How to tell the abuser from the victim is a very real problem. When I was trained to recognize and respond to domestic violence happening in my patient's lives, the issue of separating the primary perpetrator from the primary victim (both situationally and as an overarching relationship dynamic) was almost always tough. You can really get lost in the weeds if you get caught up in the root causes and generational problems.
Also I so wish more people were in agreement that it's abuse when it turns physical. My FIL brags (probably to this day) about putting the fear of God into his kids, beating them with a police belt, and spanking his non-verbal autistic grandson (a toddler) with a wooden spoon. He brags about shoving my husband up against a wall by his throat at 16 because he'd mouthed off to a teacher. The number of people who've heard this and said "they were just old school" and "they were just disciplining their kids" makes me sick. When my husband and I were still thinking of having kids, I told him that the first time his parents laid a hand on my kids would be the last time, and I meant it (I was younger then with less of a backbone; these days, they wouldn't get that first opportunity). People make way too many excuses for parents who put their hands on their kids. I'm sorry you went through what you did; I don't need to hear your parents' side of the story to know it was abuse.
When I think about parents who claim that they were abused by their estranged children, I think of my dad. I once confronted him for repeatedly letting me run out of medication while I was a teenager. I told him I felt neglected. What did he respond with? *"What about me?"* He complained that I spent too much time in my bedroom and it made *him* feel neglected?? As if my medical necessity was at the same severity as being upset that I was in my bedroom. This is why I have a hard time when parents claim that they've been abused by their children. It's not because it doesn't happen, but because both of my parents used the "Well you're abusing ME!!" Tactic when their wrongs were pointed out. And I've seen it rampantly amongst my friends who experienced abuse growing up. If there's genuine abuse being done by the child, which does happen, then I sympathise with the parent. But, most of the time, I just genuinely do not believe that is the case.
My mom does the same thing. Any time her behavior comes up the conversation goes like this: "Mom, you really made me feel like you didn't care about me at all when you [insert terrible, neglectful, or manipulative thing here]." "Yeah but I didn't feel like you cared about me either." [Notice she doesn't address the terrible, neglectful or manipulative thing, just the feelings.] "But I WAS A CHILD!" We've had this exact conversation just so so many times. I've never been able to get her to understand or even admit that caretaking her feelings was not my job as a very young kid. And when I was an older child and could have maybe done better but didn't yet have those skills, who was at fault for that? But regardless the conversation never even gets to there bc I just don't bother. I went no contact for years and have only now began to occasionally see her, mostly bc I'm trying to rebuild relationships with the rest of my family (aunties and cousins).
Oh you went down the rabbit hole too. I went there last month. It helped me realise while I deserve parents that love me in the way I need, I don't have that, so I need to provide it myself and just let them go. Let all expectations of them go.
Agreed. I can't go no contact so along with other healthly behaviours for myself I'm holding a wee funeral/ritual today at the winter solstice to grieve the childhood and parenting I will never have to help me let go and move forward.
"Go with your gut" isn't the best advice. Predators are often charming - a lot of victims of abuse don't get believed because the predator "seemed so nice." Also, therapists are very familiar with the concept of the "identified patient." Basically, the family scapegoat is often the person who ends up with a stigmatized diagnosis. Edit: Not saying the kid can't be abusive - but there's a power dynamic in parent-child relationships that favors abusive parents. I think the litmus test is "what does the person want?" If the kid is so abusive, why does the parent want to end the estrangement so badly? Often, "reconciliation" is just the desire to bring the kid back under the parent's control. On the other hand, if the kid wants the parent to capitulate to some demand, and is using NC as a form of manipulation, then that's a different story.
