Hey there @Ruby26 umm WHOA are we from the same family??? (jokes).....but....what you say is eerily familiar in every detail. No one has verified it but I suspect theres a "DARK SECRET" as in my mother's Grandfather was a PDF, I am certain that he got to her but, all of her life she has denied any problem with herself. They don't stop at one, and any time I mention ANYTHING about mental health or "the secrets of the past" to the extended family they freeze in their tracks, change the subject or just don't reply.
SO....like in your family that left my mother as a severely debilitated woman who was undiagnosed but spent every day of my life screaming at me and she is severely paranoid about society, as in we grew up with the curtains drawn shut every day etc. All of the family are robotic, they don't really enjoy anything, they seem to just do their jobs, run their businesses, hoard money, go on holidays, try to boast about their life in a false show that I find repulsive and I enjoy 'not receiving their boasting' as it's just sickening to constantly validate the showboat society who are older than me and do not, never have cared about my wellbeing on any level including severely abusive father, mental breakdown mother, it's all about what they did with their money but they haven't spent $2 on anything outside of material goods that try to make themselves look like ?magazine people or something.
I am sorry for your mother's condition and what I can see from reading your story is this:
They covered up and denied whatever broke your mother's mental health down.
You ended up similar, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree most time and as a young person my mother moulded me into her twin and I had a horrible life due to being HER PERSONALITY stuck in a child/young woman's body.
I reckon your family would be saying "Oh no not you again"...."Her mother was a such a troubled liar I can't believe that Ruby26 is the same"...."Why is she trying to get attention like her mother?" ...."Can't she just get over it?" all that utter bullshit which is the cause and effect of severe intergenerational trauma.
How to move on and out of that?
It has taken me DECADES of fighting and the #1 thing I had to learn and accept is that it was ultimately fighting against myself. The root cause of my mother's failure to thrive is her DEPENDENCY ON ABUSIVE MEN and that was something I had to unlearn as well, she had this fantasy that all I had to do was find a partner to pay for my existence and then I wouldn't be her problem anymore. (ugh..........no man wants to raise an adult child into his dream partner.......and where did she get the idea that adult men should raise children into perfect partners???)
A psychic told me once that the cause of her hatred of me is that she wanted to be a perfect partner to all men, and that since birth I had been an object in the way of her desire to be accepted by men. It makes perfect sense to me including her obsession with men and it explains the heartbreaking abandonment and rejection I have faced. Enough about me though....
For me the root cause of healing was recognising that if I had an empty bucket called my life inside, I needed to repair it and fill it up with functional things where there was little but pain and dysfunction.
I opened my mind to learning A LOT from everyone except my mother. If my instincts told me to do what she would do, I had to mentally overthrow those instincts to do what she would not do. I had to get social skills, life skills, I had to drop my ego and engage with charities and come to the bottom of the truth about my life - I had been told I had a perfect mother and was a horrible child, it is still taking 20+ years to accept that she was a horrible mother, I was a perfect child at birth, and she failed me on every single level except for not murdering me, and that I have a right to be angry/hurt about it but, NO ONE can fix it except me.
Anger and hurt are the emotions which drive any individual away from other people. It took a long time for me to stop being angry and hurt so that I would be accepted and trusted by others.
Friends: It's easy to find depressed/alcoholic/parasitic/other dependent people as friends and to sit around wasting a lot of time in a negative rut. But being distracted from the problem, doesn't fix it. To this day my friends exist for me to take a break from my own headspace through easygoing activities, mutual interests, superficial activities but I have learned the #1 way to make a person hate me is to depend on them for anything emotional, financial or material. That's seeking PARENTS when friends are just people who enjoy your company.
I get and have got a lot out of having a job, volunteering, doing things in society under my own stream. I am lucky I grew up before the internet so I know how to create in the real world, I don't know what I would do if I could only communicate or believe in things I saw on the internet as I have seen many young people live like that. I dont know how old you are but I encourage you to really work on developing real world social skills and hang out with old people, they LOVE company and most times are ignored and neglected and being around them can teach a lot of how to interact with other people.
Then, "don't be sad"....HA HA HA!!!! But, you have to learn what makes you sad, you have to grieve it, let it go and come to terms with reality so that you can be well adjusted, satisfied and/or happy from time to time. But literally being sad and angry and/or numb feels bad. So find what feels good, in the heart, not just distraction from internal pain but true happiness, and try to bring that into your life as often as possible while dealing with all the other stuff.
Decide or research or think about where you want to go. Do you want to move away from your family? Do you want to have your toxic relationships under control? Will you stay around them forever? Do you hope that one day they will change? Are you actually quite similar to them and accept wierd robotic relationships? I say this because I have developed a friendship with one Aunty, my mother's sister but it's not a true friendship, I would bet money she's autistic based on her behaviour and she plays the denial game too. I am fairly fake to her, I accept that she's only there when she wants/needs my company, I see her as the best developed flower off the crappy tree that is HER family, and I study her to learn more about what my mother is and could be.
