How can you interact with family after years of gaslighting

[Kia1212]

How can I interact with any of my siblings after recognizing the extent of their gaslighting, emotional, and verbal abuses. I could never feel comfortable in their presence again. Shame on me for not recognizing how evil this was. But I am not the abuser, I would never hurt someone to the extent they have hurt me. Now they want me to do birthdays, xmas, etc. I don't think so. This is really sick. For over 30 years I have been begging, pleading and asking to stop the abuse. I thought after I divorced in 1999, my family would stop, but my mom and siblings continued for all these years. My family told my kids I was mentally ill and they grew up with that, me always being sad and angry at the abuse. Now my kids are all adults and finally realize what I have been saying all along. My family literally thought they were so mentally healthy compared to me, which is a joke. Narcissists psychopaths straight down the line. I can not imagine having a relationship with any of them. My whole life has been my family. I married a malignant narcissist at 17 and he initiated that whole gaslighting thing and my mom and siblings ran with it. They have told all of my relatives, including aunts, uncles, cousins, etc how sick I am because I was defending myself every day against their abuses. How do you ever get over this? The only way I realized it is when I developed Complex PTSD. Apparently I repressed a lot of memories associated with this. I do therapy but it never goes away, especially the major betrayal of people that I thought loved me, like I loved them.

[Kizzie]

Most of us here are in the same boat Kia, we went through so much abuse and/or neglect and really how can anyone get over that? IMO we can learn to manage it though by stepping away from those who hurt us as it sounds like you have, putting solid boundaries in place, and working on living our best life through therapy, connection with safe, decent people, receiving and giving support from fellow survivors and so on. We only have one life so we need to try and live it as well as we possibly can.

Now my kids are all adults and finally realize what I have been saying all along.

That is absolutely awesome to hear!

[AphoticAtramentous]

As Kizzie recommended, I find the best solution to this is taking a step back where possible. Some people are simply not worth talking to, and for many of us, it's not worth talking to our families. Gain distance, limit contact, establish boundaries, and focus our time on people who actually respect us from the start!
Not forced of course, just my own recommendations.

Regards,
Aphotic.

[Kizzie]

 

[Kia1212]

That is what I did last Sept 2024 went no contact. It definitely helped my anxiety. But now my birthday and xmas are coming up and they are all messaging me, I love you, miss you, etc.
How can I be in the same room with them when they have never ever acknowledged anything and they think they don't have to. I know they don't have to and I am fine with that, but I can't pretend that these people love me, in any way, shape or form. It's goes against everything I've ever believed in. They just need me to appear normal to others, typical narcissists.

[Phoebes]

It's like once you see it, you can't unsee it.

I know that's a tough spot to be in. It's totally up to you how you handle it. My first year going NC, I agreed to Christmas morning by the tree because the kids were little. NM managed to get in her usual delusional gaslighting. I have not spent the holidays with her since then, but do find time separately with the kids when I can. It's never easy but it was to the point I could not ignore it.

[Blueberry]

That is what I did last Sept 2024 went no contact. It definitely helped my anxiety. But now my birthday and xmas are coming up and they are all messaging me, I love you, miss you, etc.
How can I be in the same room with them when they have never ever acknowledged anything and they think they don't have to. I know they don't have to and I am fine with that, but I can't pretend that these people love me, in any way, shape or form. It's goes against everything I've ever believed in. They just need me to appear normal to others, typical narcissists.

It's tough one. I'm VVVLC, have been for a good few years now. Because I can no longer tolerate listening to their denials etc or even comments out of the blue on the past, never mind being in the same room as them. But I still miss them in certain ways or more like grieving I suppose.

Love is just a word they use, my FOO too. It doesn't mean much if they don't act as if they do. My FOO certainly doesn't. Their actions made that clear last time I saw the whole bunch. As for missing me, my FOO misses somebody to dump their garbage on. They don't even really know me because I'm a shadow of my real self around them, tiptoeing around trying not to exist figuratively speaking, sometimes even literally.

Before that I was in and out of contact for a while or in contact with some FOO mbrs, out of contact with others. Now it's VVVLC with everybody. I allow emails, that's it. And I try to employ Medium Chill and Grey Rock https://outofthefog.website/what-to-do-2/2015/12/3/medium-chill (out of the Fog is our sister website). I admit, I'm better at Medium Chill, than Grey Rock but even Medium Chill took me a while.

Shame on me for not recognizing how evil this was.

There's no shame attached to not recognising. It's a process for most of on here, I think. That's my impression anyway. Like healing, it goes down deeper and deeper layers. And learning new ways of being and acting and especially feeling and believing can take a long time. May not, but can. Like me above with Medium Chill and Grey Rock.

