Where is the line between being a good child and taking care of oneself?

You can't fix what's wrong with you by trying to fix your parents or your relationship with them. As HPMOR would say, there is no point in assigning blame to a part of the system that you can't actually change.

That doesn't mean you're responsible for anything, it just means that when it comes to this type of dysfunction, the real problem exists in your "inner parents" rather than your outer ones. That is, your mental models of your parents, specifically the part of your brain that predicts how they will act in certain situations, and decides how you should feel/act about that.

Lots of people will say stuff about getting away from your parents, or how wrong they are or how you should speak up to them or whatever. This is irrelevant, because if your mental models make you feel bad about cutting off contact or speaking up, then you're going to have problems doing that. What you need more is to give up hope regarding your parents, whether you cut off contact or not.

What do I mean by "give up hope"? I mean that the thing that keeps you bound to their opinions is your desire to get something from them: love, acknowledgment, respect, etc. -- just as you're already starting to realize. As long as you feel it's possible for you to receive any of this, you'll be stuck trying to do things their way, or at least feeling like you should.

This happened because your parents put out "bait" that implies it's possible for you to get their good opinion (e.g. by being like your sister). Your brain thinks, "ah, so if I do what they want, maybe they'll give it to me."

A quick way to begin poking holes in this belief is to imagine that you have done everything perfectly to their desire, been the exact person they wanted you to be... and then ask that same part of your brain, "What would happen then?"

Most likely, if you actually reflect on it, you'll see that what your parents would do at that point is ignore you, or possibly tell your sister to be more like you... but there will not actually be any love, respect, etc. coming.

Don't logic this out; though. It's necessary for the part of your brain that makes emotional predictions to work this out for itself, by you asking questions and reflecting. Otherwise, it will just be in the logic part of your head, not the emotional part. The emotional part has to see, "oh, my prediction is in error - that wouldn't work out the way I want." Otherwise, you will be stuck knowing you should do something different, but still doing the same things as you did before.

Unfortunately, this is not a one-time, one-off thing to fix. Your brain may have hundreds of specific expectations that "If I do this thing in this kind of circumstance, they will finally love/appreciate/whatever me", and each one may have to be handled separately. In addition, it can sometimes seem to generate new ones! The emotional brain doesn't generalize in the same way the logical brain does, and doesn't seem (in my experience) to abstract across different classes of expectations when making these kinds of changes. But that's my personal experience and YMMV.

In a sense, the root cause of these "If only I do X, I will get Y" beliefs is a belief (alief, really, since it's not a logical thing) that you aren't worthy of receiving Y. There's like a part of our brains that imprints on our parents' behavior in order to learn what we're entitled to in our tribe, so to speak, and what we can expect to receive from others. If they don't give us love, respect, whatever, there's a part that learns "I have to earn this, then."

(The technical term, by the way, for this feeling you don't deserve good things (love, appreciation, respect, etc.) and need to earn your "pats on the back", is shame, and it's the #1 byproduct of being treated the way narcissistic parents treat us. So when you look at or for books on dealing with this, that's a keyword you want to look out for.)

Giving up hope that you can earn these pats on the back in a particular area is one way to uproot shame, but there's another method that seems to have an advantage in bypassing this and going after a feeling that you deserve to receive Y as a fundamental right... thereby eliminating the feeling that you need to earn it.

The method is described in this book, though it does contain some new age babble (that can be safely ignored if you focus on the specific instructions rather than theory).

The approach described does seem to be able to work at a higher level of abstraction than the other method I've described, by "giving up hope" of fixing various aspects of one's self rather than the hope of getting positive interactions from others. It still will need to be applied to a lot of things, but it may cover more ground faster, if you can make it work for you. I don't have as much experience with it personally as the other method, but it does seem at first glance to bring a much deeper sense of being at peace with myself and with the people whose "pats on the back" I previously sought.

First, upvoted for the courage to seek help.

