what is this?

[livednlearned]

This is a post about a dog attack but it's also about trauma and my mother.

Last week a mixed breed pit bull/Bull Mastiff attacked me and my dog. We found out later that he bit a friend of ours 20 minutes before he attacked us. The dog's owner was somewhere on the property with a leaf blower and didn't hear or see the attacks. At first the dog was tethered, but his breed is big, maybe 110lbs? When the dog saw us he pulled so hard he yanked the back of the trailer into the road and popped off the back gate (basically a piece of plywood). Then he ran at us and pinned my dog.

We are ok. Other than some tufts of my dog's fur and my muscle soreness, we are ok.

It is what happened next that I am working through.

There are sort of three parts. The first is that I always wondered if I were attacked, would I freeze. That's what I did with uBPD brother violence. With this incident, I fought. In the aftermath, I felt confident because my actions led to a positive outcome, which was to protect my dog and me. Similar to what I experienced with violence growing up I can only recall fragments. I don't remember being pulled to the ground but when I got home my pants were ripped at the knees and there were dirt/grass stains.

The second part is that when I learned from the other woman who got bit that the dog was a pit bull/Mastiff mix, it was like my brain had to go back and rewrite the whole narrative. Like there was a person in me saying, "See, I knew it. You were scared. You're weak." I haven't been able to sleep. The only other time I've been physically attacked like that was uBPD brother. They somehow have become connected and have been irritable and not myself.

The third part is my mother. I never pick up when she calls because she often calls at dinner. She doesn't text ahead of time to see if I'm free, which, ok whatever. Most people seem to do that these days. I texted back to my father's number (since my mother is technologically challenged) that it had been a hectic month, week, day. I say that my dog and I were attacked by a pit bull/Mastiff mix and that we're ok.

No answer.

Next day I text to see if they want to chat (mother + father) go together, there is no call with one without the other.

They send nothing about the dog attack. Nothing about how are we, is everything ok. Just: how about after 5pm when golf is done.

Two days of coordinating a time we then talk.

My mother does the talking first and wants to know about the dog attack. She seems particularly excited. This is a pattern when something bad happens. A common phrase for her is, "It's so scary." Usually it's about a natural disaster or bad human behavior like kidnapping or serial killers. You would think it was her favorite thing to talk about.

I tell her the story about how we were attacked and she says, "What did you do to get the dog going."

It slid by me until about 20 minutes into the conversation. She doesn't say, "Oh my god LnL I'm so glad you're ok" like other people. She makes it seem like I provoked the dog. We were 60 feet away not moving when it attacked.  

Then she wants to know about a terrible flight experience I had a few weeks ago.

It wasn't until she asked about my stepson's brain surgery I realize she only wants to hear about horrible things. When she hears something bad happened, she either wants to know how I caused it, or she wants to share how she had a similar thing happened but it was worse and she had a better attitude about it.

I keep thinking about this recent insight I had when my mother admitted she likes to wind up her unsuspecting friends. You would never in a million years expect her to be a person who does that, yet by her own admission she does this. I realized she does the same to me. Halfway through the conversation I realized she was excited to hear bad news happening in my life. When I started talking about successes in my professional life, she changed the conversation.

I noticed I do the same thing to her. She goes on and on about my nieces, especially the golden child, who I personally find insufferable. Lately I notice she cannot talk about the nieces without comparing them. She'll say: Younger golden one is tall and thin, the other is not as tall and will probably be "thick." Or: Younger one is athletic and good at school and has a lot of friends, the other is "not popular". She says odd things like, "They don't want to share a bed when they visit us," and when I suggest they are teen agers who have separate rooms at home she says, "The younger one doesn't mind, it's the older one who makes a fuss."

After the conversation with her, I walked to my husband and had a hard time speaking. I couldn't find words and felt strong conflicting feelings that are hard to describe. Almost like a little kid would feel wanting to be comforted after a bad incident, but not wanting the adult to feel sorry for me and see me as a weak little kid.

I felt really fragile, and felt shame, which was confusing. I told H how I was feeling, about how learning the breed impacted me, and he said a bunch of things for a while that didn't resonate. But then he said something along the lines of "your mom's an @ssh0l3" and held up his hand for a high-five, saying a phrase I can't quite recall. I high-fived him, then he had me do it again, harder. And for some reason that opened me up and made me cry like I haven't cried for a long, long time.

I don't really know what all of this adds up to. A therapist once referred to my mother as an adult child and I suppose that's what mothers with BPD share. They are children who raised children. Mine was so immature she put me in the path of a violent sibling and I hold her accountable for every physical thing that he did to me. I don't know how you can have a covert hatred for your own child like she does for me. I don't "play daughter" like she wanted me to. She wanted me to be her best friend except I found her repulsive and I'm sure she felt that.

