Emotional Blackmail and The Narcissistic Family

I've known about Narcissism in individuals for who knows how long, but I've never seen it described as a family unit.  I ran across this book:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Narcissistic-Family-Diagnosis-Treatment/dp/0787908703/?keywords=janet+g.+woititz&qid=1350315369&ref=sr_1_45&ie=UTF8&sr=8-45

The Narcissistic Family by Stephanie Donaldson-Pressman.  I think I might order it.  Reading the reviews really caught my eye because those people sound like they came from a family like my husband's family.  They'll even say something like, "People thought we had a great family, but I always felt like something was off; those people didn't know what it was like on the inside; I could never pinpoint what felt wrong, but now I know."  Sounds like my in-laws!  Making the family seem "perfect" and you aren't allowed to feel anything negative or go against what they want.  That is my in-laws!  I could go on and on about how the reviews are like my husband's family, but I don't have the energy now.  Anyway, reading those was good for me to see that people go through similar situations, so the book probably would be beneficial.  Maybe it can help others too.

And here is another book:

http://www.amazon.com/Emotional-Blackmail-People-Obligation-Manipulate/dp/0060928972/?qid=1328547145&s=books&ref=sr_1_sc_1&ie=UTF8&sr=1-1-spell

Emotional Blackmail by Susan Forward.  I'll probably order this one too!  I don't think I've heard of emotional blackmail before - at least not in that term.  I've heard of the techniques, but I have never had a name or label for it.  Oh man, I can't tell you how uncanny that is to my in-laws!  I read more about it online, and daaaaang, that is them!  My mother-in-law is more of the sufferer type, and my father-in-law is both the sufferer type and the punisher type.  Unfortunately, my husband's siblings are crafty at implementing emotional blackmail too, especially the youngest!  Seriously, even I have heard things like this over and over said to my husband:

"Do you love our family or not?"
"After everything we've done for you."
"We must be failures as parents."
"If you loved me/us, then you would do this."
"You must not care about us at all."
"How can you be so cold and heartless?"

Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head, but there are many many more.  I always knew those kinds of statements were extremely manipulative; I guess that's how I labeled it.  But emotional blackmail makes sense.  My husband heard these types of things his entire life.  He was always guilted into doing everything they wanted.  He eventually learned to just do what they wanted (or act like he did it even if he didn't) and pretend to be who they wanted or thought he was.  His mom was especially bad about making him feel like he was responsible for her emotions.  Don't do that to your kid!  And his dad....ha, there would be some you know what to pay if you didn't do or be what he wanted - or at least pretend to do and be what he wanted.  Many of the statements above were from his dad too, so he was a double emotional blackmailer.  Yikes! He was also really keen on the silent treatment or, in clinical terms, stonewalling. My husband said if they didn't conform to what their dad wanted or upset him in any way (usually no reason to even be upset - like my husband not pitching a good game - really?), then he would go days, even weeks, without interacting with you. Very manipulative and also emotional blackmail!

In reading about emotional blackmail, I ran across this quote:

"Then, 'what happens if the other person doesn't comply with the manipulation, but just goes on being pleasant and friendly... [is that] your manipulation steadily amplifies... there will be arguments, emotional pressures, even separations.' Thus 'when one person changes the signals by pulling out of the family system,' they may find others 'brand the victim, crazy, unforgiving or a family wrecker.'"

Well helllllooooo, that is definitely what happened to me because I didn't just do everything they wanted, and then my husband broke away and stopped doing everything they wanted, and now they call me all kinds of horrid things!  We are like the examples of that quote!

Just found these books intriguing and interesting, and very much applicable.

Oh, no you will not use our baby in your lies of manipulation and control!

If there is one thing that will make my husband and me madder than you can imagine, it will be in some way hurting our baby or using our baby or taking advantage of our baby or...you get the picture. Anything that can be considered negative and involves our baby somehow.

You know, it's bad enough that they've abused my husband his whole life and then they started abusing me too when we got married. It's also bad enough that they also attack my family. Or how about lying about it all and manipulating everyone around them so that they believe their stupid facade.