You might not want to hear that, but your story is so typical, you might as well have your picture under the dictionary entry "children of Narcissistic parents". I have heard identical stories a dozen times. If anyone was still in doubt "there was no me, there was just her and a faulty copy of her" gives it away. Also that your sister was the golden child, and you were the scapegoat.

Now to the really painful part. It is not clear to me if you are ready to admit that your parents are toxic and you should go full no-contact. They are beyond redemption. You owe them nothing. You have no mother, and never had one. The woman caretaker whose genetic material you share does not love you as a mother would, and never did (and probably never could).

This is a classic self-help book on the subject which helped several people I know: http://www.willieverbegoodenough.com/ There are many other good ones, too, check the Amazon recommendations under http://www.amazon.com/Will-Ever-Good-Enough-Narcissistic-ebook/dp/B001AO0GD6 .

There are also multiple online support groups for people like you, many of whom end up unwittingly perpetuating their parents behavior, suffer even more as a result, and subject their partners and children to the only behavioral pattern they know.

Here is the questionnaire from the book: http://www.willieverbegoodenough.com/narcissistic-mother/ . You will probably answer Yes to 80% of the questions or more.

Good luck to you, you have a long way to travel to emotional sanity, hope you make it!

Here's my take on the situation, but I feel like I should disclaim that this of course influenced by my own situations and personal biases.

Society tells us that we should love and respect our parents. I disagree. You should do that to the extent that those people deserve that love and respect. If your parents are abusive or bad in a different way, they don't deserve anything you're not willing to give. Internalizing this is a hard thing to do, because both you've been trained in a variety of ways that this is a bad thing. What might help is asking yourself the question: If a friend (or romantic partner) would act in this way, would you still be seeing them? Your parents should be held to similar standards, I feel.

If you do want to give them more chances or at least explain your position, I'd suggest to do it in writing. You can send them an email or give them a letter and they can read it. You should probably schedule a conversation about that letter afterwards. (This can be immediately afterwards, if they agree to read the whole thing before commenting.) This has the advantage that they can't interrupt you and you can think carefully about what you want to say. It lets you add additional explanations and disclaimers that would be harder to convey when speaking. It can also give them time to think about your message.

If you want to confront them about their behavior and how they make you feel and they're unwilling to compromise and change their behavior in the future, breaking contact probably should be considered.

The way your (admittedly one-sided) post looks to me is that your parents are emotionally abusive. You should probably take care of your own mental health before worrying about the happiness of your parents.

I had a bad relationship with my mother, and it was very important for me to fully realize that it was her problem, not mine. Outside view: I can have good relationships with other people; she can't. It seems so obvious now, but it was difficult to realize while at home. Moving away from home helped me a lot; and now when I come for visit, I make sure I never stay more than a few hours at a time, once in a few weeks.

For her, the solution is to start anew, with a blank space. I can't do that; I spent my adolescence being hit by her and apologising to her for whatever she deemed my fault on a given day.

I could have written the same thing. And for a long time I have blamed myself for my inability to also start anew and pretend that nothing happened. Because everyone keeps telling me that forgiving people is important, not only for some religious reasons but also for your mental health, etc. (Also, admitting that I have this problem lowers my status.) But there is less advice about how specifically to do it, especially if almost anything that person does is triggering to you. It is supposed to just somehow magically happen, by making the right far-mode decision. And if you can't do that, that's probably your fault, too.

My solution was to reduce contact to a "plausibly deniable" level, where I don't have to openly admit that I am avoiding contact on purpose, and I can pretend that I am just too busy to visit more often. This reduces unnecessary drama, because the drama would again make me uncertain whether I am doing the right thing. And actually the visits are not so unplesant now, because I just try to remain polite, pretend that everything is okay, avoid anything emotional, and then leave.

It was difficult to accept, but I think the correct way is simply to not expect anything from my mother. No understanding, no apology, nothing at all. Anything I would expect from her would be just another thing she could hurt me by not doing it. Why would I create such opportunities? We can have a short polite conversation instead, I feel I have fulfilled my social duty, and then I go home. This is all I can realistically hope for; I am succeeding at it; mission accomplished. My real life, including all my emotional life, is somewhere else; that is where I should focus my thoughts and actions.