Ooouf this hit way too close to home and I am not sure how to feel about it. My gut is never right because I'm actually insane, in any situation I'm going to pick the exact worst thing to do out of panic thinking it's rational when all it does is cause chaos because I'm not functional as an adult and I cannot think like a "normal" person. I am the family scapegoat. My list of diagnosed mental conditions is numerous to the point I often forget a few when I'm asked to list them. I recently went rogue on my entire family and first it was mother leaving voicemails because I blocked her number and that's the only thing the phone lets through, voicemails. Then she had my half brother reach out who hasn't spoken to me in more than half a decade and hates my guts and would only type to me on Facebook because she bullied him into it. When I just blocked him too I get a random message from his girlfriend he has two kids with that allows him to not vaccinate the youngest baby reaches out to say Merry Christmas and ask how I'm doing after she hasn't spoken to me in almost as long as my half brother. The only thing my mother hasn't done yet is try to get my step-dad (the most abusive of them all towards me) to reach out to me... she even wrote me a physical letter that I'm trying to respond to so she knows I'm alive and this is a choice I made in the nicest possible way I can because I owe this woman absolutely nothing and will give her no reason for my choice to never speak to any of my blood family again. She probably knows better than to have my step-dad try to contact me lmao. My mother absolutely wants the family punching bag back under her thumb to control and crap on any time someone needs to unload and they don't have an appropriate target. I moved away from them 3 years ago and have been in therapy for at least 2 of those years (wait lists are insane) and am currently in therapy twice a week and have been for some time, working with the boss of my first therapist because I was too challenging of a case for him to handle so I got recommended to the boss who is now waiting even more help with the absolute disaster I am due to my family and society at large. I don't want anything from them but to be left the F alone. I'm tired of being blackmailed, threatened, manipulated... I just want my sanity back, what little of it I can have at this point. Sorry for my long rant, your comment really made me feel better about the difficult choice I made after a lifetime of BS. :x
yeah the whole "go with your gut" shit only works if your gut is extremely well trained in the dynamics involved and also has very good instincts. And even then it can't be the only evidence you go by. I am always disheartened by people who are sure they just have the most amazing gut instincts who get everything wrong. Even experts who know their shit and have gotten it right for years sometimes get it wrong. Unsurprisingly, trying to figure out people who excel at manipulating other people can be rough.
I stumbled across The Missing Missing Reasons a few years ago. I had been estranged from my dad for nearly a decade at that point and carried a lot of guilt, mostly because people kept insisting I'd regret not making amends before he died. Which he did this April. Guess what? I don't feel guilty, I feel relieved. And it has a lot to do with that website. I felt so validated and stronger reading all of the insanity throughout the different sections. Knowing I'm not alone is bittersweet.
This is really simple- talk to any cop or teacher or social worker. Ask them to name the three “worst” kids they ever came across. Then ask about the parents of those kids. Exactly.
My mother was a high school math teacher. She commented that she would regularly be very concerned about a student, then meet the student’s parent(s), and realize the student, on balance, really wasn’t doing so badly! 😬
Yes I worked in child and adolescent inpatient behavioral units for years and we always knew exactly what type of parent would be coming in on visiting or for family therapy once we met the kids. The opposite it true too: if I meet a set of parents first it's easy to predict what sort of issues their kids are going to have. People -- especially people with "bad kids" -- would prefer not to know this but: your kids problems are your fault, one way or another. Did you mean to do that to them? Usually no. But the earlier someone can recognize the problems and error correct the better the outcomes are.
On occasion, if one of the parents is a narcissist, they will drive a wedge between the other parent, causing estrangement that is no fault of their own.
And the other parent was attracted to and formed a relationship with that Narcissist. The 'innocent' parent often has mental health disorders of their own. Pretending they are a passive participant in their relationships is a sign they may have their own emotional deficiencies.
@@ellyk8834Yep. My mother was the “passive victim” of my father for DECADES, and I went right along with that narrative until I was living with her after LEAVING my own, more dangerous marriage, trying to raise my baby from said marriage, and I realized how my mother not only treated me, but also her GRANDSON; like NPC’s in her grand story; not like separate people, at all. I eventually realized that my mother is only a couple shades less damaging to try to have a close relationship with than my father is! 🤦♀️
@@misspat7555 Holy shit. I got chicken skin reading your response bc I could have literally written it. Are you me? Having an existential crises I did not expect to be having on a Friday evening after watching a youtube video.
