Menu

Show posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

Show posts Menu

Messages - Dutch Uncle

#31
Quote from: Sienna on September 23, 2016, 11:23:06 AM
I hope your ok Dutch. :hug:
Yesterday I called the cops on trespassing DramaMama, which counts as progress I guess. I feel pretty OK about my (non?-)reaction to her (narc) behavior.

You sharing your experiences surely help me getting 'tuned in' on my narc-radar, I suppose.
Together we stand strong, and strong we stand together. :grouphug:
#32
Quote from: Sienna on September 23, 2016, 10:01:51 AM
Ok...please could someone let me know what they think might be happening here?
Sounds like hoovering to me...and I'm not sure his feelings are genuine.
Even if they are...i cant have any sort of relationship with my X.
And does this new girlfriend know he sent this message?
IMHO, the answer to your (understandable) dilemma lies in the bolded part.

I'll dissect his e-mail, as I read it. Which is of course my subjective take on it. With my Narc-radar on full power. Mind you, I'm a novice in Narc-radar training.
QuoteHey,
It was actually really nice talking to you today, even if it was only superficial!
Reads as: "Hmmm.. nice... superficial... just what I want. Best.Deal.Evah!"
QuoteAnyways, I was thinking on the bus, and I can't leave you without a phone, especially the internet - I know how much you love Youtube and stuff.
Honeymooning. "I'm such a sweet guy! I know what you like and what you want. I'm just the perfect guy to give it you."
QuoteI've took out a sim-only contract for you, so you get to keep the same number, although what you get will be slightly different.
"So I get to keep her number. Anything could happen. Got to keep that (Narc) supply under the press of a button. I might need it some day."
QuoteAnyways, I'm not sure what sort of shape your phone is in, so I'm going t get you an iPhone 6 if you'll let me.
He's got you begging for mercy. (If you like music: this is an awesome tune relating to this: Mercy (with lyrics) by Duffy) This is not a gift, if you take it: You will have asked for it! He's just being very generous! "Don't you forget this, Sienna! I'm your benevolent X!"
Remember the http://onlinecounsellingcollege.tumblr.com/post/137408111161/how-to-deal-with-emotional-manipulators
QuoteHow to Deal with Emotional Manipulators

1. Don't negotiate with them. For emotional manipulators, it's all about having, exerting and gaining more power. So they'll always push for more and they'll never compromise.

2. Don't engage with them. Don't try to talk, or reason, or discuss some matter with them - as they'll try to twist your motives, and leave you feeling "bad".

3. Don't confront them. They're quick to take offense and they love an argument. They'll then turn and attack you – and never let things go.

4. Know your own personal buttons. They'll aim to press your buttons to get a strong reaction. But knowing yourself well means you have the upper hand. Plan how to "not react" and to stay detached and calm.

5. Refuse to accept help as they'll treat you like "you owe them". You'll then be in their debt – so it's hard to feel you're free.

QuoteI don't want anything for either the contract or the phone, call it a christmas present or something.
"Great, I'll have her hooked at least until X-mas. That'll be the most excellent opportunity to hoover again. Hmmm... what will I text then... Hmmm... "Hi honey, merry X-mas. How's the iPhone 6 holding up? Enjoying it? I knew you would. xxx, X."... yeah, that sounds awesome. Awesome me that is!"

QuoteAnyways, what I said before still stands: I am here for you if you ever need anything, and for what it's worth, I miss you.
He doesn't. He's keeping you on a leash until he will miss you. When he has entered the discard-phase of his current conquest. But even then you will just be a tool to get to her. It's not really "missing" in a sense we understand.

QuoteHope you're really OK, and I'll come find you when I've got you the phone.
Take care,
XX
As Maya Angelou has said: "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." This bolded part sounds pretty ominous to me. And it probably proves the phone is just a tool to keep track of you. Mind you, all Apple products have a "where is my phone/laptop/etc" function. I can actually see where this laptop I'm typing this on is on a map. (I guess I have to have WiFi or other internet-connection on for it to be able to do that.) If he buys the phone, what's keeping him from using that function? Especially when it's in his name?
Don't take the poisoned pill, I'd say.


QuoteHe cant see that what he did was wrong, when i went to therapy to change my behaviour towards him. He misses me? It seemed like he couldn't wait to get rid of me.
I don't know what to do about this. I don't want him to pay.
Never again will i rely on him to help me out with anything...and i wish i never did.
I told him thanks, but that i just don't trust that he will pay it (and its not his job).
It's blatantly obvious he couldn't wait to get rid of you. And to get his new conquest in your his last X-mas present.

