Toxic Relationships

by serenitynow! 57 Replies latest jw friends

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  Snoozy

  I am now Mother to a girl that was a witness and has been disfellowshipped. Her Mom is now a JW again ( was disfellowshipped and got reinstated) and is shunning her.

  The mom has made it clear she wants nothing to do with this girl. I am dying to talk to this crazy JW lady and set her straight. I know for a fact she never bonded with this girl and it had nothing to do with being a JW..she is now using it as an excuse to not have any contact wit the girl..

  I think often it is the same with the witnesses..the love wasn't there in the first place.

  This girl has been in counseling for three years! Her Mom refuses to go ..so there they stand..no relationship and I am picking up the damaged goods.

  So I can truly see the side that you are talking about. But I am so against closing any doors..what I call throwing people away.

  The girl will never get over this rejection in my mind..not closing th edoor at least will give her some kind of hope..

  Many need that.

  So I again say, don't close the door..

  Amelia, that is the answer I was looking for..

  Snoozy
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  mrsjones5

  A dear cousin once asked me why did I keep allowing my mother to abuse me over and over with her actions and words. Why did I keep going back? Do you know what I said to her? I said "hope". I was holding on to the hope that my mother would change. What I kept missing was I was the one who needed to change. I am the one who has to finally open my eyes to who my mother really is and who she will never be - the mother I've always wanted and needed. I have to grow up. Hope can still be there but it's not up to me to change my mother. I will never have that kind of control over her and I don't want that kind of control. So I set boundries for myself of when I see her, how long I'm around her, how often I call (she's blocked from calling me - the hubby is through with her cruelity).

  Everyone's has the right to handle their mother the way they see fit to have some peace of mind. If that means cutting off the mother maybe it has to be that way to perserve a sense of sanity.
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  FlyingHighNow

  When someone is toxic to me and it establishes a long pattern, I tend to have as little or nothing to do with that person as possible. Often mental illness is involved, in the toxic person. You have to be careful or you will begin to believe the toxic person's delusional musings and become ill with the person.
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  serenitynow!

  So I set boundries for myself of when I see her, how long I'm around her, how often I call (she's blocked from calling me - the hubby is through with her cruelity).

  Everyone's has the right to handle their mother the way they see fit to have some peace of mind. If that means cutting off the mother maybe it has to be that way to perserve a sense of sanity.

  That is exactly how I feel. You've got to protect yourself from harmful people.
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  Lady Lee

  Snoozy I don't think you can compare the two.

  I would never cut off one of my children. No matter what they have done or how old they are. Clearly I am not my mother although I sometimes fear I might become her. And if by some chance one of my daughters did disappear I would never give up hope that they would change their mind and reconnect. I made mistakes. Especially before I got professional help. I have apologized to my daughters for how I treated them. But throw them away like my mother did? No way. Heck my mother has even moved away (2000 KM) and not told anyone where she is moving to.

  I am the first child. So my mother has had almost 60 years of being a "mother". She has in one way or another cut each one of 5 children out of her life. I "hoped" for change for the first 45 years. She is almost 80. People rarely get better as they age. In fact they tend to get more of the same. Hope seems pretty dim to me.
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  mindmelda

  My mother was never able to be one wholly because she was abused herself, although she largely refused to admit it. She's now an agoraphobic who believes the whole world is evil, she hoards so she won't have to go out and meet evil worldly people and she rarely calls me. (yay!)

  I never could buy into a lot of that, and even JW teachings. But I was used to going along, albeit reluctantly and passively,just to keep the peace, My dad is the same way. My brother left with his middle finger raised at her at 17. LOL

  I don't hate her now but it took a lot of work and insight not to, she was nagging, controlling, OCD, narcissistic, and just plain old AWFUL to live with.

  She was either that or totally depressed and ignored my brother and I, we never got anything in between much. Being a Witness made her worse in some ways, more self righteous and she already thought she was right about everything anyway.

  I would never cut off my children which is one of many reasons I quit being a Witness. I don't love Jehovah or Jehovah's Witnesses more than my kids and how dare he ask such an inhumane and unnatural thing.

  My kids are largely grown, are not Jehovah's Witnesses and think it's a scary as hell to be one because my mother is scary. I almost want to thank her sometimes for scaring them away from it!

  Adult Children of Alcoholics helped me a lot. Living with the obsessive, and my mom is religiously obsessed and just OCD in general, is just like living with an alcoholic who is obsessed with drinking or a drug addict who is obsessed with drugging. She also rages when things are out of control, another obsessive trait.

  Lots of "good" Witnesses seem like control freaks to me, and they have a ball bullying the ones who aren't. It's sort of a playground for those kinds of people, they're the only ones who seem to "rejoice" in it.
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  serenitynow!

  Living with the obsessive, and my mom is religiously obsessed and just OCD in general, is just like living with an alcoholic who is obsessed with drinking or a drug addict who is obsessed with drugging

  My sister, who is in AA says pretty much the same thing. She calls my mom a "dry drunk" and told her that for all the guidance and support she gave us growing up, she might as well have been a crack addicted mother.
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  mindmelda

  "Guidance and support" can be their words for it, but it's just being controlling, really. How can Witnesses not be controlling parents in some ways when they are they themselves controlled by an organization that thrives on it?

  In extreme forms, definitely crippling. My mother did a lot of things to try to impose her phobias on me, including all the usual JW ones of anything "worldly" to the point of making it hard for me to get jobs, undermining my self confidence so I wouldn't move out (so she could keep me "in the truth") and she also wanted someone there to faciliate her OCD and agoraphobia.

  That's no different than what alcoholic parents do in many ways, they do what they have to do facilitate their addictions, their kids must go along with it or else.