How a Manipulative Family Regained Control of a Straying Member
This illustrates how a manipulative biological family regains control of a sibling who was starting show signs of happiness and independence. To keep the identities of those involved confidential, we have given them pseudonyms to maintain their privacy.
This tells the story of Mike. He comes from an abusive and controlling family, and still lives with them. Mike is in his mid 20s and has had little contact with people outside of his own biological family. This represents a specific chapter in his life in which he was beginning to feel more independent and happy but reeled back in due to intense stress caused by his own biological family.
By the way, just to note, this is not an anti biological family post. Not all biological families are controlling and abusive. But it does also illustrate that some people need a family connection with others outside of their biological family.
Mike’s Story
I was in my mid 20s when this happened. I live with a very closed in family. At least for me it was very closed in. I had other siblings, and although they also had issues, they somehow seemed to have more freedom than I. I am aware they also got abuse when they were young, but as they’re both the same age they had each other to console themselves with. I’m a lot younger than them and never had anyone.
My father was never around. I only remember seeing him a couple of times when I was about five. Strangely I felt more parental love from him than anyone else. Yet he left and never returned and no one ever spoke about him or would talk to me about him. I was left to believe he was gone forever.
After he left, all I seemed to remember was abuse; be it from my mother or my other siblings. Everything I did was wrong. Thinking independently was frowned upon. Any ideas from me was treated as something bad. Only good things that benefited them or helping them was seen as good and rewarding. Asking for help or doing anything for myself was seen as selfish. I would be looked down up, shamed, or made to feel guilty; this was also especially true if I made any mistakes.
I lived most of my growing up in fear and fear of making mistakes. Sometimes I would lie to cover up my mistakes to avoid being punished. But when found out, I would be punished. If I owned up to them, I was still punished. There was no love in that family, just control and fear.
I wasn’t allowed to play out with others on my own. Friends, when they called, were told I couldn’t go with them, or later I had to tell them some excuse as to why I couldn’t go. There were times when I questioned why and asked the logic of why, there was always some reason I couldn’t. It was reasons like: I couldn’t be trusted, I had to help family, I had other things to do. I never ever remember being allowed to mix with anyone that was like me. The only people I could mix with sometimes were only people my family approved of and those people didn’t exactly give me the confidence I needed to feel safe with them.
One day I started attending an activity outside of home. I was already attending a number so this wasn’t unusual. I’d never really been able to connect with others in other activities but this time it was different. This time I met a friend. His name was Terry. He was about nine years older than me but very relaxed in his approach. I didn’t quite know how to interact with him at first because someone being that kind to me was pretty alien. I couldn’t understand what I’d done to deserve such treatment. Being in an abusive environment for a long time means you get conditioned to believe that being abused and only getting nice things if you do things for others, is the norm. Being treated nicely for no reason was quite alien to me. It felt good being treated this way but at the same time rather surprising. I found it hard to show my appreciation properly as I didn’t know what was the right sort of behaviour. But he was very patient with me so it didn’t seem like a problem.
In many ways, he felt like the family I’d never had, the father I’d never had. It felt like he was treating me the way a parent treated a child. And it felt like something I needed. In addition, as time grew on, I started treating him the same way and it felt natural to do so. It wasn’t forceful. There were no demands. It just felt natural to have this kind of connection.
See I tend to reflect back what people give to me. When people are nice it gets reflected back. When people aren’t so nice I’m no longer as co-operative. So if someone treats me like my feelings don’t matter I tend to ignore them or do something which makes them realise their behaviour towards me wasn’t right. It doesn’t feel like a conscious choice to do this though. It more feels like an automatic response. I don’t know why, this is just me. But my family could never understand this and thought they could just program me to be different or respond as they wanted. But it never worked so was often living in a hostile environment. They were abusing me, I wasn’t escaping the abuse but I wasn’t just standing there and taking it. I was reacting and they just though by snapping back and giving me more abuse would make me stop reacting. The reality though, was it just made things worse.