Well how low can they stoop? How about lying and involving our 2 month old baby?! This isn't a joke...it really happened.

Remember a couple of years ago, they lied saying they got a phone call from my husband and he left a gargled message saying he was sick? They actually called our bishop and lied to him claiming that happened!

Wellll this past week, our bishop calls my husband and says their bishop called him, claiming my in-laws "heard the baby was sick and they were so worried and concerned and wanted to make sure the baby's okay."

Oh, heeeeck no! Look, we are well aware they lie, but who uses a 2 month old, sweet, innocent, little baby in their lies to try to manipulate and control?! Siiiick people, that's who! And anyone who is smart knows they wouldn't hear anything about our baby. They don't even know our baby's name! They are seriously trying to lie about our baby to be manipulative and controlling and just plain crazy!

So, let me get this straight. You think the way to have your son in your life is to verbally beat his wife to the ground, and then to make up a lie concerning his baby? Oh yeah, makes perfect sense to me - the 2 people who mean more to him than anyone else.

Oh, and let's not forget that their bishop decided this was a good time to "explain" the situation to our bishop. Our bishop already knows about the situation, but I guess it is important for their bishop to bash my parents and me as well, and put all of the blame on my parents and me too.

Oh, and um...apparently they want to take us to court for grandparents rights. Ha...let them. They have no rights in our state. They have never met our baby and we intend to keep it that way to protect our child. Why would we put our baby in a dangerous situation with people who are abusive - physically and emotionally to my husband and emotionally to me. No way! Considering they have no relationship with our baby, they won't get any rights. That is our choice since we have a good marriage and relationship with one another. Even if something happened to us, don't they realize a judge would give our baby to the grandparents our baby knows over the ones our baby doesn't know?

Oh...and I guess this is how they think we'll let them back into our lives? By continuing to deny everything they've done, make up lies, beat us down, be abusive, stalk and harass us, and if that's not enough (even though I haven't listed everything)...let's take them to court to try to get grandparents rights. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. They are so delusional!

Grandchildren

We recently welcomed our first child. We are in heaven with this baby! We also moved about 6 months ago. We were really hoping that my in-laws wouldn't find us. We took all of the precautions we could - being unlisted, going under the radar, even forwarding our mail to a PO Box. However, they still found us! How do they do that? A PI? I don't know. It honestly freaks me out a little bit. I feel like we are being watched or something. Well, when I was pregnant, they never hinted that they knew anything, so we figured they didn't know. I was actually excited because I figured all of our discreetness paid off. But within a couple of weeks of having the baby, they knew. This is also when they found us and sent stuff in the mail to us. I don't understand. And they are playing the victim of not knowing this grandchild of their's. Ugh, it is so frustrating! I mean honestly, how can you say I don't exist and I'm not family and expect to have anything to do with our child? How can you treat my husband and me the way you have and expect to have anything to do with our child? Um, no. Not only is that just off thinking, but we will never expose our child to people that have made us feel the way they have. We want our child safe from their mistreatment. All they have done to us - there is no way we would put our child in that kind of danger. Just because they have the same blood doesn't make them family. Family doesn't do the things they have done. It's like this quote from Cougar Town:
"The people we love need to know we’re always on their side. You don’t get a free pass just because you share the same blood. Being part of a family is something you’ve gotta earn; otherwise, the heck with ya."

I just wish I knew how they always find us everywhere we go. They almost immediately know when and where we move. How? It is scary. If they show up at our door, we're not opening it; we're just calling the cops because they are scary and we have to protect our child from them. I always thought I wouldn't care that much if they found out we had a baby; kind of like an, "Oh well" sort of thing. But now that I know they know, all I care about is keeping our baby safe from them.

Choice

Back in our first year of marriage, my in-laws were treating us and me so terribly, and I literally began to lose myself.  I spiraled into a deep depression that started then and lasted years (it lasted long after we got them out of our lives because the effects were so long-lasting).  In our first year of marriage, they were still in our lives, and no matter how much they may do now, I always have to remember how much worse it could be if we had them as a part of our lives.

