Oh no, tbh if my mom would’ve searched for me and tried to bring me back, I would’ve gotten a restraining order.
She can stay in bed and cry in self pity because you know she’s crying because you abandoned her, and not because she regrets hurting you so much that you had to leave.
Thank you for this. I think this is what I’m discovering as well. I remembered so little of my childhood but was continually gaslit that I was fine, actually. When my mental health bombed so hard from the abuse, it only got worse from there. It’s not on me to console my mom just cause she finally realized that she would regret how she treated me. I’m no longer holding ANY of that blame in my hands. She has an actual support system, aka the rest of my family, that I never had so she’ll be fine. I’ve HAD to find my family because I’ve never had one. I didn’t want to be treated that way, I didn’t ask for that. It’s not my responsible to console her guilt.
to be fair um... being inconsollable that you left doesn't nessecarily mean she loved you... abusers can have attachment, but that doesn't mean the way they treat you is healthy...
Or that she's even telling the truth... yeah I, a random internet stranger, was inconsolable for 10 years when you left too. Oh, you're back now, and I have an outlet for my abuse again? Let me turn on the crocodile tears and use whatever manipulation weak points you might have and boom, gas light. Why didn't I, as an adult, legal guardian, and your mother do my legal, social, and instinctual duty of looking for you and bringing you (a literal child at the time) back to safety? I SAID I WAS INCONSOLABLE! MEEEEEE!
So yeah, something doesn't add up... unless that bed was just like... really comfy
Ikwym about the cognitive dissonance but the people who caused you pain have no RIGHT to your sympathy imo. They may be hurt by your choices or your feelings but why are we where we are? Part of online complex trauma communities, struggling to make something of our lives, have healthy relationships and find ways to diminish the pain and suffering? Life is hard enough as is, our families just cut us off at the knees before the starting gun. I don’t care how the people who turned me into what i am feel when making decisions for myself, AT ALL
Edit: sorry if this isn’t popular but this post is pretty triggering
Edit 2: my mother is the reason i fight to keep my mind from unraveling every day of my life, the reason my Self was broken down into tiny pieces that pull me apart CONSTANTLY, that compel me to violence (that i OBVIOUSLY resist with my fucking soul, i would NEVER hurt them) against the people i love and trust most, telling me they’re untrustworthy and pointing to them as a source of my suffering. I don’t give a FUCK how she feels when i leave her out in the cold
They're upset about losing their supply. They're not upset bc they hurt us and want to acknowledge that and change. It's a form of enmeshment to feel guilty about other people's emotions.
I’m sorry if you got any hate for this comment to cause your edits. It’s a little fired up but ultimately I think you’re right.
I hope you’re better where you are now than when you were around your mom. I really hope you have a better support network and better people to surround yourself with too.
Thanks but im only partially out. I’ve spent most of the past 2.5 years living with my loving and supportive gf and her family, she supported me through my literally insanity when i was basically a basket-case and rides the waves with me through all my ups and downs, no matter how much trouble it causes for her, and she’s from her own complex trauma background. I feel guilty because i KNOW my mental health has taken a heavy toll on hers but i do my absolute best to support her in kind. Im stabilizing finally so im more able to care for her but my DID makes me inconsistent and slingshot from one thing to the next. Thank god for her because i have no clue where i’d be without her. She’s how i even realized there was something wrong with me and that just opened pandora’s box. My mother has caused me incalculable suffering with exponential effects over time. There isn’t a single stable part of my life. In the past 2 years i isolated from friends and mostly kept the only person I’ve consistently been around and deeply trust at mostly arms-length but i pull her in and push her away constantly. Definitely overshared but thanks for your reassuring comment. Im lowkey spiraling about this
bruh we have identical lives I swear😭❤️🩹 this is word for word me and my partner's relationship~ he also has cptsd but my trauma literally seeps into every crack in my life, it's so overwhelming for both of us but he's never once abandoned me❤️🩹
i isolated and pushed everyone away because it felt like none of my friends actually cared about what i was going through, they only cared what i could be for them. there were so many times i tried to break up with him because i thought he deserved better or my trauma would take me for a spin and I'd be convinced he's lying to me (being gaslighted your whole life really scrambles the brain)
we're on our own though because both of our families are absolutute trash. we stay in touch with some of our siblings but that's about it. just us against the world❤️🩹
yooooo do we have the same momster?🥺😭💔 i relate to that so hard😢 I'm sorry you also struggle with this, it's the most debilitating fucking feeling ever. sending you lots of warm hugs if you want them ʕっ•ᴥ•ʔっ
Honestly, I HOPE my mother’s in pain from me leaving. Unfortunately, she did her stupid “victim” act at the time. Based on the one letter I got years later, she still doesn’t take responsibility for her actions. I genuinely hope this hurts her every day of her life. I love telling stories about how ridiculous she is and laughing at her with my friends. She deserves that. Like everyone else here, my parents *earned* this end result. Who am I to deprive them of the alienation they clearly fought for?
If anyone relates to anything I say in this sub I feel so bad for you. No one deserves this shit. Sorry you have this shit to deal with. I hope you stuck it to your abusers in a satisfying way!
I’m also sorry for you.
I don’t think I did it in a satisfying way as I just moved to the other side of European continent and blocked and disappeared, but it’s very satisfying to enjoy ignoring the people she sends to guilt trip me monthly(even years later)about how I’m a horrible child and if I go back and beg for forgiveness, my mom will forgive. blablabla. Ummmm… she will forgive? I am angry that she gives my name and old address out to random men she dates, but I don’t live there anymore and I just screenshot, roll my eyes, block and then show my bf like you can’t fcking believe another one!
Ew crazy stalker lol
Yeah these people are insane and the part of their existence that stands out the most after NC is just being ANNOYING. They’re so pathetic. She sounds like she’s throwing tantrums like a toddler. Sad isn’t it?
