I'm still here

In response to enquiries, yes, I'm still here. I don't have much to say about PA at the moment. Well, I don't think I do, but the subject has been on my mind again recently. Weeell, it's always on my mind to some extent, I guess, because it has shaped my adult life.

I've been trying to get my head around the Asperger's lately. That's taken up a lot of my thought processes, and has probably pushed the PA to one side.

I joined Facebook 3 weeks ago after much prompting by the offspring. It's been weird because family members I haven't heard from in a decade are "adding" me as their "friend", but then not speaking. I assume that's normal :> I've been reconnecting with one, however, who himself spent a lot of time out of touch with the family.

Joining Facebook has meant facing the presences of my male parent and my sister. I called her after seeing a comment that she made about her husband being sent to a war, to offer my support to her and particularly her children. She thanked me for calling and hung up. Neither of them have approached the offspring on FB - not that the latter would want that, but I have spent the last 3 weeks complaining about the former. I've probably been earbashing the offspring about them a bit too much.

I just don't understand. I keep saying it and it might get old, but I don't understand disowning people. Offspring also received birthday card and present from the male parent, with a note from his partner inside saying "We're thinking of you and your sibling" (paraphrased). I was completely excluded and thoroughly pissed off at such a direct and deliberately cruel exclusion of me.

My sister's children are living in fear of their father dying - and yet she won't let them have the comfort of me and mine.

My offspring keeps saying "Your family are crazy. Seriously. They're mental. You have been surrounded by insane people all your life".

My ex spent a great deal of time insisting he wasn't going to talk to me about my sister, by talking about my sister. Apparently she's angry about things from our childhood. Well, I TOO am angry about our childhood - but I forgive her. I did a long time ago. I'm not going to hold anyone to ransom over something that happened in 1978 when we were both little children, but apparently she's allowed to. It's SOOOO bizarre. She complains about things I did 30 years ago. I don't get it. She made my life miserable - and we argued, like sisters do. But I feel like she should get over it - and if there weren't any ulterior motives, surely she would? I feel as if there is something else going on here.

And then today out of the blue I realised that my grandfather, my male parent's male parent, disowned his daughter too, for not behaving exactly as he wanted her to. This man (whom I adored, despite my mother telling me he wasn't "a nice man") also kicked his wife out of the family home and made her leave her children behind. My offspring said "So maybe your male parent thinks that's normal? Does that make it less malicious?". Does it? It makes it more so, in my opinion, because he's been witness to what disowning does to children and grandchildren - but he did it anyway.

No, there is more than just me not towing the line for him and my sister. There's something else. I still think he chose her over me. Or I should say her and her kids over me and mine (and I have the older grandchildren who knew him, my sister's children didn't).

I have spent the last few months in a very dark place. I called the Samaritans at one point, because I honestly felt that I had nothing to live for other than my children, and that if I didn't have them, I would end my life. I spent weeks fantasizing about death, but not telling anyone. That mood lifted after a week of enforced decent sleep at night (hay fever medication!), but I still feel lost and by myself. I never actually even approached taking my own life, but I wished for an escape. I wished SO HARD!!

The Asperger's is helping me understand myself better in many, many ways, and is helping my life to become easier by giving me understanding. I can eliminate things that I can't deal with and alter how I approach others. What it doesn't do for me is repair broken relationships, even the ones I want to repair. I cannot even tell the people I need to because two in particular are spiteful and would take great pleasure in grassing me up to authorities in order to cause trouble, all the while pretending that they're just trying to do the right thing for my kids. My kids are FINE. They are great, they're happy, lively, thriving, balanced, well educated (because I hide everything negative from them, as exhausting as it is, and because I have replaced their lost family members with alternatives from our church and also have supported/maintained/encouraged relationships with step-relations). My Asperger's does not affect them.

Asperger's also tells me that there are some things that even "normal" people don't understand - and that's deliberately harmful behaviour towards others. Alienation is one such behaviour.

To sum up PA and Asperger's in my life: I was told I was unwanted so I felt excluded. I also have a condition which causes social isolation. I have been doubly excluded socially. No wonder I'm a wingnut ... but knowledge is power, and I know what I'm fighting now, instead of wallowing in misunderstanding.

I'm still not going back to the mailing lists. I can't be drowned out on my own blog so I'm staying here. Please do continue to email me and leave comments. Ask me more questions. Offer comments, even, but please do it nicely :>

Update

Just FYI, I'm not on any mailing lists anymore. I withdrew from them a couple of weeks ago so if you've sent me a message via one of them, I won't have received it. Please contact me via the email address on the profile page (on the left, down the page) or the address you found via the mailing list. I answer ALL emails (unless they're asking me what my favourite cookie is).

Will only be posting here for the foreseeable future (and yes, I'll be continuing. Sorry about my misery fit. I guess it's just part and parcel of life in general that once in a while things will get on top of us. I'm really grateful for the commenters who reminded me of the purpose of this blog: to help people. I have a responsibility to those people who come here regularly because it helps them in their own PA struggles. It's very easy to forget others when you sink like I did. Depressive episodes are inherently selfish (I mean that as a neutral statement, not that the Depressed are selfish people) and the world can disappear from view. The insomnia peaked during that week too but I'm dealing with it now.).

Thank you for your patience. I'm a trial LOL.

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When your alienated children ignore/rebuff all your attempts at contact

Another post of mine to a mailing list, prompted by a parent's despair at their gifts/letters etc to their alienated children going unacknowledged.

"Following on from Robin's post which I received today, I'd like to tell you that while I infrequently thanked my mother for the things she did for me while I was growing up and even in early adulthood before she passed away, I know TODAY what she did. I remember ALL the little things she did, like the little green rabbit cuddly toy she gave me out of the blue before the big school exams when I was 16. I remember the little notes she put in with mail she forwarded me when I was away from home. I remember that I never, ever once came home to a bed I needed to make myself. I remember how she always gave me just as much for Chrismas and birthdays as the other kids, even though none of them treated her like rubbish. I remember how she saw me struggling with English Lit before the big exams and arranged for extra tuition for me, paid for with money she must have snaffled from my stepfather because she asked me never to tell him. I remember her paying for extra Spanish lessons because I was merely interested in languages, not because I needed them. I remember the little gifts she bought me when we were out together with perhaps just the baby with us who wasn't old enough to blab to the other kids or be jealous. I still have upstairs in my wardrobe garments that she made for me with her own hands (that I was too cool to wear but would never part with, even when I (thought I) hated her most). I kept bizarre things like sick notes she wrote me for school. Her hiking boots. Her purse with a receipt bearing her signature. Her curlers because even today they smell of her. I remember how one year she felt I would appreciate a box of chocolate at Easter, rather than an Easter Egg, as I was a teenager - and how outraged I was! I remember how she laughed and made sure I received a big chocolate egg the next year. I remember she used to always buy me blank videotapes because I loved to record music shows off the TV.

I can think of a million other little things that my now-beloved mother did for me, despite being the Target Parent of some incredibly nasty behaviour from me.

Just like you alienated parents, she loved me and found other ways to demonstrate that in the face of not being allowed to tell me. And she never, ever stopped. Even to the year she died, she liked to send me little bits of money here and there to spend on her granddaughter, a child I hardly let her see.

Back then, I barely paid attention to what she was doing. I hardly saw it. NOW TODAY I can look back and remember and be relieved, grateful and blessed that she did all those things and never gave up, even though the alienation lasted for twenty years of her life.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: don't give up on your children. They will remember everything you do for them, even if right now they throw it back in your face. The comfort I receive from these gestures of love from my poor mother sometimes get me through the day."

Anger in this alienated child

This is an email I posted to a mailing list today in response to alienated parents discussing their angry alienated children - and their frustration and confusion about that anger. I've been reading so many account of loving children quite quickly developing anger and even hatred towards one of their confused and scared parents, anger that is very difficult to discuss with a child who then refuses to speak to the target parent.

I hope it explains potential reasons for bizarre anger in alienated children.

The main thing I heard from the alienator is "Your mother {insert yourself here} doesn't love you". End of story.



They will hear plenty of other bunkum to "prove" this, and I've read all your stories on this list showing what lengths alienators will go to to "prove" themselves right.



But what it all boils down to, that is what I heard over and over at the root of all alienating attacks/lectures, repeated and reinforced, used as "evidence", appearing in almost every sentence out of the alienator's mouth about my target parent was that "She doesn't love you".



"She does that because she doesn't love you."

"That's because she doesn't love you."

"If she loved you, she wouldn't do that."

"If she loved you, she'd do this."

"I hate to say this but I don't think she loves you."

"She doesn't want you because she doesn't love you."

"You remind her of me so she doesn't love you."



THIS is the foundation of everything I heard from my alienator, and THIS is why I was SOOOOOOOO angry and vile to my mother.



Anger is not an isolated emotion. No one is just angry. People are angry because ... [insert reason]. I was angry because I felt HUGE, MASSIVE, ENORMOUS hurt, pain and despair that my own mother didn't love me, that my own mother didn't want me. I despaired that I was so unlovable that my own mother didn't want me.



I remember watching a tv serial of the Phantom of the Opera when I was in my early teens, starring Teri Polo. She played Christine but also, in a flashback, the mother of the Phantom. The narrator spoke of the child being so hideously and disgustingly deformed that society rejected it - but that its mother loved it and was proud of it, that the mother could not see the ugliness everyone else in the world saw. I was a child already suffering problems because I believed my mother didn't love or want me, and when I watched that scene, I believed that I was so ugly and unloveable that not even my mother could overcome her disgust of me.



That's why I was so angry.

My view of physical discipline as a child

I used to tell people mum beat us.

Mum used to spank/smack us, sometimes with shoes and particularly with wooden spoons. I'm not advocating or condoning this form of discipline because it's wrong - by modern standards, anyway. I don't discipline my offspring this way, perhaps as a reaction against what being smacked did to me.

When I was smacked, it never made me see what I'd done wrong, rather it just simply made me angry. I never felt corrected, just hurt and unloved.

Factor in the alienation and you end up with a child being discipline by a parent, who sees the parent's actions as acts of hate. With every strike, she reinforced what the alienator said. Every time she smacked me with or without those hated wooden spoons (she broke one on my sister once), all it told me was that my mother not only hated me, but hated me so much she wanted to inflict physical violence on me.

The sheer, despairing AGONY of those moments makes me feel nauseous now, twenty years later. I was wretched after those moments and could not forgive her. My reaction was to withdraw and feel worthless, aching and silently begging to be released from the torture of a parent that hated my absolute guts. "If she loved you, she wouldn't be able to do that to you," said the male parent. "I'd never do that to you. I've never had to. You're a good girl. She just doesn't want to see it. She wants to dominate you. She hits because she's too stupid and selfish to think of any other way to discipline you." Indeed, I STILL think it was over the top, even now, even knowing that alienation was occurring. I was withdrawn and traumatized for days afterwards, but she just thought I was sulking.

What I was actually feeling was trauma and devastation so great I don't even have the words to express to you how deeply disturbed those smacks made me.

I used to tell people even when I was into my thirties, that my mother used to beat me. I believe there's a difference between beating and smacking. Beating is successive hits, several, many, lack of control involved, violence. Smacking aka spanking is one, maybe two, as a punishment after wrongdoing. I used to say "She beat the hell out of us". "She used to beat us". "She used to hit us all the time." She actually smacked us once, maybe twice at a push. For example, my sister used to yell "Didn't hurt!" so would get another one. We did not get beatings.

Let me state again: I am not a parent who condones or uses corporal punishment (unless the offspring do something dangerous, in which case it's a spanking or they continue doing something that could cause injury or death) so from the outset I am against her having hit me at all. HOWEVER in her mind, I now firmly believe she WAS just disciplining us. She was born in 1947 - unless I'm wrong, that's how her childhood discipline would have been administered. I no longer believe she hit us because she hated - but I was told otherwise.

Gah.

Am exhibiting old but familiar signs of real stress at the moment and have been for about a week. I'm having sleep trouble again and skin issues. I'm losing interest in sleeping - before, I had no trouble actually going to sleep, just trouble staying asleep. I don't go to bed until I can't stay awake any longer. I'm out of my normal routine - but I've had three weeks off over Christmas - and will really only get back into my normal routine from tomorrow onwards.

I *think* it's grief surfacing, to be honest, real nasty down and dirty honest grief for my parent. Normally I go to church on a Sunday but this morning offspring came in to wake me up - and I said "I'm not going!" and rolled over. The thought of getting out of bed and even of going to church made me want to cry. I just wanted to cry for mum all day.

Instead I've done classic avoidance stuff: reading Michael Crichton and surfing the Net. I can't bear to have a quiet moment.

Redefining EVERYTHING

Since I realised that I was subjected to Parental Alienation, I have travelled through various emotional stages. Grief and pain are involved, but also healing and empowerment. My favourite change is the calming I'm experiencing. Growing up convinced my mother hated me created such panic in my spirit and in my mind that this panic had to begin to leave me before I really comprehended its existence. I no longer exist in that place; I no longer panic and feel stress because I now know I'm NOT NOT NOT that evil, wicked, horrendous, stupid, different, silly, immature, strong person, the person hated by their mother for all those faults. She categorically did not hate me and actually loved me as much as any mother loves their child - I am therefore NOT faulty. The insecurity that arose from being led to believe the above gave rise to the aforementioned panic. As I've said before, I've lived in a state of stress for thirty years because my male parent specifically told me my mother did not love me. Nowadays, I'm so much calmer and at peace with myself. It's visible and tangible and other people notice it. IT'S WONDERFUL. I am a much nicer person to be around. I'm not on tenterhooks anymore, trying to please everyone and be a smiley-happy-eager nervous simperer.

I am so much calmer and more relaxed about myself. This big knot of tension in my stomach is unravelling and it's a miracle.

Understanding the PA also means that every relationship in my life (almost) has to be redefined, in particular those with members of my mother's family as they were also attacked as part of the PA. I have avoided my mother's family for most of my life and almost entirely since she died. Whenever I have seen them at funerals, I have been stand-offish and kept myself apart from them, partly because I was convinced I was a loser-idiot, but also because I believed them to all be as psychotic as the male parent told me they were. "They're all nutters" he said often.

This redefinition is difficult, though. I've made a start and am in touch with one Aunt who was absolutely HATED by my male parent - and lo and behold, she's nothing like he said she was. Another Aunt has tried to maintain contact with me over the years but as I've tried to ignore her as much as possible, it hasn't been easy for her. Again, this Aunt was a target by the male parent: he called her a whore frequently. Now an uncle wants to be in touch and I've held off for over a month. I don't know why I'm so nervous about emailing him. As this point, I'm too afraid to see any of them, apart from the first Aunt who we visited in November, but emailing should be easy, right? I don't know. When I saw my Aunt in November, I cried a lot because we went over the problems with my Mum and what I now know. I didn't mean to blub. It just came out - just like during my chat with the step-father the other day. So at the moment I don't want to see them - but I can't understand my reluctance to email this uncle. I'll have to mull it over. I also have to hope that anyone I get in touch with will be able to see me as I am now and understand that I am not the same as when we last met. I'm hoping for forgiveness where relevant. I'm not that much of a social person so I don't want to be overwhelmed with social invitations or anything like that. I will be happy to be included in the lives of a handful of people who care about me and will talk to me about my Mum - another consquence of Parental Alienation is that I was not interested in her as a person. I didn't want to know about her interests, ambitions, childhood, personal life, nothing. To me she wasn't someone I cared to know or understand. I'm asking questions now but I didn't know the schools she went to, the places she lived, who her friends were, what music she liked. Shaming! This is embarrassing.

Another issue at the moment is that old enemy: grief. As you know, I hardly grieved for my mother (she died in 1996) but this year has been a turning point. I KNOW that I hold so much grief within me that if I let it all out in one go, I would be out for the count, so I'm pretty certain I'm holding back. Mentally speaking, I've been waiting for an opportunity to get it all out but the opportunity is not forthcoming. My counsellor pointed out that it probably never will be. I have commitments on my time, like any other mother, that do not permit me to take hours or a day off to have a bloody big cry. I remember having a cry like that (or three) when my ex left and, though it hurt like HELL, it was cathartic and healthy. I got over that break up well because I cried a lot. Life is different now. I have less time to myself now so, at my counsellor's suggestion, I'm actually letting it out in dribs and drabs, rather than holding it in and waiting for a day that might never come. While grief is painful as we all know, whenever I feel sad about mum, I sit with it for a while and feel it. It's never too big to handle, something I couldn't bear (and maybe another reason I've been putting off "The big cry" because it will also hurt like hell), and each time I feel the pain, sometimes/usually having a cry, I feel a bit better.

I truly 100% am "letting it out", but in a way I can cope with, one that won't overload me with grief. I have these sad moments usually more than once a day but my mind is freeing up. I don't feel so laden down with grief. I'm not in a place where I can cry a lot all in one go and I'm still the Queen of Distraction (ie finding things to do when I really could be taking a moment to work through the grief), but I'm feeling better.

I also know that this is a grief that will never entirely leave. The grief I felt for my ex is gone, end of story. Grief for a loved one cannot disappear, I understand that, but it can lessen and in time it won't be something constantly on my mind, like now.

Grief for Mum, the PA, my sorrow for the pain I caused her - these three things weigh me down at the moment.

"I've hurt myself by hating you"

"Hurt" by Christina Aguilera. This song sums me up at the moment. Christina wrote how I feel about mum.

"I've hurt myself by hating you" - couldn't have said it better.

Listen to the song or look up the lyrics on the Net. Contrary to opinion, this song is not about Aguilera's estranged father.

"Because of you" by Kelly Clarkson says some of how I used to feel towards the male parent. Not completely accurate because I'm not an alienator or as messed up as the person she's singing about, but it comes close.

Um ... weird

Maybe I'm just tired (most likely) but today I feel like crap. Right after my last post, I spoke to my counsellor. It was a powerful session that began as if it were an ordinary conversation. Based on the previous session, it evolved quite strangely. In the end she asked me to talk to my child self, which made me feel like an absolute goon. I felt preposterous, so much so that I said no more than once. She offered to moved out of my sight and I kind of did what she asked. A bit. Even so, it made me absolutely sob. I felt so much pain coming out of me. The key thing I "told" myself, that little six year old she thinks I still am in some ways, was that my mum did love me. It was killer, I'm not kidding. I'm really not into psychobabble and I did not believe for a minute that it would work. She said it was a powerful technique but I failed to grasp its power until I actually sat there and did it. I wailed, and I didn't even know I had it in me. Well, maybe I did. Maybe it's all that anger.

Afterwards I felt worn out and relieved. So strange - but good. However, since then I have felt sad at all the wasted years, incredibly sad. I also feel huge amounts of sympathy for my mother for what she must have suffered without really having any idea of the motivation for my constant anger towards her.

Astonishing.

I feel grief and sadness. I also have been feeling unsure of myself again but I wonder if that's because I'm really, really tired (late nights, not the infamous insomnia that plagued me for two years after the male parent disowned me. The shock and stress of what he did and the complete change it caused in my understanding of my life and relationship with both parents kept me awake for hours nearly every night. Insomnia is an evil curse). I didn't want to go out anywhere or follow my normal routine. Found myself doing lots of my distracting things.

The "hole" is filling but far slower than I anticipated. I was all excited, wasn't I? A week ago I thought I'd be "cured" within days. Got a bit ahead of myself. I do feel better in odd ways, though. Instead of constantly feeling worthless, I think I've only really felt that way, the way I've felt most of my life, today and perhaps last night. This is good, an improvement. I suspect being so tired has an effect. I do feel intensely but manageably sad about my mother. It's timely and necessary and okay and will settle down when I've grieved enough. I'm not afraid of this grief. I MUCH prefer it to the dislike and anger I used to feel for her. Feeling sad is much nicer than feeling something verging on hatred.

I also felt violently ashamed for what I did. I know, as my counsellor repeatededly told me, that the alienation wasn't my fault. I was brainwashed from a very young age, I know, but I'm also supposed to be the clever one. I'm finding it hard to accept that I couldn't see what he truly was until I was an adult and he did it to me, until he lied about me and tried to bully me the way he did to her, all because he couldn't get his own way. I still feel stupid and complicit. The man felt me up and I still believed in him!

I have no one to protect me or take care of me. I take care of everyone else. This is okay. I have learned to take care of my offspring and am learning to take better care of myself - including self-protection. I think this is what my counsellor meant when she said to parent myself. I also need to do things my parents would both do if they were both alive, sane, able and willing. Right now, Mum would tell me to sleep more and chill out more, but also not to mess about on the Internet so much when I have important things to be doing. She'd tell me to manage my money better and be stricter with the offspring (because I think I'm too soft, given that I've always been afraid of making said offspring too angry at me, like I was with my Mum) . Critically, she would tell me that she is glad she now understands what made me the kind of child I was, that it wasn't my fault, that she forgives me and is proud of me for seeking help, for facing upto my part, however much blame you want to attach to my actions, and mostly importantly that she DID and DOES love me and that she knows I love her; she just never understood me and did not know how to show love to a child that seemed to hate her and reject her at every turn.

I'm sad but relieved that I know the truth because sophistry eats you alive and lies can kill you.

Summary of effects of Parental Alienation on me

Insecurity - as in feeling physically unsafe because prior to the PA, I had felt secure in my place in the world. I felt loved and wanted. Once the PA began, I felt unloved and unwanted.

Insecurity - emotional, because I was convinced by the alienator that my mother did not love or want me, I therefore imagined I was flawed or that there was something wrong with me. He said he loved me in spite of "my ways" (which were no abnormal "ways" at all, he was trying to make himself seem like a hero). As I mentioned, I have spent the last thirty one years believing that there was something vastly wrong with me, like a medical condition or brain damage that led to me being so hateful that my mother did not love me or want me.

Social difficulties - all stemming from feelings of worthlessness begun by the alienator telling me that my mother did not love me, that she had rejected me, that she loved my siblings more.

Relationship difficulties - no close friends, but I also am solitary by nature, I think. I like being on my own but I would like calls on Christmas day ...

Sometimes a stammer, if I'm not babbling like an idiot, when in company. I think it comes from not having adults to speak to, partly. I feel so stupid because I can't stop talking, knowing that thereafter whomever I'm speaking AT will avoid me in the future. I have seen my low self-esteem problems in someone else recently and I recognize that her symptoms really annoy me - so now I know why people avoid me and dislike me and have done forever.

Parental Alienation made me think I was autistic?!

I've just realised what a tragic comment I made about myself a few days ago. I said that at one point, I felt so damaged by the Parental Alienation that I thought I was autistic!

That's a horrific thing to say! A human being felt so broken and irreprable that they thought they were brain damaged! It's tragic!

Good grief. NOW, only NOW, after the breakthrough on Monday with my counsellor when she made the point that my emotional development may/probably was stunted at six years of age when the alienation began, do I feel calmer and more hopeful, as the most recent posts demonstrate. The tense little hole in me is closing and every day I'm waking up feeling better about the future. I can begin to look back at how this cruel and evil behaviour by one parent over thirty years, not even stopping when the target parent had died, truly caused me significant mental harm.

But what a telling description of just how low I sank: that I thought I was brain damaged, and this was inflicted on me by a parent.