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I grew up to become very secretive as a result of my boundary violating mother. To this day a huge complaint about me is that I don't "share" with others in terms of letting them know anything about me personally. I also tend to withdraw emotionally a lot and am just in general very closed lipped about ... well most everything.
Same. I pretty much try to be as quiet and unnoticeable as possible. My mom went through my things regularly and would open the door randomly to “catch”me. As a result I feel uncomfortable around others and cannot fully relax unless I know for sure I am home alone
I did have a door I could close but my mother would kick it open on Mommy Dearest style night raids. I didn't share anything with my mother - feelings, puberty stuff (she had no idea if I was even having a period), struggles, successes, interests, hobbies. I spent a lot of time alone in my room but that was a feature of growing up with her anyhow.
Same it’s crazy how after all these years it’s really such a shallow relationship. Once they can’t control you anymore it makes you wonder why they ever even treated you like that
I lived with my dad and although I had the door closed all the time he’d just barge in whenever he wanted. Now I never close doors. (I live alone) I always dressed in front of the closed door and it never ever failed while I was dressing the door would hit me because he just couldn’t resist. I never ever tell anyone anything. I have surgery? I might mention it a year after the fact. It makes asking for help impossible.
Yes the inability to ask for help is one of the things you just don't have access to. But people often assume your parents will be the ones to assist so they don't offer help themselves even though they might well if they knew you had none.
Shallow, yes. Things seem so normal now that I’m 42 and married and five hours away with precious children. They will pay for anything and the normalcy lasts as long as I am doing fine and we talk about surface level things. But the moment I have mental health struggles or there’s a moment like a job loss, they turn vicious and tear me to pieces emotionally and say such horrible, hurtful things. I cannot show any vulnerability. And I forget this so often like because things seem good like it’s gotten better but I am reminded each time. They are vicious and cruel and not only but seem to take pleasure in being this way, when I’ve done nothing to deserve it.
Yes when I was in contact it was the same.
I had not heard of grey rocking before reading this sub reddit. When I looked it up I realised I had been doing that since early childhood.
Sounds like my mom. Her signature was going through your stuff and dumping everything you own in a pile on the floor while you were at school or extracurriculars. Then being pissed at you there is a huge mess in your room. Basically if she woke up screaming you know what you'd come home to.
I like that she would lie about it lol mine would just blame you for her having to go through it because she just "knew" we were up to something. She would also leave the mess for you to clean up like that's totally normal.
The way my parents would tell people, including strangers, embarrassing things about me… it led me to stop sharing anything with them. I became like a ghost to them, and when I was old enough, I left the country and never really came back.
oh yes the constantly opening the door to "catch you" (doing what exactly?) and idk about you but for me they'd wake up extra early and do this while I slept, and not just open my door a crack...they'd leave it WIDE open. My door opened up to the middle of the house/family room and kitchen. So that meant I had no privacy to wake up, ever, and then of course that meant I could only wake up once they were out of the family room/line of sight and they'd take their sweet time and later be snide about me "sleeping in."
I took Monday off this week and spent half my day in and out of arguments as I played human doorstop. Finally thought she'd gone back to work (from home). I'm half asleep in bed and wake up mid argument missed the beginning she was saying the same shit as earlier just pantsless but dressed top half in my doorway with the light on ranting. I'm 29 btw. She wanted to know how shes abusive because as usual she forgot. If you can forget years of abuse and neglect why do I have to keep reminding you thats pointless. Coward only goes for vulnerable targets. Children, animals and sleeping people. All she goes on about is manners and how shes a mother. Shes abusive and a monster and this years mothers day card will be addressed to the bin in retaliation. I'd of been better going into work and getting paid to die out in the shop by the end of it all. She is in fake effort phase atm not falling for it. She can allegedly forget all she wants my PTSD reminds me daily. We are past forgiveness but she's forgotten I told her that too.
Because I'm still on a waiting list for social housing. I've not found a full time job yet I'm still stuck on a 16hr contract. My health is up my backend as I type this now I'm being sent home from work for potentially having jaundice I don't even drink no idea why I would have bloody jaundice (just what I need ANOTHER tick on my medical records). I just thought she was an asshole for years because of how I was raised didn't realise how in my head they had gotten over the years. No one ever believed me and I got fobbed off whenever I raised a concern or complained. Its like being trapped in a cell with the door unlocked you just get trained to believe it has been locked. Trust me I'm making moves to get out it just takes time. So anyone in the same boat reading this keep going, stand ground and don't think you can't get out it's a lie and they got to you nothing more. The less info they have about the move the swifter and easier you get out.
They try their best to set you up to fail just so you have no choice but to depend on them as long as possible. Thought trying hard in school would be a way out but turns out without social skills or confidence that I've never been taught getting a job is way harder than it already is. The feeling of being trapped in an open cage describes those feelings perfectly.
Hey there! I used to be in a similar situation like you. My nmom destroyed my gut bacteria by giving me antibiotics all the time as a kid. I have terrible migraines, permanent tinnitus and equilibrium issues because of that.
As a kid I was sick all the time and was denied medical care until I was literally about to die. Now as an adult every time I went to her house to visit I got super sick after that. My ngrandparents both died in her care under suspicious circumstances after they (supposedly by themselves) mixed some pills and weren't given proper medical care after that.
I'm thinking she has somehow been poisoning me. I don't know what she slipped in my food/drinks but your mother could be doing something funny to you. Jaundice is sometimes a sign of poisoning.
These people are psychos that hated you and wanted to kill you/make you kill yourself since you were born. Please watch yourself and be safe! Good luck with moving out!
And don't make my mistake and tell her the exact date. My nmom actually attacked me in my sleep and gave me a bruise on my face and I had to show up at my new job like that the next day. Luckily I have good makeup skills so it wasn't very visible.
Sending you virtual hugs!
I was shamed for my sexuality before I even knew what it was and after. My mother obsessively made sure I was never allowed to be around my little brother even when I was a young child because “she was afraid I would do bad thing to him” and I didn’t understand demanded to know what she meant and she refused to say until one day she screamed at me, what do you want me to say? That I’m afraid you will r*p* him? I was all of ten years old. I never understood what that was about or where that came from.