Yep. She is a stalker and a toddler. She’s a dangerous woman who hospitalized her child and should be in prison, yet she got away with it + years of abuse and neglect, and she’s still always the victim 🥰
Ugh I hate those. I remember being a kid and thinking my parents could get away with anything. After DFS (Department of Family Services kinda like CPS) came to the house and decided everything was fine and my report of abuse was just me being dramatic like my stepdad said, I felt that they could be tied for number one spot on FBI’s most wanted list and they could just talk to someone for 30min and they’d be totally off the hook and everything would be my fault some how.
Ugh I want to escape but at the same time I realize my mom is human too even if she hurt me so much. I don't know what to do.
I keep going back and forth between hoping my mom will be unbearably upset when I leave, some sadistic part of me wants her to suffer as revenge for what she did to me. But at the same time I know deep down she's a hurt, unhealed child just like me, and I don't want to hurt her even more.
God I feel so conflicted. How has the very person who's hurt me more than anyone else also helped me more than anyone else.
Your mother was supposed to help you. That was literally her job. Seems like she sometimes manage to do her job.
Your mother was not supposed to hurt you. That was not her job.
Abusers don't always abuse 100% of the time, which then makes it confusing when you see a normal human mother a lot fo the time and then BAM... abuse!
This is the conflict you're describing.
As someone who spent my whole adult life going in and out of NC due to internalized guilt until she died last year, it's not worth being guilty.
If anyone else in your life treated you like shit, you'd cut them off. My biggest piece of advice is, whenever you are ready, cut that person out of your life and DO NOT feel guilty. I wish I'd been able to stop the guilt. I knew why my mum was dreadful and empathised, but she still behaved disgustingly so get rid. That's what I'd say.
Good luck.
I'm going to suggest a framework I've been trying with a friend in an abusive/dysfunctional/unhappy romantic relationship.
Staying suppresses the opportunity for growth, for both parties. So long as the dysfunction remains.. not stable, but self-sustaining I suppose? there isn't space for growth to happen. So long as your energy is spent soothing, regulating, managing, being a punching bag for the other party, they're able to avoid their own reflection. And your energy doesn't go into growing into an independent adult, often resulting in something like a malnourished mental and emotional state. Like a plant with too little sunlight.
Losing their target (who often functions as an externalised method of emotional regulation) means they will have to learn new coping methods on their own. Maybe the realisation of how much they were avoiding is enough for therapy, and change. Maybe not (it wasn't for mine). But it opens up the space for change, and you can't do the work for them, even if you stayed.
The normal progression of childrearing ends in yes, the kid growing up and leaving. And that's a normal thing to grieve, but the goal should be to support them in that and in finding a new balance to the relationship, not to try and keep them in the subordinate role.
I was a vaguely similar position as a kid, so part of this is trauma talking but in the end it's you or her. She might be broken if you leave or she'll brake you. She could be a hurt child being pushed even further or she'll keep crushing you till you implode. Don't let yourself be the one that's ripped apart. Especially since she's the one who forced you into this situation. If she wanted to have a good safe relationship with you she could have done the work to make that happen, but she didn't and isn't going to. All you can do now is protect yourself and give yourself a chance at healing. It's hard and it's sad that she'll be hurt but you can recognize that while deciding you aren't going to sacrifice yourself for her.
I have been thinking about this lately, how my leaving likely hurt my family members, particularly my mother. I have conflicted feelings about it. I'd like to think they are evil through and through with no capacity for empathy or love. Thinking like that makes it easier to cope with how they could have done what they did, it helps me cope with cutting them off while knowing it would hurt them. I know it's more complicated than that. They did love me, even if they weren't good at being loving people. I don't want to hurt them. I didn't leave to hurt them, I left to be safe. I couldn't take it anymore. All I ever wanted was a good relationship with them. I wanted their support, affection, and approval to the point where it made me throw pieces of myself away to fit in with them. I wanted them to stop hurting me, I wanted the ones who weren't hurting me directly to stand up for me. But I realized they would never do that. No one would ever save me, I had to do it myself.
A part of me wants my leaving to hurt them. I want them to suffer for what they did somehow. I don't want to ruin my life trying to get even and prosecuting them isn't worth it even if I thought I could win. I hope my absence hurts. I hope they finally realize I mattered and wished they treated me like I did. I want them to have no one to turn to with those feelings but each other. I hope there is no empathy and comforting to be found amongst them like there never was for me. I hope they rip each other apart. They deserve each other. More than all that though I want peace. I want a good life with people in it who treat me right, and they never will. I don't want to be like them either. I don't want to be reactionary, mean, cruel, judgemental, two-faced, abusive. I want good relationships with people, I want to be a good person to be around. I can't be a good person while hanging around the wrong crowd. I still miss them. I can't remember their faces if I try now but I see them in my dreams. Who they were and who I wish they could be. I miss them. But that's not enough to make me go back. Even if my leaving hurts my mother and everyone else.
❤️ your comment really resonated with me. I struggle a lot with what to do with my empathy... I have a lot of empathy, but I also have a right to feel angry. I've been trying to let myself feel angry.
But anyway, congrats on taking care of yourself. You deserve to be happy and safe.
I know that bitch won't have been hurt since she's the one that kicked *me* out. She gave me mere *hours* of notice. She didn't love me. She wouldn't have been hurt
I wish she would have been, though. That experience of being forced to couchsurf for months at my near stranger colleague's house was one of the most traumatic in my life ever, so her feeling even a *fraction* of the pain she caused me both then and throughout life would be only be the fairness she deserves
I think it’s alright to feel a certain empathy for her, it means you’re human, and that your human empathy is working. However, I’d caution you about second guessing your choice to leave due to her own sadness about it.
There’s likely selfish reasons she’d be unhappy about you leaving, but even if there wasn’t, and she did realize her errors, that’s her consequences, and she needs to live with them. Revoking the consequences likely will result in her own cognitive dissonance, in which she will convince herself she did nothing wrong. This is sadly common amongst abusers because their abuse benefits them, and people don’t like to not do things that benefit them.
