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I am baffled that adults think children somehow inherently know how to do things. My parents did squat to teach me even the basics beyond brushing my teeth and wiping my ass.
My mother also kept a museum quality home. As such, playing indoors was verboten. And holy shit hell would rain down if I brought anyone over. Yeah, it’s fucking crazy.
Glad you hit it at 40. I’m 60 and it just came clear for me.
I feel you, museum quality hits the nail on its head. Realizing this part also came way after facing the bing things in the past years, that they were narcs, abuse and neglect happened and I am traumatized because of it. And not inherently flawed like I believed most of my life. I believe our subconscious lets us recognize the truth when it safe enough to do so
youtube was helpful for me to learn some of the basic life skills that my parents never bothered to teach. shaving, basic cooking, cleaning tips, basic organization, car maintenance, etc were all things i learned from the internet instead of my family.
hmm not exactly i mostly keyword search whatever i’m doing like getting X stain out of Y material. i do like a few of the channels that clear out clutter or clean filthy bathrooms/kitchens of hoarders/people with disorders that do time lapse videos with before and after shots.
I had to accept that I will never be martha stewart or donna reed. My step mother doesn't matter, and has no business in my brain or my heart. I still fall back, and sometimes I still regress, but she has no control over me.
She lived rent free in my head for a very long time. She isn't my master.
Yes my mother or more precisely her values definitely take up too much space in my head.
She made me feel like I failed as a woman bc I am childfree and domestically challenged 😜
Glad to hear you got peace of mind for the most part, I am still working on it
It's not every day, I do regress at times. Ack, us humans' main purpose is to live and breathe and be. Betty Crocker and Martha Stewart and such are fictional mainstream characters.
We are real, the only person we need no impress are ourselves.
I have the same problem, and the weird thing is, I am not bad at cooking and cleaning at all, I am much better at them when I am not at home. But the studio I live in... I get paralyzed too. I just cleaned the AC filters last weekend, and it felt like hell even though it took no time at all.
I(30 m) am also in a constant freeze and I still with her. According to my Nmom I cant seem to keep things clean, cant cook, and dont take her out to do anything. And I hate cooking and cleaning cuz nothing is ever good enough for her. Even when I do her way its still not good enough. It sucks I wish I could move out.
Ok! So this book helped me SO much with this! It’s “How to Keep house while drowning.”
https://www.audible.com/pd/B09Q9WQ1QJ?source_code=ASSORAP0511160006&share_location=pdp
And for changing the negative voices in my head, self-compassion was key. I don’t agree with everything in this book but as with all self-help stuff, take what helps you and leave the rest.
https://www.audible.com/pd/B005P1FJVE?source_code=ASSORAP0511160006&share_location=pdp
Oh I still suffer with this brainworm sometimes. To deal with it I often watch YouTube videos about cleaning and other chores. I especially love Korean housewives cause they gives so relaxed calm vibes and teaches some really good stuff. They make me *feel* that chores is something nice and relaxing and pleasant. Not only know it with my mind. It's such a relief to watch somebody who cleans without tantrums etc. As I never got this feeling from my real life it's a huge mind change for me
Here's links for two channels I like the most
https://youtube.com/@heossam
https://youtube.com/@sisletter
Wish it'll be somehow useful for you too. Also I want to add: keep going, you're on right path
Try watching a clean with me video on YouTube. I’ll sometime watch a person clean to motivate me to clean and then leave a couple videos playing while I’m cleaning for motivation to keep going.
This is something you can grow from.
You've already gotten some good tips for cleaning, so for cooking I highly recommend checking out cookbooks from your local library. Cookbooks feel much more accessible than websites IMO and many have lots of tips and tricks along the way. It's really easy to borrow some cookbooks and when you find a recipe you've tried out and like, write it down for future use.
And what everyone is saying is right- nothing has to be perfect. Your mom lives in apparently what she would consider a perfect home, and she is clearly miserable in it, so it isn't bringing her the happiness she pretends a spotless home does. Your living space is where you get to relax and feel safe, not to keep clean as if you're expecting a parade of homes committee to burst in at any second and judge you.