Put it into perspective. There are seven billion people on this planet. Stop wasting your time and attention on those few who have hurt you. There is nothing inherently special about them. They had their chance, they wasted it. Meet new people, make new friends. One important thing about being human is the ability to overcome familial bonds and find new allies. (And the more civilized societies seem better at this than the less civilized ones.)

I don't think you will be able to get your parents to understand you. As you've described it, they are cruel to you for their own internal reasons, rather than because of anything you've actually done.

As is always the case when you have a behavior (be cruel to daughter) with a fake reason (because she deserves it), and a real reason (because it makes me feel big/proves I'm not old/lets me get back at my possibly imaginary tormentors/vents my sadism/whatever) you have to be careful to model them correctly, in order to accurately predict their response.

Most likely, they genuinely believe in their fake reason. They don't see themselves as constantly tearing you down to build them up, but as fairly, judiciously assessing each instance, and acting appropriately. From the outside you can see that their response will always be condemnation, but they believe that each instance is provoked.

If you address the fake reason (Parents, it is unreasonable to be angry at me for being late. I was not actually late.), they'll just parry meta. (Who are you to tell us what's reasonable? Why are you making such a big deal about this? You just want an excuse for your tardiness.) That is, if they are in the wrong they'll just change the issue to you pointing it out.

On the other hand, if you address the real problems (Parents, you must stop berating me in order to feel better about yourselves), they'll deny that that's what they are doing. (What are you talking about? What kind of child would accuse their parents of being evil? Don't you know how much we love you?)

I think you won't be able to fix things via a letter/lecture as you are contemplating. Any letter you send them, any conversation you have, will be blocked in one of these two ways. If you point out the trend, they'll deny. If you discuss any specific instance of the fact that they don't see you as a person (say them stealing your mail), they'll criticize you for noticing their wrongdoing, rather than respond to your accusation.

So if explaining what they've done and fixing it is out, what's left? The following is without knowledge of your personal circumstances. Perhaps one or more of these options are closed to you. These are the three basic paths I see.

1. You can cut ties with them entirely. They will, of course, blame you for it, but they can't make you experience their condemnation if they can't communicate with you.
2. You can cease to hope for better from them. Accept their judgement and scorn and render empty apologies. Lots of people keep pets, on which they lavish love and affection and receive animal lack of understanding in return. Yours are just people shaped instead of fish shaped.
3. Continue in your current vein, that is, continue to communicate with them and continue to expect them to behave better. Perhaps they will change.

Only you can say which of these three options is best (or of course, I could have missed something and a 4th option may be superior). Whatever the case, good luck.

The Dysfunctional Family threads at Making Light might be another good resource for you.

I don't think your desire for better understanding and behavior from your mother is necessarily an irrational desire for her approval-- it's normal to want to have a good mother. On the other hand, it sounds like it's extremely unlikely that she will improve.

hugs

There's a lot of good comments on this already, so I won't add another one in the same spirit. I feel with you and I hope you can resolve this conflict in a way that's good for you.

I know we've talked about this briefly in the Study Hall, but I'd like to mention it again here: Your mileage may vary, but I got a lot out of reading "Dance of Anger". It's exactly about how to navigate situations in which you feel angry or frustrated and how to use that anger constructively without lashing out or letting it boil internally while not showing it to anyone.

It's not expensive as a kindle version, and an easy read. You can probably get most value out of it in two hours.

You don't seem to have done anything wrong to them. Keeping your distance to protect yourself may appear selfish from their perspective, but that's their opinion. In my experience, parents cannot be changed. They will always believe that they did the right thing.

It's a very Catholic thing to regard children in debt to their parents for the noble abnegation of raising you and feeding you (which is their legal obligation anyway, so nobody should get extra points for doing it); also, it's typical of parents to interpret disagreement as defiance. It's an irrational stance that does not respond well to attempts at argumentation.