Well, things were so bad for me, personally, that I was so depressed, and I would go to sleep at night hoping that I wouldn't wake up.  I never thought about killing myself - I just had no desire to live if my life was going to be full of so much pain.  Does that make sense?  I was very very depressed.  I doubted the very core of who I was - not just in that moment, but every point in my life too.  I looked at the simplest things I would do or that I did (ex: frustrated my husband wouldn't pick up his clothes), and I would fit those small little things into the picture my in-laws were painting of me (a horrible, awful monster) that I started to wonder whether they were right.  I mean, that's at the core of psychological abuse - when they can control your thinking.  I was experiencing all of this abuse (mental, emotional, verbal, psychological for me) for the first time ever in my life, and I let it affect me in a bad way - I had very severe depression and anxiety.

Not that that's uncommon when someone goes through what I did and what I still am, but when it first began to happen, it was hard on everyone involved (except for my in-laws of course, who said my depression and anxiety were fake because I just acted that way to manipulate my husband - sickos, right?).  It seriously took me 3-4 years to finally feel like I was getting back to normal.  It took a long time.  In the counseling field, we work with depression and anxiety inventories.  I do what I am now, and then I also do what I was then.  I'm proud that I am where I am at now - that I might have 1 or 2 things on those, but it's scary to realize where I was at - having around 28 on a scale of 30 (just one example).  Very severe anxiety and depression.  And I can see it more clearly now that I am out of it.  Thank goodness for such a helpful, loving, and supportive husband!

Anyway, when I first stared to spiral and things were getting really bad with my in-laws, my dad was talking to my husband, and he just briefly expressed a fear of his, saying, "I have a feeling that if it continues this way, there will come a time when you'll have to choose between your family and your wife.  I hope it doesn't come to that, but I feel like it will if it keeps going like this.  If it does, I hope you're able to make the right choice."

He didn't tell him he had to choose.  He was simply making an observation, and I think he was thinking that at that time, my husband might have chosen his family, and he was afraid of that.  My dad would never tell someone what to do or give them an ultimatum, etc.  My husband even agreed with him that he felt it would come to that (he has since told me his family had already mentioned him having to choose between them and me by the time my dad even said this).

Flashforward about 6 months after that conversation and it was when my husband was sick (when he almost died) and recovering and we were at my in-laws' house (you know, after they kidnapped him).  His mom pulls him aside and chews him out and cusses him out about probably the same old crap.  But she flat out said to him, "You need to choose - her or us because we can't be in your life if she is."  My husband says he kind of laughed at her when she said this because he couldn't believe she would think it would be a hard choice, and then he said, "Well, that's easy - her."  His mom was ticked - I was in their kitchen cooking, and they were just around the corner in the next room.  She walked into the kitchen and bumped into me like some high schooler!  She kept walking, and then my husband walked in, and I knew something had happened - then he told me.

The interesting thing is they now say that my family and I made him choose, along with saying I control him and don't allow him to have anything to do with them.  And that I'm abusive and manipulative and I've brainwashed him, blah, blah, blah.  They project everything they do onto me and then flat out make stuff up.  I know they are holding out thinking my husband is going to leave me and go running back to them.  Uh, not going to happen.

My husband made the decision to cut them out on his own - for his safety, for my safety, for our safety.  His family did this to themselves with not only what they did to us and me and my family in our marriage, but what they did to him his entire life!  Not to mention, they gave him an ultimatum and told him he had to choose (a statement they continually say came from my family and me - laaaaame!).

Beating with a belt, water hose, etc.

There's breaking news lately about a father who had been caught on camera whipping/beating his stepson with a belt during a game of catch.  Have y'all seen it?  Here is one of many links to read about it and see the video:

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/06/anthony-sanchez-california-official-caught-on-video-beating-stepson/

I often read or hear about things that are similar to what my husband had to endure growing up.  For goodness' sakes, his dad even beat him when he was 20 years old and we were dating!  My husband had called me crying at the time, but I didn't find out what his dad had done until many years later after we were married and had cut them out of our lives.

