Ongoing abuse

[Blueberry]

I know this thread is for the development of cptsd in adulthood. Whereas mine obviously developed in childhood.

But it's hit me in a way it hasn't before: My FOO including both parents and my brothers are continuing to abuse me. I was reading about coercive control and that's part of it. It's not over. It's not 'post'. It's ongoing. And they're all part of it. With whatever is going on, somebody is being complicit. Whether everybody's fine with seeing me left out of photo send-arounds of my niece. Or my brothers are fine atm with them knowing what money is to be given to me but me not being privy to that information about them. Or they're fine with me grovelling for information.

No wonder it's taking me so long to heal: you CAN'T heal till you've left the abusive situation. And I haven't. Yet. Though I don't believe I'll really have left it until something happens within me. Either that, or I finally go and explode.

Anyway, this is me finally admitting to myself that I'm continuing to be abused by my FOO, though I'm 52 years old and have long since left home.

And, yes, it IS that bad.

[Kizzie]

Such an important point BB!!  It really is a misleading word as if abuse just stops when you hit a certain age.  If you were abused/neglected by your family as a child it does not stop unless and until you go complete no contact and even then it can leak in through other family and friends.

I know therapists are fond of telling us we are adults and have way to protect ourselves we didn't when we were children and that's true to a point, but it just wears on you, sucks away a lot of the joy even when you are protecting yourself.  We shouldn't have to live armoured up to be around family or be no contact but that's the choice we have and they both suck.

[Blueberry]

Thank you Kizzie for validating

Yesterday I was reading some long pamphlet you linked on here about how to be an ally to a loved one experiencing domestic violence. That was really helpful to me because I feel as if I'm in a case of extended emotional/psychological violence. It reaches me, even if I'm not living with anybody in FOO. Being thousands of miles away + VLC and armouring is not enough for me, it's going to have to be no contact,
but I intend to go out with a bit of bang first

Will check with T first though to make sure I'm not throwing myself under a bus, other than losing forthcoming money and/or being written out of the will.

[rainydiary]

I appreciate you raising this topic Blueberry as I have thought about it before too.  It is helpful to me today to realize that I am not done dealing with abuse which is why I often still feel stuck. 

[Kizzie]

Good luck BB 

[Armee]

I agree. Good luck, BB. I do agree if you can manage it financially that no contact is probably the best course for your health.. And going no contact may relieve so many symptoms that it more of less pays for itself financially eventually?

[Papa Coco]

I agree Armee,

Twelve years ago, I went 100% no contact with my entire family, extended family, and old family friends. The rule is tried and true: If there's a sociopath who wants what you have (your share of the inheritance for example) they will spend an entire lifetime spreading rumors to everyone who knows you, so that you always feel isolated and attacked from every angle, every day, until you either go completely insane, kill yourself, or walk away. The general rule is that in families run by a sociopath, you may need to go total complete, radio-dead-silence, permanent no contact. Period. Healing begins the day the abuse stops. Not a day sooner. No exceptions to the sociopath rule. And in most nasty families, if more people were to stop and really think through their memories, I wouldn't be surprised to hear that most people would discover that it was ONE sociopathic sibling or parent, that drove every single terrible thing that all the rest of the family did to each other for the entire lifespan of that family. The sociopath's only comfortable environment is chaos. In family chaos they become puppet masters controlling the whole family of puppets. My decision to walk away from ALL of the flying monkeys that my family had become was the only way I could walk away from the one wicked witch in the center of it all.

In the 1980s I was a "Dallas" fan. Dallas was that TV series about rich oil millionaires in Texas, whose lives were all chaotic and dramatic. People had become alcoholics, crazy, mean, conniving...And J.R. Ewing, played by actor Larry Hagman, was always in the center of all the drama. In the final episode of the entire 357 episodes, they showed what life would have been like for the Ewing family if J.R. had never been born. Everyone was successful and happy. What a hoot! I relate that to my own FOO. If my one evil sister, RS, had never been born, the whole family would have been calmer and more loving, and would probably still be together today. But RS (11 years older than me) spent her first 60 years pitting naive family members against each other. When she couldn't insult us to our faces, she told rumors to everyone else that kept the little wars sprouting in every direction over and over and over. We thought our family was a mess, but we were mere puppets to a sociopath whose addiction to being the villain messed people up for sport, every single day, until I walked off. It's been 12 years and I don't even know if the predator is still alive. Don't care. I won't even do a family genealogy for fear someone will see me in the system and want to make contact. I NEVER want to see nor hear from anyone I'm related to ever again. I played out my role in taking the high road for 50 years, upholding my honor to family to the end. (I feel like an idiot). I was 10 minutes to my own death when I realized staying in the family was a life-or-death decision. It's over. They killed my little sister and they tried to kill me. Whether they knew what they were doing or not, my family was the puppets for a monster, and I'm not interested in ever seeing any of them again.

