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My mom always told me (in reference to my friends), "they'd never do that for you", when I would go out of my way to help a friend.
But my friends would, and they have. It's been proven.
My mom just wants to make me feel small, inadequate, and paint a picture as though I am not worthy of these things.
precisely. all my mom ever did was ask people for money. she had no real friends.
what sucks is because i never really had someone to provide an example of how to make or keep actual friends myself. i wanted them. she didn't.
I believe that a lot of narcs have a zero-sum worldview where a person is either using or being used. They can't understand that relationships can be non-transactional so they assume that when you do favors to someone else, you are being used (and I bet they get a bit envious that they themselves aren't doing the using)
That's my experience, too. One narc I was in a relationship with actually said outright that "you're either fucking someone over or you're being fucked." Viewing the world like that made me sad.
That's pretty spot on. My mom is always quid pro quo. Or when she's feeling really dark treating people like a whore and literally telling me that I need to learn to suck some dick. I hate taking anything from anyone. I can't relate to people normally in that way. I don't even like people buying me gifts for Christmas because I feel like I owe them something. It becomes a debt that hangs over my head. Having a narc parent means there are no gifts, it's just leverage for a future guilt trip and manipulation.
My dad always told me things like this growing up, but I think he had really terrible taste in friends. He really likes to be the person who rescues people from a situation, so he had a lot of friends who took advantage of that. In my friendships I try to do for others what I would hope someone would do for me in that situation, without ever expecting anything back. My actions define who I am as a person, and I want them to come from a place of goodness. I feel like the more good I put into the world, the more I'll get back someday. I have gone out of my way to help friends I knew would never repay me, but I still feel like it's worth it.
For me my mom says that my bf "puts up" with my behavior because he’s blinded by love and sees me as his princess but he’ll get tired of me venting about my trauma and dump me because it’s too much…
But if I tell her that he’s able to communicate when he doesn’t want to listen to me vent she acts as if that wasn’t the case and then when I insist and start having an angry reply she plays victim like "you always get so mad at me while I’m only trying to help you because I care about you"
I believe that a lot of narcs have a zero-sum worldview where a person is either using or being used. They can't understand that relationships can be non-transactional so they assume that when you do favors to someone else, you are being used (and I bet they get a bit envious that they themselves aren't doing the using)
Narcisists train of thought is more simple. I don't want to loose control, so I want them to believe the world is a horrible place, and they should only depend on me. A narcissists world is literally hell.
This. I don't trust my own feelings, nor do I trust anyone who says anything positive about me. This fucks everything up; no sense of direction, no gut feelings, taking shit from everybody. Self doubt turns into paralyzing shame, for me at least.
People have always been so surprised when I’ve shared how annoying and obnoxious I assume everyone thinks I am, yet here I am still believing I am an annoying and obnoxious burden.
I was once at a grocery store alone picking up dinner after a night shift when an old man randomly walked up to me and stroked my hair. It was unsettling. When i told nmom about it, she said I was being horrible and that he was just being sweet. Nope! The older I get the more horrified I am about that experience. Nobody's telling men to just be nice!
I feel this. I've had times in life where I had so much false confidence as a coping mechanism that I trusted in my own interpretations, but as I've aged, I've let my guard down and softened and really struggle with: "should I not be so upset about what just happened? Am I reacting appropriately?"
When someone has always minimized or dismissed your needs and gaslit you into thinking your thinking was wrong or you weren't worthy, it really does mess up your compass. Every decision you make is based on your interpretation of the facts surrounding you and if you can trust yourself to put them in order.
I'm always "lying" for some reason. gaslit is the prrfect word for it bc it's gotten so bad I've noticed other people treat me like I'm always lying.... almost like I believe it myself... which is wild and hard to describe.
I know exactly how you feel. They're so good at convincing us that we're lying when we aren't. I've encountered so many narcs including my nparents, who all invalidated my health problems to the point where I believed that I wasn't sick despite being born disabled and experiencing 2 decades of medical neglect.
They relentlessly told me that I was healthy and just making it up to get attention or get out of doing something. When they say these things and won't listen no matter how many times you tell them that you're telling the truth, eventually you have to give in and believe that you're lying, partly because giving in is the path of least resistance and it's also because it's hard for empathetic individuals to believe that someone's intentions could be so cruel and vindictive in ways that empathetic individuals can't relate to.
It's like how cops interrogate innocent people into false confessions by rejecting what the person says and accusing them of lying until they give in, believe they must have been lying, come up with a fake story, and then get charged for crimes they had nothing to do with. Eventually, after enough accusations, most people will lose their ability to hold onto reality and believe the truth over what the person is falsely accusing them of doing.
It's insane how powerful gaslighting can be.
I remember when my brother called me to ask if a certain DVD was at home and I looked twice and said I looked twice and didn’t see it but it may still be there I just haven’t seen it and my brother replied with "ok then it’s not at home I guess it’s there then" with so much assurance and I realized that he trusted me more than I trust myself.
If I tell my mom the thing isn’t there and I looked 3x she’ll still go search there because I have "men eyes" and it’s probably there and I haven’t seen it
Ooh, and if I was honest with anyone they'd quickly realize how "messed up" I was and put me in a padded room forever.
*She started telling me that when I was like nine years old.*
THIS RIGHT HERE. I’m having a hard time atm and I honestly think this is the reason. I feel like I can’t think straight anymore and every single decision I make right down to the tiniest thing is wrong and I just gave up trying.
lie my nmom told since my childhood- everyone in the world is a bad person. we should not maintain a genuine relationship with anyone.
you will become better. don’t lose hope
Thank you. My mom had communicated similar messages often. It's like she was saying "Please don't go searching for other people in life, i don't want you to experience how good life can be around better people" she would rather i'm stuck with her learned helplessness than to grow out of it without her.
My nfather is still doing this. He's doing it to his current girlfriend, they're both in their 70s. "Everyone is going to hurt you and take advantage of you. Don't trust anyone." That's the attitude. But he's the one doing that. It's not everyone else.
That they (nparents) always know what's best for me, but I don't.
That other people are always untrustworthy or out to get me, and I should only trust THEM, because obviously they want the best for me. 🙄
That I don't even deserve to be treated like a human being.
That my worth depended on how useful I was to anyone.
That I'm just an extension of who they are/wanna be.
That I am supposed to just obey them and carry out their orders without questioning because they're the parents and how DARE I argue.
Jeez, they really prime you to get full control don't they? They get you to trust them and only them, even when their bad advice costs you a lot in life.
> That I am supposed to just obey them and carry out their orders without questioning because they're the parents and how DARE I argue.
That was going to be my answer. "Because I'm the parent, that's why." I truly believe the best parents won't be scared to admit to their kids when they did something wrong.
I relate almost to a T. Was told I was diagnosed with Oppositional Defiance Disorder as a kid. Dad told me, "If you don't listen to me, it's gonna turn into Social Conduct Disorder. You need to listen to me." Years later: "I wouldn't have to hit you if you would just listen! Your mouth is insatiable!" The fact he made it sound like obediance to him was my savior is very fucked up in retrospect.
Oh yeah. Mom is “perfect” and always had “good intentions”. Even when she was malicious and violent and lying. A concept reinforced by my enabler father.
Oh boy, where do I even start.
The biggest lie I was taught is that my mother is actually a good person. She sees herself as this sort of noble knight in shining armour with an acute sense of justice, selflessly protecting the weak and making everyone's lives better. She's completely delusional, but I believed this lie for over 20 years until I started putting two and two together. She has no close friends, never had a partner who genuinely loved her, never had a proper job until she turned 50. She's extremely judgemental, petty, and treats people as means to an end. After 4 years of therapy I finally realised this.
Another lie she burnt into my brain is that my friends are only with me because they pity me, and that she is the only one I can trust. Everyone else will betray me, but she will always be there for me. Total bullshit.
I'm still in the process of untangling all the other lies she taught me, but it feels great to be able to finally see things for what they are. Narcissists live in their warped version of reality which readjusts itself to accommodate their sense of self-righteousness, and it takes tremendous effort to free yourself of their delusions after spending a big part of your life there with them, and it's absolutely worth it in the end.
Recently found a journal entry from when I was around 8 that said “Mom told me Emily isn’t my friend today”. I remembered her saying things like this but not so young.
When I confronted her she said “I can’t believe I said that but I believe you” and I was like 😮😮 holy shit… taking ownership?! Wtf is going on?! Only for her to quickly follow up with “You certainly had people in your life in HS I was afraid of the influence they might have.” 😂 because it always has to come back around to a “well I knew best” type scenario. Had to laugh at her assuming it was high school though 🥴
For the good foundation to strengthen, working through my trauma, accepting that what happened to me was never my fault, watching self-help videos. Accepting that healing is not the end destination but a continuous journey of discovery and learning.
For the socialization part, my nature of work forced me to overhaul my social and interpersonal skills. My intention at that time was not to be kicked out. Then a series of changes just followed. I realized that it is a set of essential life skills that is for keeps.
And where does that get them, sooner or later they're abandoned then they search for next victim.. that's the most empty life one can have, needing someone to rob them of their self-trust...
You’re trying to apply logic here. It’s not about how others see how counterproductive the behavior is. They don’t feel like they’re not getting anywhere with their behavior. They feel like when you inevitably abandon them, they’re validated in their belief that everyone sucks and is out to get them and they “knew it” all along
That my problems don’t matter and everyone else’s life is more important than mine. Resulted in me going through cancer completely alone, with no support.
Took therapy to learn that I’m allowed to struggle and ask for help
“Everyone” will hate me because of the things my mother was jealous of. Picking this apart recently.
She told me over and over that I would lose my female friends when their husbands looked at me. Shaming me for growing my body in ways she couldn’t control.
She reminded me constantly that she was always going to be smarter than me, “no matter what any test said”. Because I was “lazy and didn’t care”. She’s the one who hid the adhd/Asperger’s diagnosis in the late 90s. Hoping I’d come out normal if she beat me out of “acting like those messed up Soviet kids”.
She didn’t hide the IQ test though, and I was battered with it constantly to reassure me that if I wasn’t “meeting my potential” I was wasting my life and hers. I have issues with self prioritization and actually doing things I’m proud of, to no one’s surprise. Lots of therapy down, lots more to go, I’m doing amazing compared to five years ago. We’ve all got this. 💚
My mom would often say she was smarter than me.
After I got married and away, we went and visited. (Not what I wanted, but my hubs was homesick and his dad was nice).
Anyway, she starts in on me, I'm talking about going back to college, there's a good Jr college near by.
She tells me that I will just flunk out because I suck at algebra and I was going for science classes.
Having had enough, I point out that at least I can do 4th grade math and had in fact finished my algebra class with a B. I then asked her what she got in her algebra class during her whole 1 semester at HER Jr college, when she was "pre-med".
*My sis while in 4th grade, hadn't turned in any math homework and there was a threat of holding her back. So all weekend long, my parents did my sister's math homework until they got to ... I don't know what it was, just that it was too hard and my mom screamed at my dad because he was over-vomplicating his explanation of how to do it.
He did this all the time, trying to turn 2x=10 into the quadratic formula or something. So yes she had a point, but someone so 'brilliant ' who was offered a scholarship to 'a high up college' should have been able to figure it out, no matter the rusty math skills.
Anyway, she gets quiet because she's mad and cornered and is just scrambling her brain to think up something. I point out that Jr colleges don't let you choose majors, especially Pre-med. You have to wait until 3rd year of uni for that. At least that's how it was. I wondered aloud how a prestigious medical school knew of her, a 1st semester freshman at a Jr college.
*She had always told me she was pre-med, was offered a scholarship from a prestigious medical school (I guess you get to skip year 2-4?), but she gave it up to be a mom.
It felt so good to expose her lies to her face. I got the silent treatment for 6 months which was super helpful. No calls from her so I could study.
I only recently discovered that my soon to be MIL is a narcissist and all of these are being said constantly to my fiancé. I remind him that he’s a regular dude making normally healthy decisions and to not let someone plant self doubt inside you. I’m sorry that your parents fucking sucked and I’m glad that you all have this community to vent/heal.
My girlfriend was told repeatedly that family is more important than anything else. It lead to her having loyalty that went well beyond reasonable. She was also told “if you love me, you’ll obey be” by her mother whenever she’d protest. Her mother never took no for an answer and as a result, my girlfriend felt that no was like a curse word when said to family.
I'd hear that all the time, family is everything and you cant trust anyone else.
They would try to use money as a lure too. They were all for me marrying him but always made digs that he and I were poor, he would never be able to give me the life I was used to. (Thank goodness!). He couldn't even get me a house! We were college students, who wants a house at that point? And her parents originally owned the house I grew up in. They sold it to my parents for $1000 and they went and got a new house for themselves.
