I’ve just had a family member to stay who I find it very stressful to be around. She rapidly and repeatedly undermines and dismisses things I’m experiencing and what I achieve. She makes it clear she thinks I’m faking my physical health conditions, that my mental health conditions are my own choice, that I’m lazy, a let down and a failure. She starts gradually drip by drip until nearly every comment makes clear what a waste of space I am, her hatred of me and any sense I have of myself apart from her statements and blame of me is gone.
Right now I wish I’d cut off all contact with her as I almost did 5 years ago then 4 years ago when her behaviour to me, along with the circumstances I was living in, repeatedly put me in situations too closely mirroring those I was in as a child trapped with my mother’s emotional abuse.
But – and I almost didn’t write this – she’s my step mother and my father thinks she’s wonderful, and what do I do if I’m to allow him happiness… and keep some relationship with him… which actually, I think she would rather I did not have. It’s something else she’s gradually tapping away at. Rather as my mother did.
What obligations do I have to him? To her?
I’m seeing far too many circumstances repeating here. It’s very hard to try to go forward building up my recovery with this going on. But this kind of thing always will go on, and I need to make my own choices and change my own behaviour so I don’t act in the same way I did as an abused child.
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Dignity Beyond Trauma 