Ricki Yasha TarrHave you ever listened to someone vent about a problem, and about halfway through realized they are the problem?
👩‍🦯The Blind Fraggle@RickiTarr Unfortunately that sort of thing takes me a long time to figure out, as in anywhere from months to years. Some people are full of stories about bad things that've happened to them, friends and others betraying them, and doors being slammed in their faces. And I feel bad for judging because some people just do have rotton luck in life, and sometimes life and other people are just that cruel. But then I see something for myself, and I have to start to question those stories.
Sheldon@Fragglemuppet there are people in my family who have undiagnosed psychiatric disorders and are very compelling storytellers. Everyone was very sympathetic to them and wanted to help until we started to discover that we were turning up in their stories to other people as the cause of their problems, sometimes in monstrous ways.
In one case, I confronted some of these other family members for their years of abuse and bullying only for them to confront me right back about my years of abuse and bullying.
That's when the lightbulb clicked on.
Misuse Case@sysop408 @Fragglemuppet @RickiTarr Oh, I’m familiar with this from the time I had a roommate with an unmanaged (but diagnosed) issue con me out of a significant amount of money in my early 20s. I also had a relative with schizoaffective disorder who ended up under my mother’s legal guardianship: since my mother managed her appointments, allowance, etc. she would blame my mom for everything she was unhappy about on a given day.
@MisuseCase schizoaffective disorder is exactly what I think one of my family members has. Innocent interactions from today will morph into something completely else when they're recalled from memory the next day. As with your mom's experience, any negative emotions they have gets confused as being produced by that completely unrelated interaction.