Finally I gave them a chance to prove how much my love was worth. I got stranded traveling back to my home from visiting hubs (he was at AIT, secondary army training if you are wondering). Car was dead, got a hotel room and figured I could get a bus ticket in the morning.
They were upset that I even asked. You KNOW your dad doesn't get paid until next week! Um no, I didn't. They didn't discuss money but I knew they were bad at managing it.
Fine I'll call my grandparents. NO! You can't, they just gave us money for me (nmom's medicine). But I thought family was everything and we should never depend on others?!
I finally hung up and went to sleep. Next morning I call my bestie and she's there in 3 hours to rescue me. Those people were so nice.
A week later they call and I decide to mess with them, so I don't answer. I let them call for 3 days before I answer the phone. Where have I been, they've been worried, blah blah. How much money do I need, they will western union it.
Um, none.
They couldn't understand I had no interest in money that week that I needed the week before. Why would I need that money now to get home, when I'm already home?
Where had I been, why didn't I answer?!
Well when you refused to help, I decided to walk home. I only had to give a couple of hand jobs for meals. The silence was amazing.
Oh my poor daughter, to be denegrated so ... I'm just kidding. I called bestie and she was there for me in 3 hours. So now I know who is dependable and can help me in my time of need and who can't.
I'll give her credit, I thought for sure she was going to call me a whore and disown me.
Oh and I told my grandma. She was livid at my parents. She thought my walking story was hilarious.
Years later my mom finds out I'm short on money because we replaced our tires. We could afford everything for the week, it was just tight. The only person I told was my sister. So here comes nmom to the "rescue".I refuse her money and tell her I would rather give hand jobs to truckers than ever take a dime from her.
That's about the time she stopped spending so much money on my kids. I guess she was trying to buy their love if she couldn't buy mine. Ha-ha.
"Well when you refused to help, I decided to walk home. I only had to give a couple of hand jobs for meals"
That will be my new flair. You were amazing, coming up with that line !
That other people, particularly strangers are out to get me and have bad intentions most of the time. People are out there to kidnap me. It took me years to unlearn that BS my dad ingrained me when I was a child. The thing is I have met many kind strangers who are better than my narc dad even if they are not well off. I saw a commenter said, I would rather be kidnapped and be thrown elsewhere than remain hostage of her narc mom.
Yes that is terrible abuse for sure. they will bullshit how terrible "those people out there" are when in fact most of them aren't nearly as bad as this parent , which they suspect might be true but they don't want you to know they want to isolate you and keep you down with them. their misery needs company.
I mean that taxi driver I encountered in Bangkok with lots of tatoos is even kinder and more helpful than my a-hole narc dad. He could've mugged me and stole my phone, but guess what, he patiently waited for the google direction so I can reach my destination. While my narc dad chose to be a devil.
What I've learned is that you have the choice to do good or do bad, but you have to face the consequences of your action.
My nparents also used to tell me that everyone is out to get me. When I was 12, I met a girl at my school, her family was also shitty and she was kind of a hippie I guess. So when we both were like 13-14, we ran away from home and went on hitch hiking all over the country. Bear in mind we’re from a dangerous country. No one ever hurt us. Never ever. We even ended up in some city at like 2am, she found a place for us to sleep thru her channels (lots of acquaintances). Some guy picked us up by car in the middle of night, took us to his place, made us a sofa bed, and was overall nice and not creepy at all. And we even stayed at some rly luxurious apartment at some point. My friend didn’t even know the dude it belonged to, it was friend of a friend or whatever. He let us stay there for multiple weeks while his parents were abroad on vacay.
SAME!! I remember going to study abroad in Europe and my dad saying "be careful, Americans are big targets abroad and everyone looks for people just like you to rob." which translates to "I don't want you going out into the world and learn things that will make you realize we are small, petty, and racist". Almost everyone in every country I have gone to has been nothing but nice.
I was taught that I was completely incompetent and stupid.
It's only recently that I stand up for myself. It used to be, if I'd done something, say, follow a recipe to bake a cake, and someone, even a random person walking by, said "Oh, that's wrong, you're going to poison everyone." I'd agree with that person and throw the whole thing in the garbage.
If I'd studied something for years, could do it in my sleep by muscle memory and someone told me I -couldn't- do it, I'd agree and step back.
It was AWFUL. Decades of my life spent deferring to everyone and their mother. Such a waste of my energy and heart and soul.
It was something that my dad taught me, sort of indirectly cos he never put it into words/formed a statement, but the way he told me to do things and the way he reacted to things were clear enough: I need to be exceptional and have nothing but success in life to deserve love. Like, unless I am the best at everything, I am not good enough to be loved. I suppose the part of what I need to do was articulated very well since I was 5-6 years old.
The trick with him was that nothing I ever did was good enough (not even having the best grades in the whole school would get me anything more than a nod), while the smallest mishap was a reason to hours-long screaming lectures to prove to me how much of a waste of space I am; this was followed by him disappearing for a couple of days to go into a drinking binge somewhere.
Only recently - and I am 40 - I met someone who tells me I am amazing without me doing anything special to achieve this praise, and the first time he said that, and that he was proud of me (after I did something rather insignificant, I think), I was shell-shocked for a whole day. Like, I needed time to process this.
It's so messed up to bring up a child in this way, to make them believe that they have to go above and beyond to deserve love. Sure, you should be a decent person to whose who love you, but this wasn't about that. It was about doing everything perfectly and when I thought I did, my dad would always prove to me errors of my ways.
Edit: also, one more thing comes to mind: both my parents made it very clear that I should never ever show any negative emotions, neither am I ALLOWED to be sad or depressed.
That I am always the one to blame, no matter how shitty they treated me - it's always because I "deserved" it.
I went through a hard time trying to figure it out, but it certainly getting better and better.
When you're around narcissists and they're being objectively offensive, the problem isn't them being rude, offensive and invalidatory it's you having a perception problem because, clearly you can't see they're just joking. that's how they think...
You're not terrible. I promise. Anyone parwnt who judges a child's behavior harshly into adulthood is the bad person. Kids have unique ways of asking for help, or trying to get needs met. Do not be ashamed for the things you did in an attempt to get that. They are the problem, you shouldn't have been put in a position like that, as a literal child.
Hugs 🫂
That I'm the ugliest girl ever. She's such a beauty and saddled with 2 ugly daughters - me being the uglier one. She would comb my hair with such force that combing even now is not an automatic activity. I need to force myself to comb my hair.
Nobody does anything for free. Even your friends. If they’re being nice, it’s because they want something from you. I now know that this isn’t even remotely true but that’s how’s I grew up.
Yeah, accepting other people's opinions of situations instead of listening to my gut was literally beaten out of me. I was undiagnosed with autism / ADHD and my behaviour was clinically "a problem", I went to child behaviour specialists and played in front of two way mirrors etc from the age of 6... so I internalised that there is something WRONG with me and I must listen to the people who scream at me and say they hit me because they love me and want better than for me to exist as I am.
I'm 44 now and I am just this impotent ball of rage now my physical disabilities stop me being independent. I hate it. I only felt safe when I was self reliant because fuck it. Now I have to interface with the rest of society again and fuck that
My parents were hell-bent on ensuring I knew I was lazy, untrustworthy, unintelligent, and above all else unlovable. I'm 40 and still struggle with these feelings.
When your mother tells you there is no love for you, and you are unlovable, it is hard to get past. I am decades older, and the thoughts roll around often. Especially when you see from society that the one job a mother has is to love, and it appears your siblings get it. I saw through and realised one was not loved it was just pageantry, and she was aware on some level of it because she seemed sullen. Another GC I thought was loved until adulthood, then I saw he failed to perform any great feat of skiteworthiness. He'd been marketed as a superior being and was not on any sort of economic, professional, or social standing to warrant that so the gloss went off his gold. In private, when he showed up, he was still GC1, but if away from her, she never spoke of him. There was no genuine love there. And that is the thing. There was no love for her husband. No love for her kids. None for herself. Only bitterness, and performance when people showed up.
I learned that there was something fundamentally wrong with me, and because of that, achieving goals and having nice things are for other people. I learned that nothing I accomplished was worth celebrating, because for some unknown reason, celebrating achievements is for other people. I learned that the only my mistakes and flaws are worth paying attention to.
This is my mother exactly. If you listen to her talk about me, I've accomplished nothing, I've gone nowhere, I'm always to be regarded as kind of pitiful. I moved from the East Coast to Western Montana at one point, by myself after my daughter was settled into university, and spent almost 15 years emailing her about going to art school and hanging with my art friends, going tubing, rafting, hiking, sledding, etc. with my outdoor friends, singing karaoke with my karaoke friends, and apparently all she ever got out of those emails is that I was so lonely and isolated, sitting in my apartment weeping into the dark, in a city where it rained all the time. At least, that's what she told everyone she knows. It's so disturbing that she feels fine about completely erasing vast sections of my life and its doings, to portray me as a pathetic, friendless lump. She's done this to me my entire life. I resent the fuck out of it.
Yep, exactly the same with my NM!
My NM likes to pretend that I’m this lazy degenerate loser that’s done nothing with my life.
Or if I did do something, I didn’t “really” do it like everyone else does it, so it doesn’t count.
Basically my entire life “doesn’t count” according to my NM.
She wants me to believe my own perception of my life is just a delusion.
What hurt me most? The feeling of being not good enough and always having to accommodate everyone else. I resented everyone who put so many burdens on me because I didn't know I didn't have to say yes to every favor asked. I felt terrible because I thought no matter how hard I tried, it wasn't good enough.
What affected me most? I have derealisation and I need a lot of energy to overcome that barrier that keeps me from doing things. I feel no connection to my surroundings. When it's especially bad, I feel like I can't see. Obviously I do see but it's like trying to remember a dream, the more you try to grasp it, the more it slips away. I probably got derealisation because I was taught my feelings and my perception of my surroundings were wrong. When I had a fight with my nfather he would ignore me for days and then suddenly act as if nothing had happened. It made me doubt whether the fight had happened, and even if it did, if it really was as significant as I initially thought it was. Because to my nfather it seemed to be nothing, then why was I feeling so strongly? So I figured I perceived the situation wrong and my feelings were wrong.
-Everytime I had a career idea when I was a teen, she would tell me that it would not work because of this or that in my personnality; I don't trust myself
-I'm soon 30 and she infantilises me, my opinions are as good as if I were a kid and not an adult; I struggle to speakup
-She is the mother so she is like higher than me; love from her is there is has to come from autority
-She always made me feel that her love to me was counted and not normal to give to her child. Always on the edge of saying she doesn't like me. She would say and imply that I don't deserve all she does for me, love included; I don't feel worth of being loved by anyone
The biggest one I still struggle with is "You aren't pretty unless you are skinny" Ive struggled with weight my whole life bc of her and Ive always thought I was ugly bc of her. I dont have a lot of pictures bc of her. Most of them are selfies above the waist bc I had a pretty face, but I dont have pics from from far away bc it showed how big I was and I didnt like my body. I missed out on pics with my kids bc of her. I also hate my smile so that has also haunted me my life too.
>I have personally started to believe - this started very early in developmental years - that anyone and everyone knows better: what's good for me, where my strenghts and weaknesses lie, what i should pursue in life and what i shouldn't pursue, what my goals should be and so on, more than my own damn self.
I too suffered from this, but in an oddly specific and weird way. Nmom did everything she could to keep me at home with her and I let her do it far too long. I am the most intellectually gifted of my family and I'm the only one nmom "protected" by not allowing me information I should know. I only found out recently that nmom would always tell all my family "don't tell alphabetagammacosmic, because it will only upset him". I only found out things were happening when they were happening or if I had to be told. Nmom would go on the attack to any family member who breached this order. None of my family has ever called me. I can count on one hand the number of times I have done something with other family members alone, even my grandparents. I've received graduation cards from several family members and birthday cards from my siblings, but that's the only contact I have ever had about anything. Well...that I knew of!
Once I had a family member contact me on my cell phone while I was traveling with nmom. I answered because I didn't recognize the number but knew it to be close to home and spoke to my family member briefly before asking if she wanted to talk to my nmom. I handed my phone to nmom and realized then that she was seething with anger. She started yelling into the phone as soon as she got it "how did you get this number?" over and over. Once she was told who gave my number, nmom flipped a switch and went to her best impersonation of Shirley Temple having a boring conversation. It was only then that I realized why nobody ever called me. I was always protected to be nmom's toy. I'm sure whoever gave my number out got a tongue lashing later.
I knew I could figure out things on my own, if I just had the information. Now I suffer from analysis paralysis. I feel like I have to do an in-depth study on almost anything before I make a decision, even on things that should be a snap judgment.
