My sister is contacting me. I was looking around at checklists of behaviors found in abusive relationships. The bolded ones are the ones that have been pretty consistent from my mother and/or sister.
General Characteristics of Emotionally Abusive Mothers
Making the child/teen feel responsible for the mother’s feelings.
Threatening them in general.
Threatening them specifically with rejection or abandonment.
Threatening them with vague, unstated consequences.
Using force upon them.
Invalidating their feelings.
Laying undeserved guilt on them.
Placing undeserved blame on them.
Dominating the conversations.
Refusing to apologize.
Always needing to have the last word.
Judging or rejecting their friends.
Sending them to their rooms for crying.
Locking them out of the house.
Using punishments and rewards to manipulate and control them.
Invading their privacy.
Under-estimating them.
Failing to show trust in them.
Labeling them.
Criticizing them.
Giving them the silent treatment.
Failing to give them real explanations.
Giving non-explanations such as “because it is wrong” or “because it is inappropriate” or “because it is a sin”
Slapping
yup. that’s quite a list.
I didn’t remember you’d said you were cutting contact with your sister.
do you have any conditions under which you’d consider re-enrolling her in your filters?
Uhm, if she could ever stop being a pathological liar who plays constant power games?
*nodding*
yep, those are solid boundary lines to draw.
I am always glad to hear about healthy boundaries.
Umm, what a nasty list. Horrible just to read it.
Avoiding people who treat you that way seems wise.
Yeah. My sister threatened to beat me up at my baby shower. It was special.
Yeah, screw that bitch.
Both of them? All those things?
Y’know what I conclude from that list? You never brought your friends home or talked about them at home and you had your own key.
To be fair, my mom doesn’t dominate conversations much. But my sister does Constantly.
By the time I was old enough to be kicked out I was paying rent. I don’t think my mom had the cajones to try and throw me out under those circumstances.
For some reason they just never commented much on my friends. I think because I mostly didn’t interact with my friends in front of them.
Noah really is the shit.