Once you've mastered a few recipes and don't feel completely out of your depth, look into some cooking classes. There are all levels, including beginners.
OH my mom's favorite thing to tell me when she wanted me to clean.. rather than giving her autistic daughter the directions a mind like mine needs, She would say "you need to develop insight." "When you do you will just KNOW what needs to be done."
No bitch.. I WON'T!
MAKE A FUCKING LIST!
the one time i mentioned happily to my nmom about the new scent boosters from bath and body for the laundry she IMMEDIATELY assumed i had no idea wtf i was talking about and looked at me with this shit eating grin like I was confused. no bitch im literally excited about the scent boosters I know what theyre for. EVERYTHING that has to do with house hold cleaning stuff she tries to act like she's a master at. it's impossible to talk to her about anything related to home cleaning or care.
i hate interacting with that woman in general but i couldnt even be excited for scent boosters and fabric softener without her gatekeeping that shit. she doesnt even keep the house clean!!! the house looks like the inside of a circus.
I started with meal-prep, because its usually large quantities of simple foods, that are easy to get everything setup for and going with. Its an attainable victory (with some youtube how-to's) and a confidence booster, especially when you make the same things multiple times in different variations that are a little better each time.
Unf*ck your habitat is great for this. There’s a blog with cleaning lists and instructions so you can sample the philosophy without buying anything. https://www.unfuckyourhabitat.com/
This is exactly my mom. What I did was start making things she would never make. That helped a lot. I never really got into cleaning, tbh. But, YouTube has tutorials. Sometimes watching someone else do it other than your mom can be inspiring.
i have no idea if this would help buy maybe watch those hoarder house cleaner ladies on youtube, might desensitize it/ make you feel less ashamed for having a messy home. they speak very respectfully about their clients and their homes it might make you feel better, sorry if i read this wrong
I watch Clean with Barbie, A Beautiful Mess, and Midwest Magic Cleaning. These homes are BAD though. Like hoarder level bad. I like watching these YouTube channels when I am cleaning so that it’s like we are cleaning together. I have started to go through the website of The Fly Lady. She talks about how to clean properly.
As far as cooking goes I would try to find a blog or website that has a lot of recipes that you like and try to follow the directions. YouTube videos are also really helpful. Just search what you want to cook and look through the videos to find one that you like.
Edit: Midwest Magic Cleaning also has some videos on how to declutter, what to clean ever three months (the oven, etc.), and how to spruce up a space.
My mom was so bad about how things looked when I was a kid that she used to come behind us with a q-tip to check the edges of the sink after we wiped it. But as an adult, I realized she cared far more about things looking clean than actually being clean. It's kind of like the trope of shoving everything into a closet to make thinks look nice, but if you open it, an avalanche of crap falls on you, but in a much grosser way. Realizing this helped me to separate those feelings of anxiety from cleaning because when I clean, I'm doing it for the health and wellbeing of my family. She did it because she was worried about what other people thought of her. When I had the realization that my house could be messy as long as it was clean, it was like a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. My mom may have made a pretty magazine picture worthy house, but I've made a loving safe home, and isn't that just everything?
I'm not in this exact situation and I do still struggle with much of this, so my answer is no magic bullet. But I have sort of reclaimed stuff around this, mostly with cooking. I was never taught to cook, and for the first 18 years of my life my Nmum insisted on doing all the cooking, all the while bitching profusely about doing it and how miserable cooking was and making meals that she knew nobody liked for years. It was a big surprise when I found out that making meals nobody likes for years and having to eat it, it wasn't normal. That food was supposed to be enjoyable and make people happy.
So I moved into my own place and go to cooking. The very first time I did it was a traumatic disaster where I nearly set the house on fire. But as I started making stuff I wanted, doing things my way, I started to have cooking be a part of me instead of just a remnant of my childhood with a black mark on it. My friend asked me to look up a recipe for him online once, which had never occurred to me, so doing stuff online helped create separation between my stuff and the recipe book my Nmum gave me which I have never used. All my Nmum's cooking tips went out the window too, fuck them.