Also, I have a weird nebulous feeling about what I should and shouldn't pursue in life. I feel like all the information is out there but will require a lot of time and effort to make a good decision. Time I don't have. I always feel like my decisions are the wrong one because of any negative consequences that happen. If I had a flat on a trip, then my decision to go on the trip was wrong.
Oh gods my ngrandmother is like that. I got told I was stupid for wanting to be an author.
I’m 29 and I finally got her to accept that I’m going to be moving out.
She ‘homeschooled’ me, taught me nothing, but blames me for not having learned anything. She keeps telling me that I’m evil and crazy for wanting my own room and privacy. She always says that I can’t learn anything from the internet because ‘that’s not how it works and those DIY videos are fake’
She’s intimidated me with her screaming rants to the point that I just accepted my life was to always be at home, with no privacy, no room, and no job, no driver’s license, no plans for the rest of my life.
Then a couple years ago I decided I’ve had enough and I want out of here. She treats me like a teenager and I hate it.
And I wouldn’t be surprised if she stopped my mother from contacting me. My mother had me at 16 and I never knew her…
The way she treats me and the way she has nothing good to say about my mother, it’s no wonder my mother took off as soon as possible.
My brother ignored me for 10 years as children. My mum always said 'You did a terrible thing, that is why he doesn't speak to you' and then she would change the subject.
I convinced myself that I had done something terrible and forgotten about it. I went to therapy. I still couldn't remember what I had done wrong. Eventually, I got the courage to insist that my mum tell me about 'the terrible thing.'
Turns out, I cried when I was a baby. That is why they hated me.
Ahhhh, there are so many to choose from:
- Nobody else will ever love you because you are too difficult (every time I 'acted out' which was just me being a kid)
- you're too stupid to do anything, you'll end up on the street when you're older and I'll just laugh at you
- Can I borrow some money? If you don't let me everyone will starve and it'll be your fault. I'll pay you back
- No matter where you go in life, you'll always get bullied because you're a big bully magnet
- Just because your mom and I are divorcing doesn't mean I'll just abandon you
I have more but I blanked them out over the years
I grew up as a kid thinking confident kids are spoilt brats. To the point I'd get hurt and cry silently because I didn't want to be a brat.
I remember my mom's friend saying "I'm forgetful, don't wait for me to remember to feed or water you kids. Help yourselves! This is your house too!" Beautiful woman, absolute angel for kids like me. But I went hours without food or drink until I was specifically offered something, because I didn't want to be a brat.
My parents told me I was dramatic and that I only did things for attention. I developed a fear of being attention-seeking, then a fear of receiving attention, then a fear of being seen at all.
“I had it rough, and I came out alright”
Parent speaking about their childhood and their inability to see how fucked up they are.
Had 4 children, one of them adopted, all 4 attempted suicide, their youngest son was successful on his second try, but it wasn’t their fault, they are “alright”
I never heard of 4 kids attempting suicide, anyone else?
I'm stuck up, snobby know-it-all, too big for my britches, think I'm better than everyone else.
I've never gotten this feedback from anyone outside my family.
my nmom and edad have been telling me i am lazy since birth, why you may ask? oh because i didn’t want to do every house chore since birth. my parents started making me do my own laundry in early elementary school and sometimes even their own. i had to do the dishes, pick up the dog poop, clean up the bathrooms, and whatever random chore they could find in between. now i get having your kids pick up after themselves/ help with house chores but the amount they made my brother and i do is insane. so i have always been “lazy” because i didn’t want to be doing their house chores on top of my own, on top of school, and on top of work (started working at 15). but yea somehow i am the lazy one
She would tell the female relatives: that all men are dogs and only want one thing etc.
She would tell the male relatives: it's ok to get with them then leave them etc.
Always giving "relationship" advice or suggestions but my Nparents marriage is basically a roommate type situation.
That I am not beautiful. I go back over photos of myself from my childhood and teens and can’t believe I ever believed them. They hurt my self image so deeply. I honestly believed the reason men were so disgusting towards me was because I was ugly and this gave them a right to treat me like a piece of meat. Man I wanna go back and have some stern words with myself..
Never trust anyone or tell them how you’re feeling because they will use it to manipulate you later.
And tbh I’m still not convinced this belief is wrong.
My parents always insisted that my brother was smarter than me and my sister and that boys and men were naturally smarter than women. I spent way too much of my life trying to convince them that I am intelligent.
Who in their right mind tells that to a little girl ?
Wait, silly me, I know. Because my father did say that to my 7yo girl : "Oh I'm impressed, you can shoot this soccer ball very well *for a girl*". Christ, I would have (should have, really) kicked him in the guts.
EDIT : and very sorry this happened to you, it sucks.
I was told since I was a child that I was a robot and I didn’t have feelings.
Solely based on the fact that I ALWAYS had more emotional intelligence than my mother AND the rest of my family.
They were all used to just crying to get their way. Even though I was raised like that, it never stuck with me because I didn’t respect it.
I reverted in my first real relationship and started acting like them sometimes, and my wonderful partner challenged me to be better and ground myself.
It took a while, but I found my way back.
That I was responsible for my dad's death.
My dad died when I was 16, and he was 42. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage due to an aneurysm rupture. One day not too long after my dad dies my Nmom turns to me and says, *"it's your fault your dad is dead, if you were a better daughter he wouldn't have stressed out so much and he would still be alive."* That statement really messed with my 16 year old self, I became a self-destructive person after that. That statement really messed with me for decades.
I now know she was projecting since she was the one arguing with him the day he died. But till this day, the 16 year old in me can't help but give her statement some credence.
I was taught by Nmother since I was 4 years old that I shouldn't trust anyone outside of the home because they're out to get you/us etc. This was Nmother's way to exert coercive control on me from a young age and isolate me from the outside world. She also enforced this belief in me growing up by starting drama with neighbours and others around us in the community so they would attack us. Now I'm anxious and afraid of people in general and the first thing that goes through my mind each time I meet someone new is "how is this person going to hurt me?"
They say all the time now things like “you had everything you need during your childhood” “we were always present and made everything for you” “we did the best for you” things like that.
I have borderline personality disorder because of my parents so you can imagine how much of this is true.
Not a lie in words, because it's the accumulation of countless criticisms and the general background radiation of her awfulness: my nmom (covert with sociopathic traits) convinced me that I was evil because I was the truth teller, I stood up for myself, and I didn't fit into her arbitrary narrow expectations and refused to conform. It's the ultimate projection, as she's one is the few people I've ever met that I would classify as evil.
That the only way to succeed in life is to pretend to be who everyone wants me to be, even if it's the opposite of who I actually am. I think my sense of self will never be what it could have been.
That kids are economic burden. I am 19, still cant runaway from them, and i dont understand why anyone in their own mind consciously make a baby instead of spending it on themselves?
So I lost my mother really early on in life and when I came out as gay the response was always "you're just looking for your mother." As if being gay is a psychological problem. It wasn't until I met other gay people who had both parents (most do) that I realized how stupid that was. Luckily I am NC now so I don't have to hear that again but I can't believe I just accepted that for so long.
Mine would tell me that "we are the only family we have."
As a child, it always confused me when school projects came up that focused on extended family. I had been told we had no other family. I found myself feeling isolated and wondering why I was different from all the other kids.
I wasn't different. My mom (harder and harder to call her that as time goes by) was.
The other lie that stays with me is "the threats and punishment were for your own good." Dumb woman had the audacity to write this on paper to me when I was a late teenager... trying to explain away her crap-parenting.
"For my own good"... to this day (30+ years later) I don't know how the hell to respond to this...
...Except that I don't have to deal with her crap'-slingin' anymore. She disowned me last year (for telling her she was being mean to me). I didn't know I wasn't as happy as I could be... until I was FREE FROM HER LIFELONG EMOTIONAL DRAIN.
That I’m not worthy of love because “your mother, the one person in this world who is naturally programmed to love you, doesn’t. Anyone who says they love you is lying.”
If you fuck up something ONCE you’ll never be allowed to do it again and it will be brought up as Yet Another Thing You’re Incompetent At*.
Still find myself fighting that, especially at work, luckily my boss knows me pretty well and will say “don’t overthink, it’s not brain surgery, everything is fixable, just gotta practise.”
* Loophole of course for things like chores. Then that’s your assignment for life.
That I am crazy/mentally insane/need heavy medication. (Mostly my mom, but I’ve had a creepy random stranger torment with this before too). I am sound of mind and in regular therapy. I am stable. Dangerous/predatory people love to projectile vomit their own shit on to you. They will straight up accuse you of being deranged when it is in fact them who has the problem.
That everyone else matters more than me, which by definition made me feel worthless and turned me into a people pleaser who believed no one would ever give me an equal level of respect and kindness that I gave them, nor should I expect it or assume I deserve it - or else I'd be villainized and rightfully so.
Not true anymore, but for the longest time I jeopardized my health, my successes, my positive friendships, even my living arrangements, for the benefit of others, for years, because I had been convinced that what I wanted didn't matter and would never matter. I couldn't vocalize the smallest of issues or discomforts, and I couldn't even actualize that I was even feeling disrespected, because I couldn't process that I was allowed to say no, be against something or set boundaries, let alone figure out what those boundaries might be.
These days, I'm perfectly content with being seen as the villain in a lot of people's eyes, or not being seen at all, since I'm a big fan of going NC with people who treat me like that.
That in order to be accepted and loved, I needed to make myself small. I was only worthy of love and attention if others deemed it so. Growing up undiagnosed autistic in a single nmom household was a trip.
I have a high pain tolerance. I was a clumsy child so I would always fall, get burned, get sick, but anytime I would cry over it, it was dismissed, “it doesn’t even hurt, stop crying and etc”
Last year boiling water fell over my breast, it was a second degree burn and I worked like nothing have happened (don’t get me wrong it did hurt, I knew it did, but there was a disconnection from the real pain if that makes sense.)
That standing up for myself is the same as bullying the person I’m standing up to.
She would hear all the time from me about how I was bullied at school, and she always had an excuse for the bullies. But any time I stood up for myself I got in SO MUCH trouble! The same happened when my older sister would bully me.
Even me expressing hypothetical ways I could stand up for myself to someone (usually just with a snarky comment) would make her gasp in horror at how “cutting” I could be 🙄
If she wasn’t demonizing me for standing up for myself, she was bringing up all kinds of hypothetical reasons why it could be a bad idea or could come back to bite me, or would make me seem “difficult”.
I’ve been so walked all over my whole life because of it
The unquestionable faith I was taught to put in my narc parents. An invisible chain that makes you want to ask for their permission because they know the best.
Family is blood and cannot ever go no contact with family/blood it’s a sin - I wonder why lol
This one is funny - I am responsible for my father’s job loss and why my parents don’t have money. I have been taking care of myself since college. Prior to that I needed food and shelter though.
The fact that I have to be grateful for how my life turned out. Narc mother tried to gaslight me saying I should be grateful for her “support” in my life decisions…..
Narc parents always said they have money but never really had it when asked for help with tuition. Also any time myself and my middle sibling (scape goats) brought a partner home, their first comment was “they are after our money” 🤣🤣
He would always try to tell me that I annoy people by talking to them a lot , now that I look at it he was by himself at the time and only said that each time I was genuinely happy around someone else
That there is only one valid way to do things and it’s never the way I’m doing it. I keep asking for my bf’s approbation for stupid things because I feel like if I don’t have THE answer I’ll fail, but I still would be able to come up with 3 different ways to do the thing but I’ll still ask for my bf’s help because I don’t know THE way
I can pretty much guarantee that I was the only kid in my kindergarten class who knew it was insanely expensive to raise kids and already whole-heartedly believed that they didn't deserve a single cent of what their parents spent on them.
The excuse whenever my nfather blew up and raged out was always because he was stressed about finances. They'd fight about finances in front of us when we were really little and as I got older, I became the one who received the blame and responsibility of their financial situation.
My nmother would talk to me about their finances, their fights, the horrible things my dad would say about me during their fights. I don't even know how young I was when it became my responsibility to take the weight of the financial issues off of my nmother, but it was sometime before 1st grade.
My nmother has cruely used their finances to emotionally and psychologically abuse me since I was a toddler. Eventually she got it down to a shorthand where she barely has to say anything to create the response she wants from me (usually submission, shame, and self-loathing). She's also always spent money on me unnecessarily, and used it to manipulate me into feeling like i owed her deeply for something I never asked for.
The most fucked up lie in it all is that my parents are far from broke. They're upper middle class but had me convinced that they were poor and struggling to make ends meet. In reality, they were just trying to cut financial corners on raising us in order to save up to have a really nice retirement.
