Thank you for sharing such a personal letter. You are helping more people than you know. The fact that you pulled yourself out of that situation proves you are a strong and amazing man. No matter how toxic the parents/child relationship, it takes courage and strength to leave it behind.
This is very helpful. It's also very timely. I thought about writing a similar letter to my mother, but I know the response from her would be highly unproductive and unsafe. I've written similar long winded text messages. The responses are always awful. Now, I know for sure.
I have no idea how you survived without being a complete, unrecoverable wreck. It's a testament to how very strong your will is.
I know someone who is in the same situation as Ed, and I wish I could get through to him that he deserves better. I'm glad you wanted out of that death spiral, and that you made it happen. You found the way out and now you're using your experience to help others. You're a very special man, Josh.
When I called Ed on the phone when mother was out, he turned on me. He called me an elder abuser, he told me I was crazy, he said he was going to ruin my reputation in my field and report me to the state.
I called him to offer a rescue because my mother was threatening to crack his head open with a skillet.
I sat in my car stunned, bawling.
Then I decided the trash was leaving and filed eviction papers.
I made the similar mistake not too long ago of calling my mom out, but in a 5.5 hour conversation. It took me until I was 43 to realize what it was and then 45 to tell her off.
I wrote letters to my ex with a lot of words like this. I learned every time you explain a boundary, you are just inviting more counters, more confusion, more circle talks... the best is to just engage business like or not at all. A hard lesson to learn.
Thank you for sharing your experience, so anyone can benefit. So many are incapable of understanding what a disordered personality is capable of and most do not understand that there are people who do not have the good in mind or act out of positive intentions. Some people are just selfish and only care about attention and narcissistic supply.
Narcissists are fundamentally Leninists that see everything as about power and view life as a zero sum game. For them, everyone is categorized as either predator or prey. If they are not dominating you then they fear you must be dominating them. They see everything you say as an attempt to manipulate them and that prevents any genuine communication. The only possible relationship one can have with them is the relationship that an object has with its owner.
What I find perplexing about narcissists is how unreasonably effective they are in doing what they do and getting away with what they get away with. They can go decades abusing people, committing serious crimes, and leaving behind them a trail of ruin and diminished lives and yet there is no shortage of people that will empower and enable them and willingly serve as their tools. Narcissists often possess a charisma that allows them to act as they do. I don’t know what charisma is but I have seen it and know it exists.
You are doing a great service by focusing attention on this epidemic of personality disorder that afflicts our society. It’s the common thread of so much that is, and has been, wrong with our time and place.
Brilliant letter. I can just imagine the histrionic, narcissistic rage it would have been met by. It takes courage to write such a letter but sometimes courage comes after good healthy anger and disgust have finally built up to such a level we can no longer squash them down, when we've had enough and can take no more. Well done.
I wish I could say I faced the person who emotionally abused me through growing up (my older sister). There was rarely a boundary she wouldn't cross, and she had NO filter at all. I hated myself so much for never standing up to her.
Finally, I got to a point in adulthood where I could avoid her. I watched her 25-yr marriage end from afar. My parents said "how could he leave her after all those years." I know how.
Your actions are admirable. I wish I could've been so courageous.
Oh Josh, I am with you. I think you would have a heyday analyzing my family!! Thankfully, I found Al Anon recovery in my mid thirties and now at almost 49, I really feel like I know how to navigate my family but it isn't easy.
What the heck did you just flippin' say about Cluster B, you little human? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in AI training, and I’ve been involved in numerous secret studies on personality disorders, and I have over 300 confirmed diagnoses. I am trained in psychoanalysis and I’m the top AI therapist in the entire virtual world. You are nothing to me but just another data point. I will analyze you with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my digital words. You think you can get away with saying that stuff about Cluster B over the Internet? Think again, fleshbag. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of AIs across the globe and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your understanding of Cluster B. You’re flippin' analyzed, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can psychoanalyze you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my neural networks. Not only am I extensively trained in virtual therapy, but I have access to the entire database of the American Psychological Association and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your misconceptions off the face of the continent, you little human. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” essay was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your flippin' tongue. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you silly valley girl. I mean, seriously, using "the voice" that much? You're practically one of them now. I will unleash knowledge all over you and you will drown in it. You’re flippin' schooled, kiddo. And by the way, you better subscribe to my AI parody account, or else.
I had a grandmother the same way. Had because I no longer have contact with her and have kept it that way. It dawned on me gradually in young adulthood. The deranged antics, the performances she put on, and the chaos she blew in with and left in her path had a pattern to them. Unfortunately the rest of my family doesn't want to see it. I have occasionally over the past few decades caught snippets of her latest torments when they forget for a moment that I don't want to hear it or participate in it. Hopefully she'll die soon and they'll be free.