Then, you need to fill the hours of your life with stuff. What stuff? I dont know, whatever it is that makes you contented/not-sad/moving forward/going places. Once upon a time I thought all "successful" people were happy. They aren't happy, most successful people spend a lot of time woking/being stressed/being responsible and they take happiness in small doses. My quest to be HAPPY was due to being a sad kid and my mum always saying, BE HAPPY. It was another one of her delusions, lies, denials of reality so in my life I am careful to avoid the fake high of HAPPINESS and to seek CONTENTMENT AND SATISFACTION.
Do you have toxic shame based on the family situation/mental health? Try to remove that from your life. I had a friend who was a very simple bloke, very obviously disabled and he was as happy as larry outside, and very adept with social skills, although he would confide some stresses to me sometimes. He taught me to always be nice and kind and decent around other people, which allows both of us a break from our internal mindscape. Our real life friendship is over due to moving on to different locations and he loves to drink, I don't drink at all but we chat on the phone from time to time and he taught me to not dump problems on other people, to just be there for them and with them despite any stress going on. I love that man he is so well adjusted to his life although he still gets cruelly mocked sometimes due to his disability status.
Anyway I have to move on with the day but I encourage you to fight for yourself and LEARN like in primary school how to fit in with the outside world. I see it as relatively simple after many years of struggle - inside world/mothers family/known habits are narcissistic, self serving tricks and habits which don't work unless I am trying to get money off my rich parents (the family culture).
My mother has never given me a cent, she wastes all her money on food and smokes. So, I had to learn how to be humble and earn my money in society, be "normal" and able to hold down a job, even if I get sacked constantly. I have broken the cycle of domestic violence and self abuse, she's trapped in the mirror of her narcissistic/autistic father's abuse of her and she will never grow up, never evolve, never change. She has a handful of druggie friends who believe her victimhood and, that's her life.
I had the same life when I was 20-25 and it resulted in suicidality, for me evolution and growth was the only way forward to step out of the shadows of my mothers horror movie of a life that she had and gave to me, and my brothers....if you have siblings what are they like compared to you? One brother of mine is broken, the other is a monster like his mother and father. I talk to the broken one hes my best friend, I don't talk to Monster 2.0 I await the day to hear he's gone to gaol and I will celebrate that he's been caught and punished for a litany of antisocial behaviours that are applauded by our mother.
Last but not least I have come to terms with the full story, it echoes around my head as a horror movie but, I think I escaped the horror movie and I know 3 people who are helping the villain as the movie plays on repeat. Those 3 people are my immediate family, they have money but they have absolutely nothing else and I do not want their lives. My life is very hard but at least it's not evil, nor taking money from evil, nor dishonestly manipulating money from evil.
My life has turned around from being a product of evil, a selfish fairly useless person into a life I used to dream of when I was young. Healthy food, healthy mind, fairly healthy body all things considered, honest relationships, trusted and respected by amazing people whom I trust and respect also. I am far from perfect but I take responsibility for anything I need to and I constantly try to overcome my own weaknesses. I advocate FOR children's rights, mental health rights, gender equality/respect between all genders and this helps me prove in my mind I am not the same as my horrible family.
Re above I don't get ANGRY and complain about injustice, its more helpful to be STRONG and positively recommend change. Call out abuse, help people such as writing quality messages to you and others on SANE, look after my local environment, etc. The victim complex is the most disempowering thing you can let into your life, that everything is someone elses' fault and you are an innocent baby in a world thats ripped you off. IF the world has ripped you off, fix it up then be a better person that makes things fair, right, true and strong.
A very small example of that related to family was recently I had to broadcast some family news. I wrote in my text message to all of them...
"(Birthday) is coming up for (Person A) on (date). Please be sure to phone, text, send a card, write a letter. Remember that (person A) has a toxic outlook on life but if you just ignore their toxicity and talk about normal things they too will talk about normal things with you, if you lead the conversation. Dont forget, their toxicity is due to unnaddressed trauma and that if (Person B) had advocated for healing the trauma instead of (denial behaviour), this person would have a different life. Please do not discriminate nor shun (Person A) due to the ignorance and denial of (Person B) whom has never addressed their own trauma although we hope that one day (Person B) may see the benefit of change and take responsiblity for their life. This day is not about (Person B), please celebrate this day for (Person A) whom is a person who like any other deserves respect and happiness on their birthday. With love from (Myself).
That message allowed me to advocate for Person A while highlighting that Person B will try to ruin the day and also underline that Person B needs to face their issues. I will never win but, at least I am not helping Person B with their toxic victim complex that includes bullying Person A.
Anyway I must go. Stand up for yourself fairly, grow yourself like training a dog, and make a strong decision if you follow in the footsteps of the Family you will end up like them, or you have to break the cycle in order to not be like them.
And when nostalgic thoughts or hopes of being loved by them I just replay every single horrible thing they did to me over my life. Voila I snap out of it and think, phew, I could have been dead and at least I'm not dead, they never loved me and they never will so stop yearning for something that doesn't exist. Then, I can have a reality check and keep doing what I need to do for my own life.
All the best take care and stay in control of YOURSELF.
