I have decided my mother is a narcissist.

[Athyrium]

I just want to say as someone who was in a similar situation that I wish you the best of luck in cutting her out of your life. The smear campaign will happen though, so be prepared for it. My parents did their very worst with that when I came out as a lesbian and I ended up being cut off from my whole family. Which wasn't great. But honestly, in the long run it was very much worth it. I'm doing much better now than I was then.

 

[Metalhead]

Well, there is no use looking for any kind of validation anywhere in my blood family, and I can’t even talk to most 12 steppers about this without them telling me that I owe my family allegiance because I am an alcoholic and therefore I am the biggest asshole in any given room.

I quit AA as of right now. I do not hate myself enough to belong to that fellowship.

 

[AdamG]

Well, there is no use looking for any kind of validation anywhere in my blood family, and I can’t even talk to most 12 steppers about this without them telling me that I owe my family allegiance because I am an alcoholic and therefore I am the biggest asshole in any given room.

I quit AA as of right now. I do not hate myself enough to belong to that fellowship.

I didn't want to make my opinions of AA open, as they are rather negative and you were a part of it.
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But I cannot stand AA, at all. The books, if you look at them, are full of logical fallacies from the very start. The people who are really in, well let's say they are addictive people, and the meetings fill their holes. The "no we aren't religious but you have to believe in some sort of god" is just ridiculous. And ... good for those who it helps, and it does supposedly help a lot of people ... but listening to people talk about their drunken experiences does nothing but make me want to drink.
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Not only that, but our entire society is locked up in "AA is the only treatment" mindset, and will dismiss any who say it is not for them. And society itself is in this myth that "Alcoholism is like Diabetes, you would treat that right?" Well, Diabetes has known causes, known disease progression, and lots of body markers to test for. Not so, with addiction to alcohol. I won't deny there are potential DNA markers in 15% of the population or something. But this does not a disease make, it makes for a susceptibility. And no, it is not something that everyone with a drinking problem has. Not to mention, entirely not proven yet, just barely touched upon, really.
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Anyway, I've been biting my tongue on this for a while. Cannot stand 12 step programs AT ALL.
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So if you need other support with your drinking (or abstinence) there are certainly others who can help.

 

[AdamG]

Regarding the DNA marker - this is not even proven. It was tested for in mice, and if they feed mice a bunch of alcohol, those with the marker wanted more alcohol afterwards than the ones without. There's an article on this somewhere, I can't find it. So totally not proven, but it would give a bit of weight to the "disease model".
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On the other hand, my twin sisters - one had breast cancer, the other got a DNA test, and so got mastectomy/hysterectomy done prophylactically. She never had cancer, she was not diseased, but she had the markers. So can one say she was sick? So the markers (even if they turn out to be totally valid) still do not make alcoholism a disease.

 

[Metalhead]

AA sucks.

AA makes me want to drink.

Seriously, I had an AA sponsor tell me that I did not care that my cousins were being sexually abused because all alcoholics only care about are themselves. He was projecting his asshole tendencies onto me.

My blood family is ridiculously toxic. My mother often claims that she is proud of the fact that she always sided with people who seriously hurt or taken advantage of me because she thinks autism makes me too stupid to see the whole picture. She also tells me blatant lies on a regular basis to cover her own tracks.

I have cut off contact with her for the most part.

I need to let this deep rage of mine go. I am pure anger.

 

[Judge]

I need to let this deep rage of mine go. I am pure anger.

I suspect tangibly distancing yourself from all who are toxic will serve you better than rage alone. Looks like you've quickly discovered the underside of AA. Makes me wonder at times whether AA operates any differently by simply going to another chapter, local or not. Or do they operate so uniformly that more closely resembles an intolerant cult?

I'm not sure...but IMO they need to grapple with the idea that their methodologies don't magically trump all other considerations. Particularly when dealing with alcoholic autistic people and all the complexities we have in interacting with others.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazin...irrationality-of-alcoholics-anonymous/386255/

 

[Metalhead]

Most of the people I met in AA were really just dry drunks. They stopped drinking but they remained assholes.

I want to help my cousins. At the same time, I want to escape my family’s claws. I am learning to validate what I know to be true by myself, in the face of endless gaslighting by most of my family. Yes, I know my life would have been a lot worse if my mother chose to send me to the institutions when I was a child, but she did not keep me at home because she cared about how I felt.

I want to forgive my mother, aunt, grandmother and extended family. Hate is dragging me down. I need to focus on building who I want to be today instead. I want to forgive them and then let them go.

 

[AdamG]

Hate is tension. Tension stored in the body from hate reminds the body to hate. I fully believe in emotional tensions in the muscles. That tension is directly connected to the stressor which caused it, and is regarded almost the same to the central nervous system. Releasing somato-emotional (somato- means body) requires being able to face the same emotions which were concurrent with the tension being created. But if done, and the body releases, the emotion has also somewhat been dealt with.
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A bit of a ramble, I'm not super lucid at the moment. But I do believe this fully.