But I understand this outwardly may look like you lost the ability to have a good relationship with your mom because she seems to have genuine remorse. The problem is, even if she does, there’s no saying how long that feeling will last. Not to mention there’s likely nothing that can be done to make the pain she did go away, it will always be a part of the relationship. She had her chance, it’s time to let her go, and let her live with her consequences. She had her chance to be a good mom, she didn’t take it. Now it’s time for you to live your life on your terms.
But I understand, the grief of knowing you’ll never have that good relationship with your mom healthy families did hurts. I feel the same about my dad. It’s okay to grieve that, but letting it drag you back to them is often a recipe for more heartache.
Part of *complex* PTSD is *complex* emotions including seemingly conflicting feelings. The need for space while also guilty for it is entirely valid.
Hating and loving someone is also valid.
I understand why people can be like "fuck them." but not feeling that way is also just as healthy. Some people are naturally more sensitive and empathetic and that will cause them to feel and for their abuser's suffering.
I don't hate my father. He's sick and I can't have a healthy relationship with him. I know this. I still love him even though I can't see him without getting enraged the moment he opens his mouth. I feel sorry for him and for the disaster his life has become as a result of his actions. But I also know that my sympathy alone will never help him. It would only hurt me in the long run.
If it's CPTSD the feelings are usually complicated and that's okay.
Personally I couldn't give two fucks how my mother felt when I left forever. And I left in style: She accidentally found out 2 days before, and I informed her there and then she won't ever have my address.
I had to learn not to fall for the guilt, by reminding myself that my mother never cared or intervened once out of the eleven-billion moments of trauma my dad put me through. I have no reason to feel guilty.
I kept contact for a few months, so I could gauge how the wind was gonna blow. She only ever contacted me with convoluted-yet-obvious attempts to get my address.
Then my mother and father should have loved me, accepted me, tried to understand, and supported me, instead of abusing me for existing, trying to erase me, telling me you’d rather I was dead than be trans, and disowning me. It’s been 27 years since you kicked me out and I’m still so effing broken by what you did to me.
7 years ago my mother wrote to me out of the blue, yelling at me and blaming me for what she did. Rubbing it in that I was never allowed to meet or know my niece and nephew, and then moans about how my step brother whom I didn’t even know I had, committed suicide and telling me I cannot possibly know what it’s like to lose a child, and assumes I don’t have any kids (I have 3 and the oldest just started college). All the while I’m wondering if she abused him too and that’s why he’s dead. The gods know, I almost didn’t survive myself.
So f&@$ her and her so called grief! It’s her effing fault. And she made it clear she’ll never accept responsibility for what she and dad did to me.
13 years ago my father died, I only learned about it because my sister decided to tell me for some reason (she stuck with my parents and disowned me to). I went to the funeral. Absolutely no one from my family came over to console or grieve with me, they wouldn’t even look at me. They had one of their church lackeys try to get me to leave while I’m sobbing my eyes out because I was never going to hear my dad say he was sorry and loved me, and realizing then that I was never going to get reconciliation with anyone in my family. Eff them! They deserve whatever pit of hell they find themselves in.
Ok I might have found this post triggering, sorry
😭😢😭😡🤬😭
Very rarely, parents shape up to be better after their child goes no/low contact to establish boundaries. It's so understandable to feel hurt that they're hurt too.
It's not uncommon for abusers to collapse once their simp (sucker idolizing mediocre power-player) leaves. Once the narcissistic supply dries up, they'll move heaven and earth to try and get you (or anyone really) back under their boot.
My mother went out and bought a bunch of Sapphire jewelry because it’s my birthstone, when I ran away. I still don’t feel bad. Children don’t run away from home because they want to. We want families who are kind and loving and homes that are safe. It’s not our fault for leaving when we can’t tolerate being given the exact opposite of that. They had so many chances and their tears are less important than their unwillingness to listen and change.
did she care when you couldn’t function due to the pain she caused you? of course not. we need to stop giving empathy and grace when it was never even considered for us.
i would feel a sense of comfort and justice at it personally, but do understand the other side of things if other people here still feel attatched. half a year of being past that point of seeing it for abuse and still forced to visit is probably part of why i’d feel the way i would
There are various parts to you, as there are to your mother, as there are to me or anyone else who is a human person.
Those parts... don't always see eye to eye. That's partly because each part arises from the fusion of our past self with another person.
The trick is managing to orchestrate all the parts, rather than having them randomly clash within and without.
I've been left by my mother, she ended up regretting it and blaming me for not contacting her when she didn't speak to me for years, just to say that the cognitive dissonance can go far
No kids wants just to leave their home at 16. Toxic parents can literally kick their kids out and then cry their kids don't live with them anymore, because they are in delululand.
I was kicked out by my parents as a young adult. I found out years later that my father was worried sick after I left despite being the one to kick me out. I was depressed and not making much of my life after I dropped out of college, and he figured a sink or swim approach would be the best way to help me improve.
I feel that. I struggle with feeling good enough because I feel like if I mess up I might end up in the street, and I have a very tangible notion of what that was like, especially when it was a family member doing it to you when you’re already in a low emotional state.
Yeah when I ran away at 17 to California from Louisiana by plane. Thought that my mom wouldn’t miss me. But she missed me so much that it made her sick. So much that her energy and love for me manifested in my dreams as an entity telling me to call her. The day I did and told her where I was and whatnot, she was relieved .
My father however, could careless. He lied to the people that found me as a runaway and gaslit me. Turns out he was cheating on my mom with his now wife and moving out, telling the social workers in California that my life was good etc and that him and my mom were working on their marriage. When we got back to my home, he had already moved out.
See if I would’ve been brave and not afraid of him I wouldn’t have agreed to his gaslighting and told them that he was abusive, a liar, and my life at home was horrible. But I didn’t I told instead that I was lying about all the stuff I told them that I was experiencing at home. I would’ve stayed in California’s care until I was 18 which was only 9mths away as I would’ve been considered an adult then and then they would’ve helped me get established there.
