In case my sentences below help anyone who’s an abused caregiver by the LOs they’re caring for…(caregiver is anyone who helps; it doesn’t have to be hands-on) (abuse doesn’t have to be verbal/physical/etc…it can also be exploitative of your time, stealing too much of your time and life)….
Some sentences to consider:
1. Is your plan to start your life only when the LO has passed away?
2. How about letting others (paid non-family caregivers) deal with them till the end? Depending on how bad the abuse is, some people feel enormous freedom going completely no contact. For the first time in their life, they’re not abused. Remember, you’re VERY LIKELY to get a health problem later in life as a direct result of the continuous abuse. Now that you know that (you can’t say you weren’t warned), are you willing to give your consent to that future health problem?
3.You might not realize it, but your abuser is using contact with you, as an opportunity to get pot-shots in before they die.
4.”Don’t drink poison just because you’re thirsty.”
5.Can daughters (it’s normally the girl who’s abused) thrive and heal? Yes. But most likely you’ll need to get away from the abusive LO, even though you wish to help them. Ironically, your success at helping them, has extended your abuser’s life AND therefore also extended the amount of time you’ll continue to be abused!!
6.Some people find it useful to stop calling their mom, “mom”. A mom is loving, kind, cares about YOUR best interests. What you have is an enemy.
7.She doesn’t want you to succeed.
8.Success is the best revenge. You will achieve incredible things without your abuser’s influence.
I wonder if the abuse they throw at us while we caregive, is poison. They had poison in them, they throw the poison at us. Now we’re in a bad mood, until the poison leaves our body a few days later, or unless we also spit the poison at someone else (we don’t, because we’re nice).
You often hear that abusive elderly parents live long. One reason is that, they shove all their caregiving issues onto their child, which means they themselves have very little stress since they have a slave solving their stressful problems.
I’m thinking maybe yet another reason abusive elderly parents live long, is actually because they want to abuse you as long as possible! They do what they can to stay alive, for that purpose! They know if they die, you’ll be free of abuse.
To others who’re helping their abusive elderly LOs, remember:
A responsible, empathetic, non-abusive parent by definition wouldn’t want their adult child to caregive. (By caregiving, I mean helping, whatever form that takes; a huge chunk of your time and life). That includes whatever sibling, who’s trying to push you into that role, so they’re not it.
An empathetic, non-exploitative parent wants a solution for their elderly problems that doesn’t involve stealing your time. A favor here and there might be understandable. But not a huge chunk of your time. You’re in your prime and you were given life to live it.
As InvisibleOne wrote:
“Please value your life, even when others do not.”
The point of this thread, is that many posters are in this situation right now: it’s totally connected to caregiving. The posters are caring for abusive, elderly parents. That makes it very hard for the caregiver. (By caregiver, I don’t mean hands-on. I mean any form of helping/caregiving).
Sometimes I use quotation marks in my posts below: because it comes from the internet: various people with ideas on how to understand what elderly abusers do.
For those who are lucky that it’s not happening to them, great! Lucky!
But it’s happening to many people on the forum. There are many abusive elderly people. It helps to see clearly what they’re doing to you, while you’re helping.
I had an abusive elderly client for about two months, and I was afraid to leave my apartment for about a year afterwards. PTSD is real. My blood pressure was stroke range for about a year and now I have heart issues.
I'm sharing this because if this short span of time hurt me, just think and feel how this is affecting you for the long term. Abuse is abuse. It doesn't matter who is doing the abuse, it will have a hold on you for a long time.
I sought out therapy. I shared an incident with the therapist and told her how this client had literally blocked me with her walker on her basement steps and threatened me if I touched her, she was going to call and report elder abuse. Now this was a dementia client, and the next day told her cousin that she and I had a debate. Sometimes I wonder how much of this is dementia and how much of this abusive nonsense is mixed in with their illness. I quit the case. No amount of money is worth my health.
