Confronting Abusers

I'll just share my story. You need to do what really works for you and I would certainly at least consider your T's suggestion.

April 2011, Jack broke through my barriers and I confirmed we had DID. Our abuser father had died decades earlier but our abuser mother was still living, fragile and in failing health.

May: I joined this forum and began to talk about all this stuff.

June: We took Jack from our Boston home to eastern Kentucky (Appalachia), where we had never lived, because he was so homesick and in such pain and confusion, we were afraid we would die if we didn't go. We considered then heading northwest to Illinois to confront the mother, who we had just realized from memories had DID just like us. So we could distinguish our mother's good host alter from her two (or more) abusive alters. We asked about what to do in this thread similar to yours. But we made this time for Jack and decided against taking action.

July: we knew we weren't ready but we felt sure time was running out. So I went home and stayed in my mother's house some of the nights. The purpose then wasn't for ourselves but to get the mother to apologize for what she did to our sister, who didn't develop DID and feels in some ways more damaged. But of course, I was confronting her for us too. I told her in graphic detail the incredible cruelty of what she did to us, what I witnessed and remembered her doing to my sister, but I only told so much. She didn't fully deny what I was saying and never said I was wrong but kept asking how could she apologize for something she didn't remember doing. I talked through her host, essentially telling her mean alter Mabel (one who I was sure was able to listen and hear), that if she, Mabel, were able to convince our mother's host that all that I said was true and to send a letter of apology to my sister, I would stop with what I had already said. I was only asking for that one letter. My mother's face was blank a lot as I spoke and I knew Mabel and others were there listening.

** triggers, specific abuse **
I believe Mabel knew that that meant I would leave out the sexual abuse of the father and the threats to remove my genitals that she or someone did through age six.
** end triggers **

Our mother's host was getting off easy, comparatively. I told Mabel I realized that she and the others were only doing what she thought was needed to protect our mother and I actually thanked her for looking after her and protecting her. I believe it's hard for an alter, cruel or not, to dismiss acknowledgement like that.

August: our mother wrote two brief letters, one to my sister and one to me, but sent them both to my sister in confusion so I didn't know it had happened. She left me three phone messages but I didn't return any of them. It felt like I'd said everything there was to say. I left it all in her house over those couple days.

September: the mother died and we attended the funeral. Our sister told me about receiving two letters of apology and gave me mine.

Our mother had DID, with vicious alters and kind parts. We knew from experience, of our own and of her, that she was reachable and it turns out she was. I was a complete mess, from my July visit and for weeks later but for us, it was worth more than I can say. I believed she would never apologize, ever. I didn't believe it was possible but it happened. Even if it hadn't, it was incredibly purifying for me/us. For us, there's no question it was the right thing to do no matter the outcome. In our case, the mother had a condition we understood. In many ways, what had been stuck for us, probably for decades, became unstuck. We aren't perfect or anything but we don't regret any of it.

Hi friends,

I am in real distress over this. I love all of your replies and am grateful for them. PLEASE do not take anything I say here sadly or badly. I have never had more true support or more true understanding from anyone outside of T until I found you all. I am grateful for each & every one of you. I need my peers...

This must be an alter vs alter thing rather than my own ambivalent thoughts raging because I am scared out of my wits & clearly cannot see a compromise of any sort.

Everyone, aside from johnny-jack, told me what I had hoped & wanted to hear. This is why I think it is an alter vs alter thing. But, when I read Johnny-jacks reply, I fell numb. It was not what I wanted to hear, but clearly, it was what I needed to hear.

Please, if you can indulge me one more time...my baby sister who is 10 years my junior has "control" over everything right now. My mom has been living with her for some time. I have been trying to reconcile with mom since the dad's de@th 7/2011. Now that my mom has cancer, my baby sis will not hear of my upsetting her with 'my problems'. (Never mind that it was mom who created them.)

I ask you all as my friends in healing to please read the following letter that I am thinking of sending to my baby sis and to let me know what you think/how you feel about it.

