Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life

Look for this book and it helps. ignore what they say and start planning your escape

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https://www.amazon.com/Toxic-Parents-Overcoming-Hurtful-Reclaiming/dp/0553381407

There are several directions that you can go with this situation.

You can allow your parents/mom to control your life now, and quite possibly well into the future.

You can also realize the full import of being of LEGAL age, and begin making an exit plan (with backups) to gradually put into effect over the next 2 - 4 years.

You can lead a double life for a while, but that's not a good idea unless you're building your exit route by living a double life.

You can do research into destructive parental behaviors, because it sounds like your mom is over-controlling and is trying to infantilize you to keep you dependent on her/your parents.

Personally I'd build an exit plan while researching your mother's behaviors. I would suggest that you read at least two books on the subject of toxic parents.

Here are two of my favorites:

https://www.amazon.com/Toxic-Parents-Overcoming-Hurtful-Reclaiming/dp/0553381407

https://www.amazon.com/People-Lie-Hope-Healing-Human/dp/0684848597

I read Susan Forward's "Mothers Who Can't Love: A Healing Guide for Daughters" and it was like she was in the room listening to my mother and taking notes!

Her "Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life" (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0553381407/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0) and or "Emotional Blackmail: When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to Manipulate You" (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060928972/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i2) might interest your DH and help him out. I've included the links on Amazon to make it very easy for you to look at the summary and see if it's something he might use. Your public libraries might have those books.

>I see a counselor but she said to circle back to this, and to focus on my anxiety issues. Which is fine but I am feeling very alone as I grieve and people don't seem to understand I not only survived a cult, I've survived being gay in it, I've survived depression and suicide attempts, I've survived abusive family.

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Huh. Are you sure that your counselor wanted you to dwell on the abandonment, or perhaps did he/she want you to understand that your abusive family aren't worth giving any further consideration?

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One quote that really helped me (after being hit, kicked and slapped as a child into submission to the JW cult) was this comment which I think came from the book "Toxic Parents - Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life" [rough quote]:

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"If I could give just one gift to my clients, it would be the ability to leave their families to their fate."

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The point being that abusive, hurtful people deserve whatever miseries and abandonment that befalls them, while the victims of such parents/families deserve to be completely free from any entanglements with such heartless filth.

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Here's a link to that book: https://www.amazon.com/Toxic-Parents-Overcoming-Hurtful-Reclaiming/dp/0553381407

Plenty of used ones for under $3.

Someone needs to gift him a few books about toxic parents:

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https://www.amazon.com/Toxic-Parents-Overcoming-Hurtful-Reclaiming/dp/0553381407

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https://www.amazon.com/People-Lie-Healing-Human-New-age-ebook/dp/B00UC6EF62

People who behave that way do so because they are never held accountable. My father-in-law's last words to my wife after making us need to get both of our kids, (one of which was a newborn at the time, the other with special needs) tested for heavy metal exposure by vaporizing lead paint with a heat gun in the room next door to the newborn, while using no safety precautions we're: "I'm not sorry, piss off." We haven't spoken to him in two years. In the past relatively serious things were always met with "Well, I think we both did something wrong here, let's just forget about it."

If you haven't yet, I would recommend you visit /r/raisedbynarcissists and /r/justnomil. There are a fair share of shitposts, but also ones that might give you some insight into things.

I also recommend this book, if you haven't already read it. Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life https://www.amazon.com/dp/0553381407/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_Qoy8Cb2J2EBVC

Books I've read:

Toxic Parents

Running on Empty

Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents

They're all worth reading. Each of these books presents the issue from a slightly different angle, so you get different insights from each one.

My therapist recommended ”Toxic Parents” and it’s been great so far (halfway through):

https://www.amazon.com/Toxic-Parents-Overcoming-Hurtful-Reclaiming/dp/0553381407

I don't know if you will find new and helpful information in my post of the thread "Pugnacious vs. Pathetic: My Permanent Pendulum" on this sub-reddit, but you may.

Additionally, you find some psychological "weight reduction" in these books:

Nina Brown's Children of the Self-Absorbed: A Grown-Up's Guide to Getting Over Narcissistic Parents

Eleanor Payson's The Wizard of Oz and other Narcissists: Coping with the One-Way Relationship in Work, Love, and Family

Lindsay Gibson's Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

Elan Golomb's Trapped in the Mirror: Adult Children of Narcissists in the Struggle for Self

Susan Forward's Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life (a bit long in tooth now, but still useful) and Emotional Blackmail: When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to Manipulate You

Kimberlee Roth & Frieda Friedman's Surviving a Borderline Parent: How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds & Build Trust, Boundaries, and Self-Esteem

I've been a witness to this on several occasions. Some won judgments. Others got nothing but grief. And the ones who "won" judgments paid a significant price during the depositions they had to give the defense attorneys.