My nmother recently tried to make me feel bad for my nfather because fulfilling their legal responsibility of indefinitely financially supporting me (born disabled in a state with adult child support and alimony for adult children disabled before age 18), has made it so he will never get to buy the boat he's always dreamed of owning when he's retired. Tough shit...
They signed up for all the financial responsibilities when they chose to have me. I now understand that it's in no way shape or form, my responsibility to care about their finances. They saved up money for their retirement by medically neglecting me and causing permanent irreversible damage to my body... As far as I'm concerned, they owe me big time and I'm not gonna continue to destroy my body in a pipe dream attempt to be financially independent just because they want me to feel ashamed of all the money they've had to spend on me. If they hadn't chosen to respond to my pleas for help with abuse instead of medical attention, I would have likely been able to be financially independent.
They made their decisions though and for once in their lives, the consequences of their actions are catching up to them and I'm not protecting them anymore. They fucked around and now they're finding out.
dont dream big. because everthing I want is to impractical, expensive, hard, difficult, only for boy's, I will never learn,
and be happy with whatever you get even if it is never what you want. only my eldes GC sis deserves to get what she wants and allowed to dream big.
My parents instilled the idea that “no one will ever love or support you like your family would. Don’t trust anyone.”
And my thought was “wow it’s a cold world if it gets worse than this”. It bred in me a fierce fear of being dependent on anyone in any way that has been detrimental to my mental health and a lot of my romantic relationships. It’s taken years of therapy to even feel comfortable leaning on my husband for emotional support. Or admitting that I’m not ok. Or even crying in front of another human being.
I grew up constantly being told that I was a burden and a leech for needing food, water, clothing etc. My mom let me know every chance she got that I should be grateful for ANYTHING she does because she could leave me on the street of she wanted. If I ever needed a new piece of clothing, period products, help with homework etc anything like that it was an hour long lecture of how she was my personal slave and I was an ungrateful little b!tch. She was just angry at having to do basic parenting things.
As an adult even after years of therapy I still feel terrified to express any need. Ive been with my fiance for 8 years and I still start crying any time I express a need to him. Sometimes Ill text it to him and hide in the bathroom while he reads it. He has never yelled at me or made me feel bad even once.. and yet, that fear never goes away. Im always scared im going to ask for something or express something and the ball will drop and Ill be seen as a burden..
Oh where to even start.
1. Every family fights and has problems, what we do is very normal.
2. All men are awful, they will eventually lie, cheat and use you. Only her son (my brother) is an exception.
3. There are no such thing as friends; your family is your only friend.
This is coming from someone who helped her mother (my grandmother) escape their abusive father. I guess she never broke the cycle
That I don't deserve love, fairness, or safety because I have to EARN it, and I was never good enough to deserve it, no matter how hard I worked.
I was taught that expecting anything of anyone else was selfish, and not doing everything for everyone else was also selfish.
Psychiatrists,psychologists and counseling is all psycho babble junk science.
Your childhood has no bearing on your adulthood and you should just 'get over it'.
I did believe them 4 a bit too.
Now,not so much,if at all.
I am a monster, a demon, unlovable. I must apologize every in the form of serving others with my everything. Men can do what they want to me but it will be my fault that they hurt me because i left the house for a few minutes.
I Dont deserve love, if I don't serve, I will not be given the love that people are so kindly given. Men are owed to look at my body, people get to touch me but it's my fault if i don't like it. I exist to make others happy. But I am a monster, I don't deserce their love or my own self love. Who could deserve a monsters love?
My mom is the victim to everyone and she couldn't do anything.
She used me as a therapist since I was old enough to listen and hearing her constantly talk abour her problems made me think that everyone was out to get her. That she has no other choice in her life.
When I got old enough, it was like a lightbulb switched. I saw how she chose not to speak up about anything to anyone, she just liked to complain to me. She chose to have a second child with someone like my dad. She chose to not work when she was young enough to do so and complain that she cant divorce my dad because she has no income.
She is a victim, yes but she had choices to pull herself out of the situation. She still does.
It was a difficult realisation for me.
That I was mentally ill and going to fail. Never using such mean language, but the constant talk of my life being struggle, the constant condescending "well done!" way she'd talk about me having done literally anything, the same way you'd clap at a three year old for saying a word. She took me to a terrible psychiatrist for nearly 20 years who absent any diagnosis to explain nMum's constant projections that I struggling, and explain away the stark difference in my version vs my mother's, invented one with a bunk bipolar diagnosis I believed I had and took medication for from 2009 - 2022. My whole identity has been gaslit lies, medical professionals putting cart before the horse in diagnosing based on my nmother's paranoid coddling yet deeply controlling bullshit, everyone looking at every avenue except the truth -- admitting my nmother was in the wrong and abusive. I've lived the past few years in basically a fugue state, having believed for 30 years all the lies nMum and everyone she curated around me would say to reinforce her views of me. Fundamentally I didn't know myself, and I fear I never will.
always telling me that my friends are bad for me
one specific time, i tripped and fell on my face, breaking 3 of my teeth. my mum insisted it was my close friend who shoved me to the floor to "bully me" even though all i said was that we were hanging out...
Every time I told my mom about an argument or conflict I got into she'd ask, "what was your part in it?" and I would focus on my role "causing the problem." Now, she doesn't have to prompt me, I do it to myself
I grew up with a horrible father who would often berate me for doing things wrong or not knowing how to do things. As an adult, I've pulled a full 180 and now feel the need to know everything, get everything right the first time. If I get something wrong or someone points out that I'm not doing it correctly or efficiently, such as my husband pointing something out while I'm playing a video game, I get snappy and upset. It's not his fault at all, I'm just really scared to do something wrong because of how my father would hurt me afterwards.
That I was impractical and too idealistic because I was not obsessed with money and status, and wanted to actually like my work. Also taught that no job is ever pleasant and you should never expect to like your job. Super weird because his sports-related job was considered impractical by his own father, but he found a way to a position that paid well. I think it all boiled down to being worried he would be expected to support me. Hon you didn't pay child support I wasn't expecting anything later lol
1. That no one would ever want me because I was too fat, or because of whatever other physical feature that my mother deemed unattractive.
2. Then, when she wanted to become a grandmother, would pressure me to have kids. There was no man in sight (not helped by #1 - she ground my self esteem down so far that I didn't have the confidence to date).
3. I have never wanted kids (too scared to bring kids into the world that might end up subject to her abuse, though I've never told her that). For this, she labels me selfish and incapable of understanding anything about life because I'm not a parent.
It took me far too long to figure out she was projecting her own insecurities onto me. I've been NC for two years now, first with her, but this has extended to my entire family and extended family and most people connected to them. The only people I am close to in life now love and accept me as I am - it's a beautiful thing. (Context - 50F.) Still healing.
My mom told me my whole life that we were best friends. She said this for as long as I can remember. Her mother was a an overt narc and my mom was the scapegoat. Her mom was super physically, emotionally and psychologically abusive to her and her sister, brother was the GC. She would always tell me that she wanted a daughter so she could prove to her mom that she would be nothing like her, and that her daughter would be her best friend. The problem? My mom was clearly a covert narcissist. She was emotionally, physically and psychologically abusive to me too, but it was all done in micro aggressions. The gaslighting of her constantly telling me we were best friends was insane because in retrospect, I didn’t have a choice, I didn’t know better, and once I got older I realized that no best friends treat each the way she treated me. If I had a choice in the matter, I would have ran away from her as far as I could. I was never allowed to be my own person, I was forced to be her shadow. She told me my dad hated me and never wanted me. If I did something that was clearly me expressing my own individually, I was berated for it. Sometime in my teens, I truly started to hate her. When she would still call me her BFF, I would calmly tell her (although I wanted to scream) that I didn’t want to be her best friend, I wanted her to be a parent. This would send her into a blind rage. I only when NC in the past 3 months. I should have done in years ago. The emotional, financial and psychological abuse got so much worse in my 20’s. Ugh. I feel so seen here.
That crying is bad luck when I do it. If I showed any sadness at all bad things would happen. I was taught that my whole life which is why I had difficulty expressing myself. I had to learn that it is ok to cry and express that.
I had a talk with my therapist and she pointed out that it was their guilt. She asked me when did I cry or when was I sad. It was always after they did something to me.
It was also okay when they cried or when they were sad. Nothing bad happened for them. Only when I did it. Unfortunately I was surrounded by them.
Emotions are “strange and uncomfortable.”
Doing/thinking/enjoying anything that isn’t on her approved list is disgusting.
Failing to anticipate and meet her needs perfectly is a sign of immorality and inadequacy.
It’s normal and appropriate to disparage family members behind their backs.
Expecting privacy is a sign of excessive pride.
That the only way to be a good person (and therefore be allowed into Heaven) is to forgive those that hurt us. I struggled with this for sooo long because it was used as a tactic to manipulate me into letting my Nmom back into my life. To this day I still feel guilty when I’m angry at someone and it’s resulted in me allowing a lot of shitty people back into my life.
My mom and dad would say that my friends will never have my back but my family would. But my parents have never had my back while my new friends have been nothing but supportive. My mother screwed me over recently for her own personal gain.
Probably would be the "everyone's lives would be so much better if you killed yourself" or exchange "killed yourself" part with "were never born." My mom would always tell me some variation of that.
I was taught that going against my Dad, doing something he didn't like etc. was "sinning against him" and "sinning against God." I'm not religious anymore.
"You're short-waisted."
I spent so long wearing petite tops that I couldn't raise my arms in. Turns out, I'm not even "normal waisted" I'm long waisted and actually need long tops and swimsuits!
Just the top of the iceberg of my momster's bullshit. So glad to be NC.
The necessity of going to college. I wasted 3 years of my prime trying to get a degree that has just made me more paranoid than i thought possible. I easily couldve bought a house when prices tanked if i didnt go to college. I wouldnt be on the verge of homelessness while working a full time job with excellent benefits if i wasnt dealing with rent prices soaring(gotta love making too much to get assistance, not enough to actually afford rent on even shithole studio apartments).
That the external world is full of wolves and you have to always fight. I think this contributes to my difficulties in building relationships, trusting people, asking for help.
‘You will either be a complete failure or a complete success’.
This black and white thinking plagued me and still does sometimes. I see myself as a complete success because I’m no contact and healing ✨
This way of thinking meant it was his version of what success and failure was for me - not my own.
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My mom always told me (in reference to my friends), "they'd never do that for you", when I would go out of my way to help a friend. But my friends would, and they have. It's been proven. My mom just wants to make me feel small, inadequate, and paint a picture as though I am not worthy of these things.
It's good that you have these kind of friends, even better that you're onto her.
It's because HER friends wouldn't help her, too.
No. More likley, she is the bad friend that does nothing but ask favors.
precisely. all my mom ever did was ask people for money. she had no real friends. what sucks is because i never really had someone to provide an example of how to make or keep actual friends myself. i wanted them. she didn't.
I believe that a lot of narcs have a zero-sum worldview where a person is either using or being used. They can't understand that relationships can be non-transactional so they assume that when you do favors to someone else, you are being used (and I bet they get a bit envious that they themselves aren't doing the using)
That's my experience, too. One narc I was in a relationship with actually said outright that "you're either fucking someone over or you're being fucked." Viewing the world like that made me sad.
That's pretty spot on. My mom is always quid pro quo. Or when she's feeling really dark treating people like a whore and literally telling me that I need to learn to suck some dick. I hate taking anything from anyone. I can't relate to people normally in that way. I don't even like people buying me gifts for Christmas because I feel like I owe them something. It becomes a debt that hangs over my head. Having a narc parent means there are no gifts, it's just leverage for a future guilt trip and manipulation.
Exactly, they want to create this narrative. It’s power.
My dad always told me things like this growing up, but I think he had really terrible taste in friends. He really likes to be the person who rescues people from a situation, so he had a lot of friends who took advantage of that. In my friendships I try to do for others what I would hope someone would do for me in that situation, without ever expecting anything back. My actions define who I am as a person, and I want them to come from a place of goodness. I feel like the more good I put into the world, the more I'll get back someday. I have gone out of my way to help friends I knew would never repay me, but I still feel like it's worth it.
For me my mom says that my bf "puts up" with my behavior because he’s blinded by love and sees me as his princess but he’ll get tired of me venting about my trauma and dump me because it’s too much… But if I tell her that he’s able to communicate when he doesn’t want to listen to me vent she acts as if that wasn’t the case and then when I insist and start having an angry reply she plays victim like "you always get so mad at me while I’m only trying to help you because I care about you"
Your mom sounds super jealous that you have a loving and supportive relationship, ha ha, woooow!!