Dear _____,

I love that you are so protective of mom. You have always had a fighter spirit that anyone would admire.

We've lost touch & I'm sorry for that, mostly because I miss you & your positive energy that has a ripple effect that could light up the world. But also, because we have lost touch for more than a year, you could not possibly know my agenda for wanting to see mom.

My heart cries out for her pain & for her fear as she goes through this treatment. I know what it is all about because a few years back, ______ (my SO's daughter), at 26 was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma. It was a very trying time, but with love & support & with prayer she survived. Mom is elderly now, which is definitely a negative factor to her prognosis. However, so is how she may be feeling about herself.

She is likely to be carrying within her guilt & shame & pain, related to our past. What I truly believe in my heart is that if she & I were to have a conversation which brings truth to light, then, and only then, will she be set free. It would be a burden lifted off her shoulders. Then, and truly only then, will she be unencumbered, and then able to focus only on her healing journey.

She most likely is reflecting on her life (her own childhood as well as ours) as many people do when facing de@th. Her belief in Jesus (as well as my own belief in Jesus) leads me to believe that she may be feeling a variety of emotions at this time. What I think you ought to do is let her speak for herself. Let it be her decision if she wishes to see me or not. Your taking control of the situation leads me to wonder if you feel that you have to protect her in some way. I assure you that I do not wish to hurt or to harm her in any way.

All that I want for mom is for her to be free from her past. I pray that she will move on to Heaven, however near or far that may be, with a clear heart & conscience. I am sad to say that I believe you are hindering her of this by interfering with the healing that should be taking place between mom & me right now. When she frees her heart & mind, it is then that she will have the best chance at recovery from her cancer.

Please reconsider talking this through with Dr. _____. He is an elite professional in this very matter. I realize that you have been mom's primary caregiver for so long now & I thank you for that. What you might not remember is that I took care of her too, for many years, 10 or so, in the beginning, when each of my sisters moved away from our home town, one by one.

Things are different now _____. I believe that the situation at hand should be handled by a professional in the interest of mom's well-being during her healing journey. I ask you from my heart ______, if you truly care about mom's feelings, please at least consider the advice of Dr. _____ or another qualified professional of your choosing.

With love, respect & hope,

Your sister, _____

Please, set aside the religious component & just be my friend. I truly need one now. love you all...Sotrsab

Sorry, I did not make it clear that the last paragragh, after the closing "your sister____" was directed at you all & not a part of the letter to my sis. Thanks for all who respond.

Oh, Sotrsab, there is definitely more to my story and it relates to what you have said. If you saw the link in my post to my original dilemma in June 2011, you'd see we argued among ourselves whether we should go back. Various views were submitted. Sphinx stated I wasn't ready to forgive. That was not the major issue for me or so I thought. I did understand and feel compassion for my mother's host, for the abuse she suffered unfairly, since I suffered from her father also. I imagined the pain and confusion she must have lived with her whole life. I had witnessed it and saw it in this old frail woman. I didn't do evil whereas she did. So I did not hold tremendous guilt, whereas I knew somewhere her system did. I can apologize for things I did and have no trouble apologizing for things I didn't do or shouldn't need to apologize for if it makes a difference for someone else. She never apologized, except in the most cursory way. She denied a million times ever doing all the horrible, mean things people told her she did.

I had stopped talking to her for over 20 years, no correspondence, nothing. Shortly after I did that, a sister followed suit. But whereas I had explained why and what I was doing, my sister out of the blue (shocking even me and we saw each other daily) sent a letter saying she never wanted to speak to her again and for her not to contact her. Over the years this sort of drove our mother mad. She knew I made gestures and decisions like this because I would explain things. My sister never did. Eventually my mother had to stop thinking about it and just write us both off. I went to one cousin's wedding maybe 6 years ago and ignored her but as she left, I waved in spite of myself. At a cousins's wedding 3 years ago, I decided to speak to her, then went to her home with an older sister as a sort of buffer.