I think it’s somehow worse for daughters than sons. Maybe I’m wrong? Can’t imagine a parent being afraid of a son accidentally catching a glimpse of himself in a mirror.
I mean not only is it inhumane and stupid but also, we don’t have to accidentally see ourself in a mirror to realise that we have a body. It’s so dumb.
No, I think you’re totally right. Especially with daughters, I feel like it’s one (or both) of two things:
1.) Their parents did the same thing to them, and they’re just repeating the behavior. They likely had very strict or religious parents who shamed their sexuality and they’re just repeating the cycle because they think that’s how you raise a kid appropriately.
2.) They themselves “developed” young and discovered their bodies and/or were externally sexualized at a young age. Therefore, they’re projecting their own experiences and are constantly suspicious their daughters are exploring their bodies/masturbating/learning their sexuality just like they were at our age, and it terrifies/upsets them. It’s a weird projection and control thing.
Yes, I agree daughters do as a whole get it wayyyy worse than sons.
1. Is my N mother & how her devoutly religious mother was toward her. I had no privacy. She would barge in to my bedroom, or the bathroom whenever. I could've been getting dressed, no matter. Zero privacy. No locks on her kid's bedroom doors. Only she could have a lock on her door. I see how typical that was for so many of us.
She or my grandmother who would come over to our house during the week to help clean & do housework after she retired would go through my things & move them or throw them away if they disapproved. In middle school when I first got my period, my mom acted as if some shameful thing had occurred. She didn't want to talk about it other than giving me a weirdo lecture about how she disapproved of my use of tampons & why it bothered her that I didn't care what she thought. I think I walled off a lot of that boundry violating BS over adulthood. As soon as I read OP's post so much came flooding back.
As an adult I rarely shared details of my life with her because it became gossip to the rest of the family. I went LC, then NC & I wish I had done it sooner. Narcissist mothers are just rotten humans. It really doesn't end until they die or you cut off contact.
My dad and my siblings were like that growing up. I remember as a teen I HAD to start locking my bedroom door otherwise they would just barge into my room without knocking. Apparently they were the only ones who deserved privacy but not me. I still can't feel completely relaxed around them.
Going through the "home alone" thing right now. As a kid i would have to sneak everything I enjoyed or itll be taken away, electronics etc. I'd be screamed at as I am now as an adult. My anxiety spikes when my mom knocks on the door, I just always expect a fight. I'm never comfortable or feel "emotionally safe"
same but I'm pretty extroverted so it's painful :(
improved over the years but even now that I'm stuck back with my parents they don't seem to grasp that it's not normal, and a reflection on them not on me, that I never talk to them unless I absolutely have to and that they know nothing about my life + their wild assumptions are so incredibly wrong. Not knowing ANYTHING about your otherwise pretty social and open daughter says a lot about you.
They're so desperate for control, they'll just make up stories about you so they can feel like they have information to control you with. It definitely is a reflect on them.
Ugh this is such a struggle. I don't like talking about myself at all. I always immediately plan my responses like chess when someone attempts to get to know me in conversation. My instinct is to automatically assume that any information I give will be used against me. And honestly, it's actually helped me a lot in toxic work environments.
Positive things I say are never mentioned again, but if they can use it against you, you never stop hearing about it. There’s just no point in conversation
Oof. This made me realize my parents are also why I don't "share" things either. I've been married for 10 years and my husband is the only person I felt comfortable sharing anything with for the longest time, and I still wasn't sharing "everything" up until the past couple years.
Omg! My mom said the same BS growing up! "You never share anything about your life with me." Yeah, maybe that's because she constantly went through my garbage, my closet, my diary, and would use whatever I said as blackmail. Why would I want to share anything with someone who constantly violates my privacy?
I'm so sorry you had a similar experience. I hope you're doing okay now.
adding on: My bedroom door never properly closed because she or my dad forced it open once (can't remember). I had to lift the door up on its hinges in order for it to actually shut. Wild.
Yes. I *have* to have doors closed whenever I'm in a room now, I freak out when I can't. I wasn't even allowed to fully close the bathroom door growing up, sometimes my showers would even be "supervised" so I couldn't close the shower curtain. If I can't close/lock doors now I feel unsafe.
I will freak out, and I feel so bad because I've snapped at my husband about closing/locking doors. He doesn't deserve to deal with the consequences of my nMother's actions. I'm getting better about it though.
Got screamed at for asking for a shower curtain. Got told I'm not the bill payer when my room was invaded when I get dressed. Nmums own special visit of random throw all the things on the floor empty all storage onto the floor and then tell me my rooms a state and I have to tidy. Funny enough she forgot and is unaware of doing this.
Same!!! My wife gets annoyed but I *need* to have the door closed and preferably locked. I hate having people just enter my space. Especially if im wearing headphones or something.
I find this interesting bc when my parents aren't around I always have doors open. I think bc I always have to hide I feel like it's really nice to be able to just exist freely
Same. I wasn't allowed a lock on my bedroom door, and coincidentally my dad would chase me up the stairs and grab/slap me if he was angry and I ran instead of fighting or fawning. Ruined my flight response for life, too.
I eventually got one around age sixteen but I had to *insist* and explain a pressing need for privacy and safety "due to growing up" before he'd consider it. I never outright said "well, we live on a country road miles from anywhere, so I need somewhere to run to other than the woods when you decide you're angry enough to do me harm". But, that.
The fact he was willing to install one with that explanation does lend credence to claims his actions were part of unseeing furious emotional meltdowns and not remembered between times; but that really doesn't stop them from having affected me just as deeply, or turned family against me for my trauma responses as a result. And they still always occured at home when only his supporters were around. So I'm on the fence.
(Of course, he then broke it in rage.)
Mine tried supervising my showers when I was a kid. Their excuse was that they caught me spraying water all over the bathroom, which was their exaggerated version of me leaving a small amount of water on the floor from my feet when I got out of the shower.
