JaniceM
Well-known Member
- Location
- still lost between two shores..
Long ago, I got mixed up with some very messed-up, manipulative individuals. This is what I found in my experiences: in general, when someone asks a question you can take either of two approaches- you can either brush it off and not answer, or you can give an honest answer. The catch: both of those approaches were ‘wrong.’ If you do not answer, you’re said to be hiding something; if you do answer, a truthful answer doesn’t cut it- you must give the answer they want. In addition, if you say something was ‘good,’ you’re attacked as being ‘dishonest;’ if you say something was ‘bad,’ you’re ‘trying to make people feel sorry for you.’ In other words, a lose/lose situation.
Some of these individuals focused on specific topics- relationships with parents, childhood. Although I’d always gotten along well with my father, my mother and I never got along. The facts: first, she as much as told me that she’d ‘done all the parent stuff’ with/for her older kids, and wasn’t about to do it all again for me. Second, anything pertaining to me wasn’t worth acknowledging- interests, goals, accomplishments. Third, she believed it was perfectly acceptable for a parent to expect adult-aged kids to forgo any lives of their own and be in-person caregivers to their parents. It was this third example that led me to reach out to total strangers for advice- and it ended up destroying me, my life, and my family.
The facts I just gave kinda sucked, but these individuals would not take it at face-value. Instead of a demanding, unreasonable mother, they began using tactics that I later learned was common in the so-called ‘recovered-memory movement’ trying to get me to believe the ‘real’ problem was ‘sexual abuse’- that I wasn’t simply a nearly-middle aged person trying to figure out how to deal with an unreasonable parent, but that I was an ‘incest survivor.’ They started with my parents, then my much-older brother, an older kid and police officers from my early childhood, and another claimed there were probably doctors in my childhood who ‘sexually abused’ me, too. The individuals tried to weaken me by insisting I didn’t know my own life history, memories, or mind. One of the individuals demanded I turn over all my family pictures, tossed them into a wastebasket, set fire to them, stating “You’ve gotta mark ‘em all as Perpetrators.”
The individuals took cult-like approaches and tactics. Long before I learned about false memory, cults, etc., I started realizing something was very wrong- but I found I couldn’t get rid of these people, when they weren’t directly ‘on’ me they were going after members of my family. I also found I couldn’t simply put it all behind me, because they’d given false information and false accusations to some of my family members. One family member vanished quite a few years ago, and one has never been willing to listen to my explanations for any of this.
Today, and for a long time before now, the biggest regret of my life is we do not get ‘do-overs’- we can’t take back horrible mistakes and do things differently. But one reason I feel the need to tell all of this is hopefully it can help someone else avoid the same nightmare. Specifically: when I couldn’t come up with a solution to move ahead with my life without my mother’s interference, I reached out to strangers. The first person was a very nice woman, but her advice set this all into action. She said I could have a great life, but what I needed to do to achieve it was to ‘work the 12 Steps.’ So without any alcohol or drug problems, I jumped headfirst into AA and then NA, and then others pressured me to become involved with an ‘incest survivors’ program too. However, it was ‘recovering’ alcoholics and addicts in AA and NA who came up with this ‘sexual abuse’ stuff. The way I’d explain it: when you look for answers in the wrong places, you’ll find the wrong answers. But all the wrong ‘answers’ that came up weren’t nearly as bad as the effects it’s all had on my family. One family member was manipulated into believing I’m ‘insane’ because of ‘repressed memories’ (of things that never happened), and another is completely destroyed. But try as I have, I don’t see anything I can do- I can’t wind the calendar back to 1994 when this all started and do things differently…
Some of these individuals focused on specific topics- relationships with parents, childhood. Although I’d always gotten along well with my father, my mother and I never got along. The facts: first, she as much as told me that she’d ‘done all the parent stuff’ with/for her older kids, and wasn’t about to do it all again for me. Second, anything pertaining to me wasn’t worth acknowledging- interests, goals, accomplishments. Third, she believed it was perfectly acceptable for a parent to expect adult-aged kids to forgo any lives of their own and be in-person caregivers to their parents. It was this third example that led me to reach out to total strangers for advice- and it ended up destroying me, my life, and my family.
The facts I just gave kinda sucked, but these individuals would not take it at face-value. Instead of a demanding, unreasonable mother, they began using tactics that I later learned was common in the so-called ‘recovered-memory movement’ trying to get me to believe the ‘real’ problem was ‘sexual abuse’- that I wasn’t simply a nearly-middle aged person trying to figure out how to deal with an unreasonable parent, but that I was an ‘incest survivor.’ They started with my parents, then my much-older brother, an older kid and police officers from my early childhood, and another claimed there were probably doctors in my childhood who ‘sexually abused’ me, too. The individuals tried to weaken me by insisting I didn’t know my own life history, memories, or mind. One of the individuals demanded I turn over all my family pictures, tossed them into a wastebasket, set fire to them, stating “You’ve gotta mark ‘em all as Perpetrators.”
The individuals took cult-like approaches and tactics. Long before I learned about false memory, cults, etc., I started realizing something was very wrong- but I found I couldn’t get rid of these people, when they weren’t directly ‘on’ me they were going after members of my family. I also found I couldn’t simply put it all behind me, because they’d given false information and false accusations to some of my family members. One family member vanished quite a few years ago, and one has never been willing to listen to my explanations for any of this.
Today, and for a long time before now, the biggest regret of my life is we do not get ‘do-overs’- we can’t take back horrible mistakes and do things differently. But one reason I feel the need to tell all of this is hopefully it can help someone else avoid the same nightmare. Specifically: when I couldn’t come up with a solution to move ahead with my life without my mother’s interference, I reached out to strangers. The first person was a very nice woman, but her advice set this all into action. She said I could have a great life, but what I needed to do to achieve it was to ‘work the 12 Steps.’ So without any alcohol or drug problems, I jumped headfirst into AA and then NA, and then others pressured me to become involved with an ‘incest survivors’ program too. However, it was ‘recovering’ alcoholics and addicts in AA and NA who came up with this ‘sexual abuse’ stuff. The way I’d explain it: when you look for answers in the wrong places, you’ll find the wrong answers. But all the wrong ‘answers’ that came up weren’t nearly as bad as the effects it’s all had on my family. One family member was manipulated into believing I’m ‘insane’ because of ‘repressed memories’ (of things that never happened), and another is completely destroyed. But try as I have, I don’t see anything I can do- I can’t wind the calendar back to 1994 when this all started and do things differently…