We spoke but I was distant and she knew it. She asked about the sister who had shut her out. I told her she had hurt her badly but this was before I recalled the actual abuse I witnessed or knew about either of our DID. Our mother got upset, then someone got angry, because she still couldn't figure out why my one sister had simply blocked her out. She wouldn't accept she ever did anything wrong because she couldn't remember any of it, of course. Once I understood about our DID, I realized my mother's denial of any wrongdoing and her utter confusion as to why her child would suddenly shun her was very painful and left a great wound that had never healed. It left the same wound for my sister unfortunately.

In telling my mother to send a letter of apology, I was working in my sister's best interests. But my approach was also taking care of my mother. It was her vicious alters, after all, who had done the deeds, not her. I knew from first-hand experience that her host, who was mostly sweet and weak, was innocent, though not in a court of law. I did have compassion for her and I was ready to forgive so I could move on. I felt it and so did the others. They didn't have the same relationship with her that Little John and I did and they just didn't care about her much or at all.

I quickly realized in talking to her that she needed to know the mystery that was her life. She denied losing time but I kept seeing blank moments when I asked her questions and I could tell her system was listening to my words. When I told her that I knew for a fact she was multiple because I remember how she got -- everyone who knew her did -- and I had distinguished her alters in childhood, the first thing she said was "but I wasn't abused by my mother and father!" I had never mentioned her being abused and this confirmed everything because I already had tons of evidence that she had been.

She kept going back to her estranged daughter. Why had she done that? Why? I had to keep explaining, because of how cruel a part of you was to her. And that sister can't make the distinctions among the parts of her that I can so she can't distinguish the good from the bad. Overall, to her the mother is bad. It's virtually the same thing to the other sisters, though they never cut ties with her.

I realized the most significant thing for my mother was giving her closure for her loss of her daughter and for a life that rarely made sense to her (this I knew), where she had to construct a limited version of her history that was more fantasy snippets than anything resembling her whole life. It was sad to see it. Her cruel alters had either cuts ties with old friends for imagined slights and they had alienated virtually everyone who was or could have been close to her. She was incredibly alone.

Eventually during my visit, she thanked me for explaining why our sister had cut her off. She understood now. And that and other comments told me that she accepted what I had been saying. I knew this would happen after the first night, when she asked if I could leave for the day while she 'integrated' all the information I gave her. She hadn't slept at all that night and looked it. She said she had horrible visions and nightmares. My discussion the first day had created chaos in her mind but she seemed to want the information. I had melted in front of her several times and switched to littles I didn't yet know, who displayed total fear around her. I explained that she had given me DID too. There was nothing for her to do but accept what I was saying, because if I weren't telling the truth, and she knew I didn't lie to her, then the things that were beginning to explain so much confusion and pain in her life wouldn't be real.

I did forgive her, truly. I had compassion for her suffering and in many ways for a wasted crippled life just like mine. Though I was unaware, I had met her young alter Priscilla a few times, once when the sister who cut ties with her and I flew with our our mother to Paris and to visit cousins she never met in England. Before our not speaking to her, we wanted her love so badly we were willing to pay for the whole thing. Priscilla giggled at being in such a fun place and having two big people look after her and pay for her. She didn't say that exactly but it was clear. This little girl in our mother's body brought out my compassion and I didn't even then know what was going on. Looking back, she was an innocent little child feeling very safe and happy.

I knew the alter's names, BTW, because she had joked dozens of times in her life that her father couldn't remember her name. He would call her all sorts of things, like Priscilla and Mabel. But she never mentioned any other names than these two and this story was told to people WAY too many times not to mean what I knew it meant. I saw pictures of her in high school dressed like a boy, she was known to have been a tomboy (though sometimes a very frilly girl), and her friends told me everyone called her Steve for a couple years, so I knew she had a young male alter too.