What you elect to do is your own business, of course. I could have "played nice" and come away with a pretty good nest egg when my adoptive mother finally passed. But she was such an insufferably self-righteous fraud (as well as abusive to my spouse), that I just walked away. After reading books like those listed below, I'm convinced now that I would have done myself a lot more damage to just remain in contact, let alone have to fight with her and her attorneys for a few years.

Nina Brown's Children of the Self-Absorbed: A Grown-Up's Guide to Getting Over Narcissistic Parents

Eleanor Payson's The Wizard of Oz and other Narcissists: Coping with the One-Way Relationship in Work, Love, and Family

Lindsay Gibson's Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

Elan Golomb's Trapped in the Mirror: Adult Children of Narcissists in the Struggle for Self

Susan Forward's Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life (a bit long in tooth now, but still useful) and Emotional Blackmail: When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to Manipulate You

Kimberlee Roth & Frieda Friedman's Surviving a Borderline Parent: How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds & Build Trust, Boundaries, and Self-Esteem

> sometimes I am perfectly content and very happy with the way our relationship is and then sometimes I️m very very critical and am very reluctant to let any little thing slide because I don’t want to be taken advantage of/ controlled again, but on the other hand I️ know I can be a people pleaser...

Coming from an abusive childhood, it's no problem for me to identify with every word there. Here's what I have had to do thus far (from a longer list):

1) The Patterns & Characteristics of Codependence on the Codependents Anonymous website;

3) "Understand the Drama Triangle. Understand BPD." at pairadocks.blogspot.com;

4) Codependents Anonymous and Emotions Anonymous meetings (you can find meeting locators on their websites);

5) "Romantic Love, Being with What Is, and The 10 StEPs" at pairadocks.blogspot.com;

6) Jiddu Krishnamurti's On Relationships;

8) Practicing some thought questioner & mindfulness inducer like the "10 StEPs of Emotion Processing" at pairadocks.blogspot.com, so that I am able to continue to sense what is going on and know what to do about it;

9) Reading the lyrics while listening to Alanis Morrissette's "Not the Doctor" on Jagged Little Pill and "Precious Illusions" on Under Rug Swept, as well as "Death of Cinderella," which one will have to find on YouTube;

10) Pia Mellody's Facing Codependence;

11) Anne Wilson Schaef's Co-Dependence: Misunderstood, Mistreated;

12) Barry & Janae Weinhold's Breaking Free of the Codependency Trap;

13) Melody Beattie's The Language of Letting Go;

14) Pia Mellody's Facing Love Addiction, especially with respect to the flip flop from addiction to avoidance;

15) Anne Wilson Schaef's Escape from Intimacy on the same topic;

16) Barry & Janae Weinhold's Flight from Intimacy on co- and counter-dependence;

17) Susan Forward's Emotional Blackmail on manipulative relationships;

18) Patricia Evans's Controlling People on the same topic;

19) Patrick Carnes's The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships;

20) DBT's "FAST" interpersonal-boundary-setting skills set (at DBTSelfHelp.com).

21) The following great books:

Nina Brown's Children of the Self-Absorbed: A Grown-Up's Guide to Getting Over Narcissistic Parents

Eleanor Payson's The Wizard of Oz and other Narcissists: Coping with the One-Way Relationship in Work, Love, and Family

Lindsay Gibson's Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

Elan Golomb's Trapped in the Mirror: Adult Children of Narcissists in the Struggle for Self

Susan Forward's Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life (a bit long in tooth now, but still useful) and Emotional Blackmail: When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to Manipulate You

Kimberlee Roth & Frieda Friedman's Surviving a Borderline Parent: How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds & Build Trust, Boundaries, and Self-Esteem

> I want to forgive my parents for emotional abuse...

Understanding the following is almost always helpful in deals like this:

1) Anxious and ambivalent attachment,

2) learned helplessness,

3) family systems theory, and the

4) Karpman Drama Triangle.

Once you have those down, reading books like these with a journal close by to make notes and process in as one comes to tease out the truth from the family fantasies and secrets usually works wonders.

