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Situation with gfg32 has gone "beserkier"
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<blockquote data-quote="Scent of Cedar *" data-source="post: 619689" data-attributes="member: 17461"><p>"Trusting that girlfriend will find mom's behavior disgusting...." Though we don't often address it here, the truth is that those with difficult children over thirty suffer in a different realm, altogether. We have survived the missing, the loving, the criminal activity, the betrayals of self and other. We have incorporated the shock, the horror and the pain of what is lost. I hope those whose difficult children are younger never come to understand what I am talking about.</p><p></p><p>But there is a difference.</p><p></p><p>In any event, we have gone on, put our lives back together as best we are able.</p><p></p><p>Like me, we come back here when some extraordinary thing happens, and we learn there are levels of pain and betrayal and confusion even we never suspected.</p><p></p><p>It seems that, once you have managed to go on, the behaviors of the difficult child escalate. There are very few therapists who actively commiserate with an over-thirty difficult child in blaming his parents. If you refuse to accept blame, and because the difficult child no longer has an ally in blaming you for who he has chosen and worked so hard to become, the difficult child savagely blames you to anyone else who will listen. Coldly targeting the parent or other caregivers, the attacks are more personal, more targeted, the effort tailored to destroy reputations and self concept and peace. Hearsay evidence is brought in from other people in the difficult child's life to condemn us, to freeze us in place, as is being done with the girlfriend in your case. My difficult child son did the same. It was a shocking thing for difficult child to realize that his concept of his childhood (and I do think he believed it?) fell apart upon actually having the girlfriend meet us. </p><p></p><p>Have you met your difficult child's girlfriend? We came so close to turning difficult child son around with the most beautiful girlfriend ever. After meeting us, she was actually able to help difficult child see in a different way. It was this girlfriend who brought difficult child to us to confess his drug use and to ask for help, after she decided to leave him.</p><p></p><p>There is another thread here about detachment and distance. It was too painful a thread for response. I would have come into the very things I am going to write about, here.</p><p></p><p>I don't understand why these things happen. I only know they do. They happened to me. They are happening to you. They happen to each of us, here on the site, who have adult difficult child kids. Those parents who rebel, who somehow manage to retain a healthy core reality in spite of what has happened to their kids, to their families, maintain a kind of separation from those children they love. One of the posters here, Scott G and another, Recovering Enabler, write of learning to see our children clearly, and of not judging them or their behaviors. </p><p></p><p>Midwest Mom is another.</p><p></p><p>Dammit Janet is leaving home with her husband to find peace, and the freedom to live her own life with the man she has loved all her life.</p><p></p><p>This, as I understand it, is detachment. It is easier when the grown child is far away. But it is mandatory to learn and to remember these skills, because the children, despite what they say about how they feel about us, continue to come determinedly back, as though something were unfinished.</p><p></p><p>In seeing clearly, or as clearly as we are able, we take correct action toward our children, our extended families, and ourselves. In learning not to judge our children for the people they have grown into, there is peace, for us. We no longer agonize over what happened, where we went wrong, how we can help.</p><p></p><p>We simply, as Recovering Enabler instructs us, <u>let go.</u></p><p></p><p>For those parents, less fortunate than we are, who cannot maintain that core self, that core belief that we are not responsible for the choices our adult children continue to make, it seems to me that the victimization continues. It may be subtle, but it is there. I visited a mansion, once. The mother was elderly, the father was passed on. The adult son <em>and his pet pig</em> lived in and had the run of the mansion. The pig was actually delightful. It was innocent of the part it played in the shaming and destruction of the mother. The difficult child son, who did not work, who sent out that same kind of feeling so many adult difficult children send out...I don't know what else to say about that. He was there because he had nowhere to go and nothing to his name. His mother had taken him in once the father passed away.