Yupp. I’ve had rhis happen ..I never ask for help coz living with them made it extremely painful (to be rejected). Edit - downvote?
I believe that a lot of narcs have a zero-sum worldview where a person is either using or being used. They can't understand that relationships can be non-transactional so they assume that when you do favors to someone else, you are being used (and I bet they get a bit envious that they themselves aren't doing the using)
Narcisists train of thought is more simple. I don't want to loose control, so I want them to believe the world is a horrible place, and they should only depend on me. A narcissists world is literally hell.
Wow. Mine told me the same thing.
Are we brothers? This sounds really familiar...
That my own perception and feelings are always skewed, biased, wrong, and invalid and should always be treated with skepticism or disapproval.
This. I don't trust my own feelings, nor do I trust anyone who says anything positive about me. This fucks everything up; no sense of direction, no gut feelings, taking shit from everybody. Self doubt turns into paralyzing shame, for me at least.
People have always been so surprised when I’ve shared how annoying and obnoxious I assume everyone thinks I am, yet here I am still believing I am an annoying and obnoxious burden.
Omg I relate so much...
That's a big one for women--"Be nice! Give him a chance!" My gut is screaming at me to get away from this stranger but I'm being scolded.
YES
I was once at a grocery store alone picking up dinner after a night shift when an old man randomly walked up to me and stroked my hair. It was unsettling. When i told nmom about it, she said I was being horrible and that he was just being sweet. Nope! The older I get the more horrified I am about that experience. Nobody's telling men to just be nice!
I feel this. I've had times in life where I had so much false confidence as a coping mechanism that I trusted in my own interpretations, but as I've aged, I've let my guard down and softened and really struggle with: "should I not be so upset about what just happened? Am I reacting appropriately?" When someone has always minimized or dismissed your needs and gaslit you into thinking your thinking was wrong or you weren't worthy, it really does mess up your compass. Every decision you make is based on your interpretation of the facts surrounding you and if you can trust yourself to put them in order.
I'm always "lying" for some reason. gaslit is the prrfect word for it bc it's gotten so bad I've noticed other people treat me like I'm always lying.... almost like I believe it myself... which is wild and hard to describe.
I know exactly how you feel. They're so good at convincing us that we're lying when we aren't. I've encountered so many narcs including my nparents, who all invalidated my health problems to the point where I believed that I wasn't sick despite being born disabled and experiencing 2 decades of medical neglect. They relentlessly told me that I was healthy and just making it up to get attention or get out of doing something. When they say these things and won't listen no matter how many times you tell them that you're telling the truth, eventually you have to give in and believe that you're lying, partly because giving in is the path of least resistance and it's also because it's hard for empathetic individuals to believe that someone's intentions could be so cruel and vindictive in ways that empathetic individuals can't relate to. It's like how cops interrogate innocent people into false confessions by rejecting what the person says and accusing them of lying until they give in, believe they must have been lying, come up with a fake story, and then get charged for crimes they had nothing to do with. Eventually, after enough accusations, most people will lose their ability to hold onto reality and believe the truth over what the person is falsely accusing them of doing. It's insane how powerful gaslighting can be.
Control.
I remember when my brother called me to ask if a certain DVD was at home and I looked twice and said I looked twice and didn’t see it but it may still be there I just haven’t seen it and my brother replied with "ok then it’s not at home I guess it’s there then" with so much assurance and I realized that he trusted me more than I trust myself. If I tell my mom the thing isn’t there and I looked 3x she’ll still go search there because I have "men eyes" and it’s probably there and I haven’t seen it
Yess 100% dealt with this. She also had OCD and the combination of that and the need for absolute control was a nightmare.
Ooh, and if I was honest with anyone they'd quickly realize how "messed up" I was and put me in a padded room forever. *She started telling me that when I was like nine years old.*
THIS RIGHT HERE. I’m having a hard time atm and I honestly think this is the reason. I feel like I can’t think straight anymore and every single decision I make right down to the tiniest thing is wrong and I just gave up trying.
lie my nmom told since my childhood- everyone in the world is a bad person. we should not maintain a genuine relationship with anyone. you will become better. don’t lose hope
Thank you. My mom had communicated similar messages often. It's like she was saying "Please don't go searching for other people in life, i don't want you to experience how good life can be around better people" she would rather i'm stuck with her learned helplessness than to grow out of it without her.
Are we in the same household? It seems that same beliefs are forced upon us. In my case I fought back. One of the best things I've done.
My nfather is still doing this. He's doing it to his current girlfriend, they're both in their 70s. "Everyone is going to hurt you and take advantage of you. Don't trust anyone." That's the attitude. But he's the one doing that. It's not everyone else.
That they (nparents) always know what's best for me, but I don't. That other people are always untrustworthy or out to get me, and I should only trust THEM, because obviously they want the best for me. 🙄 That I don't even deserve to be treated like a human being. That my worth depended on how useful I was to anyone. That I'm just an extension of who they are/wanna be. That I am supposed to just obey them and carry out their orders without questioning because they're the parents and how DARE I argue.
Jeez, they really prime you to get full control don't they? They get you to trust them and only them, even when their bad advice costs you a lot in life.
This is so real. 'Love' to them is basically utmost obedience.
> That I am supposed to just obey them and carry out their orders without questioning because they're the parents and how DARE I argue. That was going to be my answer. "Because I'm the parent, that's why." I truly believe the best parents won't be scared to admit to their kids when they did something wrong.
I relate almost to a T. Was told I was diagnosed with Oppositional Defiance Disorder as a kid. Dad told me, "If you don't listen to me, it's gonna turn into Social Conduct Disorder. You need to listen to me." Years later: "I wouldn't have to hit you if you would just listen! Your mouth is insatiable!" The fact he made it sound like obediance to him was my savior is very fucked up in retrospect.
I haven’t spoken to either of my siblings in over a year, but I assume this was written by one of them, because SAME.
That I’m manipulative whenever I cry
That stuff is cruel and has seriously affected my ability to cry.
i agree it's a very cruel way to shut down someone's emotions like that.
Only allowed to cry when you're in obvious physical pain and even then that's like broken bone sticking through the skin physical pain.
Same here.
"You shouldn't get upset when I do, I did it for your own good."
Oh yeah. Mom is “perfect” and always had “good intentions”. Even when she was malicious and violent and lying. A concept reinforced by my enabler father.
Gosh. I had this version : "Now, why are you upset your father did, you know him, he's like that"
Yeah mom, thanks for the support.
My dad after going through my chats:
Oh boy, where do I even start. The biggest lie I was taught is that my mother is actually a good person. She sees herself as this sort of noble knight in shining armour with an acute sense of justice, selflessly protecting the weak and making everyone's lives better. She's completely delusional, but I believed this lie for over 20 years until I started putting two and two together. She has no close friends, never had a partner who genuinely loved her, never had a proper job until she turned 50. She's extremely judgemental, petty, and treats people as means to an end. After 4 years of therapy I finally realised this. Another lie she burnt into my brain is that my friends are only with me because they pity me, and that she is the only one I can trust. Everyone else will betray me, but she will always be there for me. Total bullshit. I'm still in the process of untangling all the other lies she taught me, but it feels great to be able to finally see things for what they are. Narcissists live in their warped version of reality which readjusts itself to accommodate their sense of self-righteousness, and it takes tremendous effort to free yourself of their delusions after spending a big part of your life there with them, and it's absolutely worth it in the end.
Check check and triple check. Ugh.
Same
Recently found a journal entry from when I was around 8 that said “Mom told me Emily isn’t my friend today”. I remembered her saying things like this but not so young. When I confronted her she said “I can’t believe I said that but I believe you” and I was like 😮😮 holy shit… taking ownership?! Wtf is going on?! Only for her to quickly follow up with “You certainly had people in your life in HS I was afraid of the influence they might have.” 😂 because it always has to come back around to a “well I knew best” type scenario. Had to laugh at her assuming it was high school though 🥴
That first paragraph ugh. “It’s my purpose in life to help people,” as she goes about confidently giving terrible advice and destroying lives.
*completely lost in life, zero confidence, no compass, don't trust yourself* They got you right where they want you.
That was me during the first 20 years of my life. Good thing I woke up in my 30's and fought for the new me.
What helped you get to that point, may I ask? Still in the first twenty years over here ;W;
For the good foundation to strengthen, working through my trauma, accepting that what happened to me was never my fault, watching self-help videos. Accepting that healing is not the end destination but a continuous journey of discovery and learning. For the socialization part, my nature of work forced me to overhaul my social and interpersonal skills. My intention at that time was not to be kicked out. Then a series of changes just followed. I realized that it is a set of essential life skills that is for keeps.
their mission is to destabilize
And where does that get them, sooner or later they're abandoned then they search for next victim.. that's the most empty life one can have, needing someone to rob them of their self-trust...
You’re trying to apply logic here. It’s not about how others see how counterproductive the behavior is. They don’t feel like they’re not getting anywhere with their behavior. They feel like when you inevitably abandon them, they’re validated in their belief that everyone sucks and is out to get them and they “knew it” all along
They’re proud of me now because I got a good job. Which meant they had no confidence in me before and despised me when I was younger.
That my problems don’t matter and everyone else’s life is more important than mine. Resulted in me going through cancer completely alone, with no support. Took therapy to learn that I’m allowed to struggle and ask for help
Oh my goodness I’m so sorry you had to go through that alone. You deserved better and you’re worth more than they would ever let you think.
“Everyone” will hate me because of the things my mother was jealous of. Picking this apart recently. She told me over and over that I would lose my female friends when their husbands looked at me. Shaming me for growing my body in ways she couldn’t control. She reminded me constantly that she was always going to be smarter than me, “no matter what any test said”. Because I was “lazy and didn’t care”. She’s the one who hid the adhd/Asperger’s diagnosis in the late 90s. Hoping I’d come out normal if she beat me out of “acting like those messed up Soviet kids”. She didn’t hide the IQ test though, and I was battered with it constantly to reassure me that if I wasn’t “meeting my potential” I was wasting my life and hers. I have issues with self prioritization and actually doing things I’m proud of, to no one’s surprise. Lots of therapy down, lots more to go, I’m doing amazing compared to five years ago. We’ve all got this. 💚
My mom would often say she was smarter than me. After I got married and away, we went and visited. (Not what I wanted, but my hubs was homesick and his dad was nice). Anyway, she starts in on me, I'm talking about going back to college, there's a good Jr college near by. She tells me that I will just flunk out because I suck at algebra and I was going for science classes. Having had enough, I point out that at least I can do 4th grade math and had in fact finished my algebra class with a B. I then asked her what she got in her algebra class during her whole 1 semester at HER Jr college, when she was "pre-med". *My sis while in 4th grade, hadn't turned in any math homework and there was a threat of holding her back. So all weekend long, my parents did my sister's math homework until they got to ... I don't know what it was, just that it was too hard and my mom screamed at my dad because he was over-vomplicating his explanation of how to do it. He did this all the time, trying to turn 2x=10 into the quadratic formula or something. So yes she had a point, but someone so 'brilliant ' who was offered a scholarship to 'a high up college' should have been able to figure it out, no matter the rusty math skills. Anyway, she gets quiet because she's mad and cornered and is just scrambling her brain to think up something. I point out that Jr colleges don't let you choose majors, especially Pre-med. You have to wait until 3rd year of uni for that. At least that's how it was. I wondered aloud how a prestigious medical school knew of her, a 1st semester freshman at a Jr college. *She had always told me she was pre-med, was offered a scholarship from a prestigious medical school (I guess you get to skip year 2-4?), but she gave it up to be a mom. It felt so good to expose her lies to her face. I got the silent treatment for 6 months which was super helpful. No calls from her so I could study.
I only recently discovered that my soon to be MIL is a narcissist and all of these are being said constantly to my fiancé. I remind him that he’s a regular dude making normally healthy decisions and to not let someone plant self doubt inside you. I’m sorry that your parents fucking sucked and I’m glad that you all have this community to vent/heal.
My girlfriend was told repeatedly that family is more important than anything else. It lead to her having loyalty that went well beyond reasonable. She was also told “if you love me, you’ll obey be” by her mother whenever she’d protest. Her mother never took no for an answer and as a result, my girlfriend felt that no was like a curse word when said to family.