 

[Metalhead]

My mom is at my house now and she is behaving totally irrationally. I threw some cigar ashes into my trash can because I had a smoke outside. Mom accused me of smoking in my rental house and told me my true friends did not care if I got kicked out and became homeless, only she cares about that.

I put on a movie she wanted to see, and every thirty seconds she is asking me what is going on in the movie because she is not watching it.

When she first got here, I told her to let herself in since I left the door unlocked. She got extremely offended at that and told me it was ridiculously rude for me not to meet her at the door, then after that tirade about what a horrible host I am, she demanded a hug.

I am not going to engage with her any more outside of watching the movie.

 

[Mary Terry]

In narcissistic family systems, the narcissistic parent or parents must discredit, belittle, and invalidate the truth-teller in the family in order to maintain their facade of being a wonderful person. This keeps victims from being believed and allows the abuse to continue. It is a typical narcissistic pattern also meant to isolate the victim from support and keep him or her under control.

Narcissistic family systems often operate like a cult. While the scapegoat and/or truth-teller sees what is going on, others follow the narcissistic abuser loyally. Not having any family on your side is typical of these systems which is sad and disheartening. This is why many who walk away from the main narcissist lose the rest of the family as well. But, if that happens, the rest of the family was never really there for you to begin with.

Most people do not fully grasp these family dynamics because they never lived it or are not educated about how these systems work. But other scapegoats from narcissistic family systems will recognize what you are going through because it has a similar, predictable pattern.

My mom is at my house now and she is behaving totally irrationally. I threw some cigar ashes into my trash can because I had a smoke outside. Mom accused me of smoking in my rental house and told me my true friends did not care if I got kicked out and became homeless, only she cares about that.

I put on a movie she wanted to see, and every thirty seconds she is asking me what is going on in the movie because she is not watching it.

When she first got here, I told her to let herself in since I left the door unlocked. She got extremely offended at that and told me it was ridiculously rude for me not to meet her at the door, then after that tirade about what a horrible host I am, she demanded a hug.

I am not going to engage with her any more outside of watching the movie.

Stay strong, @Metalhead. She must be a very miserable person to act like she does.

 

[Metalhead]

Seriously, I do not smoke in this house. Every time my mother comes over, she claims my place reeks of cigar smoke. When I tell her she is the only one saying that, she tells me my friends are not saying anything because my friends do not really care about me like she does. That is some toxic talk right there.

 

[tree]

I am not understanding why she is allowed in your house.

 

[Metalhead]

This reminds me of a trend my mother had earlier in my life. I bought several shirts for myself l, and every time I wore one of those shirts around my mother, she claimed the shirts I was wearing stunk, and that I should wear the shirts she bought for me instead. When I told her she was the only person complaining about that, she responded by saying everybody agrees with her and my friends are just being nice. She just was angry I was choosing my own clothing.

 

[AdamG]

I am not understanding why she is allowed in your house.

I agree. Do you need her support financially? Or some other way?

 

[Metalhead]

I do not need her support financially.

I should have just barred her at the door when she showed up today.

 

[Judge]

I should have just barred her at the door when she showed up today.

Your first "script" for your new future.

 

[Metalhead]

Yeah, my mother is not welcome in my house at this point. She always finds things to complain about how I am living every time she visits, anyway.

What I need is to spend more time with my hobbies, or possibly even take on a regular volunteer shift, to remove me from my headspace when I am alone, so I do not allow my mind to idle and hyperfocus on the victim mentality I am so terribly used to.

 

[Metalhead]

When I first started seeing my current therapist twelve years ago, I was convinced that I suffered from severe intellectual and cognitive disabilities. Being raised by my mother the way she did, that was the end result. She wants me to keep on thinking I have severe cognitive disabilities and she dislikes the fact that I was tested by doctors of my own choice (in other words, doctors who did not let her do all of the talking), and I came up with a high IQ and no cognitive disabilities or delays whatsoever.

 

[Metalhead]

I basically am nothing more than a Munchausen by Proxy person for my entire family. This gets more disgusting the more I think about the whole family dynamic. The fact that my mother controls how literally everybody else in the family sees me. And the fact that my mother has been resisting my new sobriety and my progress in therapy.

 

[Metalhead]

Yeah, the fact that my mother always groped my ass when I was in high school then started laughing at me when I told her I wanted her to stop doing that, claiming I had a cute ass and she just had to keep grabbing it and claiming I was making a big deal out of nothing…..

The fact that throughout my life my mother often repeated the words I just said to her in a way that mocked my speech issues, then laughed at me and told me she was only doing that because she loved me when I told her that was hurtful…..

The fact that every time I try to point out my mother’s exact words to her, she flat-out tells me I am delusional. She isn’t even trying to hide the fact she has been gaslighting me for my entire life. She tells lies about as easily as she breathes, and then she calls me a liar when I speak the truth.

I am going to be taking a volunteer shift on weekends, so at least I will be too busy for her to just drop by my house and ruin my day.