I would focus as you have on bringing your mother peace. If there is any good in her, and I sense there is, it's the right thing to do and I'm really not one big on forgiving. But I know that enough wise people throughout history have recommended exactly that approach. My gatekeeper was looking for that from me. So I connected to it and held on to that. It made all the difference and I felt that no matter how she ultimately reacted I had done the right thing. I became a basket case because of it, switching, getting stuck in between, dissociating and going vacant, crying, but it was worth every bit of that. My mother thanked me for telling her all I did. I know it made a difference for both of us.

Whenever someone talks about confronting their abuser, the question I always hear is, "Why are you doing it?" If you are doing it because you want a particular response (e.g., validation), it's unlikely to go well. From what you wrote in your letter, it sounds like you're doing it because you want to be able to give closure to your mother (if she wants it) - as sort of an open door. That seems healthy to me.

But I guess I'd like to write you a little bit of my story. One of my abusers was my mother. Whenever the subject of abuse has come up even on the edges, her response has always been very invalidating. Not denying that it happened but denying my reaction to it. I think she literally cannot see any perspective other than her own, so she assumes that my perspective must have been the same as hers, and well, SHE didn't see a problem with it, so why would I? If I push it, she has apologized, but the apologies don't change the way she acts (and really just makes her feel guilty and make her act in ways that are difficult to live with in the present).

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I can't see a confrontation with her ever being beneficial to either of us because of the fact that she doesn't think she did anything wrong. That hasn't changed over many years, and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

What's your most successful way of planning for tough events? For me, I'm a think, think, think, roll it around, then when the time comes, wing-it type of guy. Often I'll also write things down and it helps to be able to look at it. Having alters helps a lot. Most of us age 3 or up have imagined conversations with various people aloud because we know others are listening. I'm almost positive none of us did the practicing aloud thing before I knew I had alters and we became co-conscious. I thought out all sorts of possible scenarios of what might go wrong, even of her pulling a knife or gun from her chair, for which there was virtually no likelihood. I tried to prepare myself for anything.

I might think of relabeling what you call this process, though I realize your thread subject might have been just to make the topic clear to everyone here. If you do call if confronting an abuser for yourself, the mind is pretty literal and to some extent that's what it is, a confrontation (which implies an outcome of victory or defeat, or a draw) and an abuser (which implies that's her total identity). You're certainly confronting an issue from your past, but there's not as much winning or losing in that. She is an abuser but she is also a person and your mother and was probably okay or even kind at times. And to some extent she may be a different person now, decades later. In my own way, I forgave my mother (her host and any littles at least) for me, for us. But was it also for her, it's hard to say. Definitely I did it for the parts (not alters) of us that were nurtured by her, and that definitely happened. To validate the good that developed in us because of her. She did help teach us about being good and bad, about the difference, she just couldn't live up to being good herself, not all the time.

That said, I realize that some abusers are just evil SOBs and cannot be reasoned with. Any words your speak, even your body language, would be used against you, twisted to cause you more pain, everything you say denied or ridiculed. If she's that, I don't know what to recommend. I don't concern myself with saving anyone's soul because I'm not religious and don't believe all that but if you leave out the religious aspect, what's left is very appealing to me, very human, a clear example of goodness.

I believe I brought to my mother some level of peace she had never known. Either that or all I said destroyed her and she would have lived longer if I hadn't done what I did. Or both. I choose to believe the first and I think there's more evidence for that. Ultimately, I'll probably never know.

The more you practice actual monologues aloud of what you want to say, the less likely it is that you'll get caught up or stumble in trying to express what you want to say. If you decide to do it, keeping your eye on a small set of objectives, or even on one, improves the chance that you'll be able to stay on target and not get derailed by her or your emotions or your alters' reactions. Let everybody weigh in on this in any way they can. Is there anybody that needs something said for them? I just felt I had to focus on the defenseless youngest, what happened to Adam and especially the torture of Ashar. These parts can't speak for themselves. Their emotions the nights before my first discussion with her were just overwhelming but I didn't squelch them.