My only regret in life is that I didn't estrange from my family at 18. I had to wait until I was 50 and their lying, gossiping, team attacks had left me with more scars than will ever heal. They count on us wanting our inheritance or keeping up our faith by honoring family because "family is family." It's BS. My family caused my little sister to take her own life. It was during a suicide attempt of my own that I was rescued 10 minutes before arriving at the bridge I was going to jump off of when I realized at that moment that being willing to die FOR one's family is a noble ethic. But being willing to die BECAUSE of one's family is just a bad plan.  A friend of mine's little brother turned 18, packed his car that very morning and left a note on his bed that said, "I've moved." No forwarding address, no sappy last words or final confrontation. No explanation. No justification.  Just..."I've moved."

Oh, how I wish I'd done that on my 18th birthday!!!!!

[Blueberry]

I understand some of what you're saying PapaCoco. I'm not sure that there's a sociopath in my FOO though. They're dysfunctional and I'm not too interested in finding who's at the root of it all.

imho there are nuances between going completely insane or killing yourself. One nuance could be sort of surviving but never really thriving. That's where I'm at and deciding what to do about it exactly. A couple of decades ago I wanted to lob a couple of metaphorical bombs at FOO and go no contact. My then T said it was a terrible idea. I think she was right but not for her reasons - I don't think I would have weathered the fall-out from extended FOO mbrs or the fall-out in my own head and heart. Now I'm more likely to be able to weather it. But still I'm going to talk to my T.

[Papa Coco]

Hi, BB,

I'm glad to hear you have a good therapist helping you with this. On our own, it's really hard to know what to do from one situation to the next. My T is one of my favorite people of all because of how many times he's helped me make better decisions than what I'd do on my own. I shudder to think of where I'd be today if he hadn't been there keeping me grounded all these years.

Good luck with all this.

[dollyvee]

Hi Blueberry,

I recently went back home and didn't contact the "toxic" side of my FOO. I had a lot of guilt about this, especially since on the morning I arrived, I received a call and voicemail from my gf. As life would have it, I couldn't actually access the voicemail and had no idea what it said, which I think sent alarm bells off and activated the rescuer part of me that I always played. But I didn't reach out and contact.

I explained this to my t after a week and a half had passed and without judgement, or in a matter of fact way, she said that I was protecting myself. I think she respected my decision to go home and have a vacation for me and to not reach out, but to even see it as protection I believe validated a deep part of myself, one that always felt guilty for doing those things.

I also resonate with what PC said and sometimes family can use money to keep us enmeshed or "in line." As kids we have a need for security, and it's sometimes hard to see that we can make it on our own without our family's financial assistance. It was definitely held over my head a lot growing up and is something I'm still unpacking.

Hope you find some space away from your FOO that is safe for you,
dolly

[Blueberry]

Something from FOO has pre-empted the below. Oh well. I don't have an appt with T for a couple of weeks anyway.

Being thousands of miles away + VLC and armouring is not enough for me, it's going to have to be no contact,
but I intend to go out with a bit of bang first

Partially it's good that I've finally got some information out of FOO w/o even having to demand it. Just need to decide what to do with the ongoing abuse situation. I had thought that if I ended it on my own terms, that might heal something in me and I might not constantly end up the scapegoat in situations. Oh well.

[Papa Coco]

Going No Contact in 2010 with FOO was no longer a choice for me. It was life or death. I've never once regretted it. My only regret was that I'd waited too long to do it.

I worked in an office at the time and at Thanksgiving and Christmas each year since then, countless people would tell me how they were dreading having to see their families, parents, siblings, in-laws, etc...and that they were going to be so glad when the Holidays were over. Gads! You could see the pain in their faces as they lamented over having to eat a meal with these people that they clearly hated. When they'd say, "I have to see my [family member here], I'd smile real big, and joyfully reply, "I don't!"

It usually sparked a lively conversation about how I had decided that if my family was making me miserable then they weren't allowed in my life anymore. Boy did I see a lot of envy in the eyes of a lot of coworkers when I'd tell them we were going to have friends over instead of family for our Thanksgiving meal.