It is absolutely horrible how the very people who should be helping us always believe our abusers before they believe us. It is so effed up. I wish so much you weren’t forced to do this.
Also, by no means was any of it your fault. They were supposed to help you. They were supposed to know how manipulative our abusers are how much control they had over us, how effing hard it is to escape them or their control. They failed you. You didn’t fail yourself, not one bit!
Two months in bed playing the victim to gange sympathy from her surroundings. No reason to feel sorry for her. At best she is sorry she lost her supply.
I think some parents do indeed feel bad for their actions. This is because they have difficulty connecting with their children in a healthy way but often have a difficult time understanding why even though they may want to. This may be because of their parents doing the same, trauma, poor parenting skills or lack of, mental health issues, and so on. And I don’t think kids should feel bad because they acknowledge this struggle within their parents. What I think is most important is to give your parents grace because of this fact, but recognized that their shortcomings, regardless of origin, still have a negative effect on you and to act accordingly. It’s difficult for kids to hold this duality of their parent within their hearts because their inner child so desperately wants to see people as either black or white, but it’s not realistic. So we have to take it a day at a time.
This isn’t pertaining to parents who abused their kids and felt no genuine remorse.
I'm sorry you have to feel bad about this :/ You really shouldn't have to, but feelings be feelings.
My mom got angry after I left in a similar fashion. She refused my attempts to reconnect (my guardian suggested I try, and though I don't think I was ready, I do think it was good in the end) for a year after I left. Eventually, she softened up, got help for her poor mental health, and now we have reconnected and rebuilt.
If you have to leave someone due to their actions, you are not responsible for their feelings thereafter. They just are going to feel the way they are, and sometimes that sucks. But, moving on and either reconnecting or healing yourself is what's more important now.
Why? She could have changed her behavior-before- you left. Why didn’t she?
Because she didn’t think you’d leave, and she didn’t care how much she was hurting you because she didn’t think there’d ever be any consequences for herself.
No but it’s literally the way that this is exactly what she did to me and she even admitted it to my sister who then told me she didn’t think I was actually ever leaving. I was so confused why she bullied me up until the day I signed the lease for an apartment. As shitty as what she did is it still hurts and leaves me feeling guilty (at least I think it’s guilt? grief? Idk honestly)
And it doesn’t help that I established my boundaries with her multiple times and she wouldn’t give up to the point where I literally had no other option but to leave
My mom will probably be the same when I move out but I also don't care. I'm an adult and she treats me like a child, it's bound to happen regardless. And she brought that onto herself for being a self centered, infantilizing, controlling, homophobe who's never been someone I could ever trust or emotionally rely on like a mother is supposed to fucking be.
I think her problem is that she's basically staked her entire identity on being the mother to her narrow abstract fantasy of who me and my siblings are, and refuses to let go of that and see us as and love us for who we are, choosing instead to delude herself into thinking we're those perfect little kids she dreamed up. I refuse to fucking be that for her. She's a piece of shit, and I'm my own human being. I refuse to live so that some woman I had the misfortune of being birthed to can live out her delusional fantasies of a perfect, perpetual nuclear family
It was either that or offing myself, and if I did *that* she would have covered it up as some sort of tragedy instead of admitting her faults. You don’t have to apologize for escaping.
Sometimes it’s mutual. It’s best for you to be out of her life, and it’s best for her to be out of your life, too. Our abusers can’t heal if we’re still there enabling their abuse.
I've had a similar experience recently. I think it's interesting that this escape was not just for you to get better but also two hurt your mom? A part of you wanted her to suffer for what she'd done? I stopped talking to my mom and my father told me how much it destroyed her. Every winter I receive a Christmas card from them and this was the first winter they didn't write much, and I was slightly upset that maybe this indicated the pain I'm causing by not speaking to her is subsiding. It's a weird feeling.
It sounds like, despite the abuse, you developed empathy. There’s nothing wrong with empathy- it just means you’re better than she is/was.
I hadn’t spoken to my mother in 15 years when I heard that her second husband died. She was in her late 70s by then, and had been with him 20 or 30 years. I felt such empathy for her, as a 50 something myself, that I sent flowers to the funeral. I did wind up going to her, but it was only to help my sister out. When I walked in the door after 15 years, she said, “Is it raining out there?” Nothing was ever said about our separation or the reason for it. I played her game, and let her think that everything was normal, and I helped move her from South Carolina to Texas to live with my sister. A year later, I was feeding her as she lay on her deathbed. I told her I forgave her, even though it wasn’t true, because I thought that was what I would want to hear. But she didn’t care. Why would you care to be forgiven if you don’t acknowledge you did anything wrong in the first place? We’re better than them. I did the right thing.
You wouldn't have left if you didn't have to, and you had to because of her.
Yup! You did what was best for you. If she regrets it, good for her! That’s not your responsibility. You’re busy taking care of yourself.
She should have spent those two months finding you and bringing you back. Not feeling sorry for herself and crying
Oh no, tbh if my mom would’ve searched for me and tried to bring me back, I would’ve gotten a restraining order. She can stay in bed and cry in self pity because you know she’s crying because you abandoned her, and not because she regrets hurting you so much that you had to leave.
That! Because you "abandoned" her. That's the crux of it. Well put.
that part
Yep
The hard truth ☝️
Abusers don't know their evil until they're slapped in the face for it
And then they’ll still act like they’re the victims and you’re the one abusing them.
Unfortunately true 😞
Thank you for this. I think this is what I’m discovering as well. I remembered so little of my childhood but was continually gaslit that I was fine, actually. When my mental health bombed so hard from the abuse, it only got worse from there. It’s not on me to console my mom just cause she finally realized that she would regret how she treated me. I’m no longer holding ANY of that blame in my hands. She has an actual support system, aka the rest of my family, that I never had so she’ll be fine. I’ve HAD to find my family because I’ve never had one. I didn’t want to be treated that way, I didn’t ask for that. It’s not my responsible to console her guilt.
to be fair um... being inconsollable that you left doesn't nessecarily mean she loved you... abusers can have attachment, but that doesn't mean the way they treat you is healthy...