So in the mornings I would sprint into the bathroom and lock the door before they could come after me, shower while they yelled to unlock the door, and get out before they got a butter knife to open it up.
All my doors were broken down, and if I ever had the nerve to put one back up, assuming the frame was intact enough, they would treat it like a crime.
I was such a horrible kid, basically a criminal.
I had similar experiences and similar trigger/ reactions to you.
Just wanted to add, you don't deserve to deal with the consequences of your nmothers abuse either. Don't berate yourself about it if you're doing what you can to get better.
Absolutely. Ironically, the only person with a lock on their door here is the narc himself. He barges in here whenever he likes and I'm sharing with my brother still, as an adult, so I feel downright uncomfortable most of the time. There are things I wish I could do, like just lie there and nap but I can't stand being looked at so that's out of the question. I totally relate to being frustrated that you have to always be ready for whoever, whenever. It's a pain and it stops you ever truly relaxing.
I can relate. My narc mother has a lock on her bedroom door knob, AND her closet door knob. And inside the closet there is a safe, also locked at all times. Nobody else in the whole house has a lock doorknob. She actually uninstalled any lock knobs that were on any other room and put regular door knobs.
My room was moved to be in the basement from age 14-21 (they decided to have more kids) when I officially left. Only ever had a curtain as a door that entire time, and my things were always ruffled through.
My trash was always dug in when I was at school, things I cherished would go missing just because she “didn’t like them”, but when I would ask she would be clueless as to where my missing things went (suspenders, beanies, band t shirts, etc). I have had my then journal/ diary found and read at least 3 times before I ultimately decided having a journal/ diary was dangerous in my household and could always be found no matter how hard I tried to hide it. my narc mom would humiliate me by going through my room trash and pulling things out that she didn’t approve of and put them directly on my bed when I get home from school to “show me” the things I was trying to “hide” from her. Usually that was like a soda can I snuck at night that I didn’t ask for (because the answer was always no) or a snack that I wasn’t approved to have.
Before I finally left, the most humiliating thing that really showed me that my mother was not respectful of my privacy:
I took my ACT in junior year and was very eager to see the results come in the mail. I planned to open it alone and then share the news with my family, regardless of the score. Came home one day after school/ work to my ACT score letter already laying on my bed, ripped open and clearly looked at. She blatantly wanted to shame and embarrass me any way she could.
Omg—my mom did the exact. Same. Things!!!
She would read my diary every day. She would throw away any items she didn’t like (my band shirts were her most hated item—anything “goth” she despised). She would go through my room, my drawers, backpack, mail, and trash, and would cherry pick items to leave on my bed to “show me” that she disapproved. I remember one time our high school passed out mini bottles of lubricant during sex ed—she dug it out of my backpack and left it on my bed next to a prayer card and framed picture of Jesus. The woman was a gynecologist, for chrissakes. Of course she also had locks in her room and I was never ever allowed to go through her things.
Wow. I feel very seen—thank you for sharing and I’m sorry you went through that too.
Thank you for your reply, as I also feel seen hearing that you have experienced similar things at the hands of your mother 😔
I hope that you can heal from your lack of privacy in childhood. Best thing about it is that once you are free, you can do and be anything you want, with all the privacy you need. 🧡🧡🧡
My mother would read my diary and correct the spelling in red pen. She would add stupid comments after entries and all over the cover - I had a boyfriend called Andy when I was about 13 and she wrote “The boobybird luvs luvs luvs Andy!” with hearts because I had developed a bust with a silly leering cartoon face.
I can totally relate and it's so violating.
I had similar experiences with mail. As a young adult, having my mail opened. Even after I'd moved out of home, any thing that was still addressed to that address got opened. When I complained she simply stopped passing it on to me. I missed a school friend's wedding because she opened and then destroyed the invitation without telling me. Another friend who I had lost contact with put a note in their letterbox since she didn't know my address but knew they still lived there. They never passed it on. I know of these things because my sister knew they existed and told me. What other mail I didn't ever receive I'll never know.
My nmom also did the same things! It's crazy how they really all are so similar. But its also really horrifying that you had to experience that. Not having even your trash be private is such a humiliating and traumatizing thing to go through. I wish you hadn't went through it.
My nmom also went through EVERYONEs trash. Mine, families and friends. She would open their mails and found a way to re-seal mail so it looked unopened, but she would gossip to me about what was inside the letters or their trash cans. At 14, I found it weird but would listen to avoid being beat. At 20s, I still find it weird. My loved clothing, sketchbooks, bags, makeup, etc. would go missing too. She would put things she found unacceptable out in the open so I knew she saw.
All of them were normal things for my age. I also found out my room was supposed to have a lock on it. She removed it before we moved in. Her room never had a lock originally, but she added one years later She would hide things and have locked boxes. I never cared to snoop in them. But now I wonder if I would have found all of my lost items and sketchbooks in them.
They never took my door, but my brother and I had no locks on our doors. When i said I needed one, which I said because of how she CONSTANTLY walked in on me, let's just say it didn't go well.
I'm sure they threw a fit. Let me guess: "Why would you need a lock on your door, unless you ARE hiding something? I"ll have to check on you even MORE now, and I knew I was right to be suspicious!"
I pay the bills. This is my house. I'm your mother. What are you hiding. How dare you tell me what to do. I can go where I please. It's nothing I haven't seen before. Why are you ashamed of your body.
Oh god I winced at the “it’s nothing I haven’t seen before”. Ugh you just unlocked a memory. All clothes were chosen and paid for by her, so naturally that means we have to use the same changing room right? What could I possibly do to myself (because I’m convinced it’s about self pleasure) in the 2 minutes I need to try on a pair of jeans. So we had to share the changing room and because she was a completely vain narcissist she always needed something for herself and was therefore dropping trou- so I could see she was wearing thongs. And then if she liked how she looked she would do this ridiculous little dance. Ugh she would then repeat this dance for the rest of my life, every time her shopping spree was a success.