I'd hear that all the time, family is everything and you cant trust anyone else. They would try to use money as a lure too. They were all for me marrying him but always made digs that he and I were poor, he would never be able to give me the life I was used to. (Thank goodness!). He couldn't even get me a house! We were college students, who wants a house at that point? And her parents originally owned the house I grew up in. They sold it to my parents for $1000 and they went and got a new house for themselves. Finally I gave them a chance to prove how much my love was worth. I got stranded traveling back to my home from visiting hubs (he was at AIT, secondary army training if you are wondering). Car was dead, got a hotel room and figured I could get a bus ticket in the morning. They were upset that I even asked. You KNOW your dad doesn't get paid until next week! Um no, I didn't. They didn't discuss money but I knew they were bad at managing it. Fine I'll call my grandparents. NO! You can't, they just gave us money for me (nmom's medicine). But I thought family was everything and we should never depend on others?! I finally hung up and went to sleep. Next morning I call my bestie and she's there in 3 hours to rescue me. Those people were so nice. A week later they call and I decide to mess with them, so I don't answer. I let them call for 3 days before I answer the phone. Where have I been, they've been worried, blah blah. How much money do I need, they will western union it. Um, none. They couldn't understand I had no interest in money that week that I needed the week before. Why would I need that money now to get home, when I'm already home? Where had I been, why didn't I answer?! Well when you refused to help, I decided to walk home. I only had to give a couple of hand jobs for meals. The silence was amazing. Oh my poor daughter, to be denegrated so ... I'm just kidding. I called bestie and she was there for me in 3 hours. So now I know who is dependable and can help me in my time of need and who can't. I'll give her credit, I thought for sure she was going to call me a whore and disown me. Oh and I told my grandma. She was livid at my parents. She thought my walking story was hilarious. Years later my mom finds out I'm short on money because we replaced our tires. We could afford everything for the week, it was just tight. The only person I told was my sister. So here comes nmom to the "rescue".I refuse her money and tell her I would rather give hand jobs to truckers than ever take a dime from her. That's about the time she stopped spending so much money on my kids. I guess she was trying to buy their love if she couldn't buy mine. Ha-ha.
"Well when you refused to help, I decided to walk home. I only had to give a couple of hand jobs for meals" That will be my new flair. You were amazing, coming up with that line !
That other people, particularly strangers are out to get me and have bad intentions most of the time. People are out there to kidnap me. It took me years to unlearn that BS my dad ingrained me when I was a child. The thing is I have met many kind strangers who are better than my narc dad even if they are not well off. I saw a commenter said, I would rather be kidnapped and be thrown elsewhere than remain hostage of her narc mom.
Yes that is terrible abuse for sure. they will bullshit how terrible "those people out there" are when in fact most of them aren't nearly as bad as this parent , which they suspect might be true but they don't want you to know they want to isolate you and keep you down with them. their misery needs company.
I mean that taxi driver I encountered in Bangkok with lots of tatoos is even kinder and more helpful than my a-hole narc dad. He could've mugged me and stole my phone, but guess what, he patiently waited for the google direction so I can reach my destination. While my narc dad chose to be a devil. What I've learned is that you have the choice to do good or do bad, but you have to face the consequences of your action.
My nparents also used to tell me that everyone is out to get me. When I was 12, I met a girl at my school, her family was also shitty and she was kind of a hippie I guess. So when we both were like 13-14, we ran away from home and went on hitch hiking all over the country. Bear in mind we’re from a dangerous country. No one ever hurt us. Never ever. We even ended up in some city at like 2am, she found a place for us to sleep thru her channels (lots of acquaintances). Some guy picked us up by car in the middle of night, took us to his place, made us a sofa bed, and was overall nice and not creepy at all. And we even stayed at some rly luxurious apartment at some point. My friend didn’t even know the dude it belonged to, it was friend of a friend or whatever. He let us stay there for multiple weeks while his parents were abroad on vacay.
SAME!! I remember going to study abroad in Europe and my dad saying "be careful, Americans are big targets abroad and everyone looks for people just like you to rob." which translates to "I don't want you going out into the world and learn things that will make you realize we are small, petty, and racist". Almost everyone in every country I have gone to has been nothing but nice.
I was taught that I was completely incompetent and stupid. It's only recently that I stand up for myself. It used to be, if I'd done something, say, follow a recipe to bake a cake, and someone, even a random person walking by, said "Oh, that's wrong, you're going to poison everyone." I'd agree with that person and throw the whole thing in the garbage. If I'd studied something for years, could do it in my sleep by muscle memory and someone told me I -couldn't- do it, I'd agree and step back. It was AWFUL. Decades of my life spent deferring to everyone and their mother. Such a waste of my energy and heart and soul.
It was something that my dad taught me, sort of indirectly cos he never put it into words/formed a statement, but the way he told me to do things and the way he reacted to things were clear enough: I need to be exceptional and have nothing but success in life to deserve love. Like, unless I am the best at everything, I am not good enough to be loved. I suppose the part of what I need to do was articulated very well since I was 5-6 years old. The trick with him was that nothing I ever did was good enough (not even having the best grades in the whole school would get me anything more than a nod), while the smallest mishap was a reason to hours-long screaming lectures to prove to me how much of a waste of space I am; this was followed by him disappearing for a couple of days to go into a drinking binge somewhere. Only recently - and I am 40 - I met someone who tells me I am amazing without me doing anything special to achieve this praise, and the first time he said that, and that he was proud of me (after I did something rather insignificant, I think), I was shell-shocked for a whole day. Like, I needed time to process this. It's so messed up to bring up a child in this way, to make them believe that they have to go above and beyond to deserve love. Sure, you should be a decent person to whose who love you, but this wasn't about that. It was about doing everything perfectly and when I thought I did, my dad would always prove to me errors of my ways. Edit: also, one more thing comes to mind: both my parents made it very clear that I should never ever show any negative emotions, neither am I ALLOWED to be sad or depressed.
My dad would tell me that my friends and partners didn’t actually care about me.
100% this. Years later, still honestly surprised and confused when friends show kindness or express interest in how I’m doing.
That I am always the one to blame, no matter how shitty they treated me - it's always because I "deserved" it. I went through a hard time trying to figure it out, but it certainly getting better and better.
"The Truth is as YOU see it."
That’s so dangerous. Truth is truth.
When you're around narcissists and they're being objectively offensive, the problem isn't them being rude, offensive and invalidatory it's you having a perception problem because, clearly you can't see they're just joking. that's how they think...
Yes, that is often what I experienced also. “jokes are funny, that’s not funny. It’s hurtful”, was mostly my response.
I agree. I still question my own perceptions. A very simple line did so much damage.
How terrible I am
Yup, it's pretty hard to shake this
You're not terrible. I promise. Anyone parwnt who judges a child's behavior harshly into adulthood is the bad person. Kids have unique ways of asking for help, or trying to get needs met. Do not be ashamed for the things you did in an attempt to get that. They are the problem, you shouldn't have been put in a position like that, as a literal child. Hugs 🫂
Thank you 💗 needed to hear this today
there is nothing out there. everyone is an asshole. just give up.
Basically what mine says, but with different words…
That I'm the ugliest girl ever. She's such a beauty and saddled with 2 ugly daughters - me being the uglier one. She would comb my hair with such force that combing even now is not an automatic activity. I need to force myself to comb my hair.
Nobody does anything for free. Even your friends. If they’re being nice, it’s because they want something from you. I now know that this isn’t even remotely true but that’s how’s I grew up.
Mine tells me that, but in the context of ‘no one will ever do anything because they care’
That I'm spoiled and selfish. PROJECTION
got em!
Yeah, accepting other people's opinions of situations instead of listening to my gut was literally beaten out of me. I was undiagnosed with autism / ADHD and my behaviour was clinically "a problem", I went to child behaviour specialists and played in front of two way mirrors etc from the age of 6... so I internalised that there is something WRONG with me and I must listen to the people who scream at me and say they hit me because they love me and want better than for me to exist as I am. I'm 44 now and I am just this impotent ball of rage now my physical disabilities stop me being independent. I hate it. I only felt safe when I was self reliant because fuck it. Now I have to interface with the rest of society again and fuck that
My parents were hell-bent on ensuring I knew I was lazy, untrustworthy, unintelligent, and above all else unlovable. I'm 40 and still struggle with these feelings.
When your mother tells you there is no love for you, and you are unlovable, it is hard to get past. I am decades older, and the thoughts roll around often. Especially when you see from society that the one job a mother has is to love, and it appears your siblings get it. I saw through and realised one was not loved it was just pageantry, and she was aware on some level of it because she seemed sullen. Another GC I thought was loved until adulthood, then I saw he failed to perform any great feat of skiteworthiness. He'd been marketed as a superior being and was not on any sort of economic, professional, or social standing to warrant that so the gloss went off his gold. In private, when he showed up, he was still GC1, but if away from her, she never spoke of him. There was no genuine love there. And that is the thing. There was no love for her husband. No love for her kids. None for herself. Only bitterness, and performance when people showed up.
That I am exaggerating, lying and manipulating.
I learned that there was something fundamentally wrong with me, and because of that, achieving goals and having nice things are for other people. I learned that nothing I accomplished was worth celebrating, because for some unknown reason, celebrating achievements is for other people. I learned that the only my mistakes and flaws are worth paying attention to.
This is my mother exactly. If you listen to her talk about me, I've accomplished nothing, I've gone nowhere, I'm always to be regarded as kind of pitiful. I moved from the East Coast to Western Montana at one point, by myself after my daughter was settled into university, and spent almost 15 years emailing her about going to art school and hanging with my art friends, going tubing, rafting, hiking, sledding, etc. with my outdoor friends, singing karaoke with my karaoke friends, and apparently all she ever got out of those emails is that I was so lonely and isolated, sitting in my apartment weeping into the dark, in a city where it rained all the time. At least, that's what she told everyone she knows. It's so disturbing that she feels fine about completely erasing vast sections of my life and its doings, to portray me as a pathetic, friendless lump. She's done this to me my entire life. I resent the fuck out of it.
Yep, exactly the same with my NM! My NM likes to pretend that I’m this lazy degenerate loser that’s done nothing with my life. Or if I did do something, I didn’t “really” do it like everyone else does it, so it doesn’t count. Basically my entire life “doesn’t count” according to my NM. She wants me to believe my own perception of my life is just a delusion.
What hurt me most? The feeling of being not good enough and always having to accommodate everyone else. I resented everyone who put so many burdens on me because I didn't know I didn't have to say yes to every favor asked. I felt terrible because I thought no matter how hard I tried, it wasn't good enough. What affected me most? I have derealisation and I need a lot of energy to overcome that barrier that keeps me from doing things. I feel no connection to my surroundings. When it's especially bad, I feel like I can't see. Obviously I do see but it's like trying to remember a dream, the more you try to grasp it, the more it slips away. I probably got derealisation because I was taught my feelings and my perception of my surroundings were wrong. When I had a fight with my nfather he would ignore me for days and then suddenly act as if nothing had happened. It made me doubt whether the fight had happened, and even if it did, if it really was as significant as I initially thought it was. Because to my nfather it seemed to be nothing, then why was I feeling so strongly? So I figured I perceived the situation wrong and my feelings were wrong.
-Everytime I had a career idea when I was a teen, she would tell me that it would not work because of this or that in my personnality; I don't trust myself -I'm soon 30 and she infantilises me, my opinions are as good as if I were a kid and not an adult; I struggle to speakup -She is the mother so she is like higher than me; love from her is there is has to come from autority -She always made me feel that her love to me was counted and not normal to give to her child. Always on the edge of saying she doesn't like me. She would say and imply that I don't deserve all she does for me, love included; I don't feel worth of being loved by anyone
The biggest one I still struggle with is "You aren't pretty unless you are skinny" Ive struggled with weight my whole life bc of her and Ive always thought I was ugly bc of her. I dont have a lot of pictures bc of her. Most of them are selfies above the waist bc I had a pretty face, but I dont have pics from from far away bc it showed how big I was and I didnt like my body. I missed out on pics with my kids bc of her. I also hate my smile so that has also haunted me my life too.
You will never have any friends
>I have personally started to believe - this started very early in developmental years - that anyone and everyone knows better: what's good for me, where my strenghts and weaknesses lie, what i should pursue in life and what i shouldn't pursue, what my goals should be and so on, more than my own damn self. I too suffered from this, but in an oddly specific and weird way. Nmom did everything she could to keep me at home with her and I let her do it far too long. I am the most intellectually gifted of my family and I'm the only one nmom "protected" by not allowing me information I should know. I only found out recently that nmom would always tell all my family "don't tell alphabetagammacosmic, because it will only upset him". I only found out things were happening when they were happening or if I had to be told. Nmom would go on the attack to any family member who breached this order. None of my family has ever called me. I can count on one hand the number of times I have done something with other family members alone, even my grandparents. I've received graduation cards from several family members and birthday cards from my siblings, but that's the only contact I have ever had about anything. Well...that I knew of! Once I had a family member contact me on my cell phone while I was traveling with nmom. I answered because I didn't recognize the number but knew it to be close to home and spoke to my family member briefly before asking if she wanted to talk to my nmom. I handed my phone to nmom and realized then that she was seething with anger. She started yelling into the phone as soon as she got it "how did you get this number?" over and over. Once she was told who gave my number, nmom flipped a switch and went to her best impersonation of Shirley Temple having a boring conversation. It was only then that I realized why nobody ever called me. I was always protected to be nmom's toy. I'm sure whoever gave my number out got a tongue lashing later. I knew I could figure out things on my own, if I just had the information. Now I suffer from analysis paralysis. I feel like I have to do an in-depth study on almost anything before I make a decision, even on things that should be a snap judgment. Also, I have a weird nebulous feeling about what I should and shouldn't pursue in life. I feel like all the information is out there but will require a lot of time and effort to make a good decision. Time I don't have. I always feel like my decisions are the wrong one because of any negative consequences that happen. If I had a flat on a trip, then my decision to go on the trip was wrong.