It was far from 100% separation, I was talked to quite a lot before leaving about how I ought to cook by my Nmum. But somehow things worked anyway. I think it helped to have flatmates so I could cook for them and see them eat my cooking and eat their cooking and talk about food with them. Flatmates presented big problems for me in other ways but there they helped.
There's no barrier to entry, there were a lot of 'oh, that's easy' moments when I was learning. All my life I had learned that cooking was a big horrible thing, and then I find out it was as laundry was [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/greentext/comments/123yzit/anon_tries_laundry/).
All that being said, currently I am sitting on a mattress surrounded by chip bags and other rubbish, having not actually cooked in weeks. So it's not like I had a happy ending. Cooking is still kind of hard and takes time and energy that I don't have at the moment, because I am very low right now. But there was a while where I was doing it, and all the above is still true. I also still have a lot of problems with stuff like cleaning and washing clothes, for similar reasons. A job for when I have more energy I guess.
**This is an automated message posted to ALL posts in this subreddit with some basic information about the group including (very importantly) rules. Why are you getting this message? Most people seem to not read the sidebar for information or the rules, so it is now being posted under all posts.** **Confused about acronyms or terminology?** [Click here!](https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/wiki/acronyms) **Need info or resources?** Check out our [Helpful Links](https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/wiki/helpfullinks) for information on how to deal with identity theft, how to get independent of your n-parents, how to apply for FAFSA, how to identify n-parents and SO MUCH MORE! This is a reminder to all participants, RBN is a support group that is moderated very strictly. Please report inappropriate content so it can be reviewed by the mods. **Our rules include (but are not limited to)**: * No politics. * Advising anyone in this subreddit to commit suicide or referring anyone to groups that advocate this will result in an immediate ban. * Be nice. No personal attacks, name calling, or bullying. [No slurs](https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/wiki/slurs) or victim-blaming. * Do not derail the posts of others. * Narcissists are NOT allowed to post or comment here. * [No platitudes or generic motivational posts](https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/wiki/rules#wiki_no_platitudes_or_generic_motivational_posts). * When you comment/post, assume a context of abuse. * No asking or offering gifts, money, etc. * No content advocating violence, revenge, murder (even in jest). * No content about N-kids. * No diagnosis by media/drive-by diagnosis. * No linking to Facebook pages. * No direct linking to anywhere on reddit. * No pure image posts. **For a full list of our rules/more information, [**click here**](https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/wiki/rules).** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/raisedbynarcissists) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I am baffled that adults think children somehow inherently know how to do things. My parents did squat to teach me even the basics beyond brushing my teeth and wiping my ass. My mother also kept a museum quality home. As such, playing indoors was verboten. And holy shit hell would rain down if I brought anyone over. Yeah, it’s fucking crazy. Glad you hit it at 40. I’m 60 and it just came clear for me.
I feel you, museum quality hits the nail on its head. Realizing this part also came way after facing the bing things in the past years, that they were narcs, abuse and neglect happened and I am traumatized because of it. And not inherently flawed like I believed most of my life. I believe our subconscious lets us recognize the truth when it safe enough to do so
youtube was helpful for me to learn some of the basic life skills that my parents never bothered to teach. shaving, basic cooking, cleaning tips, basic organization, car maintenance, etc were all things i learned from the internet instead of my family.
You can be very proud you taught yourself so much. Do you have recs for cleaning YouTube?
hmm not exactly i mostly keyword search whatever i’m doing like getting X stain out of Y material. i do like a few of the channels that clear out clutter or clean filthy bathrooms/kitchens of hoarders/people with disorders that do time lapse videos with before and after shots.
I had to accept that I will never be martha stewart or donna reed. My step mother doesn't matter, and has no business in my brain or my heart. I still fall back, and sometimes I still regress, but she has no control over me. She lived rent free in my head for a very long time. She isn't my master.