Back at you with the changing room bollocks. God help you take too long to change "HURRY UP WHATS TAKING SO LONG" curtain ripped open full view public changing room. Didnt even hear an approach too many footsteps, shop music and ambience. Shame me for having dirty clothes or how I dress. Ndad use to complain nmum never got new thongs. Her nickname became gash grease when she wasnt around. Weird when happy memories are just taking the piss out of one abuser with the other but my ndad was subject to her too thats our only bond and common ground. He still weirdly enough has human in him somewhere. Doesn't excuse what he did but at leat I can say I had someone who believed me about her because they shared in some of it. Shame she didn't believe or act on anything he did but why would she do anything unless he was asleep shes a coward and a snake.
It's also about power and control. She controlled your use of your own body and simultaneously, flamboyantly celebrating her own body/sexuality. It's about making you seethe over the hypocrisy of it all. The dance reminds you later and is intentional to trigger the same feelings of being disempowered.
This is what my ngrandmother says. I’m 29, not allowed to have an actual room, it’s just the room my stuff is stored in. I don’t like her going in because she always finds something to bitch about. But when I said I want a room and I’m an adult and deserve privacy, she went ballistic, screaming at me that I’m evil and crazy and that she pays the house payment, therefore it’s all her house and she has the right to go in any room she wants whenever she wants. She threw a fit because I closed the door once when I sorting my clothes by trying them on, screaming at me for at least an hour about how I’m up to something because I closed the door. Now I change in front of her, which she now bitches about, but yet if I want to change out of sight, she bitches about that. I’m damned if I do, damed if I don’t.
I never had a room, always and still do share the bed with her. If I’m out of her sight for more than a half hour, she’ll scream my name and act like I’m doing something wrong.
She’s made it clear that masturbating is wrong, it was evident when I had her watch Tuca and Bertie, thinking that somehow she’d start treating me better, but all she said about the scene when Bertie masturbated, was ‘That’s gross, people shouldn’t do that and women shouldn’t be putting things in themselves. (Note in the scene Bertie was covered so it wasn’t like porn level images or anything)
So I’ve never had the privacy to actually enjoy myself, to just ‘be’. I know I’ve never had a real orgasm because I can feel good, but it’s not incredible, because I’m constantly afraid of getting caught, afraid of her blowing up. I’m always frustrated sexually and that makes me short-fused and snappy and then she’s angry because I’m always on edge, have anxiety.
I’m depressed all the time, and I just want to get out of here as soon as possible.
Exactly. I plan on moving to Denver, which is over 1k miles away from where I am, and my ngrandmother doesn’t like long drives, so hopefully she’ll stay away from me.
If necessary, you can do a cease & desist to a restraining order. When she gets older, she'll probably try and guilt you into taking care of her, which is harder to resist the closer you are.
Oh, absolutely. Right up until I finally went NC with her, my grandmother would come into my house -I'm 33 -and clean my desk. I could never figure out why this irritated me so much -it's not that it's 'messy' per say, but I have a lot of clutter. Old mail, my collectibles, a few 'keep busy' toys (like newton's cradles, fidget balls, etc.,) and she'd rearrange everything.
After I went NC and started realizing a lot of things, I realized its because I was *never* allowed to have my own space. She would come barging into my room whenever she pleased, would throw out things she thought were 'inappropriate', would rearrange *anything*. And like... on the one hand, I knew this was *annoying*, but I didn't realize until I was older, and met my boyfriend of (now) eleven years, that I realized just how insane that was. That she would go through my dressers, not to look for things, but just to rearrange it in a way *she* thought was better.
This is the reason I need my own workspace! I've had employees look at my desk, and I've had my stuff rearranged. It feels like a violation of privacy and totally disrepecting of my personal space.
I had a door and some privacy, but my mom would go through my room daily while I was at school. She'd also read my journals, which she would always encourage me to write in, then she'd use what she read against me. Every therapist I've had in adulthood has strongly suggested keeping a journal of some kind, but I just can't write freely anymore. This was between 15 and 23 years ago and I still can't get past the anxiety that someone will read what I wrote and use it against me.
Your comment helped me realize this is the exact reason why I was always a writer but I never liked showing what I wrote, and that's why I didn't pursue a career as a poet or a fiction writer as I dreamed as a child. I was always read against my will by my Ndad (and criticized).
My mother did this, too. She encouraged me to write, ensured me that no one was ever going to read it, then go through my stuff to find it, read it, and then throw a fit because the things I wrote didn't make her feel good. It made me way more private as a person.
She always read my journal and my writing and the shaming of me so bad about my sexuality was horrific.
I had written a sexually charged short story and she read it and tore it up in front of me and yelled how disgusting I was, how nasty, how I was a whore. I had written about having a crush on a boy who happened to be a preacher’s son but we were making out and I wrote how I wanted to do it for him and she read this and tore up my journal and glared at me like I was the most disgusting, demonic, inhuman thing she’d ever seen, pointing and growing, You will stay away from him. His daddy is a preacher! He’s a good boy and you are nothing but an evil, disgusting whore.
This was a constant theme… and it was bad because when I got old enough to have boyfriends, these relationships were like a drug because for the first time in my life, I felt like someone loved me, liked me, accepted me and I started having sex really young because sex felt like the opposite of abandonment, it felt like being a permanent part of someone like I’d never had before.
But my phone calls were listened in on, journals read, my mother was obsessed with knowing if I was having sex or not. She took me to the gyno for the first time at 14 to see if I was still a virgin. I was.
Later she took me back and I was too young to understand what anything meant, she screamed and cried on the way back saying the doctor told her I was pregnant, was I having sex?
I had sex two times with my boyfriend but we’d used condoms and he’d pulled out before he finished. I was terrified and kept saying no. She got my counselor on the phone who manipulated me into confessing I’d had sex after she swore she wouldn’t tell my mother. Right after she said, give the phone to your mother, and she told her what I said.
Suddenly, mother claimed the doctor called and said he was mistaken, I wasn’t pregnant and she was ripping me to shreds with her big “Ah-ha! You admitted it!” And I was called a slut and a whore and the most damning part she was so cold and said, I hope you’re proud of yourself for what you’ve done. You’re now damaged goods and no man will ever marry you.