When I was growing up, I wasn’t being allowed to grow up at my own pace. It felt like someone else was deciding for me at what ages to grow to the next stage without my consent. Toys would disappear and I would notice they weren’t there any more. These were not toys I was discarding naturally. These were being removed from my life at a point I wasn’t ready to let them go. Papers I would save from school I’d put away because I thought they’d be useful to reference back to later. But I’d then come to the kitchen one day and find them in shreds by the bin waiting to be thrown out. I hadn’t made that decision to get rid of them. The decision had been made for me without my consent. If I ever questioned it they’d play dumb, play it down or try to coerce me into believing that I didn’t need them any more. But it still hurt and left a gap because something had been taken from me that I didn’t want to lose. In effect, these things had been stolen from me. There were later times when my possessions had been given away to other siblings. One item I had bought for myself, a piece of furniture. It was something nice and a nice gift for myself and it made me happy. But later I found it was given away to another sibling. When I questioned this, they again played dumb and said they didn’t realise it had belonged to me – yeah, as if they genuinely expected me to believe that! All it did was cause further resentment from me.
But back to my main story, Terry and I were getting along really well. I felt a lot happier and he felt like he was my family. I only attended the activity maybe two times a week, but I got more from him, family wise, seeing him for that length of time than from my biological family who I saw every day.
I mean, I must have been outwardly changing as well. People must have noticed I was getting a lot happier. My biological family must have noticed. I actually started attending the activity more times a week just to be able to interact with Terry because he treated me like an individual. The was mutual respect between us and we always looked after each other and prevented either from coming to harm.
Another thing was our interaction was a nice slow pace. So nothing we did or learnt about each other shocked us. Another reason for this slow pace was that English wasn’t his first language. Oh he could speak it ok, but when there were times something wasn’t understood between us we took time to make ourselves understood either through words or non-verbal communications, gestures etc. And there was something else. We never called each other by our names. We just interacted without calling each other anything. And in many ways that was nice because it was good to be accepted as a person without having a label as such. When at home I was always being called my name and often in a tone as if I’d done something wrong. It was like the name first and then the individuality second if I was lucking. For family, my name was me and my name was punished as if it was just me. But with Terry, although we knew our names, it was our individuality that came first. The names were just identifiers if they were needed.
So for about two years I’d now known Terry and was feeling a lot better for it. But then my family dropped a bombshell. They announced they were going to move house. They weren’t moving to another town but just a slightly smaller house. They’d actually moved once before and it had a terrible effect on me. I lost most of the few friends and connections I had and it actually put me in a more anxious state which I’d never really recovered from. That was another move I had to go along with whether I liked it or not. But this time was different.
When it happened I assumed the reasons were genuine. But when I look back I start to notice questionable things about it and the effect it had on me. Naturally I didn’t want to move. I wasn’t ready and I’d felt happier in my home as I was happier finding new family in Terry. Though my family never knew about him. I never discussed my biological family with him because… well, why would I? My biological family made me unhappy so I just didn’t want to discuss them. He was providing me what they weren’t. He was my family as far as I was concerned.
I was told we couldn’t afford to live there any more. I came up with suggestions of how we could manage this. One was maybe taking in a lodger. You see other siblings had moved out and it was a bit sparse in that house, so in some ways that was a sensible suggestion because it meant getting money from rent etc. But no, they wouldn’t even entertain the idea, nor any other ideas. Though the lodger one may have been because they didn’t want anyone outside knowing of the abuse that was going on or for me to tell anyone outside what was happening.
So despite my objections I had to watch as my family, and siblings, were now completely against me. I had to watch as people were shown round and discussing what room could be used for what. The rooms I’d made my home in that I really wasn’t ready to leave behind. But seeing their use being psychologically destroyed by new people being shown around. It was like I didn’t exist as a person and none of my feelings mattered.
This event actually put me under a lot of stress and affected my connection with Terry. I was suddenly in a situation where I felt powerless and needed a way out. I was in need, desperate need and this was making itself visible in my personality. Remember I said before that anything directed at me was also reflected back. Well stress also has that affect because it puts me in a desperate mindset. And in that mindset I make decisions that are not healthy for me. In the past my family had used similar tactics to pressure me into doing things I didn’t want, to make me give things up I wasn’t ready to let go, or to force me to make decisions which were unhealthy for me.