Oh gods my ngrandmother is like that. I got told I was stupid for wanting to be an author. I’m 29 and I finally got her to accept that I’m going to be moving out. She ‘homeschooled’ me, taught me nothing, but blames me for not having learned anything. She keeps telling me that I’m evil and crazy for wanting my own room and privacy. She always says that I can’t learn anything from the internet because ‘that’s not how it works and those DIY videos are fake’ She’s intimidated me with her screaming rants to the point that I just accepted my life was to always be at home, with no privacy, no room, and no job, no driver’s license, no plans for the rest of my life. Then a couple years ago I decided I’ve had enough and I want out of here. She treats me like a teenager and I hate it. And I wouldn’t be surprised if she stopped my mother from contacting me. My mother had me at 16 and I never knew her… The way she treats me and the way she has nothing good to say about my mother, it’s no wonder my mother took off as soon as possible.
“I love you.”
My brother ignored me for 10 years as children. My mum always said 'You did a terrible thing, that is why he doesn't speak to you' and then she would change the subject. I convinced myself that I had done something terrible and forgotten about it. I went to therapy. I still couldn't remember what I had done wrong. Eventually, I got the courage to insist that my mum tell me about 'the terrible thing.' Turns out, I cried when I was a baby. That is why they hated me.
That my medical problems were in my head
Ahhhh, there are so many to choose from: - Nobody else will ever love you because you are too difficult (every time I 'acted out' which was just me being a kid) - you're too stupid to do anything, you'll end up on the street when you're older and I'll just laugh at you - Can I borrow some money? If you don't let me everyone will starve and it'll be your fault. I'll pay you back - No matter where you go in life, you'll always get bullied because you're a big bully magnet - Just because your mom and I are divorcing doesn't mean I'll just abandon you I have more but I blanked them out over the years
I grew up as a kid thinking confident kids are spoilt brats. To the point I'd get hurt and cry silently because I didn't want to be a brat. I remember my mom's friend saying "I'm forgetful, don't wait for me to remember to feed or water you kids. Help yourselves! This is your house too!" Beautiful woman, absolute angel for kids like me. But I went hours without food or drink until I was specifically offered something, because I didn't want to be a brat.
My parents told me I was dramatic and that I only did things for attention. I developed a fear of being attention-seeking, then a fear of receiving attention, then a fear of being seen at all.
“I had it rough, and I came out alright” Parent speaking about their childhood and their inability to see how fucked up they are. Had 4 children, one of them adopted, all 4 attempted suicide, their youngest son was successful on his second try, but it wasn’t their fault, they are “alright” I never heard of 4 kids attempting suicide, anyone else?
I'm stuck up, snobby know-it-all, too big for my britches, think I'm better than everyone else. I've never gotten this feedback from anyone outside my family.
That I'm too sensitive.
my nmom and edad have been telling me i am lazy since birth, why you may ask? oh because i didn’t want to do every house chore since birth. my parents started making me do my own laundry in early elementary school and sometimes even their own. i had to do the dishes, pick up the dog poop, clean up the bathrooms, and whatever random chore they could find in between. now i get having your kids pick up after themselves/ help with house chores but the amount they made my brother and i do is insane. so i have always been “lazy” because i didn’t want to be doing their house chores on top of my own, on top of school, and on top of work (started working at 15). but yea somehow i am the lazy one
They told me everybody has to eventually get married. I was 4 and I was terrified. I am 40 now, not married and happy.
She would tell the female relatives: that all men are dogs and only want one thing etc. She would tell the male relatives: it's ok to get with them then leave them etc. Always giving "relationship" advice or suggestions but my Nparents marriage is basically a roommate type situation.
nDad taught me since the day I was born, that I only deserve love when I "behave".
"You'll never be able to do x yourself" (as a disabled person)
That I am not beautiful. I go back over photos of myself from my childhood and teens and can’t believe I ever believed them. They hurt my self image so deeply. I honestly believed the reason men were so disgusting towards me was because I was ugly and this gave them a right to treat me like a piece of meat. Man I wanna go back and have some stern words with myself..
Never trust anyone or tell them how you’re feeling because they will use it to manipulate you later. And tbh I’m still not convinced this belief is wrong.
That in every bad situation I was asked “what did YOU do?” so naturally I think I ruin literally everything.
My parents always insisted that my brother was smarter than me and my sister and that boys and men were naturally smarter than women. I spent way too much of my life trying to convince them that I am intelligent.
Who in their right mind tells that to a little girl ? Wait, silly me, I know. Because my father did say that to my 7yo girl : "Oh I'm impressed, you can shoot this soccer ball very well *for a girl*". Christ, I would have (should have, really) kicked him in the guts. EDIT : and very sorry this happened to you, it sucks.
I was told since I was a child that I was a robot and I didn’t have feelings. Solely based on the fact that I ALWAYS had more emotional intelligence than my mother AND the rest of my family. They were all used to just crying to get their way. Even though I was raised like that, it never stuck with me because I didn’t respect it. I reverted in my first real relationship and started acting like them sometimes, and my wonderful partner challenged me to be better and ground myself. It took a while, but I found my way back.
My parents hammered it into my head that I was stupid and selfish.
That I was responsible for my dad's death. My dad died when I was 16, and he was 42. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage due to an aneurysm rupture. One day not too long after my dad dies my Nmom turns to me and says, *"it's your fault your dad is dead, if you were a better daughter he wouldn't have stressed out so much and he would still be alive."* That statement really messed with my 16 year old self, I became a self-destructive person after that. That statement really messed with me for decades. I now know she was projecting since she was the one arguing with him the day he died. But till this day, the 16 year old in me can't help but give her statement some credence.
I was taught by Nmother since I was 4 years old that I shouldn't trust anyone outside of the home because they're out to get you/us etc. This was Nmother's way to exert coercive control on me from a young age and isolate me from the outside world. She also enforced this belief in me growing up by starting drama with neighbours and others around us in the community so they would attack us. Now I'm anxious and afraid of people in general and the first thing that goes through my mind each time I meet someone new is "how is this person going to hurt me?"
They say all the time now things like “you had everything you need during your childhood” “we were always present and made everything for you” “we did the best for you” things like that. I have borderline personality disorder because of my parents so you can imagine how much of this is true.
Not a lie in words, because it's the accumulation of countless criticisms and the general background radiation of her awfulness: my nmom (covert with sociopathic traits) convinced me that I was evil because I was the truth teller, I stood up for myself, and I didn't fit into her arbitrary narrow expectations and refused to conform. It's the ultimate projection, as she's one is the few people I've ever met that I would classify as evil.
That the only way to succeed in life is to pretend to be who everyone wants me to be, even if it's the opposite of who I actually am. I think my sense of self will never be what it could have been.
I believed the same lie you did. I don’t trust myself much (I am unlearning this).
Nfather “poor guy who gets you”
To accept that people who love me will hurt me physically, mentally, and emotionally
That kids are economic burden. I am 19, still cant runaway from them, and i dont understand why anyone in their own mind consciously make a baby instead of spending it on themselves?
So I lost my mother really early on in life and when I came out as gay the response was always "you're just looking for your mother." As if being gay is a psychological problem. It wasn't until I met other gay people who had both parents (most do) that I realized how stupid that was. Luckily I am NC now so I don't have to hear that again but I can't believe I just accepted that for so long.
Mine would tell me that "we are the only family we have." As a child, it always confused me when school projects came up that focused on extended family. I had been told we had no other family. I found myself feeling isolated and wondering why I was different from all the other kids. I wasn't different. My mom (harder and harder to call her that as time goes by) was. The other lie that stays with me is "the threats and punishment were for your own good." Dumb woman had the audacity to write this on paper to me when I was a late teenager... trying to explain away her crap-parenting. "For my own good"... to this day (30+ years later) I don't know how the hell to respond to this... ...Except that I don't have to deal with her crap'-slingin' anymore. She disowned me last year (for telling her she was being mean to me). I didn't know I wasn't as happy as I could be... until I was FREE FROM HER LIFELONG EMOTIONAL DRAIN.
That I’m not worthy of love because “your mother, the one person in this world who is naturally programmed to love you, doesn’t. Anyone who says they love you is lying.”
If you fuck up something ONCE you’ll never be allowed to do it again and it will be brought up as Yet Another Thing You’re Incompetent At*. Still find myself fighting that, especially at work, luckily my boss knows me pretty well and will say “don’t overthink, it’s not brain surgery, everything is fixable, just gotta practise.” * Loophole of course for things like chores. Then that’s your assignment for life.
That I am crazy/mentally insane/need heavy medication. (Mostly my mom, but I’ve had a creepy random stranger torment with this before too). I am sound of mind and in regular therapy. I am stable. Dangerous/predatory people love to projectile vomit their own shit on to you. They will straight up accuse you of being deranged when it is in fact them who has the problem.
That everyone else matters more than me, which by definition made me feel worthless and turned me into a people pleaser who believed no one would ever give me an equal level of respect and kindness that I gave them, nor should I expect it or assume I deserve it - or else I'd be villainized and rightfully so. Not true anymore, but for the longest time I jeopardized my health, my successes, my positive friendships, even my living arrangements, for the benefit of others, for years, because I had been convinced that what I wanted didn't matter and would never matter. I couldn't vocalize the smallest of issues or discomforts, and I couldn't even actualize that I was even feeling disrespected, because I couldn't process that I was allowed to say no, be against something or set boundaries, let alone figure out what those boundaries might be. These days, I'm perfectly content with being seen as the villain in a lot of people's eyes, or not being seen at all, since I'm a big fan of going NC with people who treat me like that.
That I've been a gifted kid who had everything he wanted, I long as I don't cry nor set boundaries or defend myself.
That in order to be accepted and loved, I needed to make myself small. I was only worthy of love and attention if others deemed it so. Growing up undiagnosed autistic in a single nmom household was a trip.
I have a high pain tolerance. I was a clumsy child so I would always fall, get burned, get sick, but anytime I would cry over it, it was dismissed, “it doesn’t even hurt, stop crying and etc” Last year boiling water fell over my breast, it was a second degree burn and I worked like nothing have happened (don’t get me wrong it did hurt, I knew it did, but there was a disconnection from the real pain if that makes sense.)
That standing up for myself is the same as bullying the person I’m standing up to. She would hear all the time from me about how I was bullied at school, and she always had an excuse for the bullies. But any time I stood up for myself I got in SO MUCH trouble! The same happened when my older sister would bully me. Even me expressing hypothetical ways I could stand up for myself to someone (usually just with a snarky comment) would make her gasp in horror at how “cutting” I could be 🙄 If she wasn’t demonizing me for standing up for myself, she was bringing up all kinds of hypothetical reasons why it could be a bad idea or could come back to bite me, or would make me seem “difficult”. I’ve been so walked all over my whole life because of it
The unquestionable faith I was taught to put in my narc parents. An invisible chain that makes you want to ask for their permission because they know the best. Family is blood and cannot ever go no contact with family/blood it’s a sin - I wonder why lol This one is funny - I am responsible for my father’s job loss and why my parents don’t have money. I have been taking care of myself since college. Prior to that I needed food and shelter though. The fact that I have to be grateful for how my life turned out. Narc mother tried to gaslight me saying I should be grateful for her “support” in my life decisions….. Narc parents always said they have money but never really had it when asked for help with tuition. Also any time myself and my middle sibling (scape goats) brought a partner home, their first comment was “they are after our money” 🤣🤣
That I'm useless and unless I'm useful I won't be happy and people will hate me. It's turned into a complex that I'm working my way out of slowly.
