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Post by msnoble on Mar 14, 2018 9:20:24 GMT -6
Am I autistic? Maybe. I've never been tested.
Once upon a time when I was little I remember constantly being told not to say anything. I don't know the exact phrasing but I knew in my kid-brain that it was Very Important That I Not Say Anything. My parents would take me with them to visit out of state relatives and the adults would ask me scary questions like "how are you doing today" and "would you like a cookie" and I would stare at them with big round eyes while I tried to breathe around the fear that I was choking on. Eventually Mom would smile a little too big and inform the person that I was "just shy" and direct the conversation elsewhere.
I hated being called shy. I didn't know what it meant but it felt like a slur.
I could never understand why Mom was so friendly and chatty with the people I wasn't supposed to say anything to. Hell, my parents even insisted that I HUG these people when we visited them! What was this madness?
I have at least one memory of being left with my aunt while Mom and Dad went to go do something else. It was an uneventful evening except that remembering it even now makes my throat tighten up in panic.
I would get stress-sick every time a vacation to visit family was planned, which was at least twice a year. There was no getting out of it, I **HAD** to go, everyone was supposedly wanting to see me even though for the life of me I couldn't figure out why. All I did was try to hide the entire time.
In my teens I started noticing a few things. First, this one couple, my aunt and uncle, were the beloved social hub of that side of the family. Second, they were the ones I was the most upset around and third, what the hell.
Once age and illness removed many of my relatives I started having less worry and more questions.
I asked my mom what was going on back then, that I experienced so much tension with a family that it seemed everyone loved. Turns out my aunt was very social and a tiny bit gossipy and my dad was TERRIFIED that I would say something childlike and it would get repeated to others who might spin it into...something? I don't know. All I know is I was pissed off that I spent so much time scared over something like that, plus it really hurt my ability to have a relationship with those (now deceased) family members.
My parents were eccentric as hell. I wish I were a better writer because I have many stories.
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Post by Sally on Mar 14, 2018 9:47:08 GMT -6
Have you read "Educated" by Tara Westover? I would highly recommend that you do. I am just finishing it and plan to blog about it when I get done, but don't wait for that, and don't rely on that. Get the book and read it.
It will be the Udder Balm for your psyche. I promise.
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Post by msnoble on Mar 14, 2018 10:26:33 GMT -6
I read a few reviews for Tara Westover's book and now I must see it in it's entirety. I grew up Survivalist but never knew it had a name until a few years ago.  It should be considered a religion. |
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Post by msnoble on Mar 28, 2018 9:12:43 GMT -6
Still haven't read the book #lazy but I read the review on BLB and I was awash in memories, let me tell you.
When I was a kid my mom would LIE LIE LIE very Nicole-like to make herself seem like a victim, and if I overheard and called her out on it by saying, "No it didn't happen like that, it happened like this" she would speak over my head to the other person and say, "She's little, she doesn't remember." Mom also told people I was an absolute horror to take care of. I learned this by about the millionth time someone other than mom took care of me for a short time and would return me with a sort of triumphant attitude and announce that THEY hadn't had any trouble with me. It seemed weird so I started paying attention to what Mom was saying on the phone when she was chatting with someone. Sure enough she was recounting whatever we had done that day BUT she was spinning it like mad. If we decided to have ice cream while watching TV, then I had pitched a fit until we had ice cream, according to her. That sort of thing.
As an older kid/teenager at family social events I had people come up to me that I didn't know who would barely say hello before launching into a stern lecture about how I needed to respect my mother. WTF? I was just sitting there reading a book but okay whatever. When I asked Mom about that she would shrug and act innocent but I could tell that she knew what was up.
I found out from some of my first husband's family that Mom had gone to several of them and told them that I was mentally slow and immature. I think she believed that if they thought that, then the family would push me away as defective, and wouldn't believe me if I told them anything about her. Then she would "win" because I would be broken up from the husband she didn't like plus her BS wouldn't be questioned. My first husband's family had a LOT of big problems but they could see right through Mom and I found that hilarious.
(For what it's worth - I was in advanced classes all through school and my IQ always tested on the high end of average in case you were curious.)
After Mom died I was going through some papers and found letters to her from various family and friends. From what they had written I gleaned that when I moved out and then got married Mom went to Every. Single. Person. she knew and told them that I had "run off" and had spun this lurid tapestry of what a monster I had become. I was just like...wow.
Funniest part of all of that was that she was incredibly protective of this imagined family honor. (I think she read a book about the Kennedys once and watched too much Young And The Restless. We were just people.) The stories she was telling, if they were even a tiny bit true would have hurt the family name more than anything I actually did. (In fact I pointed that out to her once and he just huffed and puffed and changed the subject.)
Dad had his own weirdness that I may get into sometime. My first husband's parents were VERY Naugleresque and the things he went through deserve mention when I have more time to sit and remember.
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Post by maidmarian555 on Mar 28, 2018 14:18:20 GMT -6
msnoble: I don't know if you've ever looked up Narcissistic Personality Disorder (or indeed other personality disorders) but your mum sounds a bit like my own mother (who has an interesting relationship with truth and reality). Stumbling across some online discussions between children who have parents with NPD was a real eye-opener for me, and incredibly helpful. I also spent my entire childhood being a scapegoat for her problems and it's taken a lot of time and work to realise that I wasn't the one who was deficient with serious issues. My mum isn't actually capable of being truthful, she exists in this kind of alternate reality where she's at the centre and everyone else needs to revolve around her, she is also always the victim and never does anything wrong, period. It's hard work but having a better understanding of what I am fairly sure is the issue has certainly helped me understand how she operates and why, as long as I live, I will never get an apology for any of the dreadful things she has said and done. She just doesn't have that capability.