I guess five decades later I can see that she not only didn't protect me, she wanted me to be hurt.

[GaGrl]

You know pit bulls are called "bullies" and the bully breed? You might want to spend some time thinking through metaphors and analogies -- what triggers you? Obviously, this horrible experience did.

Your mother sounds so much like my step-grandmother. It makes me sad and mad for you.

(FYI, my husband and I had American bulldogs, English bull terriers, and "bully" type pit bull terriers. They require much love, much affection, and much discipline. Upon the death of our last bulldog, we decided no more, in our 60s. We have a much smaller breed now. If your neighbor doesn't have the dog under proper control, there needs to be a conversation.)

Is this something you can spend some therapy time discussing. It seems important -- fundamental yet with the possibility of opening up insight for your life right now.

[EyesUp]

Hi LnL.

Glad you're relatively unscathed.

It sounds like our mothers have a few things in common, so it's probably no coincidence that we're both here, working through various inter-generational traumas and patterns of behavior. I hope you don't mind if I relate:

Negative framing? You bet. I was a competitive athlete (skier). My mother would never ask "how did you do today?" or anything open-ended. Instead she would consistently ask, before anything else, "how many times did you fall?" - when I was very young, this seemed like a normal-ish overprotective motherly concern. But it never stopped, even into adulthood when I worked in the ski industry for a period of time. Once I had the ability to make note of it in a light-hearted way, and suggest, "You know, you seem mainly interested in falling. Have I ever told you an interesting fall story? After all these years, are you hoping that one day, I will have a fall story? Why is it always about falling?" - I thought she might take a hint - nope. I think she would simply prefer to talk about a fall, or even better - an injury. Of course the real purpose is to highlight someone else's misfortune and give her a certain perch in the conversation...

No direct response to comments? You bet. Conversations have always been about whatever she prefers to pick and choose to focus on - often some perceived slight or insult, e.g., "I didn't know you were going" or "why wasn't I invited" or "why didn't you call while you were there?" - this is a persistent pattern of seeking negative attention by interjecting her concern and an element she can control, rather than any expression of sincere outward interest or attention - in me, in her grandchildren, or in whatever event or activity might be the primary topic in a healthy dialog. A common go-to is "you didn't thank me for the birthday card I sent 6 months ago" - anything to flip the script.

Turn the conversation to her own experience? Always. e.g., she might ask her grand daughter what it's like in kindergarten, and then immediately interrupt the answer to tell her grand daughter about her own experience in kindergarten some ~70 years ago...

Childlike behavior? You bet. I could go on...

At some point, I detached. I still communicate with my mother, and check in regularly, however I have no expectation that she will behave like a mother. She wants me to be her friend, always did, even when I was very young. That didn't work out for either for us, and so there is a distance between us that is a disappointment for both of us. I'm sure she would like to be appreciated and acknowledged in some way that isn't happening. And I would certainly like to have someone I could trust to be involved in my kids' lives in a healthy and productive way, which is also not going to happen. I've come to accept all of this - you can't be disappointed if you adjust your own baseline expectations.

About the pit bull... was there any follow up with the owner?  Maybe irrelevant to the larger part of your story, but we often talk about accountability here and as I first started to read what happened, I wondered if the story would lead to an encounter with the dog's owner. Interesting association with your brother, yet a very different response. Could it be that your protective / defensive instinct is stronger when someone else is threatened, in this case - your own dog?

You mentioned that your mother didn't protect you and wanted you to be hurt - do you want to elaborate on that?

What factors do you think contributed to your mother's ability to have these behaviors? That's something I think about a bit with my mother - what combination of stubbornness, obliviousness, entitlement, and/or enablement allows someone to behave this way?  

[Tangled mangled]

Halfway through the conversation I realized she was excited to hear bad news happening in my life. When I started talking about successes in my professional life, she changed the conversation.




This here
LnL

I hope you’re okay and recovering well from the above incident.
I’m sorry you had such an unpleasant experience and worse with your mother. Bpd mums seem to reserve the worse treatment for their daughters. My ubpd mother is exactly as you have described: only interested in bad news and seeing me suffer, sometimes played the rescuer but then I owed her for life. Mine use to one up too about being a bigger victim but stronger than me.
I had an incident years ago where my older son ( then under 5 ) managed to open our front door and let himself out and his brother to a busy street. I was in the shower and had got out mid shower to lock the side door, not knowing their dad left the sliding unlocked and left them unsupervised while I was in shower to head to town. When I told my mum what happened she said but you always waste time in the shower, somehow it was all my fault and she couldn’t acknowledge that their dad was wrong for leaving them unsupervised. Nothing happened to the children thankfully.