Probably the biggest "up yours" you can give him is to not reply, sort the phone/internet access thingy out on your own, and when you have let him know in the next hoover (which probably be in the vain off: "Hey, I got you the iPhone anyway, where can I drop it off?") "Thanks for your gallantry, but I got it sorted out already, bye!" and let him give the iPhone to NewConquest, which he probably will do while letting her know it was actually meant for you. He won't be able to control his need for letting her know how much leeway her leash gives her. But that is their mutual problem, not yours.

:hug:
#33
Depression / Re: Depression After Surgery
September 23, 2016, 08:46:53 AM
 :hug:

Probably superfluous, but have you reached out to those who have had the same procedure?
F.e.:
https://www.google.nl/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=ileectomy&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&gfe_rd=cr&ei=-enkV7qFGcqT8Qf9mLzICw#q=ileostomy%20recovery

https://healthunlocked.com/colostomy-care/posts/130044585/do-you-have-any-tips-for-recovering-from-an-ileostomy-op-and-how-to-manage-your-bag

Depression is also one of the five stages of loss and grief. At times it helps me in my recovery to realize I might not be depressed in the sense of a clinical (?) depression, but rather passing through one of the stages of grief, i.e. I'm mourning.

many  :hug:
Dutch.
#34
I got an e-mail from her: "You said I had been your therapist, and that's true. That never should have happened. I'm sorry.
Your mother."
:hoovering:

I feel OK about having told her that though, as it's one of the (many) prime reasons why I'm NC. And as I've said elsewhere here (primarily in my recovery journal): "Mrs. Therapist, you're fired!"
Too bad that she, as an adult, has made the choice to forfeit her role as mother in favor of her narcissistic ambitions as a therapist. And imposed it on her small child(ren). (Un?)fortunately I now know it's up to me to (re-)parent, (re-)mother myself, and that her opportunity obligation to do so has now long passed and that in no way her neglect can be undone.
She'll probably try to leverage this to try and hoover me into "let's do our best to now get the mother-son relationship we never had", but that's futile if not outright dangerous for me to expose me to the never ending narcissistic abuse.
There has never been a secure bonding between her and me, a secure bonding only she could have provided at my age at the time.
And given her "breach of homely peace" (as Tresspass to land is named in Dutch) using a chat or confidence trick yesterday only fortifies my conviction and knowledge I'll never be even remotely secure or safe with her.
I will press charges for trespassing. I'm not even going for "stalking". This is worse than stalking.
#35
General Discussion / Re: Surviving Character Assassination
September 23, 2016, 05:54:19 AM
 :thumbup: and  :applause:

:heythere:
#36
Hi mimiboo  :wave: and welcome.  :hug:

Congrats on making the step to posting.  :applause: The anxiety of doing so is something I can relate to, though judging by my post count I apparently had some catching up to do.  ;)

Feel free to share, ask or just read around as you wish.

I hope and wish the site and community will be of aid to you, both with the cPTSD as well as the social anxiety, which is a very common theme among us here.

Welcome again,
Dutch.
#37
Please Introduce Yourself Here / Re: Hello - I'm new here
September 22, 2016, 08:59:26 PM
Hi Fen  :wave: and welcome.  :hug:

I hope and wish this site and community will be of aid in your recovery process, already so well under way.  :thumbup:
The site is quite new (two years) so a big well done to you for keeping going the nine years before that.  :)

Welcome again,
Dutch
#39
OK. So this will be a double post with the previous.
Cops are busy, called me back to check. All is OK, since she has left.
I will press charges tomorrow.

My mom protested heavily I used the term chat trick while talking to the cops. LOL. "It wasn't a chat trick! I really had to pee!". "Then why are you not leaving!", I shouted, "that's why it's a chat trick!"
Talking about presence of mind, from my side.
And plausible deniability from hers.

A couple of times she tried to have an argument, and I struggled not to get drawn into it. She really knows how to press my buttons. She had some crappy presents for me (socks, is what I saw at the top of the plastic bag) and when she tried to hand them over to me (after her toilet visit) I found myself kicking the bag! "Out, out OUT!" I shouted. I tried to push her out of my home, and it became a struggle. She resisted with all her might. Which then gave me the luminous idea to call the cops. Yay for self-restraint, even when one looses it.
I was clearly loosing it... almost too far.

There was the expected whining that "this can't go on" ("Yes it can, I feel fine with it" was my reply), "I am your mother!" (note: not "you are my son". Being OOTF is such a blessing) to which I even managed to say "Well, sort off only, you are my therapist." BAM! There, I've said it. Whine, whine,  :dramaqueen:  from her: "I'm sorry for that, and I see how much pain I have caused you" ("and I 'd like to do that some more, please let me in again" is of course the (not so) secret (anymore) message behind it).