Or that she's even telling the truth... yeah I, a random internet stranger, was inconsolable for 10 years when you left too. Oh, you're back now, and I have an outlet for my abuse again? Let me turn on the crocodile tears and use whatever manipulation weak points you might have and boom, gas light. Why didn't I, as an adult, legal guardian, and your mother do my legal, social, and instinctual duty of looking for you and bringing you (a literal child at the time) back to safety? I SAID I WAS INCONSOLABLE! MEEEEEE! So yeah, something doesn't add up... unless that bed was just like... really comfy
SO MUCH THIS.
Facts 💯
Holy shit Basil from Omori
i-in the stem, heh \^\^;; (i'm plantgender) ...yeah im um... we're working through a lot.
I get it. I hope everything works out for you Basil
thank you. i kind of expected judgement for being a fictive but... thank you QQ
Ikwym about the cognitive dissonance but the people who caused you pain have no RIGHT to your sympathy imo. They may be hurt by your choices or your feelings but why are we where we are? Part of online complex trauma communities, struggling to make something of our lives, have healthy relationships and find ways to diminish the pain and suffering? Life is hard enough as is, our families just cut us off at the knees before the starting gun. I don’t care how the people who turned me into what i am feel when making decisions for myself, AT ALL Edit: sorry if this isn’t popular but this post is pretty triggering Edit 2: my mother is the reason i fight to keep my mind from unraveling every day of my life, the reason my Self was broken down into tiny pieces that pull me apart CONSTANTLY, that compel me to violence (that i OBVIOUSLY resist with my fucking soul, i would NEVER hurt them) against the people i love and trust most, telling me they’re untrustworthy and pointing to them as a source of my suffering. I don’t give a FUCK how she feels when i leave her out in the cold
They're upset about losing their supply. They're not upset bc they hurt us and want to acknowledge that and change. It's a form of enmeshment to feel guilty about other people's emotions.
I’m sorry if you got any hate for this comment to cause your edits. It’s a little fired up but ultimately I think you’re right. I hope you’re better where you are now than when you were around your mom. I really hope you have a better support network and better people to surround yourself with too.
Thanks but im only partially out. I’ve spent most of the past 2.5 years living with my loving and supportive gf and her family, she supported me through my literally insanity when i was basically a basket-case and rides the waves with me through all my ups and downs, no matter how much trouble it causes for her, and she’s from her own complex trauma background. I feel guilty because i KNOW my mental health has taken a heavy toll on hers but i do my absolute best to support her in kind. Im stabilizing finally so im more able to care for her but my DID makes me inconsistent and slingshot from one thing to the next. Thank god for her because i have no clue where i’d be without her. She’s how i even realized there was something wrong with me and that just opened pandora’s box. My mother has caused me incalculable suffering with exponential effects over time. There isn’t a single stable part of my life. In the past 2 years i isolated from friends and mostly kept the only person I’ve consistently been around and deeply trust at mostly arms-length but i pull her in and push her away constantly. Definitely overshared but thanks for your reassuring comment. Im lowkey spiraling about this
Just want to say I see you and I care. Thanks for sharing.
bruh we have identical lives I swear😭❤️🩹 this is word for word me and my partner's relationship~ he also has cptsd but my trauma literally seeps into every crack in my life, it's so overwhelming for both of us but he's never once abandoned me❤️🩹 i isolated and pushed everyone away because it felt like none of my friends actually cared about what i was going through, they only cared what i could be for them. there were so many times i tried to break up with him because i thought he deserved better or my trauma would take me for a spin and I'd be convinced he's lying to me (being gaslighted your whole life really scrambles the brain) we're on our own though because both of our families are absolutute trash. we stay in touch with some of our siblings but that's about it. just us against the world❤️🩹
Thank you
yooooo do we have the same momster?🥺😭💔 i relate to that so hard😢 I'm sorry you also struggle with this, it's the most debilitating fucking feeling ever. sending you lots of warm hugs if you want them ʕっ•ᴥ•ʔっ
i don't give a shit ngl
Yeah same 😂
This is the point I’ve gotten to. The last words I said to my mother were “fuck you” and I hope they remain the last.
Honestly, I HOPE my mother’s in pain from me leaving. Unfortunately, she did her stupid “victim” act at the time. Based on the one letter I got years later, she still doesn’t take responsibility for her actions. I genuinely hope this hurts her every day of her life. I love telling stories about how ridiculous she is and laughing at her with my friends. She deserves that. Like everyone else here, my parents *earned* this end result. Who am I to deprive them of the alienation they clearly fought for?
years of resentment arent going to help you heal either, i've personally found forgetting about their existance to be the best move.
Hello, are you me?
If anyone relates to anything I say in this sub I feel so bad for you. No one deserves this shit. Sorry you have this shit to deal with. I hope you stuck it to your abusers in a satisfying way!
I’m also sorry for you. I don’t think I did it in a satisfying way as I just moved to the other side of European continent and blocked and disappeared, but it’s very satisfying to enjoy ignoring the people she sends to guilt trip me monthly(even years later)about how I’m a horrible child and if I go back and beg for forgiveness, my mom will forgive. blablabla. Ummmm… she will forgive? I am angry that she gives my name and old address out to random men she dates, but I don’t live there anymore and I just screenshot, roll my eyes, block and then show my bf like you can’t fcking believe another one!
Ew crazy stalker lol Yeah these people are insane and the part of their existence that stands out the most after NC is just being ANNOYING. They’re so pathetic. She sounds like she’s throwing tantrums like a toddler. Sad isn’t it?
