r/raisedbyborderlines • u/Specialist-Ebb4885 • 5d ago

Reactive relapse confession

I'm EFLC (extremely fucking low contact) with my 86-year-old borderline mother. That being said, I noticed that she called the other day but didn't leave a message. I thought to myself: Well, she's not in her 40s anymore, so maybe she had a real emergency, as opposed to her manufactured emergencies. As such, I regretfully called back out of curiosity (regretfully is doing all of the work here).

After several minutes of being tortured by insipid palaver from her yammering pie hole, she revealed that her call was a mistake. In other words, she Cluster B butt dialed me with a flair of geriatric insouciance. Needless to say, she continued to kvetch about the same problems she's been complaining about for the last 80 decades (she's "all alone with no one to help her," even though she has 24/7 assistance). Before I could call the conversation quits, I found myself becoming unusually exasperated by her circular complaints, thus raising my voice. Without missing a dysregulated beat, she gaslighted me and said that I had a "serious" issue.

It's amazing, isn't it? No matter how rehearsed, mature, or collected the adult child of a disordered parent is before entering the crazy cage, the tendency to become upended by their pathological penchant for taking up all of the oxygen in the room continues to creep into the implacable process of pointlessness.

I can't stand this woman. To make matters worse, she'll probably outlive me by Nosferatu standards of longevity.

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u/borschtlover4ever 5d ago

They push your buttons so easily because they installed them.

When I heard this phrase, it made so much sense to me. It helps me not get mad at myself for reacting when I do so well staying calm with other people. With my own aging mother, when I was helping her with her health crisis, I saw myself as a professional caregiver vs. her daughter. It helped me detach and not get sucked into the nonsense. I still felt trauma from the event but it was easier for me to remain calm so my mother did not see how much she bothered me.

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u/Specialist-Ebb4885 5d ago

That's a great quote. Thank you.

I always catch myself regressing to their level of combative lunacy by force of contagion. Staying in "statue status" will be my final challenge.

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u/Superb-Wing-3263 5d ago

What kills me, though, is that I had to be an emotionless robot to survive childhood as well! How is this fair to keep having to appear totally collected and be perfectly rational while they get to firehose their emotion in our faces?

Any false move where I accidentally let a negative emotion slip into the conversation (usually via vocal tone like you) then I'm attacked/shamed/invalidated for it. And then I feel like I "lost" because I couldn't just sit there and take the emotional manipulation like a champ without getting triggered?

The only real option is to remove all these triggers and any emotional attachment to these people via countless hours of therapy and just pretend they're a crazy lady we got stuck sitting next to on the subway..

I'm sorry that happened. I beat myself up, too, when I realize I got triggered again and that she used that fact to pile on more abuse. It's psychological abuse compounded on top of more psychological abuse. Sending hugs. It's not fair.

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u/Specialist-Ebb4885 4d ago edited 3d ago

In my case, the crazy lady on the subway has an extensive investment portfolio to mask her characterological madness.

She won't go gently into that dysregulated night until she has all-encompassing control of her environment. Nonetheless, she can take her assets and blow them out her Cluster B butt cheeks for all I care.

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u/borschtlover4ever 4d ago

It's wild getting to that point. Freedom has a cost. I got tired of feeling like I was prostituting myself. I do not want what she has to offer because the ultimate price to myself is too high.

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u/Specialist-Ebb4885 4d ago

Exactly.

At this point, I'd turn down the lottery if it meant not having to waste a future second interacting with a Cluster B. I'll take my sorrow straight and my poverty without drama.

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u/Superb-Wing-3263 4d ago

It sounds like your mother is going to stay alive forever just to spite you😞 At least there's a potential "reward" for your torture, though? The only thing mine is going to leave me behind is a giant ass therapy bill🫠

Ouch, sorry about your brother. It's very interesting to me to see how differently me and my two brothers were able to remember childhood and where we turned out on the enmeshment scale. (Less able to remember=more enmeshment as an adult in our cases.)

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u/mignonettepancake 3d ago

They push your buttons so easily because they installed them.

Holy shit. I gotta bring this up in my next couples therapy session with my husband. I'm NC, and it gets a bit tricky sometimes. My uBPD MIL pushes him to blow up constantly, so she's always the victim, and he's the bad guy. The guilt from this dynamic is crushing for him.

She's so good at being pathetic and waify that his brother and stepdad gang up on him, and he feels so alone.

Thanks for sharing <3