So I was in desperate need for a way out or somewhere to go. With Terry it stopped being a nice slow and relaxed connection and became a rushed one. So I was doing things so fast he wasn’t ready for. Not that anything was said, but my mannerisms indicated as such. He became scared of me and actually withdrew and put barriers up. True there were other factors going on as well not related to the house move, but my stress affected him. And I could no longer help him the same because I was suddenly in desperate need. You see before, things happened at a slow relaxed pace so nothing happened too quick and no one got stressed. I didn’t have this overall grand plan to make him my family, it just naturally began happening that way. If I hadn’t had that external stress then that slow relaxed pace would probably have continued. But the trust was reduced and I wasn’t able to tell him what was happening as I was under so much pressure. My life as I knew it was being destroyed and I felt powerless to stop it.
So as a result I actually lost Terry. He actually left that activity and I lost my only real family connection. But what happened next was even worse. I was desperate for a connection to carry me through it. For some reason I went to one of my siblings whom I’d never really trusted before. It was one that had also abused me. Had the move not been forced on me I would never have made such a decision. But I was under so much stress and pressure it was good to get relief. Or, so I thought.
I still had to move and my sibling convinced me it wouldn’t be so bad. So I became closer to that sibling. But, despite this, I still longed for Terry to come back. And this sibling, that I trusted, once the mask had started to slip, became very controlling, demanding and impatient with me. But now I was back in my controlling family. And I just felt this grey emptiness where Terry should have been. I’d lost a father figure that understood me. I’d lost a real genuine family connection. I’d lost someone to genuinely care for as well. And all because my biological family wanted to regain control of me.
End
Analysis
Mike grew up in a controlled and abusive environment with little outside contact and therefore never knew any different. He was still living at home in his mid 20s as a result.
When Mike met Terry he didn’t understand why he was being treated so well for no reason. Mike didn’t realise this was normal human behaviour because he’d never been allowed to experience it.
Mike saw Terry as a father figure. It worked because Terry naturally assumed this role. Mike also extended this role back to Terry so in a way was giving to Terry what Terry was giving to Mike. A sort of mutual exchange but an automatic one.
Mike is a type of person that will give back whatever is directed at him. If positive behaviour is aimed at him then positive behaviour will be reflected back. If negative behaviour is aimed at him then the behaviour given back will be one that tries to make people understand that their treatment of him is not acceptable.
It would seem, though not confirmed, that Mike’s family preferred to have him in a fearful state or a state in which he felt powerless. They wanted Mike to only rely on the family and not be completely happy. Because in an unhappy state the family found it easier to keep Mike under their control. If they wanted him to do a certain thing, or give something up, they simply applied pressure or put him under stress. Putting him under stress to force him to give up things that made him happy and accept things that made him unhappy.
Conclusion
Some people have good family connections with their own biological family. Some do not and need someone external. Not all who do not have connection with their biological family are in an abusive one. Some just need a connection that only certain other individuals can give. Though it must be asked, in Mike’s case, did the family really genuinely want children at all because all they seemed to do is not care about them and abuse them. It could also be said that the family did want children but they had an expectation that they would all naturally connect. But when this natural connection did not occur they resorted to abuse and controlling behaviour to force such a connection on the siblings. The abusive strategy of course didn’t work and just resulted in resentment from Mike and other family siblings.
Perhaps family should be redefined as to what family really is. Not as society dictates that you should only remain loyal to your biological family; because in abusive situations, and non-abusive, people are under pressure to put those first who have either abused them or they have no natural connection to.
And when we say a natural connection we mean like an automatic connection. The connection happens automatically. There is no force or agreement before hand. It just happens. As with Mike and Terry there was an automatic connection and an automatic reciprocation. It wasn’t forced on them nor expected. There was no pressure on either party to accept that role. The connection happens as if it were natural. Meaning, it feels right to go along with it and there is no pressure whatsoever.
#father #family #connection #abuse #fear #manipulation