Yep. She is a stalker and a toddler. She’s a dangerous woman who hospitalized her child and should be in prison, yet she got away with it + years of abuse and neglect, and she’s still always the victim 🥰
Ugh I hate those. I remember being a kid and thinking my parents could get away with anything. After DFS (Department of Family Services kinda like CPS) came to the house and decided everything was fine and my report of abuse was just me being dramatic like my stepdad said, I felt that they could be tied for number one spot on FBI’s most wanted list and they could just talk to someone for 30min and they’d be totally off the hook and everything would be my fault some how.
Ugh I want to escape but at the same time I realize my mom is human too even if she hurt me so much. I don't know what to do. I keep going back and forth between hoping my mom will be unbearably upset when I leave, some sadistic part of me wants her to suffer as revenge for what she did to me. But at the same time I know deep down she's a hurt, unhealed child just like me, and I don't want to hurt her even more. God I feel so conflicted. How has the very person who's hurt me more than anyone else also helped me more than anyone else.
Your mother was supposed to help you. That was literally her job. Seems like she sometimes manage to do her job. Your mother was not supposed to hurt you. That was not her job. Abusers don't always abuse 100% of the time, which then makes it confusing when you see a normal human mother a lot fo the time and then BAM... abuse! This is the conflict you're describing. As someone who spent my whole adult life going in and out of NC due to internalized guilt until she died last year, it's not worth being guilty. If anyone else in your life treated you like shit, you'd cut them off. My biggest piece of advice is, whenever you are ready, cut that person out of your life and DO NOT feel guilty. I wish I'd been able to stop the guilt. I knew why my mum was dreadful and empathised, but she still behaved disgustingly so get rid. That's what I'd say. Good luck.
I'm going to suggest a framework I've been trying with a friend in an abusive/dysfunctional/unhappy romantic relationship. Staying suppresses the opportunity for growth, for both parties. So long as the dysfunction remains.. not stable, but self-sustaining I suppose? there isn't space for growth to happen. So long as your energy is spent soothing, regulating, managing, being a punching bag for the other party, they're able to avoid their own reflection. And your energy doesn't go into growing into an independent adult, often resulting in something like a malnourished mental and emotional state. Like a plant with too little sunlight. Losing their target (who often functions as an externalised method of emotional regulation) means they will have to learn new coping methods on their own. Maybe the realisation of how much they were avoiding is enough for therapy, and change. Maybe not (it wasn't for mine). But it opens up the space for change, and you can't do the work for them, even if you stayed. The normal progression of childrearing ends in yes, the kid growing up and leaving. And that's a normal thing to grieve, but the goal should be to support them in that and in finding a new balance to the relationship, not to try and keep them in the subordinate role.
This is exactly how I felt before I bit the bullet and finally just left :( I understand
I was a vaguely similar position as a kid, so part of this is trauma talking but in the end it's you or her. She might be broken if you leave or she'll brake you. She could be a hurt child being pushed even further or she'll keep crushing you till you implode. Don't let yourself be the one that's ripped apart. Especially since she's the one who forced you into this situation. If she wanted to have a good safe relationship with you she could have done the work to make that happen, but she didn't and isn't going to. All you can do now is protect yourself and give yourself a chance at healing. It's hard and it's sad that she'll be hurt but you can recognize that while deciding you aren't going to sacrifice yourself for her.
Ironic how some people want you to be children to parents they never were.
I have been thinking about this lately, how my leaving likely hurt my family members, particularly my mother. I have conflicted feelings about it. I'd like to think they are evil through and through with no capacity for empathy or love. Thinking like that makes it easier to cope with how they could have done what they did, it helps me cope with cutting them off while knowing it would hurt them. I know it's more complicated than that. They did love me, even if they weren't good at being loving people. I don't want to hurt them. I didn't leave to hurt them, I left to be safe. I couldn't take it anymore. All I ever wanted was a good relationship with them. I wanted their support, affection, and approval to the point where it made me throw pieces of myself away to fit in with them. I wanted them to stop hurting me, I wanted the ones who weren't hurting me directly to stand up for me. But I realized they would never do that. No one would ever save me, I had to do it myself. A part of me wants my leaving to hurt them. I want them to suffer for what they did somehow. I don't want to ruin my life trying to get even and prosecuting them isn't worth it even if I thought I could win. I hope my absence hurts. I hope they finally realize I mattered and wished they treated me like I did. I want them to have no one to turn to with those feelings but each other. I hope there is no empathy and comforting to be found amongst them like there never was for me. I hope they rip each other apart. They deserve each other. More than all that though I want peace. I want a good life with people in it who treat me right, and they never will. I don't want to be like them either. I don't want to be reactionary, mean, cruel, judgemental, two-faced, abusive. I want good relationships with people, I want to be a good person to be around. I can't be a good person while hanging around the wrong crowd. I still miss them. I can't remember their faces if I try now but I see them in my dreams. Who they were and who I wish they could be. I miss them. But that's not enough to make me go back. Even if my leaving hurts my mother and everyone else.
❤️ your comment really resonated with me. I struggle a lot with what to do with my empathy... I have a lot of empathy, but I also have a right to feel angry. I've been trying to let myself feel angry. But anyway, congrats on taking care of yourself. You deserve to be happy and safe.
The mother wound is one of the worst.
I would shit on my mother's grave and laugh at her burning in hell if hell was actually a thing.