Nina Brown's Children of the Self-Absorbed: A Grown-Up's Guide to Getting Over Narcissistic Parents

Eleanor Payson's The Wizard of Oz and other Narcissists: Coping with the One-Way Relationship in Work, Love, and Family

Lindsay Gibson's Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

Elan Golomb's Trapped in the Mirror: Adult Children of Narcissists in the Struggle for Self

Susan Forward's Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life (a bit long in tooth now, but still useful) and Emotional Blackmail: When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to Manipulate You

Kimberlee Roth & Frieda Friedman's Surviving a Borderline Parent: How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds & Build Trust, Boundaries, and Self-Esteem

Also likely to be helpful: From Bipolar to Borderline to Complex PTSD: The Long Way Around the Recovery Barn.

What in the world is normal? (Because normal does not mean "healthy" or "functional.") Okay... Let's move on to some suggested reading and other activity, shall we?

Nina Brown's Children of the Self-Absorbed: A Grown-Up's Guide to Getting Over Narcissistic Parents

Eleanor Payson's The Wizard of Oz and other Narcissists: Coping with the One-Way Relationship in Work, Love, and Family

Lindsay Gibson's Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

Elan Golomb's Trapped in the Mirror: Adult Children of Narcissists in the Struggle for Self

Susan Forward's Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life (a bit long in tooth now, but still useful) and Emotional Blackmail: When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to Manipulate You

Kimberlee Roth & Frieda Friedman's Surviving a Borderline Parent: How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds & Build Trust, Boundaries, and Self-Esteem The Patterns & Characteristics of Codependence on the Codependents Anonymous website;

"Understanding the Drama Triangle...;"

ACA, EA and CoDA meetings (you can find meeting locators on their websites);

Jiddu Krishnamurti's On Relationships;

Practicing some thought questioner & mindfulness inducer like the "10 StEPs of Emotion Processing" so that one is able to continue to sense what is going on and know what to do about it;

Pia Mellody's Facing Codependence;

Anne Wilson Schaef's Co-Dependence: Misunderstood, Mistreated;

Barry & Janae Weinhold's Breaking Free of the Codependency Trap;

Melody Beattie's The Language of Letting Go;

Susan Forward's Emotional Blackmail along with this brief article on dealing with manipulative relationships;

Patricia Evans's Controlling People on the same topic;

Patrick Carnes's The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships;

DBT's "FAST" interpersonal-boundary-setting skills set (at DBTSelfHelp.com).

Suggested for perusal (because there are books in there that are all over the stuff you wrote above).

A CPTSD Library

And specifically:

Nina Brown's Children of the Self-Absorbed: A Grown-Up's Guide to Getting Over Narcissistic Parents

Eleanor Payson's The Wizard of Oz and other Narcissists: Coping with the One-Way Relationship in Work, Love, and Family

Lindsay Gibson's Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

Elan Golomb's Trapped in the Mirror: Adult Children of Narcissists in the Struggle for Self

Susan Forward's Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life (a bit long in tooth now, but still useful) and Emotional Blackmail: When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to Manipulate You

Kimberlee Roth & Frieda Friedman's Surviving a Borderline Parent: How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds & Build Trust, Boundaries, and Self-Esteem

Pretty similar FoO background here. Had to do all the stuff listed in the earlier post at the link below to dig out of the upshots to the extent that I have. Have also read and done the work suggested in the books listed after that first link.

From Bipolar to Borderline to Complex PTSD: The Long Way Around the Recovery Barn

Nina Brown's Children of the Self-Absorbed: A Grown-Up's Guide to Getting Over Narcissistic Parents

Eleanor Payson's The Wizard of Oz and other Narcissists: Coping with the One-Way Relationship in Work, Love, and Family

Lindsay Gibson's Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

Elan Golomb's Trapped in the Mirror: Adult Children of Narcissists in the Struggle for Self

Susan Forward's Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life (a bit long in tooth now, but still useful) and Emotional Blackmail: When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to Manipulate You

Kimberlee Roth & Frieda Friedman's Surviving a Borderline Parent: How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds & Build Trust, Boundaries, and Self-Esteem

I read all this stuff about where each of were at any given time on the Karpman Drama Triangle... and learned boundary setting skills.