</p><p></p><p>In all her life, the mother had been so fortunate. The challenge had been this one son. At the time I visited the mansion, both were waiting for her to die. This happened years before I would understand the underlying dynamic. I don't know why I am telling this story, now. To underline the truth that this may be the outcome for each of us who does not require herself to see with clarity, to set boundaries about how we allow ourselves to love our difficult child children.</p><p></p><p>I think that is why I am telling this story.</p><p></p><p>I sound like such a know it all, all the time. I apologize. We are all just here, sharing what we think we know. But I see a pathology in the grandmother's handling of this painful devastation of your life as slyly harmful, and as harm filled, as my own mother's response when our daughter's situation became family knowledge.</p><p></p><p>I am sorry your mother is using this tragic and so personal devastation to hurt you.</p><p></p><p>That is the other thing that happens, when we have difficult child kids we just cannot turn around. Persons we normally would not have coffee with offer advice (generally, sanctimoniously)...and we are afraid not to consider it; we are afraid that might be the thing we missed.</p><p></p><p>The grandmother is very wrong to buy her way into Heaven on the back of your difficult child's pain. My mother was very wrong to purchase that hit of self esteem at my expense and on the back of my then 14 year old daughter.</p><p></p><p>But she did.</p><p></p><p>It was a triumph for her.</p><p></p><p>I had been a very good mother.</p><p></p><p>And then? All at once...I wasn't.</p><p></p><p>And my mother finds vindication in that to this day. </p><p></p><p>I have learned to trace a kind of mental illness through my family line. It was not open enough to require psychiatric assessment and so, there were no diagnoses made. But it is there. It is there in my mother. It is there, in my poor daughter. It may be there in me, and it may be that I cannot see it. </p><p></p><p>That may have something to do with why the grandmothers need to find some way to slice us open when the opportunity presents itself.</p><p></p><p>I haven't been very helpful, here. I have no solution, no comfort to offer. It is insult added to deep injury. </p><p></p><p>There is some comfort in seeing it, in knowing what it is. </p><p></p><p>This dynamic may not be true for your family.</p><p></p><p>Your only choice is to survive it. It is an added burden. Maybe part of it is that the pain of our children's situations somehow freed us from the dominance of our mothers? Hurting us through our children may be one way to recover that power?</p><p></p><p>I don't know why they do such things.</p><p></p><p>You do know I am sending you strength; you do know all of us here are your companions on a journey so dark we can't see a darn thing for sure.</p><p></p><p>Cedar</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Scent of Cedar *, post: 619689, member: 17461"] "Trusting that girlfriend will find mom's behavior disgusting...." Though we don't often address it here, the truth is that those with difficult children over thirty suffer in a different realm, altogether. We have survived the missing, the loving, the criminal activity, the betrayals of self and other. We have incorporated the shock, the horror and the pain of what is lost. I hope those whose difficult children are younger never come to understand what I am talking about. But there is a difference. In any event, we have gone on, put our lives back together as best we are able. Like me, we come back here when some extraordinary thing happens, and we learn there are levels of pain and betrayal and confusion even we never suspected. It seems that, once you have managed to go on, the behaviors of the difficult child escalate. There are very few therapists who actively commiserate with an over-thirty difficult child in blaming his parents. If you refuse to accept blame, and because the difficult child no longer has an ally in blaming you for who he has chosen and worked so hard to become, the difficult child savagely blames you to anyone else who will listen. Coldly targeting the parent or other caregivers, the attacks are more personal, more targeted, the effort tailored to destroy reputations and self concept and peace. Hearsay evidence is brought in from other people in the difficult child's life to condemn us, to freeze us in place, as is being done with the girlfriend in your case. My difficult child son did the same. It was a shocking thing for difficult child to realize that his concept of his childhood (and I do think he believed it?) fell apart upon actually having the girlfriend meet us. Have you met your difficult child's girlfriend? We came so close to turning difficult child son around with the most beautiful girlfriend ever. After meeting us, she was actually able to help difficult child see in a different way. It was this girlfriend who brought difficult child to us to confess his drug use and to ask for help, after she decided to leave him. There is another thread here about detachment and distance. It was too painful a thread for response. I would have come into the very