I really appreciate your efforts to see this topic in from a wider perspective than you may have started with. You come across as far better thought than the average content creator on this topic. Thank you
Ultimately, adults have a right to have as much or as little contact with other adults as they see fit. As I conveyed it to my son, “Once you are 18, you can live with whatever other adult is willing to have you live with them (his father and I separated when he was an infant).”. We can have feelings about others not wanting contact with us, especially those we had some kind of provider/dependent relationship with while under 18, for sure; but those feelings are ours to deal with; no one else can feel and process our feelings for us, either! 🤷♀️
I’ve known families with kids who were actually abusive to everyone around them, and them leaving was not seen as the abusive part, quite frankly. Most of them refused to leave until they were kicked out or their families ran out of money trying to deal with their destructive antics and therapy bills. So in my mind, when I hear a parent say their allegedly problematic child is abusing them by leaving, that to me is an indication that the problem is the parent wanting to control their child, and not getting their way. People in positions of power generally don’t fight to keep genuinely abusive people around.
I had to click on this just because of the jumpscare of the "Issendai" being so close in spelling to my name, there was a moment of Uh oh, what did I do, and how did my name get spelled slightly wrong. XD
I wish every parent would read The Prophet. “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you. And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.” Refer to the book for the rest.
Note: Autism or AudHD with C-PTSD can have the same symptoms as BPD and NPD (also bipolar). Many more femmes and women are diagnosed with B cluster disorders than men bc women are more often the victims of extremely toxic CEN.
I don't think you're obligated to talk about the "BUT WHAT ABOUT..." side that people throw at you. Your channel is about abusive parents. If people want to talk about abusive kids, they can start that channel. It's like when women discuss issues about men, and men come along with "but women do X, Y, Z." Fine. You do posts/videos/etc about that. We're talking about this. It's totally fine to go down these rabbit holes, of course, if you want to, but I don't think you *have* to in order to validate your side or your experience. Abusive parents exist and their children are victims, completely independent of what other children may have done to their parents.
Right like these are just two different victims of two different situations! I never argued that I hate the parents of abusive children. I obviously want neither situations to be happening to anyone’s family 😐
@@roberkraft1982Yep. “Oh, so women NEVER abuse men, eh?”. No one said that. We were talking about how much more common women (or men in gay relationships) being physically endangered by men is, tot he point that it is somewhat socially sanctioned. Talk about women engaging in unusual, exceptional, definitely NOT and NEVER socially sanctioned activities maybe where that is being more generally discussed? 🤨
So you have no formal education knowledge yet you are handing out advice to impressionable people.Thank you for acknowledging that. I am an abused child of a very toxic Mother as wells an abused parent. There is not formula. Of 3 children as well as 4 grands only 1 is estranged, no grandchildren . And this one has wreaked havoc with her siblings as well myself, estranged from them. She is now 25, an adult. I now longer want HER in my life. Is that abusive on my part?
As someone with education and knowledge I take no offense to anything this content creator has said in any past videos. I have not watched this video yet. It is extremely difficult to understand your writing due to improper grammar, spelling, and punctuation. There is also a huge lack of context to your situation, which I would consider a positive as I'm not sure it's wise to inform the entire internet that you could be a problematic person. As your post was, at best, half baked I'm not going to try to assume anything. I will say breaking the cycle of abuse is important, take that for what you will.
So your love towards her is conditional? Maybe she acts out because she has felt that her whole life? Who knows. But at no point have you said you want to love her from a distance, while giving yourself and her respectful space to learn how to have a healthy relationship. It's very telling with what you do and don't say.
@@tally551 The child has literally committed felonies, beat me up, broke into my home and stole valuable as well as memories.. I could make a 5 year long list but honestly, you think I am being conditional? Why would you attempt to weirdly try and"Diagnosing" me on a you tube thread ? Maybe I have just had it.
@@Kandei-Kain I suppose I will have to take your word that you are an educated and knowledgeable person. Although, if this is so, I would think you would know that In every story there are 2 sides. Somewhere in the middle you will find the truth. And I sincerely apologize for my "Poor grammar and spelling". I hope this is more to your high standards.
How to tell the abuser from the victim is a very real problem. When I was trained to recognize and respond to domestic violence happening in my patient's lives, the issue of separating the primary perpetrator from the primary victim (both situationally and as an overarching relationship dynamic) was almost always tough. You can really get lost in the weeds if you get caught up in the root causes and generational problems.