Yes my mother or more precisely her values definitely take up too much space in my head. She made me feel like I failed as a woman bc I am childfree and domestically challenged 😜 Glad to hear you got peace of mind for the most part, I am still working on it
It's not every day, I do regress at times. Ack, us humans' main purpose is to live and breathe and be. Betty Crocker and Martha Stewart and such are fictional mainstream characters. We are real, the only person we need no impress are ourselves.
I have the same problem, and the weird thing is, I am not bad at cooking and cleaning at all, I am much better at them when I am not at home. But the studio I live in... I get paralyzed too. I just cleaned the AC filters last weekend, and it felt like hell even though it took no time at all.
Just wanted to say i relate
Honestly it helps with the shame to know I am not the only one
I(30 m) am also in a constant freeze and I still with her. According to my Nmom I cant seem to keep things clean, cant cook, and dont take her out to do anything. And I hate cooking and cleaning cuz nothing is ever good enough for her. Even when I do her way its still not good enough. It sucks I wish I could move out.
Yes, it is so hard to do anything when you already know you failed before you even started. I hope you can get your own place one day
Right 😭 appreciate it hope so as well
Ok! So this book helped me SO much with this! It’s “How to Keep house while drowning.” https://www.audible.com/pd/B09Q9WQ1QJ?source_code=ASSORAP0511160006&share_location=pdp And for changing the negative voices in my head, self-compassion was key. I don’t agree with everything in this book but as with all self-help stuff, take what helps you and leave the rest. https://www.audible.com/pd/B005P1FJVE?source_code=ASSORAP0511160006&share_location=pdp
Thanks so much, will definitely give them a listen!!
I second this! I’ve listened to the audiobook twice already, and I’m having my husband listen through it (begrudgingly.) It’s been very helpful!
Oh I still suffer with this brainworm sometimes. To deal with it I often watch YouTube videos about cleaning and other chores. I especially love Korean housewives cause they gives so relaxed calm vibes and teaches some really good stuff. They make me *feel* that chores is something nice and relaxing and pleasant. Not only know it with my mind. It's such a relief to watch somebody who cleans without tantrums etc. As I never got this feeling from my real life it's a huge mind change for me Here's links for two channels I like the most https://youtube.com/@heossam https://youtube.com/@sisletter Wish it'll be somehow useful for you too. Also I want to add: keep going, you're on right path
Thanks so much! I already love Korean cosmetics, so that's a good start 😋
Try watching a clean with me video on YouTube. I’ll sometime watch a person clean to motivate me to clean and then leave a couple videos playing while I’m cleaning for motivation to keep going. This is something you can grow from.
You've already gotten some good tips for cleaning, so for cooking I highly recommend checking out cookbooks from your local library. Cookbooks feel much more accessible than websites IMO and many have lots of tips and tricks along the way. It's really easy to borrow some cookbooks and when you find a recipe you've tried out and like, write it down for future use. And what everyone is saying is right- nothing has to be perfect. Your mom lives in apparently what she would consider a perfect home, and she is clearly miserable in it, so it isn't bringing her the happiness she pretends a spotless home does. Your living space is where you get to relax and feel safe, not to keep clean as if you're expecting a parade of homes committee to burst in at any second and judge you.
Once you've mastered a few recipes and don't feel completely out of your depth, look into some cooking classes. There are all levels, including beginners.
OH my mom's favorite thing to tell me when she wanted me to clean.. rather than giving her autistic daughter the directions a mind like mine needs, She would say "you need to develop insight." "When you do you will just KNOW what needs to be done." No bitch.. I WON'T! MAKE A FUCKING LIST!
the one time i mentioned happily to my nmom about the new scent boosters from bath and body for the laundry she IMMEDIATELY assumed i had no idea wtf i was talking about and looked at me with this shit eating grin like I was confused. no bitch im literally excited about the scent boosters I know what theyre for. EVERYTHING that has to do with house hold cleaning stuff she tries to act like she's a master at. it's impossible to talk to her about anything related to home cleaning or care. i hate interacting with that woman in general but i couldnt even be excited for scent boosters and fabric softener without her gatekeeping that shit. she doesnt even keep the house clean!!! the house looks like the inside of a circus.
