care enough about me to even ask or delve deeper? (However, I'm aware that this is a BP tendency - if you're not the friend, you're the enemy.)

As of now, I think that I've come to the conclusion that it's not really worth it to repair those relationships (which I feel guilty about, but this is something I'm still working on because I know that it's not my fault that all of this is happening). What I get from those relationships isn't really worth putting the effort in, but I'm afraid that I might regret this decision down the road? And even such, even though I don't necessarily want to have a relationship with them, I still feel the need to clear my name - but I guess I'm not quite sure why.