[Papa Coco]

I personally can't imagine a scenario where I would EVER want to talk with any of my siblings from the FOO ever again. Ever. Their abuse of me for over 50 years only ended because I turned and walked away. No doubt those lousy monsters are still wishing they had me to kick, but I don't care. I don't EVER want to see ANY of them EVER again. EVER.

And to keep them from bugging me, I changed all my phone numbers and email addresses. It's not impossible to find people today, but it takes effort, and that seems to have paid off in my favor. They haven't taken the effort to find me, or they "got the message".

In all the books I've read about narcissists and sociopaths, No Contact is listed as the only way to free one's self from them. No last words. No proclamation, "I never want to see you again" or anything like that. Simply stop listening, turn, and walk away, and forever never respond to anything they write, or say, or do.

During the first few years of my No Contact, I continued to get Christmas cards from some older relatives due to the fact that I still live in the same house, so my physical address never changed, but I ignored those cards. I just ignored them. No Contact, for me had to be at the 100% level. Aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews... Everyone was subject to believing the lies told about me, so everyone had to be moved out of my life and replaced with those who love me for who I really am and not laugh at me for being who my elder siblings lied and said I was.

When I was working, people would walk past my desk and stop to talk. At Thanksgiving and Christmas, people would stop to complain about how stressed out they were that they had to visit their stupid families and take all kinds of abuse for a few hours. I mean, they stressed for weeks about having to deal with their less-than-savory relatives for a single meal. My response was a comically joyful, "I don't!" And I would tell them that I refuse to have TG dinner with people who disrespect me, so I traded my old mean family for a bunch of good friends that know how to say nice things to each other. During the first few years, we had Thanksgiving dinner for our friends, NOT our families. Now that my son has married a good woman and given us two beautiful grandsons, our Thanksgiving is reserved only for us and them. And we do NOT dread the Holiday gatherings anymore.

Please know too that I'm very aware of how big a deal it can be to go full No Contact. It's painful and has consequences. I wouldn't even contact my siblings if I needed a kidney transplant. I'd die before I'd let one of them have THAT to hold over my head for the rest of my life. I'd rather die than take their help. Their help comes with lifelong aggravation. So living with anything they give me would be a fate worse than death. MY situation called for full No Contact. I don't believe that everyone's situation is as deadly dangerous as mine was: My older sister had tormented my beautiful baby sister so viciously that my little sister took her own life. The older sister then turned all her rage onto me, because I was the other baby in the family and if she could get me to take my own life too, that meant she got my inheritance AND my little sister's inheritance. I was 15 minutes from jumping when someone intervened to stop me. I went full No Contact the next day to save my own life. So my family had a murderer in it, and with that stark reality, going No Contact was truly needed. I don't recommend anyone go full NC unless they are ready to stand by it. Going no contact, and then returning, kind of makes me feel like I'd be twice as vulnerable once they knew I couldn't even go No Contact well enough to stay away.

These are my own personal thoughts. Please consider my thoughts but don't do anything you aren't ready to do. Going FULL No Contact cost me my inheritance and my supply chain in case I ever need bone marrow or kidneys donors. But my situation did have an urgent life-threatening component.

Often, I thank God for allowing me to leave them in 2010 and for the joy of living 15 years so far without their abuse messing with my head all the time. I say, "My family finally got so ugly that even I couldn't love them anymore."

Good luck with everything. I hope the Holidays weren't too stressful for you this year.

[Kizzie]

They just need me to appear normal to others, typical narcissists.

A therapist once told me I took the family picture down from the wall and smashed it, referring to my unwillingness to go along with their brand of reality even before I knew there was a heavy dose of narcissism at play and that I had developed CPTSD. I was messing with the image they wanted to portray to the world like your family and that did not go over well to say the least. Of course it was me not them who had the problem according to them and that was so hard to take. At one point I just couldn't deal with any of that anymore and I went low/no contact.

I hope the holidays weren't too stressful for you.   

[Chart]

I am actively low contact with my immediate family and passively low contact with my extended family. I have not stated this explicitly with any of them, I just don't respond unless I see the need to (usually things around my kids). I often feel guilt and conflict concerning my mother, but that's diminished over the years. I believe we "should" do what we need to do based entirely on our own needs and well-being. I really don't think I'll cry at my mom's funeral... if I in fact I even go. Not sure what I'll say if she has a long downward deterioration. For sure my dad will fly me in. That's gonna be a nightmare. One thing at a time... first I need to heal this horrid wound enough to just have a little daily joy. I prefer to concentrate on living... people I consider dead inside already can wait. I do pity them, but not for the reasons they might imagine.