Eeh. She's in denial. My dad thinks the place should be shut down outight but my mom won't even read the information i give her. She refuses to take a look at anything i print off for her. "get over it" I'm told on a daily basis. Or "Your wasting your time with this crap" (in reference to my website). It's funny... she doesn't say that when i play video games.
She refuses to listen to me about my experiences there. She says it's too much stress for her. She says I was "out of control" and "we didn't know what to do with you". I was "dressing in all black" and "involved in that Wicca crap", and "doing drugs" (she had no proof at the time). I never smoked while in my parents house before getting sent to program. period. ( i smoked at parties sometimes outside of the house but never inside ). The main reason I was out of control was becuase they found out i was bi... and that really threw them through the roof.(religious types)
Now you understand why i tolerate Karen so well. My mom is far worse.
Hrms. I think I would respond to, "Get over it" with, "You're the one living in denial. You're the one who screwed up by the numbers.
You get over it."
Maybe not those words, but something short that means the same thing. No rancor, no heat, no opening of the discussion---just a calm, consistent, repetitive contradiction of her denial.
I do strongly suggest using the broken record technique. It works better than many other things at shaking someone out of denial.
Hitler, bless his little genocidal heart and I hope he's burning somewhere, said: "Tell a person a lie often enough and he will begin to believe it."
The Big Lie technique stinks--when someone is pushing lies.
However, it also works equally well with the truth. Particularly if you "stay on message" and "stick with your talking points" and "stay on that sound bite."
Pick a sound bite, three of them at most, and repeat them consistently whenever the subject comes up.
One of my favorite generic ones is, "Your denial is not my problem."
I save this technique for when the situation is very, very serious. I don't use it for casual disagreements---just for big problems where someone's denial is dangerous to others or a
very big pain in the butt stressing others' daily lives.
Wanna believe the Earth is flat? Fine, don't care. Wanna believe you're not manic when you're bouncing off the walls, coming on to everybody in sight, talking a mile a minute bouncing from subject to subject, not sleeping, irritable as hell and biting people's heads off, convinced you're the smartest and most talented person on earth (big time grandiosity), spending more money than you have on random useless junk and needing to be rescued---in short, if you're being an overwhelming pain in the butt to everybody around you? Then I care about your denial. Don't really care how you and your doctor deal with it, just as long as you quit being a colossal pain in the butt to your friends, coworkers and family.
Hey, if someone's close to me and they're sick and always needing rescue, I'd really rather see her get better than have to cut her out of my life to protect myself and my other loved ones.
You obviously love your mother. Her denial is equally obviously hurting you. It's worth bringing out the heavy verbal artillery to try to break through. Which doesn't mean being verbally abusive--just annoying in a way that's usually effective. Eventually.
I know the Programs use the soundbite jargon with the Big Lie and use it to hurt people.
As I'm letting my foster daughter know, everybody manipulates other people. We all do it. The important part is how, and when, and why--what ethical limits you place on using those techniques.
"Manipulation" doesn't make you bad, it just makes you human. How, when, and why is what makes the difference between being a good person versus being at best fucked up and at worst a real asshole.
Every good parent manipulates their kid from babyhood through adulthood. We just do it with the end goal of getting a happy, healthy adult, with ethical limits on what techniques we use when, and with enough real love that we put the kid's interests before our own. Genuinely, not in the false-front way the Programs and Program Parents do. Grounding a kid from TV because she didn't do her chores is manipulation. So? We all do it. It's the limits that we set on our use of it that makes the difference between good and bad.
When you're all outside of institutions and free to walk away, the broken record technique is a mild form of coercive persuasion that usually eventually works if you're right, and just makes you a colossal pain in the butt if you're wrong.
It also has the virtue that if you're wrong, your friends and family will get sick of it, gang up, and get through to
you. So it has a built in safeguard.
There's not a thing wrong with one person "manipulating" another---as long as the how, when, and why are right. Which takes a great deal of brutal self-honesty.
Julie