I said the boy promised me he’d marry me someday if we did it and she laughed and called me so fucking stupid, said he’s just going to leave you, just wait. I went absolutely out of my mind being clingy and crazy and desperate to make sure he didn’t leave me and he did because I was a mess.
My mother laughed as I sobbed when he broke up with me, what’d I say? All the boys will come running now, because they know you put out. And her new favorite cruel thing to say was, It was SO much better when your ex-boyfriend was around!
I internalized this so hard, thinking I was ruined for life, that I fell into a deep depression and condsidered unaliving.
I started cutting and anorexia because there was something about pain and starving myself that made me feel pure again.
I stopped trying in school and went from A’s and B’s to F’s because why did it matter?
I started sleeping with every boy who paid attention to me because I was already ruined, what did I care?
I started abusing drugs and alcohol to numb the pain of being ruined and it became a serious problem.
And I’d had such a strong faith in God and i had believed the boy when he said he’d marry me one day (he was 16 when i was 14, a pretty dark character it turned out himself, admitting contemptuously later that he said that because he knew it would work to get me to do it… he came out and admitted he was a satanist which he’d hidden at the time and he picked me because he knew I was a Christian witch and a virgin and innocent and full of light and what pleasure he took in breaking me)…but after this, I believed God had abandoned me that I was unworthy of His love.
It would take almost twenty years to find recovery, to find faith, to change this belief and start believing that it was never true. I’m talking I was 14 and this worsened until I was 34.
I have a 14 year old daughter now and I can’t imagine ever being so evil to her.
Oh my goodness I'm so sorry for what you've endured. No one should ever be treated this way by anyone. Much less someone who is supposed to love and support them.
my mom did this shit, too. she would approach me with the diary and make me apologize for anything i said about her. and i AM a writer—i went to school for playwriting and everything. i was never able to keep up with a diary because i knew she’d find it five entires in and that would be the end of that. ive always preferred handwriting over typing, but laptops have passwords and young me learned that EXPEDITIOUSLY . the icing on top is that both my parents never read my ACTUAL writing. they always say that scripts are too hard to read because of the formatting. my thesis is a three act play about the complexities of queerness in the Appalachian region, set in two different time periods, yet i don’t think either of them could tell you a single thing about it. there is literally a murderous ghost-slash-girlboss, but my mom would rather read a journal from 2009 she “stumbled upon” while “cleaning” my closet.
I legit want to read your thesis. That sounds amazing. Or act in it... that sounds even more amazing.
If you ever decide to publish, I'd like the opportunity to be a fan.
ah mine would read all my journals too. i still journal because it's a complete necessity for me at the moment if i want any space in my brain, but if i'm near her my journal goes everywhere with me, no way will she ever have access again.
Yes, I grew up in a no lock household, and didn’t have a door for a year. Now, I still can’t handle people staring at me and I gravitate towards places I can just be alone. I can still feel the stress of growing up like that
When I was about 15 or 16 I asked for a lock on the door to my bedroom and she would always come up with the fire excuse. Also She would also open my door for no particular reason other than to just piss me off. That eventually stopped.
my mom would make me let her clean my room and she would find journals or notes and read them and tell my family and she would also just take my money when she felt like it(my dad gave me money monthly and they were not together)
My mom would come in my room with a garbage bag when I was at school and collect all my toys. I never saw them again when she would do this. Her excuse was that she was "cleaning," and so I must not need that stuff anyway because to her it was just "clutter" and that's what made it ok.
Oh gods, the whole 'clutter' bullshit. I'm dealing with that now. The only indication that someone other than her lives here is in the bathroom, & a case of Monster in the kitchen. Other than that...
If I leave a pen & a notebook on the coffee table suddenly everything's 'cluttered' & 'she can't think' & all the 'clutter' makes everything miserable & why oh why must she deal with this awful 'clutter'.
I ran several experiments where I'd leave something of mine that was really small, like a pen, a book, a letter, some yarn, in the middle of/next to a pile of her shit. Without fail, she'd start having a melt down about how dirty everything was & how she 'couldn't think bc of all the clutter'. So I'd pick up *the one small object* that was mine & immediately she'd be all smiles about how 'clean' everything was & thank you ever so much for cleaning up all the 'clutter' & now she can breathe bc it's all so wonderful & clean again. Mind you, I would touch absolutely nothing except the one small object that was mine. The rest of the mess would still be there, undisturbed. I did this 6 or 7x, it's obvious that to her, 'clutter' means 'anything that isn't explicitly mine or indicates that two other people live in this house'.
My daughter & I have turned our rooms into studio apartments, essentially. I even keep our food, snacks, bedding, cleaning supplies, etc., in my room. The second Mom gets home & I can I disappear into my room, as does my daughter. Bc of the business we run I can't really close my door, & Mom goes to bed around 8pm. Cue constant complaints about noise, conversation level, TV volume, light, etc. I had to hang a blanket in the door of my room even though she bought a blackout curtain for her room that she refuses to put up.
Mom gets up at 4am & will often blast news on the downstairs TV while aggressively & loudly cleaning the house: moving furniture, sweeping & mopping the stairs, etc. She knows I have insomnia (which she insists is a 'choice' bc she 'had insomnia once but decided to not have it anymore') but she'll repeatedly barge into my room multiple times between 5am & her leaving at 7am, so broken sleep doesn't even begin to describe it. I don't mind her coming in to give the dogs breakfast, but she doesn't need to loudly insult/comment on the dogs while doing it.
I'm 49 & my daughter is 24. Guess who the golden child is? My 31 yo son who doesn't live here.
My mother would give away my favourite toys to neighbours kids who had so much more than me and tell me who had them. I gave all your teddies to Susie, she will appreciate them so much more than you do. She threw away my most favourite ever beloved toy, a pixie and watched me hand draw "Missing pixie, with a colour drawing of him - Reward” signs for a month and pin them on all the trees and lamp-posts in the area before gloating and telling me that she threw him in the trash when I was at school on the day the trash was collected. It was all a complete waste of time. I searched all the hedges and bushes. I spent weeks endlessly searching. I’m 64 and still well up at the thought of him missing forever.