Sometimes I think the bpd mum will like to see her daughter suffer more than she did and it makes her feel superior.
I too had nbpd brothers and I have repressed emotions and memories from the trauma of physical violence from one of my brothers in particular, looking back, I feel mum triangulated me and my siblings: setting me up as their little mother / her helper to take on her role and responsibilities without any respect or appreciation. She was the mastermind of the conflict between me and my siblings. I have gone NC with my entire family and I don’t see any amount of therapy will bring me back to any kind of relationship with them.

You may want to explore these issues in therapy if you choose to maintain even low contact with yours,  sounds like you continue to be retraumatised by your relationship with your mother.

[Methuen]

First let me say I’m glad you are ok.  That was a big dog.  How on earth did you manage to save both of you from harm? I can imagine your little dog has immense gratitude to you.  

I can relate to BPD mom’s excitement about negativity.  

This has really bothered me for a long time but I’ve never been able to put my finger on it when it happens to me.  Reading your story though I have a theory.

I’ve always assumed my mom’s negativity was because she is a “glass half empty “ person perpetually stuck in victim mode and using unhealthy thinking strategies learned in childhood which she carried into adulthood.  To me it makes sense that a child who perpetually suffers in an unsafe FOO will look for examples of someone else’s suffering to make themselves feel better about their lot.  They get something from that.  After that, it’s just a matter of repeating whatever gives you that rush of a good feeling. Even if it’s fixating on daughter’s bad luck.  Attaching blame is another maladaptive strategy.  That blaming just adds fuel to the fire,  is also part of the formula for stirring up bad feelings in others, drama, chaos, and conflict. That’s just my theory about why our mothers can get off on our misfortune, or conversely not show a thread of empathy or caring.  

A couple of years ago when I was still wanting to believe I actually had a mother I pointed out in a conversation where she was engaging in self pity that I was developing some of her medical issues, but 20 years earlier than she did.  She changed the subject.  

Neighbors that she idolized for years without really knowing them she suddenly painted black with some narrative she had created in her mind as she watched them from her window. She became excited as she was spinning this narrative and getting herself all worked up, and I just changed the topic as other family members tried to stifle their laughter at the dinner table from the outrageousness of it.  

Why get pleasure from the neighbors broken marriage?

Who knows if it’s even true.  But why focus on that instead of the decades long narrative about what great parents they were?

Ick.

Yes, the piece about their excitement over bad news resonates, as does the lack of empathy.  

When there was zero response to your text that you had been attacked by a dog, that would have felt “off”.   But then to later receive a text “talk after my golf game” - well that would just make my feelings from the dog attack experience invisible and clearly not important.  But remember it comes from a self absorbed person and we’re safer to not have any expectations from those people.

How are you and little dog doing now?  Did you speak to the owner, or report the attack to anyone?

[TelHill]

lnl, Very sorry this pit bull bit you and your dog.  That's a very irresponsible owner. Don't know if the area you live in has laws about this aggressive breed. If they do, you may consider getting your jurisdiction involved.

I can relate to what you said about physical abuse. My dBPD mother hit me with a tree switch from age ? to 6. It was painful and frightening. She also used to put rubbing alcohol on my scalp and ran a comb through my hair as a child. She wasn't gentle with my tangled hair. It hurt so much it made my cry and I begged her to stop. My hair was not up to par and the rubbing alcohol was supposed to make it beautiful.  My substance abusing/PD older brother would punch me too, often in front of my mother. I begged her to punish him. She in turn would hit me because I was crying. She said she wouldn't have hit me if I wasn't crying.

What kind of strange people inflict this on small girls? It's painful to think about.  Am very sorry it happened to you too.

Yes, I've had the freeze up you're talking about with people I don't like or trust.  It has happened with authority figures (work mainly)  and members of my family. I have had dreams where people abuse me and I am unable to scream.   Have gotten somewhat better through reporting people to the police and them taking action. I stay away from problem people in my family.  I carry my phone with me at all times outdoors. Have meditated daily for over 10 years.  I still have work to do as I see this makes me afraid of starting new friendships. I have the pervasive feeling I'm about to be physically attacked. It's frustrating and been a long road. It seems as if I've been working on this forever.

I plan to take a course in Model Mugging which is a workshop for women who have been physically assaulted.  You are taught martial arts techniques and practice on a heavily padded male volunteer.