A person's personality even an abusive one will come shining through once those filters are gone. I would observe if this behavior will stop when others are around. If the behavior stops when others are around, this means this person still has some measure of control. Maybe, I'm in denial, but a lot of things that are said about the brain being broke may work in some instances. However, abusers always abuse when there are no witnesses around.
ventingisback, I totally agree with you. We do have an obligation to ourselves and I also believe others have an obligation to have a place where people who are being abused can report it. There already are means for children and spouses, just not adult victims of narcissist abuse. Sometimes even when people go no contact, the abuser won't let them. Also, there are cases when the person who is abused is the only caretaker. There are certainly challenges along the way for people dealing with this sort of abuse. It is my hope that there will be a means for reporting it and having real change take place. I have heard one known therapist state that they think that narcissist abuse should be a crime, likened to domestic and child abuse. They explained also that their hands were tied at this point to make real change happen, but I disagree. People have to hear from them also for this to occur. It would be great if that would happen also. So many people are suffering, reading about caregivers also who have their families ripped apart, as well as their finances sometimes being wiped out, as well as their health being effected badly. I'd like to see real change like starting a petition regarding narcissist abuse for a start and to get it out there right from the people who are experiencing it.
“I discovered HOW STRONG I AM AND HOW MUCH SHE HELD ME BACK. I went through a second puberty in my 40s and I AM NOTHING COMPARED TO WHEN I LIVED UNDER HER ROOF. I'm extremely confident and HAPPY!!! THERE’S ABSOLUTELY NO HEAVINESS in my home. YOUR MOTHER DOESNT FEEL GUILTY WITH HOW SHE TREATS YOU. SHE EXPECTS TO BE RESPECTED EVEN THOUGH SHE DISRESPECTS EVERYONE. THIS IS NOT NORMAL!!!!!!!
YOU HAVE ONE LIFE, LIVE IT WITH PEACE....WITHOUT HER.”
The same thing happened to me. I was negative, though I was a big failure, though I was selfish and that I was the cause of moms complaining. She is still alive but I moved out 2 1/2 years ago. My attitude, self-esteem, happiness and more has totally changed. I have the confidence to stick up for myself and understand it's OK TO BE HAPPY!
“The truth is, there are a lot of bad people in this world. These people are everywhere. It's up to good people to put up boundaries to keep the bad people out. Bad people have no boundaries.”
Yes venting: "The truth is, there are a lot of bad people in this world." I was just going to write about how absolutely, totally, I am tired of hearing the word "narcissistic" tossed around on this forum. (I think someone else recently said something similar, but there may have been other issues with that posting). And I was just going to write using the word "bad" -- precisely -- as to what I have used in the later years of my life to characterize certain people. They are "bad" (but if there's "bad" then there has to be "good," no?) But of course the older I get, instead of getting "wiser" I find myself questioning more and more -- everything. Forgive my digression(s) I have talked to others about dementia as I have no close-relative experience with it. Someone who does have experience in this recently said how glad she was that her grandmother (who she moved into a house down the street from hers to watch over the woman) remained as "sweet" as she always was when she began suffering from dementia. She then added that this is NOT always the case, i.e. someone who starts experiencing dementia symptoms who may have had a wonderful, kind, even tempered personality all his/her life may become just awful to deal with as they are afflicted with dementia. As to why this may be more prevalent now than in other times, i.e. a greater number of difficult elderly people than in a bygone era (if that is in fact true) here's a comment I read recently that made me think. Michael Connelly (one of our top fiction/crime writers, also on Netflix I hear) very recently published a book with a dialogue between Harry Bosch (his main character) and a young detective he is mentoring. They've just been dealing with some awful, depraved crime and the younger one asks Harry: "WHY?" In this novel, written during or in in the post-Pandemic period, has Harry make this reply: "A lot of people are very angry right now..." Then, to add some punch to this observation, the younger detective replies something like this: "Oh. I think I understand." Harry replies: "NO!!! I hope you never do understand." Anyway, life is very tough for a lot of people right now, and the elderly may feel particularly vulnerable. Are they bad people? Narcissistic people (whatever that means...) I don't know. But I'm pretty sure they are probably very angry people.
“Yes. Healing was possible for me after 20 years of narcissistic abuse from parents, even if the next 20 involved narcissistic abuse from other sources.”