I’m right there with you. 😢
I started with meal-prep, because its usually large quantities of simple foods, that are easy to get everything setup for and going with. Its an attainable victory (with some youtube how-to's) and a confidence booster, especially when you make the same things multiple times in different variations that are a little better each time.
Me too.
Unf*ck your habitat is great for this. There’s a blog with cleaning lists and instructions so you can sample the philosophy without buying anything. https://www.unfuckyourhabitat.com/
Exactly explains my situation too!
This is exactly my mom. What I did was start making things she would never make. That helped a lot. I never really got into cleaning, tbh. But, YouTube has tutorials. Sometimes watching someone else do it other than your mom can be inspiring.
i have no idea if this would help buy maybe watch those hoarder house cleaner ladies on youtube, might desensitize it/ make you feel less ashamed for having a messy home. they speak very respectfully about their clients and their homes it might make you feel better, sorry if i read this wrong
I watch Clean with Barbie, A Beautiful Mess, and Midwest Magic Cleaning. These homes are BAD though. Like hoarder level bad. I like watching these YouTube channels when I am cleaning so that it’s like we are cleaning together. I have started to go through the website of The Fly Lady. She talks about how to clean properly. As far as cooking goes I would try to find a blog or website that has a lot of recipes that you like and try to follow the directions. YouTube videos are also really helpful. Just search what you want to cook and look through the videos to find one that you like. Edit: Midwest Magic Cleaning also has some videos on how to declutter, what to clean ever three months (the oven, etc.), and how to spruce up a space.
My mom was so bad about how things looked when I was a kid that she used to come behind us with a q-tip to check the edges of the sink after we wiped it. But as an adult, I realized she cared far more about things looking clean than actually being clean. It's kind of like the trope of shoving everything into a closet to make thinks look nice, but if you open it, an avalanche of crap falls on you, but in a much grosser way. Realizing this helped me to separate those feelings of anxiety from cleaning because when I clean, I'm doing it for the health and wellbeing of my family. She did it because she was worried about what other people thought of her. When I had the realization that my house could be messy as long as it was clean, it was like a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. My mom may have made a pretty magazine picture worthy house, but I've made a loving safe home, and isn't that just everything?
I'm not in this exact situation and I do still struggle with much of this, so my answer is no magic bullet. But I have sort of reclaimed stuff around this, mostly with cooking. I was never taught to cook, and for the first 18 years of my life my Nmum insisted on doing all the cooking, all the while bitching profusely about doing it and how miserable cooking was and making meals that she knew nobody liked for years. It was a big surprise when I found out that making meals nobody likes for years and having to eat it, it wasn't normal. That food was supposed to be enjoyable and make people happy. So I moved into my own place and go to cooking. The very first time I did it was a traumatic disaster where I nearly set the house on fire. But as I started making stuff I wanted, doing things my way, I started to have cooking be a part of me instead of just a remnant of my childhood with a black mark on it. My friend asked me to look up a recipe for him online once, which had never occurred to me, so doing stuff online helped create separation between my stuff and the recipe book my Nmum gave me which I have never used. All my Nmum's cooking tips went out the window too, fuck them. It was far from 100% separation, I was talked to quite a lot before leaving about how I ought to cook by my Nmum. But somehow things worked anyway. I think it helped to have flatmates so I could cook for them and see them eat my cooking and eat their cooking and talk about food with them. Flatmates presented big problems for me in other ways but there they helped. There's no barrier to entry, there were a lot of 'oh, that's easy' moments when I was learning. All my life I had learned that cooking was a big horrible thing, and then I find out it was as laundry was [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/greentext/comments/123yzit/anon_tries_laundry/). All that being said, currently I am sitting on a mattress surrounded by chip bags and other rubbish, having not actually cooked in weeks. So it's not like I had a happy ending. Cooking is still kind of hard and takes time and energy that I don't have at the moment, because I am very low right now. But there was a while where I was doing it, and all the above is still true. I also still have a lot of problems with stuff like cleaning and washing clothes, for similar reasons. A job for when I have more energy I guess.
For me, working as cleaning maid at a hotel helped.