Now that you're an adult with your own children, you can find the support and approval you need in the friends you choose to have. At least, that's what worked for me. Make your own life and your own meaning, apart from them. You don't owe them obedience anymore.

It took me a moment to work out what was going on in footnotes 3 and 4, so let me check I understand (though it's far from central to the points actually at issue): you already had Child 1 (with a terrible genetic disease) and were planning Child 2 and intending to avoid having another child with a terrible genetic disease by embryo testing and termination of pregnancies?

(Reading the above, I find that it sounds unsympathetic and maybe even condemnatory. It's not meant to, and I'm not suggesting any moral fault on your part.)

This is a very typical experience of too many people including my own self. However, the only person you can fix or control is you. The only person you can work on is yourself. My recommendation is to sit with yourself and decide what is their draconian expectations and what is truly your problem. Leave everything that is theirs behind and only worry about what is yours. It won't seem like you're a "good son" but too often being a good son means co-dependency and excess control. Don't hand your very real power away to someone else. You will always be in the wrong, you will never do it right for them and you will never get what you are looking for. I do not say this to hurt you but to help you to an important realization. You are you and they are sick and trying to infect you with their disease. It's time to walk away.

So I invented that I want my mother to understand why what she did was hurting me and apologise. She knows that I think she wronged me, though I doubt she realizes how very bitter I am about it all. For her, the solution is to start anew, with a blank space. I can't do that; I spent my adolescence being hit by her and apologising to her for whatever she deemed my fault on a given day. The problem with my solution is that she's incapable of it. For the sake of simplification: she does not comprehend other people's emotions (but she does have emotions of her own and she mostly comprehends them)5.

Except for the hitting part, and maybe the bitterness (my sister is just more hurt than bitter), this is my sister's take on my mom. My sister hasn't communicated with my mom for maybe a decade, maybe more. The decision likely came easier to her, since my parents divorced and my father moved away when we were young, and she had already stopped talking to him a good decade earlier.

She's actually excommunicated a number of people from her life, generally on the principle of feeling wronged by that person. In my mother's case, she feels judged, and is judged, in unkind ways. She recounts coming home crying from afternoons out with my mother. For other people, they just weren't there for her as much as she expected.

My sister's standoff with my mom looked just like yours - my sister felt judged, felt hurt thereby, and wanted to confront my mom about it. My mom didn't want to talk about it, thinks my sister is too sensitive, and similarly wanted to "start anew". After years of standoff, my sister decided to just move on.

Largely, it was a dominance struggle, where both sides felt entitled to the moral high ground, and submission from the other thereby. That's the part I consider a failure on both sides.

By entirely cutting my mother off, my sister has cut off part of her own life, and cut off the possibility of reconciling. I think she could have found a way of interacting with my mother that preserved both, but didn't open herself up to what she considered to be abuse. She threw out the baby with the bath water, IMO.

On my mother's side, I just don't see complaining about her daughter being too sensitive to criticism. Yeah, maybe so. And maybe she is, and you're also unkind in your comments. That's the way it appears to me. But whatever it was, she's still your daughter. Suck it up and deal with it. If she were an albino and sensitive to light, you'd deal with it, but because the sensitivity implicates you in bad behavior, you cope by avoidance.

Well, my sister finally coped with my mom by avoidance too. The apple doesn't fall too far from the tree.

For your case, I'm glad that people are affirming your right to decide who is in and out of your life. But I'd encourage you to take it a step further now. Does breaking it off best serve your values? More generally, what are your options, what are the costs and benefits of each, and what's the highest value alternative?

Having conflicts with your parents is normal. Boiling inside and not having your conflicts in the open on the other hand is not good for mental hygine.

In my country it's even unthinkable that I am trying to cut the contact with one of my grandmothers.

Where do you live? It seems your action are driven by the culture in which you are living.