I didn’t know this term existed (DARVOing). It only took me XXX years to discover this.
ALL abusers do this, DARVOing you.
DARVO ("deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender")
1. The abuser denies the abuse ever took place.
2. When confronted with evidence, the abuser then attacks the person that was abused (and/or the person's family and/or friends) for attempting to hold the abuser accountable for their actions, and finally
3. The abuser claims that they are actually the victim in the situation, thus reversing the positions of victim and offender. It often involves not just playing the victim, but also victim blaming.
I think we get confused with narc moms and dads, because there’s the word “mom” and “dad”.
If any “friend” treated us that way, we’d immediately see it’s crazy and wrong, and we’d get rid of the “friend”. We would see they are an EMEMY.
But with our crazy Nmoms and Ndads, we don’t see that actually they are our ENEMY, not a friend. Narcs feel self-hatred and spit it at us. And they’ll sabotage our life because they’re our ENEMY.
Think of all you would have achieved without such an ENEMY in your life? With instead a normal, nice parent in your life?
They’re our ENEMY. None of what they do to is is that surprising, because that’s what ENEMIES are for!! Instead of that nice song “That’s what friends are for”…
”**When confronting a narcissist. Sometimes it might be better not to. They NEVER will own their sh**t. They CAN'T take responsibility, and WILL use anything you say against you in the future. And they WILL twist facts, and NEGLECT your emotions. **”
Survival and NC (No Contact) are not healing. It’s not enough.
Acceptance is not healing.
You can’t heal in the same environment that hurts you.
“How do I get to the other side of it and feel healed and whole, and at peace, that nothing can undo my peace? That I no longer become an open wound when someone touches the scabs of my past trauma?”
Possible answers: —Finding your smile again is a major victory. —Once you can consistently have a positive mood and slowly let go of the pain, that's also another step. (That’s not me, since my name is Ventingisback) —Do things you weren't allowed to do. —Reclaim your life in the way you knew it should've been. —The world is your oyster at this point. You don't need to figure everything out tommorow morning.
“I'm 60 years old, and just realized that I had an Nmom. I always knew something was 'off', but now I know what. This whole time I thought it was me....”
Yeah, I’m a slow learner. I was in my fifties when it finally dawned on me.
”DARVO” nails it.
If I ever dared to ask her to stop a behaviour that hurt my feelings or was inappropriate, she’d deny ever having done or said it. When I provided specific examples and circumstances, she’d become very angry. Then she’d turn it around that I should learn to understand her and stop picking on her. I’d tell her that I didn’t want to fight. I simply wanted to make her aware that, when she acted like that, it hurt my feelings terribly and pushed me away.
It baffled me my whole life that, after she was nasty to me, somehow she was the victim.
You know what kills me? I’m that friend everyone comes to for advice. For perspective. For support. At the same time, examining my own upbringing has left me feeling sad and angry - an emotional train wreck.
Actually you do know what they’re doing: they’re intentionally trying to harm you, and most likely attacking your character so you suddenly have to defend yourself. They want you to constantly defend yourself.
Just act dumb, like you don’t understand what they’re saying.
Venting - at first when I saw that your old post was coming back to life I almost bypassed it, but I'm so very glad I didn't. Your updated comments are so incredibly relevant to what is happening with my narcissistic father-in-law right now and I'm literally compiling them into an email to share with my SIL and sharing them with my DH today.
As is almost always the case when someone moves to a nursing home - my FIL has ramped up his behavior because he is not happy he had to move. But as is ALWAYS the case with a narcissist - he is reaching new heights of underhanded and contemptible behaviors that make me want to just walk away entirely. BUT naturally due to the years of conditioning for my DH and SIL, the process is very long and hard for them to learn and begin to really protect themselves from who their father really is.
My FIL is under psychiatric care, and since he is undiagnosed as NPD, I did mention to the social worker (with permission from DH and SIL) that we have long felt that he had an undiagnosed personality disorder after some things that have occurred the last two weeks. I'm hoping at the bare minimum that the psychiatrist might weigh in and give my DH and SIL some coping skills on how to deal with what is going on with their dad and the over the top manipulation we are seeing now that we can't watch his every move from home.