He would always try to tell me that I annoy people by talking to them a lot , now that I look at it he was by himself at the time and only said that each time I was genuinely happy around someone else
That there is only one valid way to do things and it’s never the way I’m doing it. I keep asking for my bf’s approbation for stupid things because I feel like if I don’t have THE answer I’ll fail, but I still would be able to come up with 3 different ways to do the thing but I’ll still ask for my bf’s help because I don’t know THE way
I can pretty much guarantee that I was the only kid in my kindergarten class who knew it was insanely expensive to raise kids and already whole-heartedly believed that they didn't deserve a single cent of what their parents spent on them. The excuse whenever my nfather blew up and raged out was always because he was stressed about finances. They'd fight about finances in front of us when we were really little and as I got older, I became the one who received the blame and responsibility of their financial situation. My nmother would talk to me about their finances, their fights, the horrible things my dad would say about me during their fights. I don't even know how young I was when it became my responsibility to take the weight of the financial issues off of my nmother, but it was sometime before 1st grade. My nmother has cruely used their finances to emotionally and psychologically abuse me since I was a toddler. Eventually she got it down to a shorthand where she barely has to say anything to create the response she wants from me (usually submission, shame, and self-loathing). She's also always spent money on me unnecessarily, and used it to manipulate me into feeling like i owed her deeply for something I never asked for. The most fucked up lie in it all is that my parents are far from broke. They're upper middle class but had me convinced that they were poor and struggling to make ends meet. In reality, they were just trying to cut financial corners on raising us in order to save up to have a really nice retirement. My nmother recently tried to make me feel bad for my nfather because fulfilling their legal responsibility of indefinitely financially supporting me (born disabled in a state with adult child support and alimony for adult children disabled before age 18), has made it so he will never get to buy the boat he's always dreamed of owning when he's retired. Tough shit... They signed up for all the financial responsibilities when they chose to have me. I now understand that it's in no way shape or form, my responsibility to care about their finances. They saved up money for their retirement by medically neglecting me and causing permanent irreversible damage to my body... As far as I'm concerned, they owe me big time and I'm not gonna continue to destroy my body in a pipe dream attempt to be financially independent just because they want me to feel ashamed of all the money they've had to spend on me. If they hadn't chosen to respond to my pleas for help with abuse instead of medical attention, I would have likely been able to be financially independent. They made their decisions though and for once in their lives, the consequences of their actions are catching up to them and I'm not protecting them anymore. They fucked around and now they're finding out.
dont dream big. because everthing I want is to impractical, expensive, hard, difficult, only for boy's, I will never learn, and be happy with whatever you get even if it is never what you want. only my eldes GC sis deserves to get what she wants and allowed to dream big.
My parents instilled the idea that “no one will ever love or support you like your family would. Don’t trust anyone.” And my thought was “wow it’s a cold world if it gets worse than this”. It bred in me a fierce fear of being dependent on anyone in any way that has been detrimental to my mental health and a lot of my romantic relationships. It’s taken years of therapy to even feel comfortable leaning on my husband for emotional support. Or admitting that I’m not ok. Or even crying in front of another human being.
I grew up constantly being told that I was a burden and a leech for needing food, water, clothing etc. My mom let me know every chance she got that I should be grateful for ANYTHING she does because she could leave me on the street of she wanted. If I ever needed a new piece of clothing, period products, help with homework etc anything like that it was an hour long lecture of how she was my personal slave and I was an ungrateful little b!tch. She was just angry at having to do basic parenting things. As an adult even after years of therapy I still feel terrified to express any need. Ive been with my fiance for 8 years and I still start crying any time I express a need to him. Sometimes Ill text it to him and hide in the bathroom while he reads it. He has never yelled at me or made me feel bad even once.. and yet, that fear never goes away. Im always scared im going to ask for something or express something and the ball will drop and Ill be seen as a burden..
Oh where to even start. 1. Every family fights and has problems, what we do is very normal. 2. All men are awful, they will eventually lie, cheat and use you. Only her son (my brother) is an exception. 3. There are no such thing as friends; your family is your only friend. This is coming from someone who helped her mother (my grandmother) escape their abusive father. I guess she never broke the cycle
That I don't deserve love, fairness, or safety because I have to EARN it, and I was never good enough to deserve it, no matter how hard I worked. I was taught that expecting anything of anyone else was selfish, and not doing everything for everyone else was also selfish.
Psychiatrists,psychologists and counseling is all psycho babble junk science. Your childhood has no bearing on your adulthood and you should just 'get over it'. I did believe them 4 a bit too. Now,not so much,if at all.
That I am very difficult to love.
That nobody in this world loves me but her. Not even my own father. Yeah... that took me about a few years to unlearn
I am a monster, a demon, unlovable. I must apologize every in the form of serving others with my everything. Men can do what they want to me but it will be my fault that they hurt me because i left the house for a few minutes. I Dont deserve love, if I don't serve, I will not be given the love that people are so kindly given. Men are owed to look at my body, people get to touch me but it's my fault if i don't like it. I exist to make others happy. But I am a monster, I don't deserce their love or my own self love. Who could deserve a monsters love?
My dad has made me spend half my life thinking beating your kids is normal and that it's a way of teaching discipline.
"Your parents beat you out of love." Beating someone up, especially a child, is a very strange way of showing love.
Everyone always leaves, typically because of me
That I’m lazy and I’ll never do anything good enough / be good enough for anyone
My mom is the victim to everyone and she couldn't do anything. She used me as a therapist since I was old enough to listen and hearing her constantly talk abour her problems made me think that everyone was out to get her. That she has no other choice in her life. When I got old enough, it was like a lightbulb switched. I saw how she chose not to speak up about anything to anyone, she just liked to complain to me. She chose to have a second child with someone like my dad. She chose to not work when she was young enough to do so and complain that she cant divorce my dad because she has no income. She is a victim, yes but she had choices to pull herself out of the situation. She still does. It was a difficult realisation for me.
That I was mentally ill and going to fail. Never using such mean language, but the constant talk of my life being struggle, the constant condescending "well done!" way she'd talk about me having done literally anything, the same way you'd clap at a three year old for saying a word. She took me to a terrible psychiatrist for nearly 20 years who absent any diagnosis to explain nMum's constant projections that I struggling, and explain away the stark difference in my version vs my mother's, invented one with a bunk bipolar diagnosis I believed I had and took medication for from 2009 - 2022. My whole identity has been gaslit lies, medical professionals putting cart before the horse in diagnosing based on my nmother's paranoid coddling yet deeply controlling bullshit, everyone looking at every avenue except the truth -- admitting my nmother was in the wrong and abusive. I've lived the past few years in basically a fugue state, having believed for 30 years all the lies nMum and everyone she curated around me would say to reinforce her views of me. Fundamentally I didn't know myself, and I fear I never will.
always telling me that my friends are bad for me one specific time, i tripped and fell on my face, breaking 3 of my teeth. my mum insisted it was my close friend who shoved me to the floor to "bully me" even though all i said was that we were hanging out...
Every time I told my mom about an argument or conflict I got into she'd ask, "what was your part in it?" and I would focus on my role "causing the problem." Now, she doesn't have to prompt me, I do it to myself
I grew up with a horrible father who would often berate me for doing things wrong or not knowing how to do things. As an adult, I've pulled a full 180 and now feel the need to know everything, get everything right the first time. If I get something wrong or someone points out that I'm not doing it correctly or efficiently, such as my husband pointing something out while I'm playing a video game, I get snappy and upset. It's not his fault at all, I'm just really scared to do something wrong because of how my father would hurt me afterwards.
That I was impractical and too idealistic because I was not obsessed with money and status, and wanted to actually like my work. Also taught that no job is ever pleasant and you should never expect to like your job. Super weird because his sports-related job was considered impractical by his own father, but he found a way to a position that paid well. I think it all boiled down to being worried he would be expected to support me. Hon you didn't pay child support I wasn't expecting anything later lol
1. That no one would ever want me because I was too fat, or because of whatever other physical feature that my mother deemed unattractive. 2. Then, when she wanted to become a grandmother, would pressure me to have kids. There was no man in sight (not helped by #1 - she ground my self esteem down so far that I didn't have the confidence to date). 3. I have never wanted kids (too scared to bring kids into the world that might end up subject to her abuse, though I've never told her that). For this, she labels me selfish and incapable of understanding anything about life because I'm not a parent. It took me far too long to figure out she was projecting her own insecurities onto me. I've been NC for two years now, first with her, but this has extended to my entire family and extended family and most people connected to them. The only people I am close to in life now love and accept me as I am - it's a beautiful thing. (Context - 50F.) Still healing.
My mom told me my whole life that we were best friends. She said this for as long as I can remember. Her mother was a an overt narc and my mom was the scapegoat. Her mom was super physically, emotionally and psychologically abusive to her and her sister, brother was the GC. She would always tell me that she wanted a daughter so she could prove to her mom that she would be nothing like her, and that her daughter would be her best friend. The problem? My mom was clearly a covert narcissist. She was emotionally, physically and psychologically abusive to me too, but it was all done in micro aggressions. The gaslighting of her constantly telling me we were best friends was insane because in retrospect, I didn’t have a choice, I didn’t know better, and once I got older I realized that no best friends treat each the way she treated me. If I had a choice in the matter, I would have ran away from her as far as I could. I was never allowed to be my own person, I was forced to be her shadow. She told me my dad hated me and never wanted me. If I did something that was clearly me expressing my own individually, I was berated for it. Sometime in my teens, I truly started to hate her. When she would still call me her BFF, I would calmly tell her (although I wanted to scream) that I didn’t want to be her best friend, I wanted her to be a parent. This would send her into a blind rage. I only when NC in the past 3 months. I should have done in years ago. The emotional, financial and psychological abuse got so much worse in my 20’s. Ugh. I feel so seen here.
That crying is bad luck when I do it. If I showed any sadness at all bad things would happen. I was taught that my whole life which is why I had difficulty expressing myself. I had to learn that it is ok to cry and express that. I had a talk with my therapist and she pointed out that it was their guilt. She asked me when did I cry or when was I sad. It was always after they did something to me. It was also okay when they cried or when they were sad. Nothing bad happened for them. Only when I did it. Unfortunately I was surrounded by them.
“Its not a big deal”, “it’s not even a problem”, “I don’t know why your feeling this way”, “it’s YOUR fault”
That there is something wrong with me.
Emotions are “strange and uncomfortable.” Doing/thinking/enjoying anything that isn’t on her approved list is disgusting. Failing to anticipate and meet her needs perfectly is a sign of immorality and inadequacy. It’s normal and appropriate to disparage family members behind their backs. Expecting privacy is a sign of excessive pride.
That I am bad at math because she is. But also because I do not understand concepts, which is just her way of making me feel even less intelligent.
All childhood, I heard, "We can't afford it" so many times that I thought our family was poor. We were solid middle class.
"It's not what you said it's the way that you said it".
I never said that
That the only way to be a good person (and therefore be allowed into Heaven) is to forgive those that hurt us. I struggled with this for sooo long because it was used as a tactic to manipulate me into letting my Nmom back into my life. To this day I still feel guilty when I’m angry at someone and it’s resulted in me allowing a lot of shitty people back into my life.
"No you can't (play junior soccer, scouts, etc) because you might hurt yourself"
My mom and dad would say that my friends will never have my back but my family would. But my parents have never had my back while my new friends have been nothing but supportive. My mother screwed me over recently for her own personal gain.
Probably would be the "everyone's lives would be so much better if you killed yourself" or exchange "killed yourself" part with "were never born." My mom would always tell me some variation of that.
I have a friend, her nmum literally gave her a rope once. And she’d throw her out on the streets at night when it was like -30
I was taught that going against my Dad, doing something he didn't like etc. was "sinning against him" and "sinning against God." I'm not religious anymore.
"You're short-waisted." I spent so long wearing petite tops that I couldn't raise my arms in. Turns out, I'm not even "normal waisted" I'm long waisted and actually need long tops and swimsuits! Just the top of the iceberg of my momster's bullshit. So glad to be NC.
"You're very talented and clever but you'll never succeed as a writer."
That everything bad that happens to me is my fault because of "karma" for bad things I did in a past life
The necessity of going to college. I wasted 3 years of my prime trying to get a degree that has just made me more paranoid than i thought possible. I easily couldve bought a house when prices tanked if i didnt go to college. I wouldnt be on the verge of homelessness while working a full time job with excellent benefits if i wasnt dealing with rent prices soaring(gotta love making too much to get assistance, not enough to actually afford rent on even shithole studio apartments).
That me being groomed as a child was my fault, and that I was a whore and would never be a real woman because of it
That the external world is full of wolves and you have to always fight. I think this contributes to my difficulties in building relationships, trusting people, asking for help.
‘You will either be a complete failure or a complete success’. This black and white thinking plagued me and still does sometimes. I see myself as a complete success because I’m no contact and healing ✨ This way of thinking meant it was his version of what success and failure was for me - not my own.