Also I so wish more people were in agreement that it's abuse when it turns physical. My FIL brags (probably to this day) about putting the fear of God into his kids, beating them with a police belt, and spanking his non-verbal autistic grandson (a toddler) with a wooden spoon. He brags about shoving my husband up against a wall by his throat at 16 because he'd mouthed off to a teacher.
The number of people who've heard this and said "they were just old school" and "they were just disciplining their kids" makes me sick. When my husband and I were still thinking of having kids, I told him that the first time his parents laid a hand on my kids would be the last time, and I meant it (I was younger then with less of a backbone; these days, they wouldn't get that first opportunity).
People make way too many excuses for parents who put their hands on their kids. I'm sorry you went through what you did; I don't need to hear your parents' side of the story to know it was abuse.
When I think about parents who claim that they were abused by their estranged children, I think of my dad. I once confronted him for repeatedly letting me run out of medication while I was a teenager. I told him I felt neglected. What did he respond with?
*"What about me?"*
He complained that I spent too much time in my bedroom and it made *him* feel neglected?? As if my medical necessity was at the same severity as being upset that I was in my bedroom.
This is why I have a hard time when parents claim that they've been abused by their children. It's not because it doesn't happen, but because both of my parents used the "Well you're abusing ME!!" Tactic when their wrongs were pointed out. And I've seen it rampantly amongst my friends who experienced abuse growing up.
If there's genuine abuse being done by the child, which does happen, then I sympathise with the parent. But, most of the time, I just genuinely do not believe that is the case.
My mom does the same thing. Any time her behavior comes up the conversation goes like this:
"Mom, you really made me feel like you didn't care about me at all when you [insert terrible, neglectful, or manipulative thing here]."
"Yeah but I didn't feel like you cared about me either." [Notice she doesn't address the terrible, neglectful or manipulative thing, just the feelings.]
"But I WAS A CHILD!"
We've had this exact conversation just so so many times. I've never been able to get her to understand or even admit that caretaking her feelings was not my job as a very young kid. And when I was an older child and could have maybe done better but didn't yet have those skills, who was at fault for that? But regardless the conversation never even gets to there bc I just don't bother. I went no contact for years and have only now began to occasionally see her, mostly bc I'm trying to rebuild relationships with the rest of my family (aunties and cousins).
Oh you went down the rabbit hole too. I went there last month. It helped me realise while I deserve parents that love me in the way I need, I don't have that, so I need to provide it myself and just let them go. Let all expectations of them go.
Agreed. I can't go no contact so along with other healthly behaviours for myself I'm holding a wee funeral/ritual today at the winter solstice to grieve the childhood and parenting I will never have to help me let go and move forward.
@firstsurname7099 I hope that helps. good luck.
"Go with your gut" isn't the best advice. Predators are often charming - a lot of victims of abuse don't get believed because the predator "seemed so nice." Also, therapists are very familiar with the concept of the "identified patient." Basically, the family scapegoat is often the person who ends up with a stigmatized diagnosis.
Edit: Not saying the kid can't be abusive - but there's a power dynamic in parent-child relationships that favors abusive parents.
I think the litmus test is "what does the person want?" If the kid is so abusive, why does the parent want to end the estrangement so badly? Often, "reconciliation" is just the desire to bring the kid back under the parent's control. On the other hand, if the kid wants the parent to capitulate to some demand, and is using NC as a form of manipulation, then that's a different story.