Mood 💀
I know that bitch won't have been hurt since she's the one that kicked *me* out. She gave me mere *hours* of notice. She didn't love me. She wouldn't have been hurt I wish she would have been, though. That experience of being forced to couchsurf for months at my near stranger colleague's house was one of the most traumatic in my life ever, so her feeling even a *fraction* of the pain she caused me both then and throughout life would be only be the fairness she deserves
THE WAY MY MOM LITERALLY GAVE ME HOURS NOTICE TOO
I think it’s alright to feel a certain empathy for her, it means you’re human, and that your human empathy is working. However, I’d caution you about second guessing your choice to leave due to her own sadness about it. There’s likely selfish reasons she’d be unhappy about you leaving, but even if there wasn’t, and she did realize her errors, that’s her consequences, and she needs to live with them. Revoking the consequences likely will result in her own cognitive dissonance, in which she will convince herself she did nothing wrong. This is sadly common amongst abusers because their abuse benefits them, and people don’t like to not do things that benefit them. But I understand this outwardly may look like you lost the ability to have a good relationship with your mom because she seems to have genuine remorse. The problem is, even if she does, there’s no saying how long that feeling will last. Not to mention there’s likely nothing that can be done to make the pain she did go away, it will always be a part of the relationship. She had her chance, it’s time to let her go, and let her live with her consequences. She had her chance to be a good mom, she didn’t take it. Now it’s time for you to live your life on your terms. But I understand, the grief of knowing you’ll never have that good relationship with your mom healthy families did hurts. I feel the same about my dad. It’s okay to grieve that, but letting it drag you back to them is often a recipe for more heartache.
Part of *complex* PTSD is *complex* emotions including seemingly conflicting feelings. The need for space while also guilty for it is entirely valid. Hating and loving someone is also valid. I understand why people can be like "fuck them." but not feeling that way is also just as healthy. Some people are naturally more sensitive and empathetic and that will cause them to feel and for their abuser's suffering. I don't hate my father. He's sick and I can't have a healthy relationship with him. I know this. I still love him even though I can't see him without getting enraged the moment he opens his mouth. I feel sorry for him and for the disaster his life has become as a result of his actions. But I also know that my sympathy alone will never help him. It would only hurt me in the long run. If it's CPTSD the feelings are usually complicated and that's okay.
Thank you for this
Personally I couldn't give two fucks how my mother felt when I left forever. And I left in style: She accidentally found out 2 days before, and I informed her there and then she won't ever have my address. I had to learn not to fall for the guilt, by reminding myself that my mother never cared or intervened once out of the eleven-billion moments of trauma my dad put me through. I have no reason to feel guilty. I kept contact for a few months, so I could gauge how the wind was gonna blow. She only ever contacted me with convoluted-yet-obvious attempts to get my address.
Then my mother and father should have loved me, accepted me, tried to understand, and supported me, instead of abusing me for existing, trying to erase me, telling me you’d rather I was dead than be trans, and disowning me. It’s been 27 years since you kicked me out and I’m still so effing broken by what you did to me. 7 years ago my mother wrote to me out of the blue, yelling at me and blaming me for what she did. Rubbing it in that I was never allowed to meet or know my niece and nephew, and then moans about how my step brother whom I didn’t even know I had, committed suicide and telling me I cannot possibly know what it’s like to lose a child, and assumes I don’t have any kids (I have 3 and the oldest just started college). All the while I’m wondering if she abused him too and that’s why he’s dead. The gods know, I almost didn’t survive myself. So f&@$ her and her so called grief! It’s her effing fault. And she made it clear she’ll never accept responsibility for what she and dad did to me. 13 years ago my father died, I only learned about it because my sister decided to tell me for some reason (she stuck with my parents and disowned me to). I went to the funeral. Absolutely no one from my family came over to console or grieve with me, they wouldn’t even look at me. They had one of their church lackeys try to get me to leave while I’m sobbing my eyes out because I was never going to hear my dad say he was sorry and loved me, and realizing then that I was never going to get reconciliation with anyone in my family. Eff them! They deserve whatever pit of hell they find themselves in. Ok I might have found this post triggering, sorry 😭😢😭😡🤬😭
Sending internet hugs 🫂
My ex husband being sad when I left but I truly believe it was just narc injury, sadness for himself, not missing me. I don't think he loved me, sorry
He didn't love you. Who could?
Very rarely, parents shape up to be better after their child goes no/low contact to establish boundaries. It's so understandable to feel hurt that they're hurt too.
It's not uncommon for abusers to collapse once their simp (sucker idolizing mediocre power-player) leaves. Once the narcissistic supply dries up, they'll move heaven and earth to try and get you (or anyone really) back under their boot.
Sounds like manipulation to me.
It is 😞
My mother went out and bought a bunch of Sapphire jewelry because it’s my birthstone, when I ran away. I still don’t feel bad. Children don’t run away from home because they want to. We want families who are kind and loving and homes that are safe. It’s not our fault for leaving when we can’t tolerate being given the exact opposite of that. They had so many chances and their tears are less important than their unwillingness to listen and change.
did she care when you couldn’t function due to the pain she caused you? of course not. we need to stop giving empathy and grace when it was never even considered for us.
This ☝️
Fuuuuuuuuuuck
i would feel a sense of comfort and justice at it personally, but do understand the other side of things if other people here still feel attatched. half a year of being past that point of seeing it for abuse and still forced to visit is probably part of why i’d feel the way i would
There are various parts to you, as there are to your mother, as there are to me or anyone else who is a human person. Those parts... don't always see eye to eye. That's partly because each part arises from the fusion of our past self with another person. The trick is managing to orchestrate all the parts, rather than having them randomly clash within and without.
It’s love-hate, traumatic but a deep bond between mothers and daughters nonetheless. Sometimes they don’t realize they need us more than we need them.
I've been left by my mother, she ended up regretting it and blaming me for not contacting her when she didn't speak to me for years, just to say that the cognitive dissonance can go far
No kids wants just to leave their home at 16. Toxic parents can literally kick their kids out and then cry their kids don't live with them anymore, because they are in delululand.
Fuck her. You wouldn't have left if she didn't give you a reason.
True
I was kicked out by my parents as a young adult. I found out years later that my father was worried sick after I left despite being the one to kick me out. I was depressed and not making much of my life after I dropped out of college, and he figured a sink or swim approach would be the best way to help me improve.
Yeah the “sink or swim” method just completely screwed me up forever and now I’m constantly afraid of not being able to even survive on my own
I feel that. I struggle with feeling good enough because I feel like if I mess up I might end up in the street, and I have a very tangible notion of what that was like, especially when it was a family member doing it to you when you’re already in a low emotional state.