Back to my point.  This dad on this video was arrested and charged with child abuse, and is being investigated, etc.

Well, I've known for a while that my oh-so-wonderful father-in-law would whip my husband and his brother with a belt.  This would go on for minutes at a time, often 10-15 minutes straight of being whipped/beaten with a belt.  He wouldn't hit just their butts - it was the back and the legs a lot.  He always made sure to hit places that wouldn't be seen.  He would leave welts, bruises, cuts, and marks on them.  I still cringe thinking about it.  I made sure my husband understood this was not normal or okay.  I never dealt with that - I don't even think I ever got spanked!  Also, his mom would beat him with a water hose because that's the only way she could hurt them.  I about flipped that she actually said that.  I'm sorry, but punishment should never be about hurting your children!

Moving on.  This video is hard to watch, but while watching it, I was thinking, "Well, I guess that's what my father-in-law was like when he would whip them with the belt."  So, I showed my husband the news article and video.  I asked him if that's what it was like for him, and he said, "No, it was a lot worse for us.  It was constant and long, and if we screamed or cried, it got even worse."  This also wan't a once or twice thing for them - it was a regular occurence.

Yikes.  Not to mention his dad threw him into walls, held him by his collar, threw things at him, broke things, etc.  I asked why his dad would beat him like that, and it basically boiled down to if his dad was angry, he wanted to take it out on them, and he would find any excuse to do so.  What a sicko!  Plus, his mom was always so manipulative with statements like, "I just won't do this..." or "Well, then I'm not going to..."  you know, blah, blah, blah - all to get them to do things, and she would yell and scream at them over nothing.  They are just full of so many issues!  Unfotuantely, now, they project all of their behavior onto me and blame me for everything they do!

Well, the guy in the video got arrested and charged with child abuse!

See, it's not just me!  Other people know this kind of behavior is wrong.  However, my in-laws are so good at hiding it that no one knows what they do.  However, if people knew, they would think the same way as the ones who do know (my husband [now that he knows a different life than that], me, my family).  When I hear or read stories like this one that are so similar to my in-laws and then I see the outrage over it, it reminds me that it's not just me who think it's abuse and terrible and awful.  If other people knew the truth about them, they would think so too.  It's just that people don't know - my in-laws work hard to have the "perfect" image on the outside.

I always feel bad for my husband when I hear what it was like for him, but I'm glad he is safe and away from it now (and me too - plus, our children won't have to be subjected to that either - thank goodness!  My husband and I have said there is no way we would ever want our children around those crazies!).

Non-existent

My in-laws have said on many many occasions that I do not exist to them. They have said I am not family. They've excluded me a lot, to say the least. We got something in the mail that bothered me. My husband's brother and his wife have been married just a year and they had a baby 2 months ago. Well they sent out baby announcements that she addressed. My husband and I have never met this girl, so keep that in mind. Who was the announcement addressed to? Just my husband. Not me; not me at all. ONLY my husband. I expect that from my in-laws because they've been doing it for a while-excluding me. But this girl whom neither of us has ever met sends something addressed only to my husband, purposely excluding me? And they wonder why we don't want anything to do with them? Seriously...maybe it's my hormones, but I get so tired of people I don't even know doing stuff too. I guess she is going to be just like them and do everything they want. Well, shucks.

Oops!

We had a "visitor" last month.  I didn't write about it immediately because we've been trying for a baby for a while, and have been under a lot of stress with that.  I just got diagnosed with pcos a couple of weeks ago, and I just started the medications for it (hopefully they work!).  Needless to say, I've been emotional about other stuff lately (for good reason, right?).

Well, at the end of February we had a knock on our door one Saturday afternoon.  It was my in-laws' "adopted" son.  You know, the one they say they adopted but they didn't, and he's really just a replacement for my husband.

