Why forgiving someone else is about you

This.

So many here have not had to deal with extensive emotional trauma brought upon manipulations, oversights, ignorance, inexperience, etc. of a parent who was totally a victim too, but THIS DOES NOT NEGATE HOW DANGEROUS they can be.

My own mother whom was beaten and abused by an alcoholic grandmother will tragically never be capable of seeing her own faults due to the trauma that basically arrested her development at the age of 12. She has NPD and persistently bullied one of my sisters for being fat as a child, despite being the parent who kept feeding her McDonalds.

She would never admit how wrong they are to their own assumptions. She bullied and belittled my step-father when he had a medical emergency that forced him back into the family house after years of “mutual” separation.

I eventually figured out she had been lying to me for years and using my “blood relation” as an excuse to triangulate and manipulate my siblings into hating me, and me hating them, with disinfo, seperate sit downs like she was a fucking Mafioso, and other tactics a sick child would make in attempts to show that they “care”.

If you bring 9/11 up, there’s a good chance a histrionic anecdote that has nothing to do with the conversation at hand will pop-up and it will be about her, you will have to shut the fuck up while listening despite yourself being interrupted mid-sentence, otherwise speaking out against a narcissist is forbidden, and eggshell walking is the norm during rare get togethers.

She will instantly fall into victim and paranoid mode if challenged in any reasonable way: you don't really love her if you keep having issues with her behavior RIGHT?! So goes the maddening Cartesian logic.

And yet, according to this article, I should just “let go” of the following: anxiety disorder, binge eating / anorexia, depression, BPD w/ NPD CPTSD features (latest opinion I’ve received at least), the alienation of my family caused by the mother driving everyone apart, and most importantly the distortion lens that comes with being raised and essentially spoiled compared to my siblings, the emotional incest brought upon me when my step-father left at the age of 13 because I was the only man of the house and I guess that also meant hearing intimate details of love lost and her being unhappy and being treated like a therapist for the next 12 years until I was 25, wherein I became so maladaptiveley schizoid while dealing with the persistient and obvious fact that ONE OF MY CARGIVERS WAS ACTIVLEY NOT CARING AND BEING DESTRUCTIVE.

To her credit, she rarely lifted her hand to hit us; lot of reflexes and close calls that are then always minimized as “not that bas” and “you should try growing up in my life, you kids are lucky!!!!” which somehow justifies further incursions because shit, she doesn't drink and is disabled, she must be a fucking Saint in comparison to her mother, especially because of being physically disabled.

She loves to fall on the sword in a conversation about that all of the time. We have only the best parts of Mother Sorporano & Mussolini to thank for this.

She also “forgave” her mother and now all that my grandmother does is fill my mothers head with Trump garbage and YouTube conspiracies that I have to disassemble because she thought bleaching the skin would help against COVID.

So again, forgiveness is fucking trite. Anger about the situation as an adult helped me change my approach and saved me from a further path of self-destructive solipsism and drinking my trauma away excessively.

Anger as a kid was less useful and Was turned inside until another counselor at high school realized what was happening, which sadly didn't help as I quit the school in protest / denial of the chemical and emotional imbalanced brought upon me and my siblings by persistent emotional abuse and neglect.

In sum, she is emotionally manipulative and a vampire, and WHILE her maladaptions make sense in a shitty environment, at some point as an adult you have to take ownership of trauma or it will eat you alive. She will never reach the point of self-actualization and its tragic that she is the only mother my siblings and I will have known.

My sisters and father also deserved so much better than me being an unwitting victim and enforcer of her bullshit when I was too young to know better.

So I agree with any other posts that might more or less say: “fuck forgiveness.”

Forgiveness has become yet another external demand, same as the duty to feel gratitude. The important thing is to work through, then let go and move on. Forgiveness might be part of that process, but it doesn't need to be. It might as well include confrontation, or even a little bit of revenge.

I recently went through therapy for some touch up work. I was getting mad at someone because of their shenanigans. Basically the therapist told me "when someone pisses you off, they want you to get mad, so why would you give them the pleasure of getting mad?" After some discussion on methods for how to not get mad, I stopped getting mad.

Might be worth looking into whether it's worth wasting any brain cycles on whether or not to forgive someone.

Unfortunately, narcissists will never learn and any and all problems are because others are the problem unless a truly catastrophic event forced a major reality check on them given what I’ve read so far. Even on a relative scale of attempting to self-reflect they’ll believe they’re “compromising” when it’s not really helpful.

It may be helpful to view narcissists as having a mental disability rather than it being simply a part of their personality. And when people are destructive to others’ lives few cultures would say we should accommodate the minority to a fault.

Sounds like she is constantly violating your boundaries. Based on the abusive behavior of the past, it seems like you're also enabling the bad behavior. When dealing with adults, put clear boundaries in place (don't come to my house unannounced, don't scream at my wife, nor come in my home to scream, etc) and if she violates your boundaries, then give her a timeout (she's not allowed to see me/my family/my child for a week).

If it's egregious, you'll need to cut her out permanently. I had to with my mother. (P.S. I've also forgiven her [I hold no grudge towards her and her shitty/abusive decisions throughout my childhood] but...she's still not in my life)