Narcissistic abuse in the elderly is a new level of "fun". The entitlement is strong.
More on what abusers do, in case this helps anyone:
“…All of them claim to have ‘lost control’, but they are super charming and in control when the cops show up or someone else, and how the abuse is never to a boss or person of authority…and he’s careful that the damage isn’t bad enough to need a hospital, and the stuff he breaks is never HIS stuff…
“The ones where the police kind of blew it off as a misunderstanding and the judge gave them a slap on the wrist? Those abusers came back HARDER.
“They abuse because they feel entitled to. Because they LIKE it and how it makes them feel.
“No amount of therapy will fix bad character.
“He knows he’s being sh*tty and he doesn’t care.”
“All you end up doing is wasting your time and making yourself sick with effort to change someone who is unwilling.”
To heck with the abuser. My dad was abusive. He couldn't beat us anymore, but he did have a mouth.
I went to Weight Watchers and discussed it there and about my weight gain. One lady told me to stop talking to him. Once he died, let one of my siblings call me. It played out exactly that way.
I had dad over one day a month before he passed. He was himself that day and had a lot to say to me. He stopped walking shortly after his last visit because the cancer was taking over. I'm glad I got to spend one last visit with him. This is the visit I chose to remember him by.
Not about how to heal, but understanding what abusers do:
In case this is useful for anyone.
From the internet: this is a list of things abusive people do. The abusive person could be a family member (often it’s a mother), a stranger…or even a “friend”. Be careful, because a bad friend can behave this way, too.
1. Blame-shifting. It’s an abusive tactic used to control conversations, and signals that this person cannot and will not be accountable to his responsibility. He’ll verbally attack, instead of admitting his fault.
2. This person isn’t a friend. They’re making themself feel better by criticizing you.
3. In combination with gaslighting ("He later claims he had no idea you were upset").
4. If you want to know someone’s character, say “no”. Everyone’s nice when they get along. Try saying “no”, try disagreeing. Then you see that person’s real character.
5. Be careful of sentences such as, “This conversation is over for me. Whatever problem you have with what I said, you’ll have to solve it in your own head.”
6. They accuse you of doing things they're doing (gas-lighting, projecting). The blame is no longer on them, in order to put you on the defense.
7. is the stink bomb This is the last resort, usually when they've been blatantly caught or called out for something they know they did wrong.
They throw a completely unfounded, terrible accusation at you.
Now you're defending yourself against wild accusations that you never could have even dreamed of. Who could prepare for that?
And once again, that's the whole point. The blame is now off of them, and now you're the one in hot water.
Wow, venting. That's amazing Good for you!!! I agree that a total break is necessary at times for healing and clear thinking; as is learning about what you are dealing with. Both helped me enormously. I know jealousy is a big issue with narcs. Now to keep your boundaries firm. Boundaries have to change sometimes. They are not etched in stone. We change, other people change, circumstances change, so boundaries have to change.
I am so happy for you and glad you have your good life back. ((((((hugs)))))
In case my sentences below help anyone who’s an abused caregiver by the LOs they’re caring for…(caregiver is anyone who helps; it doesn’t have to be hands-on) (abuse doesn’t have to be verbal/physical/etc…it can also be exploitative of your time, stealing too much of your time and life)….
Some sentences to consider:
1. Is your plan to start your life only when the LO has passed away?
2. How about letting others (paid non-family caregivers) deal with them till the end? Depending on how bad the abuse is, some people feel enormous freedom going completely no contact. For the first time in their life, they’re not abused. Remember, you’re VERY LIKELY to get a health problem later in life as a direct result of the continuous abuse. Now that you know that (you can’t say you weren’t warned), are you willing to give your consent to that future health problem?
3.You might not realize it, but your abuser is using contact with you, as an opportunity to get pot-shots in before they die.
4.”Don’t drink poison just because you’re thirsty.”
5.Can daughters (it’s normally the girl who’s abused) thrive and heal? Yes. But most likely you’ll need to get away from the abusive LO, even though you wish to help them. Ironically, your success at helping them, has extended your abuser’s life AND therefore also extended the amount of time you’ll continue to be abused!!