Ooouf this hit way too close to home and I am not sure how to feel about it. My gut is never right because I'm actually insane, in any situation I'm going to pick the exact worst thing to do out of panic thinking it's rational when all it does is cause chaos because I'm not functional as an adult and I cannot think like a "normal" person. I am the family scapegoat. My list of diagnosed mental conditions is numerous to the point I often forget a few when I'm asked to list them. I recently went rogue on my entire family and first it was mother leaving voicemails because I blocked her number and that's the only thing the phone lets through, voicemails. Then she had my half brother reach out who hasn't spoken to me in more than half a decade and hates my guts and would only type to me on Facebook because she bullied him into it. When I just blocked him too I get a random message from his girlfriend he has two kids with that allows him to not vaccinate the youngest baby reaches out to say Merry Christmas and ask how I'm doing after she hasn't spoken to me in almost as long as my half brother. The only thing my mother hasn't done yet is try to get my step-dad (the most abusive of them all towards me) to reach out to me... she even wrote me a physical letter that I'm trying to respond to so she knows I'm alive and this is a choice I made in the nicest possible way I can because I owe this woman absolutely nothing and will give her no reason for my choice to never speak to any of my blood family again. She probably knows better than to have my step-dad try to contact me lmao. My mother absolutely wants the family punching bag back under her thumb to control and crap on any time someone needs to unload and they don't have an appropriate target. I moved away from them 3 years ago and have been in therapy for at least 2 of those years (wait lists are insane) and am currently in therapy twice a week and have been for some time, working with the boss of my first therapist because I was too challenging of a case for him to handle so I got recommended to the boss who is now waiting even more help with the absolute disaster I am due to my family and society at large. I don't want anything from them but to be left the F alone. I'm tired of being blackmailed, threatened, manipulated... I just want my sanity back, what little of it I can have at this point. Sorry for my long rant, your comment really made me feel better about the difficult choice I made after a lifetime of BS. :x
yeah the whole "go with your gut" shit only works if your gut is extremely well trained in the dynamics involved and also has very good instincts. And even then it can't be the only evidence you go by. I am always disheartened by people who are sure they just have the most amazing gut instincts who get everything wrong. Even experts who know their shit and have gotten it right for years sometimes get it wrong. Unsurprisingly, trying to figure out people who excel at manipulating other people can be rough.
I stumbled across The Missing Missing Reasons a few years ago. I had been estranged from my dad for nearly a decade at that point and carried a lot of guilt, mostly because people kept insisting I'd regret not making amends before he died. Which he did this April. Guess what? I don't feel guilty, I feel relieved. And it has a lot to do with that website. I felt so validated and stronger reading all of the insanity throughout the different sections. Knowing I'm not alone is bittersweet.
This is really simple- talk to any cop or teacher or social worker.
Ask them to name the three “worst” kids they ever came across.
Then ask about the parents of those kids.
Exactly.
My mother was a high school math teacher. She commented that she would regularly be very concerned about a student, then meet the student’s parent(s), and realize the student, on balance, really wasn’t doing so badly! 😬
Yes I worked in child and adolescent inpatient behavioral units for years and we always knew exactly what type of parent would be coming in on visiting or for family therapy once we met the kids. The opposite it true too: if I meet a set of parents first it's easy to predict what sort of issues their kids are going to have. People -- especially people with "bad kids" -- would prefer not to know this but: your kids problems are your fault, one way or another. Did you mean to do that to them? Usually no. But the earlier someone can recognize the problems and error correct the better the outcomes are.
On occasion, if one of the parents is a narcissist, they will drive a wedge between the other parent, causing estrangement that is no fault of their own.
And the other parent was attracted to and formed a relationship with that Narcissist. The 'innocent' parent often has mental health disorders of their own. Pretending they are a passive participant in their relationships is a sign they may have their own emotional deficiencies.
@@ellyk8834Yep. My mother was the “passive victim” of my father for DECADES, and I went right along with that narrative until I was living with her after LEAVING my own, more dangerous marriage, trying to raise my baby from said marriage, and I realized how my mother not only treated me, but also her GRANDSON; like NPC’s in her grand story; not like separate people, at all. I eventually realized that my mother is only a couple shades less damaging to try to have a close relationship with than my father is! 🤦♀️
@@misspat7555 Holy shit. I got chicken skin reading your response bc I could have literally written it. Are you me? Having an existential crises I did not expect to be having on a Friday evening after watching a youtube video.
Watch We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011)
Oh I second this! I'd love to hear your thoughts!
That jab at nurse Hannah was DIABILICAL (and accurate) 😂😂😂
I really appreciate your efforts to see this topic in from a wider perspective than you may have started with. You come across as far better thought than the average content creator on this topic.