things I am going to write about, here. I don't understand why these things happen. I only know they do. They happened to me. They are happening to you. They happen to each of us, here on the site, who have adult difficult child kids. Those parents who rebel, who somehow manage to retain a healthy core reality in spite of what has happened to their kids, to their families, maintain a kind of separation from those children they love. One of the posters here, Scott G and another, Recovering Enabler, write of learning to see our children clearly, and of not judging them or their behaviors. Midwest Mom is another. Dammit Janet is leaving home with her husband to find peace, and the freedom to live her own life with the man she has loved all her life. This, as I understand it, is detachment. It is easier when the grown child is far away. But it is mandatory to learn and to remember these skills, because the children, despite what they say about how they feel about us, continue to come determinedly back, as though something were unfinished. In seeing clearly, or as clearly as we are able, we take correct action toward our children, our extended families, and ourselves. In learning not to judge our children for the people they have grown into, there is peace, for us. We no longer agonize over what happened, where we went wrong, how we can help. We simply, as Recovering Enabler instructs us, [U]let go.[/U] For those parents, less fortunate than we are, who cannot maintain that core self, that core belief that we are not responsible for the choices our adult children continue to make, it seems to me that the victimization continues. It may be subtle, but it is there. I visited a mansion, once. The mother was elderly, the father was passed on. The adult son [I]and his pet pig[/I] lived in and had the run of the mansion. The pig was actually delightful. It was innocent of the part it played in the shaming and destruction of the mother. The difficult child son, who did not work, who sent out that same kind of feeling so many adult difficult children send out...I don't know what else to say about that. He was there because he had nowhere to go and nothing to his name. His mother had taken him in once the father passed away. In all her life, the mother had been so fortunate. The challenge had been this one son. At the time I visited the mansion, both were waiting for her to die. This happened years before I would understand the underlying dynamic. I don't know why I am telling this story, now. To underline the truth that this may be the outcome for each of us who does not require herself to see with clarity, to set boundaries about how we allow ourselves to love our difficult child children. I think that is why I am telling this story. I sound like such a know it all, all the time. I apologize. We are all just here, sharing what we think we know. But I see a pathology in the grandmother's handling of this painful devastation of your life as slyly harmful, and as harm filled, as my own mother's response when our daughter's situation became family knowledge. I am sorry your mother is using this tragic and so personal devastation to hurt you. That is the other thing that happens, when we have difficult child kids we just cannot turn around. Persons we normally would not have coffee with offer advice (generally, sanctimoniously)...and we are afraid not to consider it; we are afraid that might be the thing we missed. The grandmother is very wrong to buy her way into Heaven on the back of your difficult child's pain. My mother was very wrong to purchase that hit of self esteem at my expense and on the back of my then 14 year old daughter. But she did. It was a triumph for her. I had been a very good mother. And then? All at once...I wasn't. And my mother finds vindication in that to this day. I have learned to trace a kind of mental illness through my family line. It was not open enough to require psychiatric assessment and so, there were no diagnoses made. But it is there. It is there in my mother. It is there, in my poor daughter. It may be there in me, and it may be that I cannot see it. That may have something to do with why the grandmothers need to find some way to slice us open when the opportunity presents itself. I haven't been very helpful, here. I have no solution, no comfort to offer. It is insult added to deep injury. There is some comfort in seeing it, in knowing what it is. This dynamic may not be true for your family. Your only choice is to survive it. It is an added burden. Maybe part of it is that the pain of our children's situations somehow freed us from the dominance of our mothers? Hurting us through our children may be one way to recover that power? I don't know why they do such things. You do know I am sending you strength; you do know all of us here are your companions on a journey so dark we can't see a darn thing for sure. Cedar [/QUOTE]
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Situation with gfg32 has gone "beserkier"
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