6.Some people find it useful to stop calling their mom, “mom”. A mom is loving, kind, cares about YOUR best interests. What you have is an enemy.
7.She doesn’t want you to succeed.
8.Success is the best revenge. You will achieve incredible things without your abuser’s influence.
I would love that. Not my problem anymore.
“2. …are you willing to give your consent to that future health problem?”
NO.
You often hear that abusive elderly parents live long. One reason is that, they shove all their caregiving issues onto their child, which means they themselves have very little stress since they have a slave solving their stressful problems.
I’m thinking maybe yet another reason abusive elderly parents live long, is actually because they want to abuse you as long as possible! They do what they can to stay alive, for that purpose! They know if they die, you’ll be free of abuse.
A responsible, empathetic, non-abusive parent by definition wouldn’t want their adult child to caregive. (By caregiving, I mean helping, whatever form that takes; a huge chunk of your time and life). That includes whatever sibling, who’s trying to push you into that role, so they’re not it.
An empathetic, non-exploitative parent wants a solution for their elderly problems that doesn’t involve stealing your time. A favor here and there might be understandable. But not a huge chunk of your time. You’re in your prime and you were given life to live it.
As InvisibleOne wrote:
“Please value your life, even when others do not.”
By doing that, they do the following:
“She didn't actually want me succeeding or going anywhere, but she would never have admitted that or wanted anyone to know about it.”
Sometimes I use quotation marks in my posts below: because it comes from the internet: various people with ideas on how to understand what elderly abusers do.
For those who are lucky that it’s not happening to them, great! Lucky!
But it’s happening to many people on the forum. There are many abusive elderly people. It helps to see clearly what they’re doing to you, while you’re helping.
It means while you’re helping them, they’re abusing you. They’re DARVOing you:
deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender.
I'm sharing this because if this short span of time hurt me, just think and feel how this is affecting you for the long term. Abuse is abuse. It doesn't matter who is doing the abuse, it will have a hold on you for a long time.
I sought out therapy. I shared an incident with the therapist and told her how this client had literally blocked me with her walker on her basement steps and threatened me if I touched her, she was going to call and report elder abuse. Now this was a dementia client, and the next day told her cousin that she and I had a debate. Sometimes I wonder how much of this is dementia and how much of this abusive nonsense is mixed in with their illness. I quit the case. No amount of money is worth my health.
A person's personality even an abusive one will come shining through once those filters are gone. I would observe if this behavior will stop when others are around. If the behavior stops when others are around, this means this person still has some measure of control. Maybe, I'm in denial, but a lot of things that are said about the brain being broke may work in some instances. However, abusers always abuse when there are no witnesses around.
I’m kidding. No mystery.
Abusers abuse specific people, with whom they think there are no consequences.
“I discovered HOW STRONG I AM AND HOW MUCH SHE HELD ME BACK. I went through a second puberty in my 40s and I AM NOTHING COMPARED TO WHEN I LIVED UNDER HER ROOF. I'm extremely confident and HAPPY!!! THERE’S ABSOLUTELY NO HEAVINESS in my home.
YOUR MOTHER DOESNT FEEL GUILTY WITH HOW SHE TREATS YOU. SHE EXPECTS TO BE RESPECTED EVEN THOUGH SHE DISRESPECTS EVERYONE. THIS IS NOT NORMAL!!!!!!!
YOU HAVE ONE LIFE, LIVE IT WITH PEACE....WITHOUT HER.”
Could be like going back to live with the abusers, getting involved romantically with abusers…”
“Yes.
Healing was possible for me after 20 years of narcissistic abuse from parents, even if the next 20 involved narcissistic abuse from other sources.”
!!!
I didn’t know this term existed (DARVOing). It only took me XXX years to discover this.
ALL abusers do this, DARVOing you.
DARVO ("deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender")
1. The abuser denies the abuse ever took place.
2. When confronted with evidence, the abuser then attacks the person that was abused (and/or the person's family and/or friends) for attempting to hold the abuser accountable for their actions, and finally
3. The abuser claims that they are actually the victim in the situation, thus reversing the positions of victim and offender. It often involves not just playing the victim, but also victim blaming.