While I was on the phone (her downstairs at my door, me sitting on the staircase leading up to my floor) she tried to distract me with sentences like "this is the best I can do" "I'm only doing the best I can" etc., which I let pass as I was trying to get a cop on the phone, or was actually talking to a cop.

She wanted to know "why", to which I said nothing more than "read our last e-mail exchange, it's all there" (this is the infamous exchange where she blamed me for her forgetting to tell me her Jubileeeeee had been moved to another date, and she "knew how that came about" (the forgetting) as I had "offended" her there months earlier. Such a blatant blame-shifting tactic was even too much for my well ingrained denial and servitude, and both surrendered to the truth.)
She tried the "I don't have them anymore trick, to which I replied: "Too bad". She wanted me to resend them ("No").

At some point I also managed to get out that what she was doing right now (chatting her way in and then not leaving) was exactly the problem (a veiled attempt to tell her she is a professional boundary-buster. Probably best to keep it veiled as well. For any normal person it would not be veiled in the first place, it's her blindness to obfuscates her vision. SHE is wearing the veil after all, although that's probably a scam: she has 20/20 vision pretending to be blind.) And the therapeutic-New Age-psychoballe of her "wanting to see and hear you" popped up as well.

So I expect lots of  :hoovering: over the next days and weeks, not in the least since DramaSis' birthday party is coming this weekend, so she and sis will have excellent opportunity to play the pity-party together to LC-bro and enabler-dad.
Quite probably this effort of DramaMama was more inspired by being able to poke sis' eyes out she had "such a good talk with Dutch" and shame DramaSis in the proces of her own party.
Good grief, is it sick to think like that or is it sick I don't even invent this stuff, but only imagine this because it has happened so often... That's a rhetorical question of course. Two uHPD's... (I should come up with a joke someday: Two HPD's are standing on X. Says one HPD to the other:" :bawl:" to which the other HPD replies " :dramaqueen:".
But I digress :excited: )

Good thing is I've made such progress the last week(s), that my house was actually presentable. Not that she did see much, but I had been a mess just a few days earlier.

I've survived one more!  :yahoo: The tests get harder every time, but I'm getting stronger faster then they can get creepier.  ;D

edited to add: I went to the police station to press charges. I have an appointment to do so on the 2nd of October :roll: . The two female officers behind the desk (whom I spoke to separately) did look at me funny. The first one had to giggle when I told her DramaMama had used a chat trick to get in (she of course had to ask if I had asked my mother to leave, to which I reiterated she wasn't even allowed in except for her chat trick about needing a pee) but quickly regained her composure by immediately following up with "that's not funny". "No, it isn't", I said. When I told the second one I had been wrestling with my 'mom' to get her out of my house before I called the police she said "Ahhh..." out of pity for 'mom' of course. "Yeah! 'Ahhh...' for me!", I responded. That shut her up allright.
I had hoped I could press charges today and tomorrow she would get a nice visit by the cops to tell her not to anything like that again, as she would be in serious trouble. Now it'll take two weeks. Oh well...
#40
Wow. DramaMama showed up at my door. She managed to get in with a chat trick that she had to go to the toilet. Hesitant I agreed under condition she would leave immediately after that.
Of course she didn't.

I called the cops, LOL.

Currently I'm waiting for them to show up. I will press charges. (for what it's worth)
She has left after I hung up on the 911-call (normal police-line was busy)

I'll be back after the cops have been here.

Good grief. But I feel good.
I stuck up for my boundaries!  :cheer:
#41
General Discussion / Re: Hey peeps...
September 22, 2016, 08:48:58 AM
 :hug:

It's great to have you around, too.  :yes:
#42
Quote from: thebutcher on September 21, 2016, 07:37:22 PMIs this what they call a trigger?  What could it mean?
I'm by no means an expert, but I think the kids that age are indeed a trigger and the feeling you get is an Emotional Flashback (EF).