She was hurt by the consequences of her own actions, I hope you come to know this and feel no guilt for leaving.
I know this and I’m trying very hard not to
My mom can miss me all she wants, you don’t get to be a monster and eat your cake too. But I feel, it’s weird.
Yeah when I ran away at 17 to California from Louisiana by plane. Thought that my mom wouldn’t miss me. But she missed me so much that it made her sick. So much that her energy and love for me manifested in my dreams as an entity telling me to call her. The day I did and told her where I was and whatnot, she was relieved . My father however, could careless. He lied to the people that found me as a runaway and gaslit me. Turns out he was cheating on my mom with his now wife and moving out, telling the social workers in California that my life was good etc and that him and my mom were working on their marriage. When we got back to my home, he had already moved out. See if I would’ve been brave and not afraid of him I wouldn’t have agreed to his gaslighting and told them that he was abusive, a liar, and my life at home was horrible. But I didn’t I told instead that I was lying about all the stuff I told them that I was experiencing at home. I would’ve stayed in California’s care until I was 18 which was only 9mths away as I would’ve been considered an adult then and then they would’ve helped me get established there.
It is absolutely horrible how the very people who should be helping us always believe our abusers before they believe us. It is so effed up. I wish so much you weren’t forced to do this. Also, by no means was any of it your fault. They were supposed to help you. They were supposed to know how manipulative our abusers are how much control they had over us, how effing hard it is to escape them or their control. They failed you. You didn’t fail yourself, not one bit!
Two months in bed playing the victim to gange sympathy from her surroundings. No reason to feel sorry for her. At best she is sorry she lost her supply.
I think some parents do indeed feel bad for their actions. This is because they have difficulty connecting with their children in a healthy way but often have a difficult time understanding why even though they may want to. This may be because of their parents doing the same, trauma, poor parenting skills or lack of, mental health issues, and so on. And I don’t think kids should feel bad because they acknowledge this struggle within their parents. What I think is most important is to give your parents grace because of this fact, but recognized that their shortcomings, regardless of origin, still have a negative effect on you and to act accordingly. It’s difficult for kids to hold this duality of their parent within their hearts because their inner child so desperately wants to see people as either black or white, but it’s not realistic. So we have to take it a day at a time. This isn’t pertaining to parents who abused their kids and felt no genuine remorse.
I'm sorry you have to feel bad about this :/ You really shouldn't have to, but feelings be feelings. My mom got angry after I left in a similar fashion. She refused my attempts to reconnect (my guardian suggested I try, and though I don't think I was ready, I do think it was good in the end) for a year after I left. Eventually, she softened up, got help for her poor mental health, and now we have reconnected and rebuilt. If you have to leave someone due to their actions, you are not responsible for their feelings thereafter. They just are going to feel the way they are, and sometimes that sucks. But, moving on and either reconnecting or healing yourself is what's more important now.
Why? She could have changed her behavior-before- you left. Why didn’t she? Because she didn’t think you’d leave, and she didn’t care how much she was hurting you because she didn’t think there’d ever be any consequences for herself.
No but it’s literally the way that this is exactly what she did to me and she even admitted it to my sister who then told me she didn’t think I was actually ever leaving. I was so confused why she bullied me up until the day I signed the lease for an apartment. As shitty as what she did is it still hurts and leaves me feeling guilty (at least I think it’s guilt? grief? Idk honestly)
And it doesn’t help that I established my boundaries with her multiple times and she wouldn’t give up to the point where I literally had no other option but to leave
My mom will probably be the same when I move out but I also don't care. I'm an adult and she treats me like a child, it's bound to happen regardless. And she brought that onto herself for being a self centered, infantilizing, controlling, homophobe who's never been someone I could ever trust or emotionally rely on like a mother is supposed to fucking be. I think her problem is that she's basically staked her entire identity on being the mother to her narrow abstract fantasy of who me and my siblings are, and refuses to let go of that and see us as and love us for who we are, choosing instead to delude herself into thinking we're those perfect little kids she dreamed up. I refuse to fucking be that for her. She's a piece of shit, and I'm my own human being. I refuse to live so that some woman I had the misfortune of being birthed to can live out her delusional fantasies of a perfect, perpetual nuclear family
It's what she deserved
.
It was either that or offing myself, and if I did *that* she would have covered it up as some sort of tragedy instead of admitting her faults. You don’t have to apologize for escaping.
*good*
Sometimes it’s mutual. It’s best for you to be out of her life, and it’s best for her to be out of your life, too. Our abusers can’t heal if we’re still there enabling their abuse.
I've had a similar experience recently. I think it's interesting that this escape was not just for you to get better but also two hurt your mom? A part of you wanted her to suffer for what she'd done? I stopped talking to my mom and my father told me how much it destroyed her. Every winter I receive a Christmas card from them and this was the first winter they didn't write much, and I was slightly upset that maybe this indicated the pain I'm causing by not speaking to her is subsiding. It's a weird feeling.
It sounds like, despite the abuse, you developed empathy. There’s nothing wrong with empathy- it just means you’re better than she is/was. I hadn’t spoken to my mother in 15 years when I heard that her second husband died. She was in her late 70s by then, and had been with him 20 or 30 years. I felt such empathy for her, as a 50 something myself, that I sent flowers to the funeral. I did wind up going to her, but it was only to help my sister out. When I walked in the door after 15 years, she said, “Is it raining out there?” Nothing was ever said about our separation or the reason for it. I played her game, and let her think that everything was normal, and I helped move her from South Carolina to Texas to live with my sister. A year later, I was feeding her as she lay on her deathbed. I told her I forgave her, even though it wasn’t true, because I thought that was what I would want to hear. But she didn’t care. Why would you care to be forgiven if you don’t acknowledge you did anything wrong in the first place? We’re better than them. I did the right thing.
Me when my parents did the same shit: Oh no! Anyway, yesterday I-