[paul72]

I kinda fell into going NC with my parents and brother in 2013, not realizing that was the plan at the time... but certainly it was absolutely necessary. I can't imagine ever healing if there was even the threat of having to see them or talk to them.
I toyed with contacting my brother but that ended abruptly. Even contact with my sister has been difficult but we've kinda grown into an acceptance and we just don't discuss the rest of the family.
I say all this because none of it was on my terms.. but I'm ok with that now - it almost feels like it wouldn't have mattered how it happened- just that it happened
Whatever you do BB, I wish you the best of luck, and more importantly the best of peace.

[Papa Coco]

Coercive control by FOO is not to be taken lightly. As I deal with my past and my children's pasts I see more and more instances when FOO's death grip on my self-worth drove my own bad decision after bad decision.

One Friday afternoon in the late 1990s my wife and I came home from grocery shopping to find a note written by our 12-year-old son, saying he'd gone camping with his uncle K. He left no clues as to where they'd gone, but our tent and sleeping bags were missing from the garage. Uncle K was my wife's older brother. He was a chronic alcoholic, drug addict who enjoyed the furious protection of her enabler parents. Any time we tried to push Uncle K out of our lives, we incurred the wrath of Mom. She'd use pity and sadness to wrench us back into obedience. I had been raised the same way with my sociopath/NPD elder sister. In both our families, NOT babying the elder NPD sibling was an unforgivable sin. Today I can see that fear often disguises itself as honor. I honored my family, and my wife honored her family. But why? In part, I suppose that as human beings, we're biologically wired to respect our elders, but also because deep down we were both raised with a terrifying fear of abandonment if we didn't "honor" them. My wife and I wanted to believe our families were Norman Rockwell perfect. Hallmark Greeting cards in real life. Our parents were close. They were "good grandparents". Our kids loved them. We felt loved by them...as long as we behaved how we were raised to behave. And that behavior included NOT ever calling the cops on our nasty siblings. It was our job to trust and respect certain FOO people who, in reality, had never earned anyone's trust or respect.

It was 24 hours before we got a phone call from our son. This was long before cell phones had become affordable. He was in a phone booth at a campground near our home. I immediately drove there and found our son in good shape, but his Uncle K was passed out on the tent floor. I took my son for a walk around the campground. He assured me that he wanted to stay and finish out the camping trip. Having been raised to always help others get what they want, I eventually decided to honor his request and let him stay with the drunk for one more night. To our knowledge, no abuse happened. Our son, now 35 says he has very little memory of that weekend ever happening, and he has no memory of anyone, ever molesting him. So, hopefully at least that didn't happen...Hopefully.

Today I have massive regret for having been so trapped by FOO coercive control that I didn't have the mental capacity to override my young son's decision, and just put him in the car and take him home where he was safe.  My wife and I both lived, at that time, under the terror that family would turn on us if we displeased them. It's how we were raised. Love was 100% conditional and 100% transactional. We were loved when we pleased our families. We were made the topic of gossip and rumors anytime we did not please our families. If we had called the cops when we found our son missing with his precious golden-boy Uncle, we'd have been disgraced across the phone lines to all our relatives. We'd have been in danger of being those bad children who didn't respect our poor, pathetic sibling and his "little problem of sometimes drinking a little too much" Blah, blah, blah. Our families used group gossip to keep us in line. If we had stopped this campout, we'd have had to endure the wrath of my wife's entire family for NOT trusting sweet Uncle K.

Coercive Control by FOO is powerful, and it alters our abilities to make good decisions. Stories like this one are the reason I always say that I don't regret going 100% No Contact with my family, but that the only regret I really do have is waiting until I was 50 to finally do it. Who knows what life would have been like had my wife and I been able to see how we were being controlled, and if we'd have both gone no contact with our FOOs when we were just starting out? Maybe better, maybe worse. All I know is both of us were pawns to our Families of Origin and that coercive control led us to make a long list of bad decisions, many of which we are sick about today.

I have no choice but to forgive myself by keeping Maya Angelou's famous words on the wall above my computer: "Do the best you can until you know better. When you know better, do better." Maya Angelou.

[Kizzie]

So tough deciding to go NC BB.    

We become trauma orphans and like Phil said, it's not of our own doing or like Papa said it's not like we have any real choice in the matter if we want to have a healthier life. It was the same for me.  The mere thought of being around my M or B makes me feel sick and that tells me how bad it was. 

It's not a choice any of us should have to make.