Here is the info in case you're interested:
https://modelmugging.org/

Just a suggestion but you may not want to divulge personal details to people who have abused you in the past and make it a point to show they don't have your best interests at heart. Maybe don't tell your mother much of anything.  You deserve to keep yourself safe as you heal from past trauma. There's no point telling giving some sadistic person the fuel to sharpen their teeth. Have had to stop telling my problem brother troubling incidents in my life.  No empathy and plenty of ridicule shown at other times from him. I deserve better. I've treated him like a work colleague. I'm fine and thanks for asking.  There is grief involved at letting go of the hope of a loving sibling. 

Again, am sorry these things happened to you.

[zachira]

I was once a person who overwhelmed people by encouraging them to tell me all about their problems/drama in long monologues. I felt connected because this was what I was used to in my FOO, especially my BPD mother ranting and raving about all kinds of things that made no sense. I was often disappointed in healthy people because there was no drama to connect to and I had no idea for the most part how to have relationships with healthy people. What you are describing with your mother is indeed heartbreaking, and it is all about how unhappy she is. She would not know how to be happy for another person, never mind her daughter, because she is unable to be happy for herself.  

[Notwendy]

I am glad that you and your dog are OK. That was certainly terrifying.

I also "freeze" when someone yells at me.

BPD mother also seems to want to hear about negative thing- or people doing something she is critical of. I think it is about  boosting up her own self image and a sense of power maybe?

Zachira makes a good point about drama being the sense of connection to people.

[TelHill]

Zachira makes a good point about drama being the sense of connection to people.

Yes to this! I did this (trying not to for last few years) for almost all my life. I became over involved with people's lives and told them solutions. I expected them to follow my ideas. This is often not wanted.

[livednlearned]

If your neighbor doesn't have the dog under proper control, there needs to be a conversation.

The owner of the dog was doing landscaping in the yard. The homeowner (who has a dog) will not ever hire him again. Dog owner is not likely to return due to the neighborhood network spreading the word that the dog is dangerous.  

Is this something you can spend some therapy time discussing. It seems important -- fundamental yet with the possibility of opening up insight for your life right now.

I'd like to do somatic experiencing therapy, that seems to be what I need most (I did this when we lived in a bigger town). The part I can't seem to shake is the physical response. It's been hard following some advice, including advice to myself, because in the moment my body takes over and it's everything I can do to manage that experience. Though sometimes I get feedback that I didn't seem nervous/agitated/annoyed. I must hide it well. I'm hoping whatever came up with the dog attack is something I can manage ...

It sounds like our mothers have a few things in common, so it's probably no coincidence that we're both here, working through various inter-generational traumas and patterns of behavior.

So true. I don't think people wander into a BPD/NPD marriage without a ton of FOO setting them up for more of the same  

Of course the real purpose is to highlight someone else's misfortune and give her a certain perch in the conversation...

Is there a way for people like us to understand this? I'm realizing I will probably never understand, though I can't seem to stop trying.

Turn the conversation to her own experience? Always. e.g., she might ask her grand daughter what it's like in kindergarten, and then immediately interrupt the answer to tell her grand daughter about her own experience in kindergarten some ~70 years ago...

How did your daughter respond to this? Did you have to learn to change this kind of response pattern in yourself? Sometimes I catch myself doing it and I feel mortified.

One time I joined my mother during lunch with two of her friends. They each were having a separate conversation and didn't seem to notice. It was the oddest thing. I thought the goal must be to perform lunch and not to listen to each other? It was confusing to try and have a conversation with them because I was the audience for each of their separate conversations. But when they get together, who is the audience? And do they even realize what's happening? It makes me feel very self-aware when I don't quite listen to people.

I still communicate with my mother, and check in regularly, however I have no expectation that she will behave like a mother. She wants me to be her friend, always did, even when I was very young. That didn't work out for either for us, and so there is a distance between us that is a disappointment for both of us. I'm sure she would like to be appreciated and acknowledged in some way that isn't happening.

This is eerily similar. Does your mother pick up on any hostility from you? If mine detects indifference of any kind, or senses I am not going along with the show, I get passive aggressive responses that I have learned it's best to ignore. Then she pouts until it hooks my father in. He used to discipline me, even as an adult, although that happens less so now.

And I would certainly like to have someone I could trust to be involved in my kids' lives in a healthy and productive way, which is also not going to happen. I've come to accept all of this - you can't be disappointed if you adjust your own baseline expectations.

My mother also could not be trusted. She fell asleep watching my son when he was a year old. He wandered outside open sliding doors and was found dipping his hands into the pool. She also accidentally locked him in a car in 90 degree heat when he was 2. She would insist on taking care of him and I couldn't take the risk, not only because her judgment is impaired, but also because she gets defensive when she does harm. Would I let a 6-year-old drive a car with my child in it? No. So I don't allow my mother to do the same.