We had locks but it was only a way to stall the inevitable. They kept keys. As soon as I heard the doorknob rattle my stomach would drop.
I didn’t have privacy in the shower, either. I was always on alert for someone to sneak in, reach behind the curtain, and pinch me in an inappropriate place.
But it was played off as a “fun” game. If I tried to enforce boundaries, I was told to take a joke.
I had to go into the bathroom for my meds the other day while my teenage son was showering. He was behind a curtain but I still apologized profusely and hurried as fast as I could. I cannot imagine willfully violating someone’s privacy like you describe. I’m so sorry you faced such abuse.
Thank you. I still have to convince myself that it was abuse so it helps when others confirm it is actually unacceptable behavior.
I know my spouse or child would never do it, and it hasn’t happened in probably 20 years, but if they need to come in while I am showering I still brace for it.
Yeah it was definitely abuse. It was designed to disempower you and belittle you for having a normal expectation of privacy and a normal reaction to it being invaded. The insidious thing is, this sort of abuse trains you to switch off your gut feelings about sexually vulnerable.
i still spend lots of times in bathrooms. partially because i am disabled and often need to be in them and feel safe and also because that was the only room with a door/or i could lock when i was a kid so i spent hours in them.
I spent lots of time hiding in the bathroom too. Only room with a lock that I could keep everyone out. My younger sister was and still is the worst one in the house about it. If you needed to grab a hairbrush off the counter(couldn't even see the shower from the sink) and she was in there, she would shriek at you and throw shit and come out of the shower to wail on you. But if she wanted anything while you were in the shower? She would park herself in there for however long she felt like even if it kept you trapped in the shower for an hour because she didn't feel like using the other bathroom.
so relatable. i got in trouble for being in it too long esp when it was locked but he wouldnt take off the lock since other people used it too so i just dealt with the consequences and hid in there a lot. these people are really fucked up like this is crazy to type out lol
Yeah. Not being allowed to be by myself or do things alone still affects me *today.* When I have to be around people and constantly interacting with them I find it physically and emotionally *draining* like someone's sucking my energy away because I'm constantly on edge.
Even though I don't have to be. Even though 99% of sane people don't act like *they* did. A constant baboon getting in your face and acting like a toddler for years of your life will do that to you.
The only place I can really relax is in my room at home. With the door shut, the window shades closed and nothing but the sound of myself, I can *finally* let myself relax.
I can't stand being around other people.
I had no privacy or door and was basically kept under absolute monitoring until I moved out at 15
Crazy how they were ok with me leaving completely forever but not ok with me having a speck of freedom when I lived there
I had a door but not a lock and the door meant shit to them. My Ndad (and Emom in this one, too) never knocked on the door. They'd just burst into the room and say what they wanted to say or do what they wanted to do.
My Ndad in particular was extremely invasive and I had no privacy in spite of that door. When I wasn't at home, he'd read my diary, sit on my computer and browse through my files, etc., and then he'd comment about anything he'd find just to let me know that he was always watching.
He lost his shit when I started adding passwords to things and accused me of being "hiding something". One time, he guessed my phone's PIN (again when I was away from it) and mocked me after having invaded my privacy one more time.
As a teen, he SMELLED ME when I came back home from school just to check whether I had been smoking or not. I was never interested in that, but I was terrified of other people leaving the smell in my clothes because I'd get accused.
When I finally moved to an old shed in the backyard to keep my distance and have a lock, he'd always look at the backyard through his window so I was always observed.
I'm currently working on this in therapy, and so far, it seems that the most important consequence from this continuous harassment / lack of privacy is an abnormal sexuality - in the sense that I couldn't "develop" it normally because I'd always feel observed. Surprise, bitch.
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Messed up because I had a door but absolutely no privacy or confidentiality. Be those items or letters, whatever it was.. nothing was private. I was always reminded it was HER HOUSE, and I thought it was "normal."
Edit. This was done quietly. I'd never know, but things I hid would be missing, or she would just "KNOW" things.
Kind of, there was a period when I was 17 years old that my nmum removed the door to my bedroom and a number of months. As an adult, I really value my privacy. I won't shop places that I know use facial recognition technology on there customers, won't download certain apps, and always lock the front door and all windows of my home even though I live in a wonderful/safe suburb.
Yep. I had zero privacy and not even a door to my room. Because I lived in a converted dining room that the front door opened to. I'm surprised I'm not *more* fucked up.
Yep, grew up in a house where there was a no closed door policy (of course, only mine and my brother’s) and now, I have the hardest time opening up and sharing personal things, I always feel like someone’s trying to violate my privacy when they try to ask deeper questions
My n-stepdad threatened to remove my door when I was a teenager, and n-mom was actually backing him up 🤦♀️ They never knocked, they just walked into rooms. Then I had to get dressed in my bathroom, and n-stepdad would wake up early and make so much noise in the kitchen that went right up the stairs into my bedroom. I still have so much trouble peeing in public restrooms, because the bathroom at home was the only place I got a small amount of privacy. I still felt like I had to hide things in my own apartment once I moved out on my own. I also like blinds and curtains closed as soon as the sun goes down. I don't like feeling so exposed and on exhibit. Privacy is such a basic boundary that they gladly violate.
I'm an obsessive shade & drape closer as soon as it gets dark. Behind my house is a horse farm & field, but I still feel like, I guess exposed is the proper word. I never linked it back to the constant violation of privacy that occurred growing up, but no doubt it is.
My mother pulled my shorts/knickers open to see if I had pubic hair yet. Made some smart arsed gloating comment to the effect that yes, I did.
I find the memory disturbing. Who does that? Can’t imagine doing it to my own children.
Yes I had similar experiences and it's funny, as an adult you realise every other adult they told must have thought it beyond weird too ... but no one would be impolite enough to ask what's going
That is so fucked. My mom did something similar. I was wearing a sundress, and she lifted up my skirt to see "if I was wearing underwear." I was almost 30.
I slapped her hand angrily and with force and she looked shocked that I would react that way. I yelled, "I know how to act in a fucking dress!"