We didn't answer - duh!  But he did walk down to his BRIGHT YELLOW (hard to miss that car, haha) truck.  He came running back up to our door with a piece of paper in his hand.  It was a bunch of bull poopie about how they talk about us often and they miss us, blah blah blah.  That he's visiting a friend in our town and looked us up on his own to see if we wanted to catch up over lunch or dinner or something.

I'm sorry, catch up?  Dude, we met you once, and it was the same time you met the rest of my in-laws.  It was when my husband was sick and almost died and my brother-in-law didn't even care to tell you my name; he just said I was his brother's wife.

Anyway, he said in the note at least 4 times that my in-laws didn't ask him to come by, that he came by on his own, and that they don't even know he came by.  Ummmm, yeah right.  First of all, you definitely wouldn't come by on your own.  You don't even know us.  Second of all, if you have to repeat that statement that many times throughout the note, then you're definitely lying about that!

Well, my sister followed him to make sure he wasn't coming back (PI anyone?).  haha.  He went to the zoo and met up with my father-in-law, mother-in-law, and sister-in-law.  They never showed up anywhere we were though.  Lucky, much?

It's interesting.  It's been about a year since they sent anything to us that was downright mean.  In fact, they don't do as much directly to us anymore.  They still send stuff, but it's not as often, and it's not as straight forward mean.  They usually only send stuff when they want to make us feel like we're missing out (vacations, weddings, his brother's having a baby, etc.).  They are usually full of a bunch of crap, and sometimes have underlying digs (his brother hit a "homerun" with his wife; remember that one?).

Well, they try to be "nice" in what they send us lately, but they have no problem posting digs at me/us online.

Case in point.  The DAY after the "adopted" guy got rejected by us not opening the door for him and leaving a note full of bologna (basically, it not going the way they wanted), my father-in-law posts this on his facebook (I copied and pasted - typos and misspellings and everything - he's not very bright; I italicized the part I want y'all to pay attention to):

Sitting in church and feeling greatful and humble. I want my kids to know how much I love them and how pleased I am with them. Sitting here picturing the beautiful smiles on my daughters beautiful faces, the joy my sons give me every time we talk, a beautiful and wonderful daughter-in-law that makes my son happy and is a great example to my daughters. The Lord has blessed me and my beautiful wife, my best friend with eternal joy. ("Adopted" grandson) and (My husband's brother's baby on the way) papa loves you ( my buddies)

Did y'all catch that?!  Daughter-in-law; not daughter-in-laws (and we've been married far longer than his brother and his wife - they haven't even been married a year).  hahahaha...and you wonder why we don't want to talk to y'all?!  Wow, such a hurtful dig, especially since you have flat out told my husband that I am not family and I don't exist to y'all.  Not to mention this post is just weird.  It's not a coincidence that he posts this the day after nothing comes of that visit.  Oh yeah, the visit they apparently didn't ask him to do and that they knew nothing about.  Yeahhhh right!

Did I mention a couple of months ago that he commented on a post talking about how manipulative I am to my husband, how I've lied to him, and how I've beaten him down?  haha, this was in response to a status my cousin-in-law posted about her boyfriend, who had tragically just died.  She was saying how it's unfair that people leave their loved ones of their own choosing, but her's was taken from her.  First, I think it's super insensitive to make her hard time about yourself (but I don't expect anything different from them).  Second, I'm pretty sure she was talking about spouses/fiances/significant others leaving each other because her boyfriend was planning on proposing - ring and all.  She got the ring the day after he died.  Anyway, everyone ignored his comment - maybe people see through their stupid ways and are sick of it.  I know I sure am.

Well, I just think it's laughable that they are "trying" to be fake to us, but we know better!  We have too much negativity from them to believe this facade - both from them in the past, and what they are currently saying/doing to others/online that we find out about.

You know, it'll be 5 years this Fall that we cut them out of our lives.  And they still haven't gotten a clue.  Sad, right?