About the pit bull... was there any follow up with the owner?

 

Since the dog attacked two people, there are now two reports with animal control. Our state is not a one-bite state so there is some leeway in how animal control handles things. I told the homeowner (person who hired the dog's owner) and so did the other person who was attacked. The homeowner contacted the HOA and activated her network and I'm told he cannot have his dog here. Which doesn't help people elsewhere, of course.

I wondered if the story would lead to an encounter with the dog's owner. Interesting association with your brother, yet a very different response.

I'm not usually someone who F bombs other people at the top of my lungs but that's what I did. I yelled at the guy to get his attention (over the leaf blower) and then yelled for him to get his dog. He kept saying the dog was tied up, while the dog was untied ... which made me drop a truckload more F bombs for him to put his dog in the cab. Before walking away I said if I saw the dog tied up and not in the cab I would report him. There is a sliver of codependence in the last bit because he's a poor guy, uneducated, blah blah blah. But when I got home I felt my titanium backbone that grew in after n/BPDx had a psychotic episode and led me to think he was going to kill himself and our son. No. Not doing that feeling again. I drove back to the guy's truck and the dog was tied up and not in the cab so I reported him. I definitely have a codependent wobble that happens when I'm peak angry. I get there, feel a bit of shock to be there, then try to walk things back a bit. It's a problem. But I'm also trying to learn that I can be angry, period. It takes so much for me to get to that place, I should learn to trust it when it happens.

Could it be that your protective / defensive instinct is stronger when someone else is threatened, in this case - your own dog?

You could not have said anything more true. It's the reason why I left my marriage. Be mean to me, fine. Be mean to this child? No. In many ways, my son is responsible for helping change the entire inter-generational family script. I don't know why all parents don't see this opportunity. Surely that kind of love can make us all better people. I guess not with personality disorders and other fun dysfunctions.

You mentioned that your mother didn't protect you and wanted you to be hurt - do you want to elaborate on that?

I think of it like abusers who repress things in themselves, then both yearn for what this repress (I want this for myself) and at the same time hate those things in others (I had to repress this thing so I need to punish it in you), she does the same with me. It's primitive, there is no parent-child connection it's more like a sibling dynamic. She has a lifetime of hiding who she is and cannot be angry (not ladylike), so she is aggressive in other ways. I suspect she resents what I represent. There are some freedoms in being the family scapegoat, and I think she resents those freedoms. She was also first born and wanted to be popular, smart, pretty. But it was her sister, second-born, who became those things. I always felt like she wanted to live life through me, especially when I embodied those traits. When I found that weird and resisted it, she found it satisfying to see me punished physically by my violent sibling (unconsciously probably). Otherwise why would she not protect me or help me? One Christmas I decided to not come home, knowing I would be beaten. I was in my early 20s. It rocked my family because I was living in the same city. It was scandalous in their minds, versus being curious what was happening. When I said I didn't want to get beaten up and there were no protections, they behaved as though it was news to them and that made me angrier. My father arranged for me to see a therapist who asked to meet with all three of us. It was in the first two sessions that the therapist focused like a laser on my mother and referred to her as an adult child. She got my mother to admit that she knew my brother was violent with me, and that she looked the other way. It took many years for me to realize that my father and I ganged up on her because she pretended to not know. I didn't fully grasp that it meant he did know, and did nothing. Therapy ended after that session.

Great family.

What factors do you think contributed to your mother's ability to have these behaviors? That's something I think about a bit with my mother - what combination of stubbornness, obliviousness, entitlement, and/or enablement allows someone to behave this way?

 

I'm still trying to unpack this. All four words you use to describe your mother could be used to describe mine. However, mine has also gone through the world as a waif. At the same time she is bossy and tries to engineer things for me without asking my consent. Sometimes I wonder if I was a project gone wrong. I was supposed to be the one thing she could mold and then I had my own personality, including traits that I have that she doesn't. My grandmother also delighted in me -- we were so similar. I think my mother would be much nicer to me if I had that relationship with her, but she isn't a delightful person and isn't able to engage in real intimacy.

She is not really a fully developed self, whereas I think my whole life I have done everything I could to figure out how to have one, despite all the setbacks and bad decisions.  

[Turkish]

I don't have much to say now other than I'm glad that you're OK 

Traumatic experience in multiple levels.

I see too many stories on Nextdoor of owners not controlling their dogs.

I'm sorry that your mother had no empathy.