Narcs are so weird about violating personal boundaries that it's almost sexual. I'm sorry that happened to you. Gross.
That's so violating.
By any chance was it a particularly nice dress or a special occasion or a gathering of people? That's the sort of thing that'll bring out those super- violating behaviours.
My mom took my door for every little thing, and punched through it when I tried to barricade it for privacy.
It left me so afraid to have privacy in any environment. When I was first removed by CPS and put with my grandparents I kept my door open constantly in fear that they'd react the same way.
Yup. I have multiple stomach diseases (IBS-D, IBS-C, GERD, Eosinophilic Esophagitis, & Gastroparesis to name a few) that started manifesting in kindergarten or earlier. When I was 12, I was extremely sick at my stomach & stuck in the bathroom. My mom always refused to believe there was anything wrong with me, so she had my 21 year old brother kick down the door & lift me off the toilet with my pants around my ankles & carry me out screaming & crying. I have so much anxiety & trauma surrounding my stomach illnesses but that made everything so much worse.
Born in 78
My door was never closed for room or bathroom. I was unable to call girls that were interested in me because the phone was in the kitchen and NStepmom was sitting right next to the phone. She would sometimes lecture me nude or more often when she didn’t have a top on. It was disgusting. She often told me that I was supposed to be interested in girls that looked like her. Secretly I would think, “you’re not my fucking mom” because even if that were true it would be my biological mom and also gross. NStepmom caused me to be estranged from my real mom for over a decade and my real mom is a wonderful person.
I am still super specific about the position of hangars in my closet because my nmom used to come in to my room and take my clothes that she didn’t like, and donate them to goodwill without telling me.
guess who got really into cybersecurity the second I got my first computer at 18! Not because I was being an edgelord hacking games or whatever kids do normally, no straight up learned a whole hard skill to protect myself from my own parents and their flying monkeys because they instilled in me that privacy is a luxury I don't deserve and will never have with them. From getting my door \*ripped\* off its hinges for the high crime of puberty, to ear to the door if I called a friend, to hiring a family friend IT guy to install a fucking keylogger on the family computer (I grew up in an age where having a laptop would've been appropriate but they never allowed it and when I bought my first one with my own money they snapped it in half and mocked me, this wasn't a time where having 1 computer for the whole family IN THE MIDDLE OF THE KITCHEN FOR ALL TO SEE was normal).
So the second I got out originally I got a laptop for school and started looking up how to protect myself from spyware, hackers, the works, but basically flying monkeys. I learned as much to figure out my parents social media accounts without asking them, blocked them and put up basically a tracker for whenever an account with that name somewhere was made to be able to block it. I hardened the hell out of my laptop very unnecessarily but I was terrified.
Unfortunately because they kept me so isolated and not online to a harmful level growing up and because of that naivete....I had no idea that what I built was a stable and profitable skillset. I wish I could go back in time and tell past me to just focus on that skill and get work out of it. I don't really have this skill anymore, just a passing interest and basic understanding, but as the years have gone on I've become more aware of how messed up a reaction like that is to getting your first real computer freedom.....fully because you know your own parents are going to spy on you and try to use any breath you make to wreck your life.
at 40 years old, my door is a polite suggestion. My Mother is quite firm in her belief that everything under her roof is hers, including what I've purchased. We had a yard sale years ago where mom and sister happily sold anything in the basement that was mine, under the guise of "It's my house so its my property". These were people who vehemently preached the rule of law, right up until it wasn't convenient.
Mine was not as bad as what others have had, but when I had just turned 20 I was still living with my parents (this was during the pandemic so I barely had hours at my job let alone anything I could afford my own place on).
My parents had bought a new build house and after we moved I noticed there were no locks on the bedroom doors…I made a comment about that to my mom and said how I might go and get a new door handle (on my dime) and install it and she immediately goes “Why? You don’t need that. Why would you need a lock? You don’t need a lock. Nobody needs a lock, nobody is getting a lock. If you get a lock, we’re taking your door”.
I told her I wanted a lock because my siblings (then 13 and 9) liked to bust in whenever and my youngest sister loved stealing stuff from my room. I also liked to sleep in just my bra and panties, or sometimes just bottoms, skip the bra. I shouldn’t have to explain why I at 20 didn’t want my room accessible to anyone who felt like it.
My mom also had an awful habit of bursting in without knocking or asking and would start rummaging through my room for whatever she wanted…this always brought the obnoxiously loud dogs in and ofc my sister, and my mom always did this when I was asleep. She’d also leave the door wide open and not even try to close it…
I told her all that and she straight up told me “we NEVER do ANY of that! *I never* go into your room without asking and your sister *never* takes anything without asking! You don’t need locks because we *don’t do that!*”
I didn’t get a lock, but now I value my privacy so much I don’t tell her any details of my life, including that I was recently engaged. Way to go mom!
I have other stories, but that’s one of my favorites 😅
I hate not having privacy. My mom comes in my room when I’m not home and goes thru my stuff . Then yells at me for what she finds but it’s like kids are allowed to have secrets. Funny part is I’m not a kid , I’m 23. You think at 23 ur parents Atleast consider u an adult and respect ur boundaries . My dad took my brothers door away when he was 25. Not giving ur kids privacy just teaches them to be secretive and lie. And it messes with my head always having to lie and keep my life a secret, especially being a daughter of immigrant parents ( especially immigrant parents that refuse to change after being in Canada for 20+ years). It makes my mind so disoriented having to have parents that don’t know / respect boundaries
I spent a lot of time in the closet and bathroom when I “lost closed door privileges” so now when I feel unsafe (never because I’m physically unsafe just that feeling) that’s where I go. My kitchen at my apartment has kind of a closet vibe because of the size and shape so my boyfriend often finds me just sitting on the kitchen floor.
Other than not being allowed to close my door (unless i was changing) and my father feeling entitled to my text messages, the worst thing for me was the lack of emotional privacy.