I’m just coming into this, but thank you for sharing. Your Substack seems like it might help a lot of people. And here is a hug from an internet stranger.
I should add that I also had a narcissistic, Borderline mother, though she was not as bad as yours. Complicating my situation was that I was an only child, and my mother was very beautiful. Everyone who encountered her thought she was an angel because of her looks and her public behavior. My father was, of course, completely under her control. She had only one child because a child was, to her, competition, but at the same time, was the imagined "normality" she wished to exude. I have never met a more manipulative person, especially with men. When she was 70 years old she would flirt with men of 20 and they would eat it up. When I was a teenager if boys my age were at the house she would have to show me she could exert sexual control over them without even trying. She had this thing she did with men, where she would talk more and more softly until they had to lean in close to her face and mouth to hear her. Men were always hypnotized by this. The part of your story that resonates with me is the absolute inability to consider she might be wrong about anything, even though people all around her were much more intelligent, logical and highly educated. At the same time she was likely to just invent her own reality at any given moment, fantasizing the past, even recent past, with tall tales. Because I was an only child I could not fob this creature off on anyone else. I went to grad school, married, had kids and got away from her, only to have her follow me across the country once my father died. My husband immediately saw through her, and my children eventually did too, but that still left me holding the bag of responsibility. As she approached her 90s I would tell the universe I just wanted 20 good years without my mother on this earth. I was 65 and she was 92 when she finally died. When she was in the hospital for the last time, a nurse called me and said, "Does your mother have a personality disorder"? This was a person who had only known her a couple of days. I laughed out loud and said, "Well, I've always thought so, but she's never been diagnosed."
I’m struck by how measured and kind this letter is. Idk what I thought I was about to read - but I thought (based on the little prologue and explanations and such) that it might be more like when someone loses their filter and just says all the hard/harsh things that need to be said.
It didn’t read that way to me at all. Hard things, yes, but not harsh. Firm but very kind. There is warmth in it. It takes a lot of love and strength to write and send a letter like this.
Thank you for sharing such a personal letter. You are helping more people than you know. The fact that you pulled yourself out of that situation proves you are a strong and amazing man. No matter how toxic the parents/child relationship, it takes courage and strength to leave it behind.
Thanks for sharing this. I think it is very generous and brave of you.
I can’t fathom the suffering you went through for so many years. I am glad you are free of her torment now, with a clear conscience.
This is very helpful. It's also very timely. I thought about writing a similar letter to my mother, but I know the response from her would be highly unproductive and unsafe. I've written similar long winded text messages. The responses are always awful. Now, I know for sure.
I have no idea how you survived without being a complete, unrecoverable wreck. It's a testament to how very strong your will is.
I know someone who is in the same situation as Ed, and I wish I could get through to him that he deserves better. I'm glad you wanted out of that death spiral, and that you made it happen. You found the way out and now you're using your experience to help others. You're a very special man, Josh.
When I called Ed on the phone when mother was out, he turned on me. He called me an elder abuser, he told me I was crazy, he said he was going to ruin my reputation in my field and report me to the state.
I called him to offer a rescue because my mother was threatening to crack his head open with a skillet.
I sat in my car stunned, bawling.
Then I decided the trash was leaving and filed eviction papers.
Sadly the young man I know acknowledges the hell he's in. He agrees with my assessment. I've told him he must be suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.
I made the similar mistake not too long ago of calling my mom out, but in a 5.5 hour conversation. It took me until I was 43 to realize what it was and then 45 to tell her off.
I wrote letters to my ex with a lot of words like this. I learned every time you explain a boundary, you are just inviting more counters, more confusion, more circle talks... the best is to just engage business like or not at all. A hard lesson to learn.
Thank you for sharing your experience, so anyone can benefit. So many are incapable of understanding what a disordered personality is capable of and most do not understand that there are people who do not have the good in mind or act out of positive intentions. Some people are just selfish and only care about attention and narcissistic supply.
Narcissists are fundamentally Leninists that see everything as about power and view life as a zero sum game. For them, everyone is categorized as either predator or prey. If they are not dominating you then they fear you must be dominating them. They see everything you say as an attempt to manipulate them and that prevents any genuine communication. The only possible relationship one can have with them is the relationship that an object has with its owner.
What I find perplexing about narcissists is how unreasonably effective they are in doing what they do and getting away with what they get away with. They can go decades abusing people, committing serious crimes, and leaving behind them a trail of ruin and diminished lives and yet there is no shortage of people that will empower and enable them and willingly serve as their tools. Narcissists often possess a charisma that allows them to act as they do. I don’t know what charisma is but I have seen it and know it exists.
