Quote:
Originally Posted by TishaBuv
“A couple years ago she held a knife to her chest because she was angry at her own mum for some reason.. she asked me and my sister if she should kill herself. It was very scary and still affects me to this day. My sister and I were frozen. She eventually put the knife in the draw and went to her bedroom.”
Your mom has done several abusive things you already mentioned, but let’s just look at this one for now: First or all, doing that was her being over the top dramatic. I doubt she’d have really stabbed herself. So she did that to get a rise out of your sister and you. She traumatized you both and she only did that for effect. That’s abuse.
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Wait a minute here. Nobody is in this woman's mind and body.
When I've been in a . . . "activated state"? "emotional flashback"? I've acted in ways that were hurtful and traumatizing to my children, now adults, but I was so into my state they, like, weren't even there. Not as people who my actions might affect. Not as my children, whom I loved.
Therapy has not, did not, help much so I'm disinclined at this point to use therapist language in this kind of situation. Including "abusive" even if that was the effect. I agree it's important to understand how these kinds of behavior on the part of our parents affected us. And, as a parent after the fact, it feels "good", if not pleasant, to be able to feel and understand how similar behaviors on my part may have affected my children, daughter in particular.
But attributing intention to what the OP's mother did is something else. If she was upset about her own mother -- well, these things do tend to get passed down, as I also know well. I can well imagine that put her in a "state" like I described.
I'm not "excusing" what the OP's mother did. But for me the hardest thing has been to feel and accept how deeply hurtful and wounding was the effect on me of the behavior of female relatives in my family.
It is far from easy to disengage and sort through the emotional spaghetti tangles of these distorted and unhelpful dynamics. Which, now as adults ourselves, we have to try to find some way to do, or else. . .
Accepting the effect your mother's behavior had on you is one thing. I didn't find it helpful myself, though, to try to diagnose and label the persons. Label and identify the behavior, maybe. "That was narcissistic!" But a person doesn't have to have NPD in order for that to happen.