Thank you
Ultimately, adults have a right to have as much or as little contact with other adults as they see fit. As I conveyed it to my son, “Once you are 18, you can live with whatever other adult is willing to have you live with them (his father and I separated when he was an infant).”. We can have feelings about others not wanting contact with us, especially those we had some kind of provider/dependent relationship with while under 18, for sure; but those feelings are ours to deal with; no one else can feel and process our feelings for us, either! 🤷♀️
I’ve known families with kids who were actually abusive to everyone around them, and them leaving was not seen as the abusive part, quite frankly. Most of them refused to leave until they were kicked out or their families ran out of money trying to deal with their destructive antics and therapy bills.
So in my mind, when I hear a parent say their allegedly problematic child is abusing them by leaving, that to me is an indication that the problem is the parent wanting to control their child, and not getting their way.
People in positions of power generally don’t fight to keep genuinely abusive people around.
I had to click on this just because of the jumpscare of the "Issendai" being so close in spelling to my name, there was a moment of Uh oh, what did I do, and how did my name get spelled slightly wrong. XD
I wish every parent would read The Prophet.
“Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you. And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.”
Refer to the book for the rest.
Note: Autism or AudHD with C-PTSD can have the same symptoms as BPD and NPD (also bipolar).
Many more femmes and women are diagnosed with B cluster disorders than men bc women are more often the victims of extremely toxic CEN.
if im right, its likely pronounced: EE-SS-eh-n-dah-ee
I don't think you're obligated to talk about the "BUT WHAT ABOUT..." side that people throw at you. Your channel is about abusive parents. If people want to talk about abusive kids, they can start that channel. It's like when women discuss issues about men, and men come along with "but women do X, Y, Z." Fine. You do posts/videos/etc about that. We're talking about this.
It's totally fine to go down these rabbit holes, of course, if you want to, but I don't think you *have* to in order to validate your side or your experience. Abusive parents exist and their children are victims, completely independent of what other children may have done to their parents.
""but women do X, Y, Z." Fine. You do posts/videos/etc about that" this is so true its always bugged me. its usually a deflection on their part.
@@roberkraft1982 I know right??
Right like these are just two different victims of two different situations! I never argued that I hate the parents of abusive children. I obviously want neither situations to be happening to anyone’s family 😐
@@roberkraft1982Yep. “Oh, so women NEVER abuse men, eh?”. No one said that. We were talking about how much more common women (or men in gay relationships) being physically endangered by men is, tot he point that it is somewhat socially sanctioned. Talk about women engaging in unusual, exceptional, definitely NOT and NEVER socially sanctioned activities maybe where that is being more generally discussed? 🤨
So you have no formal education knowledge yet you are handing out advice to impressionable people.Thank you for acknowledging that. I am an abused child of a very toxic Mother as wells an abused parent. There is not formula. Of 3 children as well as 4 grands only 1 is estranged, no grandchildren . And this one has wreaked havoc with her siblings as well myself, estranged from them. She is now 25, an adult. I now longer want HER in my life. Is that abusive on my part?
As someone with education and knowledge I take no offense to anything this content creator has said in any past videos. I have not watched this video yet. It is extremely difficult to understand your writing due to improper grammar, spelling, and punctuation. There is also a huge lack of context to your situation, which I would consider a positive as I'm not sure it's wise to inform the entire internet that you could be a problematic person. As your post was, at best, half baked I'm not going to try to assume anything. I will say breaking the cycle of abuse is important, take that for what you will.
get your answer in therapy, not from a TH-camr.
So your love towards her is conditional? Maybe she acts out because she has felt that her whole life? Who knows. But at no point have you said you want to love her from a distance, while giving yourself and her respectful space to learn how to have a healthy relationship. It's very telling with what you do and don't say.
@@tally551 The child has literally committed felonies, beat me up, broke into my home and stole valuable as well as memories.. I could make a 5 year long list but honestly, you think I am being conditional? Why would you attempt to weirdly try and"Diagnosing" me on a you tube thread ? Maybe I have just had it.
@@Kandei-Kain I suppose I will have to take your word that you are an educated and knowledgeable person. Although, if this is so, I would think you would know that In every story there are 2 sides. Somewhere in the middle you will find the truth. And I sincerely apologize for my "Poor grammar and spelling". I hope this is more to your high standards.