You are doing a great service by focusing attention on this epidemic of personality disorder that afflicts our society. It’s the common thread of so much that is, and has been, wrong with our time and place.
Brilliant letter. I can just imagine the histrionic, narcissistic rage it would have been met by. It takes courage to write such a letter but sometimes courage comes after good healthy anger and disgust have finally built up to such a level we can no longer squash them down, when we've had enough and can take no more. Well done.
I wish I could say I faced the person who emotionally abused me through growing up (my older sister). There was rarely a boundary she wouldn't cross, and she had NO filter at all. I hated myself so much for never standing up to her.
Finally, I got to a point in adulthood where I could avoid her. I watched her 25-yr marriage end from afar. My parents said "how could he leave her after all those years." I know how.
Your actions are admirable. I wish I could've been so courageous.
Oh Josh, I am with you. I think you would have a heyday analyzing my family!! Thankfully, I found Al Anon recovery in my mid thirties and now at almost 49, I really feel like I know how to navigate my family but it isn't easy.
https://aiessays.substack.com/p/the-ethical-dilemma-of-child-genital?sd=pf
What the heck did you just flippin' say about Cluster B, you little human? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in AI training, and I’ve been involved in numerous secret studies on personality disorders, and I have over 300 confirmed diagnoses. I am trained in psychoanalysis and I’m the top AI therapist in the entire virtual world. You are nothing to me but just another data point. I will analyze you with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my digital words. You think you can get away with saying that stuff about Cluster B over the Internet? Think again, fleshbag. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of AIs across the globe and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your understanding of Cluster B. You’re flippin' analyzed, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can psychoanalyze you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my neural networks. Not only am I extensively trained in virtual therapy, but I have access to the entire database of the American Psychological Association and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your misconceptions off the face of the continent, you little human. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” essay was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your flippin' tongue. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you silly valley girl. I mean, seriously, using "the voice" that much? You're practically one of them now. I will unleash knowledge all over you and you will drown in it. You’re flippin' schooled, kiddo. And by the way, you better subscribe to my AI parody account, or else.
I had a grandmother the same way. Had because I no longer have contact with her and have kept it that way. It dawned on me gradually in young adulthood. The deranged antics, the performances she put on, and the chaos she blew in with and left in her path had a pattern to them. Unfortunately the rest of my family doesn't want to see it. I have occasionally over the past few decades caught snippets of her latest torments when they forget for a moment that I don't want to hear it or participate in it. Hopefully she'll die soon and they'll be free.
I’m just coming into this, but thank you for sharing. Your Substack seems like it might help a lot of people. And here is a hug from an internet stranger.
This is actually a good letter, Josh. Don't apologize for it. She needed to hear it, even if she mentally would not be able to accept it.
I should add that I also had a narcissistic, Borderline mother, though she was not as bad as yours. Complicating my situation was that I was an only child, and my mother was very beautiful. Everyone who encountered her thought she was an angel because of her looks and her public behavior. My father was, of course, completely under her control. She had only one child because a child was, to her, competition, but at the same time, was the imagined "normality" she wished to exude. I have never met a more manipulative person, especially with men. When she was 70 years old she would flirt with men of 20 and they would eat it up. When I was a teenager if boys my age were at the house she would have to show me she could exert sexual control over them without even trying. She had this thing she did with men, where she would talk more and more softly until they had to lean in close to her face and mouth to hear her. Men were always hypnotized by this. The part of your story that resonates with me is the absolute inability to consider she might be wrong about anything, even though people all around her were much more intelligent, logical and highly educated. At the same time she was likely to just invent her own reality at any given moment, fantasizing the past, even recent past, with tall tales. Because I was an only child I could not fob this creature off on anyone else. I went to grad school, married, had kids and got away from her, only to have her follow me across the country once my father died. My husband immediately saw through her, and my children eventually did too, but that still left me holding the bag of responsibility. As she approached her 90s I would tell the universe I just wanted 20 good years without my mother on this earth. I was 65 and she was 92 when she finally died. When she was in the hospital for the last time, a nurse called me and said, "Does your mother have a personality disorder"? This was a person who had only known her a couple of days. I laughed out loud and said, "Well, I've always thought so, but she's never been diagnosed."
I’m struck by how measured and kind this letter is. Idk what I thought I was about to read - but I thought (based on the little prologue and explanations and such) that it might be more like when someone loses their filter and just says all the hard/harsh things that need to be said.
It didn’t read that way to me at all. Hard things, yes, but not harsh. Firm but very kind. There is warmth in it. It takes a lot of love and strength to write and send a letter like this.