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Post by msnoble on Mar 28, 2018 16:13:28 GMT -6
Yeah Mom had a lot of NPD behavior. There are a lot of worse cases out there, but her oddities were what I was dealing with. I wish I could go back to some of the people she told "stories" to and ask them what they thought about it but most of them are dead now.
For a long time I had trouble believing my own sanity, hell to this day I'll turn to a friend and be like, "I'm glad you witnessed whatever we did today" since I feel like if it's just me telling about my day, no matter how mundane, I might be getting it wrong somehow.
If my mom's shenanigans messed up my sense of reality like that I wonder what the Naugler kids must think at times (like when the cop was checking for seat belts and Joe and Nicole were blowing up what happened, making it sound worse and worse by the minute.) Do they ever think about how what they saw and how they hear their parents tell about it are so different? Do they doubt their own perception of a seemingly calm police officer talking, when the parents swear up and down the cop was vicious? smh
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Post by Antigone on Mar 28, 2018 22:46:57 GMT -6
It's interesting that this is the first thread I read on this forum. My mother absolutely has NPD, among other issues. Being raised by a narcissist (especially if you are a daughter) is like existing in two realities: the one your rational mind knows is true and the emotional one your mother has gaslighted you into believing over threat of loss of her love/support/etc.
One of the reasons I worry so much about the Naugler children is that I know how devastating it is when the cracks occur, when the real world begins to seep in and you come to challenge what you thought you knew to be true, the values you thus absorbed, the way you treated others and the choices you made. And the betrayal. I've spent more than thirty years trying to verify what really happened, but more importantly, also trying to forgive myself for the bad choices I made because of what I was led to believe.
I am lucky to have witnesses, a sister who remembers, my mother's best friend who, though she didn't know how bad it was, was willing to confirm what she did witness, my own father, who was manipulated in terrible ways and it took years for him to process the anger and be able to talk with me about what happened. And my own husband, who I met at church at age seven, dated through high school and part of college, parted ways for sixteen years, and then reunited and married. He remembers everything and, though he was too young and inexperienced to understand what he was witnessing then (except that it was constant drama and seemed very lacking in consistency), has had enough therapy and seen me through enough therapy that he can affirm my experiences and help me forgive myself. We have two daughters and no contact with my mother. He helps check me when my anxieties about being a mother make me question myself.
It has been such a long journey, really a lifetime of lifetimes. To the original poster, my youngest daughter (11) is autistic, brilliant, and says seemingly random things to strangers all the time. It has been my joy to learn to enter her world and discover how her mind works (and that mine is actually very similar). Letting go of shame, imposed by others and internalized at such a young age, is the greatest gift you can give yourself.
Good luck.
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Post by maidmarian555 on Mar 29, 2018 17:39:53 GMT -6
Gosh yes. When I realised how much lying was going on, it was really hard to come back from that. Its really tricky to come back to the real world when you've spent your whole childhood being told that you're always mistaken and what you see as reality isn't right.
Some years ago I confronted my mother in what I thought was going to be an extremely cathartic showdown. I was all prepared, calm and knew exactly what I was going to say. She flat-out denied any of the things I asked her about had happened at all and told me I had mental health issues. It's funny because people talk about 'closure' all the time but actually, if you have an NPD parent, closure is the one thing you will never get.
I am horrified for the Naugler children because not only do they appear to be living with parents who have clear parallels to my own, they're getting no exposure to what 'normal' parenting looks like via friends and they're also having their entire childhoods posted all over the Internet. The parents have a mob who could easily be turned on a wayward child who attempts to break away from them, that's not a pressure I'd have wanted added to the many I was already under when I broke free.
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Post by Antigone on Mar 29, 2018 19:28:13 GMT -6
In my younger days, I tried a year of silence with my mom and then a reintroduction on my terms. I was even seeing a therapist to help me set limits. So naive. She co-opted every last part of the "meeting." And when I refused to agree with her and her version of things, she told my father (who she was then divorced from) that I was on drugs and that that was actually what I was spending the therapy money he was sending to me on. She told me if I didn't re-enter the fold, she would throw away all of my childhood belongings, including my books and stuffed animals, and she did. She told everyone that I had had a breakdown and was crazy.
You are right that there is never closure, except for totally cutting them off. I have no regrets. I hope some day that the Naugler children are able to witness for one another and that they are able to piece together what really happen and empower themselves.
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Post by msnoble on Apr 7, 2018 8:15:11 GMT -6
Whenever my mom would get called out for her crazy, caught red-handed being...her, she would put on as pitiful of an expression as possible and ask WHY everyone was being SOO MEEAAN to her?! and it really reminds me of Nicole's behavior recently.
I should tell of the damage done to my first husband by his mother, who bought a ton of clothes in his size at the flea market one summer and insisted that he wear them to school no matter how strongly he argued that the mid to late 80s was no time to be wearing wide collared shirts and bell bottomed pants. She was so busy being proud of paying only 25 cents per clothing item she was ignoring the giant target she put on her kid.
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Post by msnoble on Apr 25, 2018 18:34:10 GMT -6
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It should be considered a religion.