Nina Brown's Children of the Self-Absorbed: A Grown-Up's Guide to Getting Over Narcissistic Parents

Eleanor Payson's The Wizard of Oz and other Narcissists: Coping with the One-Way Relationship in Work, Love, and Family

Lindsay Gibson's Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

Elan Golomb's Trapped in the Mirror: Adult Children of Narcissists in the Struggle for Self

Susan Forward's Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life (a bit long in tooth now, but still useful) and Emotional Blackmail: When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to Manipulate You

Kimberlee Roth & Frieda Friedman's Surviving a Borderline Parent: How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds & Build Trust, Boundaries, and Self-Esteem

Might want to at least look into these online to see if you resonate with the synopses... and then read the ones that strike you:

Nina Brown's Children of the Self-Absorbed: A Grown-Up's Guide to Getting Over Narcissistic Parents

Eleanor Payson's The Wizard of Oz and other Narcissists: Coping with the One-Way Relationship in Work, Love, and Family

Lindsay Gibson's Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

Elan Golomb's Trapped in the Mirror: Adult Children of Narcissists in the Struggle for Self

Susan Forward's Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life (a bit long in tooth now, but still useful) and Emotional Blackmail: When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to Manipulate You

Kimberlee Roth & Frieda Friedman's Surviving a Borderline Parent: How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds & Build Trust, Boundaries, and Self-Esteem

Cut her off and kick her out. She will never change.

Also buy this book and both you and your wife read it: https://toptalkedbooks.com/amzn/0553381407

2 Chor 12: 14 "for the children ought not to lay up for [their] parents, but the parents for [their] children. "

She's a parasite.

You sound like an amazing person, and your parents really failed you. If I may suggest, "Toxic Parents " is a great read when you're feeling a bit stronger, but in the meantime, please check out Lifeline's chat.

Recommended:

Nina Brown's Children of the Self-Absorbed: A Grown-Up's Guide to Getting Over Narcissistic Parents

Eleanor Payson's The Wizard of Oz and other Narcissists: Coping with the One-Way Relationship in Work, Love, and Family

Lindsay Gibson's Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

Elan Golomb's Trapped in the Mirror: Adult Children of Narcissists in the Struggle for Self

Susan Forward's Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life (a bit long in tooth now, but still useful) and Emotional Blackmail: When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to Manipulate You

Plus getting on board the Treatment Train:

1) Medications, but only if really needed to get one stabilized enough to do the next six things on this list: Find a board certified psychopharmacologist in your area by using the clinician locator on the Psychology Today website. Getting psych meds from a GP or primary care doc can be useless or even risky. Psych diagnoses, meds and med interactions are just too complex now for most GPs and primary care docs.

2) Support Groups: AA, MA and/or NA if one is using intoxicants to try to cope with emotional pain; ACA, EA and CoDA... where you will find others in similar boats who have found explanations, answers and solutions.

3) Books and academic, professional websites including Mayo Clinic, WebMD, NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health), NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness), and even Wikipedia (when everything asserted is solidly documented with citations). Strongly recommended because they all understand the upshots of having been stressed for too long, including complex PTSD which sounds like at least a good possibility here: Bessel van der Kolk, Peter Levine, Patricia Ogden, Ronald Kurtz, Laurence Heller, Bruce McEwen, Sonya Lupien and Robert Sapolsky. Accurate information is power.

4) Psychotherapy: I currently use Ogden's SP4T as the interoceptive 9th of the 10 StEPs of Emotion Processing to manage any "time bombs" that turn up, but had good results over the years with several of the CBTs including REBT, collegiate critical thinking, schema therapy, and CPT, as well as DBT, MBCT, ACT, MBBT, MBSR, EMDR, HBCP, SEPt, and NARM.

DBT, MBCT, ACT, MBBT and MBSR are terrific for symptom management. EMDR, HBCT, SEPt, SP4T and NARM are first-rate for memory-reprocessing, sense-making and detachment from the conditioning, programming, etc.

To find the clinicians who know how to use these psychotherapies, look here, and here, and here, and (for DBT specialists in particular) here. If you dig a little on each page, you will be able to see which therapies they use. Then interview them as though they were applying for a job with your company. Most MD / psychiatrists, btw, are not therapists themselves (they are medication specialists), but can refer you to those who are, and are often -- though not always -- excellent sources of referral.

5) Mindfulness Meditation: Try the Vipassana-style? (For a lot of people with anxiety, this stuff handles anxiety chop chop. Not sure about depression. Many of the modern psychotherapies for anxiety are actually based on it now.)

6) Therapy Workbooks: I got a lot of lift-off by using inexpensive workbooks like these, and these, and these, and these.

7) Moderate exercise: Because it is the single healthiest of the distractions one can use to yank oneself out of the paradigm for a while... and it can help to "massage" the brain so that it responds more quickly to psychotherapy.