Maybe you want a small list of points you want to make. I wrote some things out but as an alter designed for extemporaneous solutions, kept on track by some inside, I knew I could count on getting it out. Plus I knew I probably had a couple days and could mess up or forget things, then correct that. You may have one visit. So my suggestion is to really think this out, if you choose to go forward and if it can happen.

Hello -

Too fuzzy to really comment on this right now but know I am thinking of you & best wishes in figuring out how to proceed.

xxoo

I dont know who your abusers are, but be careful.

Often when confronting them they might denie it, put the blame on you or get hostile. Ive tried with one and it didnt help. Some people are abusers for a reason, they just dont care or see the harm in it. Not everyone is born with the gift of seeing right and wrong like you and us. I cant speak about your situation specifically but take this step by step. It can be very traumatizing if not done right.

Now if this is just for information purposes it may help, but still make sure the information is solid and valid.

I think obviously you need to do what you feel is right for you.

I just thought I'd put in my two cents about how I'd feel in this situation...

I have actually always wanted to confront at least two of my abusers. I haven't done it yet because I know it's not the right time for me. But certainly if they were dying, I'm sure I'd take a chance and just go for it. Oddly, not because I'd want them to validate what they did to me or apologise. Because I don't personally think that is going to happen in my case. But because it would actually give me comfort to have them continue to twist my words and deny it. Not because it would feel good to have them say those things exactly, but because it would give me a sense of peace that I had given them the opportunity to make it right.

It would make me feel in a way sorry for them that they were so lost that they couldn't bring themselves to admit what they did and apologise, it would just prove to me further how messed up they were and in a way that would give me comfort because I'd know I'd done the right thing but that it was their lack of righteousness and maturity that was keeping them from admitting it and apologising. I would feel that I was taking a healing step and the problem lay solidly with them. And although it's not nice to know that you never got an apology or even had it admitted that they knew what they did was wrong, it would make me feel that I had in a sense "outgrown" them and their issues and made my way to a healthier place to attempt to do what is right for me. It would allow me to grieve the fact that they had never reached a stage where they could apologise to me and to grieve the fact that their treatment of me was wrong, even to the end, even when given the opportunity to do the right thing.

I suppose in some sense, it seems that you want to believe that your mother has found Jesus. If she was to deny the abuse, that would be a difficult thing for you because not only would you have the sting of invalidation but also of knowing that she might not be saved. I suppose you need to decide if it's important to you to give her the opportunity to come clean about the abuse even if she chooses not to and if you will get some healing from this opportunity to confront her for yourself and her regardless of whether she admits the abuse or not...

I don't envy your decision here... This is something that takes incredible strength even to consider doing. I think you are very brave to be even thinking about this option.

Well I wrote this long reply - then apparently it didn't post grrrrrrr! So this one will be shorter.

I wanted to say thank you for your post, it has been very helpful to read all the replies(thank you all) and think about how i am handling the situation with my own mother and sis.

I can see Jonny-Jack's point, I do care about my mother, she does dissociate, she is obviously damaged and suffering, but I also start to think she did some pretty $#%^ stuff, most of which i don't remember, but others inside me do. DID has just come out for us, alters are appearing and disappearing daily and very secretive. But we did start to distance Mother and sis a few months back (only see them once a year anyway, so hardly close) Now I don't want her anywhere near me or my kids, so different parts feel differently....big surprise.

I did think it must be very helpful to have drafted that letter to your sis, just going through the process of writing the letter, must have been very healing in it's own way, lots of processing. We write a lot and write things we then don't need to post. Sometimes just writing is enough. Only you know if you need to post.

I would also like to say, your relationship with your mother is ultimately between the you and your mother. Your sis has her own relationship with your mum and she can't really take responsibility for yours. You can say what you like to your mother, it is your choice and right. I wouldn't hold back on account of your sis, you may then resent her later, blaming her because you didn't get to say what you wanted.

I guess I think you should do whatever feels right to you, it's your choice not your sisters or anyone elses.

Well still a long post, sorry if that was a bit blunt.

Blu.(&friends)