As for what it means, I haven't got clue. Possibly it's related to something you personally experienced, but it may well be something you witnessed happening to a kid that age, or something completely non-related to kids that age, but something you witnessed as a kid that age (you might have witnessed a bad accident somewhere while yourself being at a safe distance), or it might be a story you have heard about a kid that age, or...
It could be anything really.
I think.  :Idunno:
#43
General Discussion / Re: What do people think...
September 21, 2016, 12:42:09 PM
 :thumbup:

Quote from: meursault on September 21, 2016, 11:37:57 AM
What do others think?  I feel like I'm basically being gaslighted by therapists right now.
I get the same impression.
QuoteHis response of "miscommunication" moved the goalposts, and minimized, and completely neutralized my problem by essentially saying: "You didn't understand."  I think that's gaslighting as well.
Spot on, IMHO.
QuoteAm I coming across as crazy with this email I sent?
Far from it. You're being rather clear, straightforward and to the point.
QuoteAm I just some difficult, non-compliant freak of nature who is so insane I don't understand anything?  This was at a place specifically devoted to trauma, PTSD, and c-PTSD, and I don't understand how what he did was at all acceptable.  I sort of feel guilty that I'm being mean and vicious with my email below.
Confrontational, yes, but with every right and reason for it. Not mean or vicious. You're being factual. So I give a  :thumbup: for that.
Quote[I responded:]
[EMDR Guy],
[...]
Don't worry about reimbursing me, as I have already forwarded the receipt for tax purposes.
Probably the best you could have done, also in the light of the complaint you filed. This way he can't weasel his way out with having 'reimbursed' you. Keep the check, just don't cash it. You can always hand it over to any investigating board in the future.
As long as you don't cash it, you have not actually accepted it.

:hug:
Dutch.
#44
For me it has been a journey traveling back from the present to the past.
The abuse that has been inflicted on me has continued well into adulthood, and only 5 years ago it got so absurd (in my experience) that finally the blinkers got off.
In this particular case my DramaSister made the same old derogatory accusations to me she had been doing for over twenty years, and I thought: "this can only be 'true' if I'm an Asperger". That set me on the path towards first investigating if I could be an Asperger's, which turned out to be I'm not (it seemed unlikely anyway, but that is how deep my perceived 'flaws' had been bashed into my 'being': the ever present self-doubt) and from then on I started googling "dysfunctional families" and I delved ever deeper.

Quote from: Wife#2 on September 20, 2016, 08:05:37 PM
Consider beginning a Recovery Journal - and let your recovery journey there be about recapturing YOUR memories of childhood. Putting them into context. Verifying their accuracy. You'd be surprised how complete the story of our lives is in our memories (I'm nearly 50, reclaiming memories of being 4 - 11). It's not too late to reclaim these. And understand how they complete the puzzle of how you ended up here.
:yeahthat: I second wife#2's suggestion.
For me my recovery journal has been instrumental in uncovering the abuse that has started in childhood and has continued up to today. For 50-odd years I have passed it on as 'normal', which of course is the message that has been send to e all that time: "Don't whine so much, it is and has been normal all along." But it isn't and wasn't.

Looking into the past of your parents or even grandparents can be useful. Though in my personal experience it has mostly taught me how the abuse has been passed on from one generation to the other. Instead of 'easing' my pain from my abuse, it rather has made me feel the pain more. So in a sense it's a dangerous path to walk on. In the sense it will not provide much comfort.
The comfort, if any, needs and can only be found in the present, i.e. your life's experiences. All your life's experiences are "now", or as a favorite philosopher/neuroscientist of mine has said: "A memory is a thought arising in the now."

During my journey I've come across a few articles in the early stages that made me realize more had been going on in my past than I probably realized on a conscious level, or even had memories of. This is particularly true if it concerns emotional abuse and/or neglect. It can be worthwhile to first recognize your reactions, even without fully understanding or remembering the abuse.
To a degree it's probably not even necessary to 'remember' all past abuse, as it can be re-traumatizing.
30 Signs Of Emotional Abuse In A Relationship
Signs of Trauma
are just two examples of articles that deal with the effects of trauma, rather then the causes.

I hope this, and the articles, may be of help to you.
#45
Hi Sienna,

I think it's all pretty normal.
These are reminders of past times, and they were bad times. No wonder they bring back memories and triggers. You may want to sift through them and throw out the stuff you don't want to have anymore. Or you may want to put it all in a corner and not look at it for now. Or ever.
You may want to sell some stuff off, or bring unwanted stuff/cloths to a recycling center, or perhaps switch them for nice clothes they have on offer.

Your phone/internet: perhaps some friends have 'old' (smart)phones collecting dust? Or an old laptop with WiFi? Around here there are plenty of shops and cafe's that have free WiFi, so you could connect to the net there, no direct access needed. Take out a SIM-only yourself, it can be very cheap, especially if it's just for being able to call/get called. I have such an arrangement for my phone, and it's less than $10 a month. (granted, I have internet and a WiFi-router at home)

Good job on standing your ground, and asserting independence from him, even if it would cost you (temporary) loss of internet access. You're right for not trusting him to pay the bills, simply because you don't trust him:thumbup:

:hug: and stay the course: your course.  :thumbup: