When the answer is right there
I wrote this post in August 2016 and just rediscovered it. The board is long dead and the member has moved on to a locked group, but the dynamic continues to define estranged parents’ groups.
On one of the boards I watch, one of the members got an email from her estranged son saying the estrangement wasn’t her fault, he loved her, and he wanted to see her again. The letter every estranged parent wants to get. She met up with him for an afternoon, and… he was psychotic. Not Hollywood psychotic, raving and raging, but genuine psychotic, paranoid and delusional in the slow-burn way that starts functional and ends on the streets. The member recognized it immediately. Her mother and brother had been the same way.
The strange thing about this heartbreaking story was the member’s reaction. On one hand, she knew her son had an inherited medical condition. She referred to him several times as mentally ill, and implied that medication and hospitalization would help. On the other hand, she reacted as though her son’s symptoms were innate parts of his personality. She acted the same as a parent whose child cut her off for personal reasons, such as alleged abuse. Two ideas coexisted in her mind: My son has a disease and My son chose to do me wrong.
What caused my brain to explode was a comment from her that her son hadn’t changed in two years — that is, before the estrangement. She’s known all along that her son is psychotic. And yet, this year alone she said:
I sometimes wonder how my wonderful son and our great relationship got to this point without any argument[.]
[M]y husband and I gave our boys [son and stepson] every vacation and opportunity WITHOUT any abuse growing up and they aren’t speaking to us.
I’m sick at the thought of how so entitled our [estranged son] and [estranged stepson] are to
treat us this way. I have a mother who is totally maniac on and off for many years, who said and did inappropriate things because of her illness and I wouldn’t think of abandoning her and never letting my children see her while they were growing up.
What happened? Did we all subtly give them permission? Did our society say it’s okay with everyone to do saying they are going to get toxic people out of their lives?
Where is the tolerance?
Where is the conversation and communication?
(She and her husband are also estranged or semi-estranged from his kids, who aren’t mentally ill.)
On one hand: My son is psychotic. On the other: Why did our great relationship go sour? On one hand: My son is psychotic. On the other: He avoids me because he’s entitled.
She’s not an ordinary parent of a mentally ill child who stumbled into an estrangement group instead of a support group for parents of the mentally ill. She defends and enables the other estranged parents, including two who are so radioactively toxic that it’s a wonder their screen names don’t glow. She and her husband have problems with her husband’s children as well as her mentally ill son. She talks the talk and walks the walk as well as any other estranged parent — so well that she’s something of a group leader. She’s not the parent of a psychotic son, she’s the parent of an estranged son who’s also, incidentally, psychotic.
It’s the kind of dynamic that occurs over and over in estranged parents’ groups, but it never stops shocking me.
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I wish that I could crawl into these people’s brains and read a plot of their thoughts.
Because I suspect that everything they SAY is filtered through a desire to be seen as innocent, a deep-rooted resistance to self-insight, and a comfortable relationship with dishonesty. So what they say comes out confusing and ultimately meaningless. Surely there’s a place in their brain where everything is laid out cleanly. What does that look like?
The contents floating around in a blender on “purée.”
Lol – has anyone seen this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-cEsAT4HCo&t=38s
It’s like she read Issendai’s whole “Down the Rabbit Hole” series & brought it to life. She got soundly called out on her narcissism & published a response doubling down on everything. Classic.
Yes indeed! She showed up in my feed as well and what a treat! We get to observe a Tantruming Toddler in action-or a SNL parody. This is her Campaign of Denigration/Revenge on her daughter who finally said, “I’m Done.” Her acting is so bad I don’t think there’s enough rotten tomatoes to “gift” this loon but the performances are exactly what one would expect: Disingenuous, dishonest and entirely self-serving. Yep, the Double Down is so predictable. When she came back for Part 2 of “I’mma Idiot (But I Just Want to RECONCILE! WAAAA!)” her Psychopathic Smirk™️ was on proud display.
Like a typical toddler, the attention she garnered in Part One spectacularly fed her belief she is center of the universe. She is a great example of an adult in physical form who is psychosocially arrested at a much earlier Stage of Development and needs her binky, her blankie-and a diaper change. When you live in a hermetically sealed World of Self-Absorption whether good or bad, allllll attention is currency. They’re exhausting Equal Opportunity Attention Hoes, bottomless pits of “mmmeeeeeeee!”
And this is exactly why we dump their pathological posteriors: They remain terminal toddlers impervious to self-reflection and self-correction. Good on the daughter for recognizing the futility of any further engagement with this freak of a “mother” who outed herself-for eternity. Mommy Dearest failed toilet training so she’s slinging her excrement at the world and wondering why *she still stinks.*