I think we get confused with narc moms and dads, because there’s the word “mom” and “dad”.
If any “friend” treated us that way, we’d immediately see it’s crazy and wrong, and we’d get rid of the “friend”. We would see they are an EMEMY.
But with our crazy Nmoms and Ndads, we don’t see that actually they are our ENEMY, not a friend. Narcs feel self-hatred and spit it at us. And they’ll sabotage our life because they’re our ENEMY.
Think of all you would have achieved without such an ENEMY in your life? With instead a normal, nice parent in your life?
They’re our ENEMY. None of what they do to is is that surprising, because that’s what ENEMIES are for!! Instead of that nice song “That’s what friends are for”…
”Don’t you miss the non-empathy?”
”**When confronting a narcissist. Sometimes it might be better not to. They NEVER will own their sh**t. They CAN'T take responsibility, and WILL use anything you say against you in the future. And they WILL twist facts, and NEGLECT your emotions. **”
Acceptance is not healing.
You can’t heal in the same environment that hurts you.
“How do I get to the other side of it and feel healed and whole, and at peace, that nothing can undo my peace? That I no longer become an open wound when someone touches the scabs of my past trauma?”
Possible answers:
—Finding your smile again is a major victory.
—Once you can consistently have a positive mood and slowly let go of the pain, that's also another step. (That’s not me, since my name is Ventingisback)
—Do things you weren't allowed to do.
—Reclaim your life in the way you knew it should've been.
—The world is your oyster at this point. You don't need to figure everything out tommorow morning.
“I'm 60 years old, and just realized that I had an Nmom. I always knew something was 'off', but now I know what. This whole time I thought it was me....”
”DARVO” nails it.
If I ever dared to ask her to stop a behaviour that hurt my feelings or was inappropriate, she’d deny ever having done or said it. When I provided specific examples and circumstances, she’d become very angry. Then she’d turn it around that I should learn to understand her and stop picking on her. I’d tell her that I didn’t want to fight. I simply wanted to make her aware that, when she acted like that, it hurt my feelings terribly and pushed me away.
It baffled me my whole life that, after she was nasty to me, somehow she was the victim.
You know what kills me? I’m that friend everyone comes to for advice. For perspective. For support. At the same time, examining my own upbringing has left me feeling sad and angry - an emotional train wreck.
“All they want is to hurt someone, they enjoy it, they crave it and they won't change. Treat them like serial killers.”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
Repeat,
“I don’t understand.”
Then change subject, or leave. Just act dumb, like you’re intellectually not able to understand.
If you’re on the phone, just say the connection’s really bad, you can’t hear. Or, play dumb.
Try not to argue, get upset/sad/hurt. That’s exactly what they want. Just act dumb. You don’t understand what they’re saying.
Just act dumb, like you don’t understand what they’re saying.
A toxic person is not worth a nanosecond of your time.
A toxic mother is always going to seek to do harm. Never forget that “deceit” is their middle name.
Live your own, best life. Make your own choices and your own way through the world.
As is almost always the case when someone moves to a nursing home - my FIL has ramped up his behavior because he is not happy he had to move. But as is ALWAYS the case with a narcissist - he is reaching new heights of underhanded and contemptible behaviors that make me want to just walk away entirely. BUT naturally due to the years of conditioning for my DH and SIL, the process is very long and hard for them to learn and begin to really protect themselves from who their father really is.
My FIL is under psychiatric care, and since he is undiagnosed as NPD, I did mention to the social worker (with permission from DH and SIL) that we have long felt that he had an undiagnosed personality disorder after some things that have occurred the last two weeks. I'm hoping at the bare minimum that the psychiatrist might weigh in and give my DH and SIL some coping skills on how to deal with what is going on with their dad and the over the top manipulation we are seeing now that we can't watch his every move from home.
Narcissistic abuse in the elderly is a new level of "fun". The entitlement is strong.
By the way, I’ve also compiled all this info into an email to myself. Very useful to look at, once in a while.
Be careful of people who try to make your life just a little bit more frustrating.
“If they play pigeon chess. I knew an abuser who could never be wrong about anything even if he was wrong. He played pigeon chess all the time.
“It knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and flies back to its flock to claim victory.”
“…All of them claim to have ‘lost control’, but they are super charming and in control when the cops show up or someone else, and how the abuse is never to a boss or person of authority…and he’s careful that the damage isn’t bad enough to need a hospital, and the stuff he breaks is never HIS stuff…
“The ones where the police kind of blew it off as a misunderstanding and the judge gave them a slap on the wrist? Those abusers came back HARDER.
“They abuse because they feel entitled to. Because they LIKE it and how it makes them feel.
“No amount of therapy will fix bad character.
“He knows he’s being sh*tty and he doesn’t care.”
“All you end up doing is wasting your time and making yourself sick with effort to change someone who is unwilling.”
WHAT TO DO:
1.
Put your own needs first.
Stop worrying about pleasing or protecting the abuser.
Take care of yourself and your needs, and let the other person worry about themselves.
2.
Realize you can’t “fix” them.
You can’t reason your way into their hearts and minds.
3.
Develop an exit plan.
You can’t remain in an emotionally abusive relationship forever.
The abusers tend to enjoy the power they feel from mental abuse.
4.
You are not to blame.
You start to feel like something must be wrong with you since this other person treats you so poorly.
It is NOT you. This is the first step toward rebuilding your self-esteem.
THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU.
Also, things to keep in mind:
1.
Nothing is more damaging to your confidence and self-esteem than being in an emotionally abusive relationship.
2.
The most common is:
abusive man against woman.
3.
It’s a psychological trauma inflicted to create a power imbalance in the relationship.
I went to Weight Watchers and discussed it there and about my weight gain. One lady told me to stop talking to him. Once he died, let one of my siblings call me. It played out exactly that way.
I had dad over one day a month before he passed. He was himself that day and had a lot to say to me. He stopped walking shortly after his last visit because the cancer was taking over. I'm glad I got to spend one last visit with him. This is the visit I chose to remember him by.
I guarantee you’ll recognize your abusive mom, dad…or even abusive “friend”.
They all do the same things…
https://liveboldandbloom.com/02/relationships/signs-of-emotional-abuse
Whether it’s your awful, elderly mom doing this to you (99% are moms, rather than dads)…or an abusive “friend”…
Understand this:
WHY?
Emotional abusers have a need to control and dominate the other person.
CONSEQUENCE:
The stress of emotional abuse will eventually catch up with you in the form of illness, emotional trauma, depression, or anxiety.
You simply can’t allow it to continue, even if it means ending the relationship.
In case this is useful for anyone.
From the internet: this is a list of things abusive people do. The abusive person could be a family member (often it’s a mother), a stranger…or even a “friend”. Be careful, because a bad friend can behave this way, too.
1. Blame-shifting. It’s an abusive tactic used to control conversations, and signals that this person cannot and will not be accountable to his responsibility. He’ll verbally attack, instead of admitting his fault.
2. This person isn’t a friend. They’re making themself feel better by criticizing you.
3. In combination with gaslighting ("He later claims he had no idea you were upset").
4. If you want to know someone’s character, say “no”. Everyone’s nice when they get along. Try saying “no”, try disagreeing. Then you see that person’s real character.
5. Be careful of sentences such as, “This conversation is over for me. Whatever problem you have with what I said, you’ll have to solve it in your own head.”
6. They accuse you of doing things they're doing (gas-lighting, projecting). The blame is no longer on them, in order to put you on the defense.
7. is the stink bomb
This is the last resort, usually when they've been blatantly caught or called out for something they know they did wrong.
They throw a completely unfounded, terrible accusation at you.
Now you're defending yourself against wild accusations that you never could have even dreamed of. Who could prepare for that?
And once again, that's the whole point. The blame is now off of them, and now you're the one in hot water.
My heart goes out to those enduring this behavior from both groups!
I am so happy for you and glad you have your good life back. ((((((hugs)))))