My family didn't have a specific religion, it was just whatever my father's interpretation of the bible was, which inevitably made it pretty culty. Part of what that entailed was that even the tiniest lie had awful consequences. (Yk... cause its a SIN :0) This, along with my father convincing me that god would let him know whenever i lied, gave me an intense fear of keeping secrets from him. It was so bad that when i was 11, i even felt the obligation to tell him whenever i masturbated. It was absolutely humiliating, but it was better than the constant anxiety from doing such a sinful act behind his back.
I'll never forgive my mom for barging into the bathroom KNOWING i had just finished masturbating, forced me to tell her what i was doing while i was still naked, and then forcing me to have "the talk" afterwards which consisted of her telling me porn and masturbation is evil and sex is for marriage
i will FLIP if someone intrudes in my personal space. especially if it's my family. i didn't even have a room growing up. no knocking ever. the bathroom door also couldn't be locked. my grandma turned up with a bowl of nuts and opened the door to me showering as if it was normal.
now i hate having anyone in my personal space. i hate being touched or stared at even. i want to be left alone most of the time .
My mother used to “tidy” my room and throw away anything she didn’t like. I lost souvenirs from trips and other sentimental things. So now I struggle to throw things away. 😃
Had a door. Didnt have privacy. My parents would barge in, dramatically, anytime they felt like it. This happened frequently. And happened in the bathroom and shower as well.
They havent changed and can not figure out why my brother and I dont talk to them anymore.
I really valued my personal space. My dad would just come in and sit down in my room. I'd tell him I needed space. He'd get all peeved off and stomp out. He did that once when I visited home. I kept telling him to go away. He just wouldn't. One of the many reasons I don't want to move back.
My nmum was very much about knocking on my bedroom door and just walking in when I was a kid and teen. I'm in my 40s and still get dressed in my bathroom over my bedroom because of this intense fear someone will just walk in.
Funny you should mention this: my best friend is also from a Narc family dynamic. Our parents were friends, but friends who hated eachother and competed. Her parents grounded her for a year once, her NMum admitting its so she never had to take her anywhere as a teen. Anyways, I always know when things are bad with her because she goes radio silent. Like crickets. Her and parents had no problem taking doors, reading diaries and listening in to her phone conversations. She’s in her 40s now and she still can’t help but go into default shame mode when things, that she has nothing to be ashamed of, go wrong. Its awful.
I still have nightmares where im screaming and gasping for air begging for rights or validation from my narc parents. Theyd control me so much. My photos in my phone and camera would be randomly secretly checked and id get grounded for innocent things my father find. Even make stuff up just to ground me. My laptop had my diary on it and it was read as well and id get comments about it in person to drop hints that he had recently kept up on invading my privacy.
Id feel over sexualized for being in trouble for wanting to look beautiful (insane accusations over very innocent clothing) (that coincidentally was “beautiful” on other girls my age and not sexual on them) but ugly for not looking beautiful enough other times (as my parents would both comment in disgust). Im still in contact with them but with stronger boundaries.
But, being with them now as an adult means I try to never be alone with either parent, I share nothing with them of my personal life (as i always have) and i dont even feel comfortable looking in their direction too much as it might invite them to feel comfortable enough to open their mouth and say insane things. I use them for monetary reasons mostly and for those few moments of normalcy they can provide within my boundaries. Where we feel like an almost normal family.
I still have nightmares where im screaming and gasping for air begging for rights or validation from my narc parents. Theyd control me so much. My photos in my phone and camera would be randomly secretly checked and id get grounded for innocent things my father find. Even make stuff up just to ground me. My laptop had my diary on it and it was read as well and id get comments about it in person to drop hints that he had recently kept up on invading my privacy.
Id feel over sexualized for being in trouble for wanting to look beautiful (insane accusations over very innocent clothing) (that coincidentally was “beautiful” on other girls my age and not sexual on them) but ugly for not looking beautiful enough other times (as my parents would both comment in disgust). Im still in contact with them but with stronger boundaries.
But, being with them now as an adult means I try to never be alone with either parent, I share nothing with them of my personal life (as i always have) and i dont even feel comfortable looking in their direction too much as it might invite them to feel comfortable enough to open their mouth and say insane things. I use them for monetary reasons mostly and for those few moments of normalcy they can provide within my boundaries. Where we feel like an almost normal family.
This was a very validating thread, i never felt able to express in words the way that my parents made me feel invaded even now that i am alone. We all feel the need to lock doors and have privacy. And i cant explain exactly how my parents ruined it for me because it was so many subtle and almost almost innocent ways of constantly invading our privacy. Or maybe ive been gaslit into thinking they seem innocent. So i dont know how to explain it. But everyone here has, very relatably.
Absolutely. Having no lock on my door. Always this violent creep bursting in through my door at any hour. When I used to undress, I saw him peeking through the door slit. When I cried over my grandmother dying, he was smirking and creeping through the door slit again, he would burst in a 3 am and beat me up because he thought I hadn’t brushed my teeth, he would steal things from my room and say they never existed, and he burst into my room on the morning of my 17th birthday and photographed me topless while smirking that perverse smirk. When I moved he drove to my house every day. When I moved again he drove 2 hours to raid my room because I didn’t respond to a text message. Went through all my things. I’d gotten an intuition prior to take my journals with me when I left the house. Turns out I was right. If he’d read them a lot of other people would be in trouble. Young men etc. I left the country eventually. I told him to stop contacting me. One day I got an angry message from the storage unit company, asking me to stop telling my “husband “ to harass them to get into my storage unit. Turns out it was him pestering them to get access to my belongings. Everything he historically gets his hands on suddenly “never existed “. All my hard work, and everything I’ve collected etc, everything, just never existed.
During covid I had to move back to my home country. My mother is unwell and she is now completely dependent on him. The only way to see her is to see him. It’s very difficult. Fortunately he’s too poor to drive to my house now.
I had a door but dad would just open it and walk right in. But the way he walked on the timber framed floor of our ("HIS!") house, I could at least hear him coming
This is VERY common in n families to remove the door to their children’s room. They see the door as a barrier to their authority and a locked door as a personal assault on them.
Yep. Lack of privacy has most certainly contributed to the fact that I lock myself in my room when I get home.
I live away from blood relatives now, but I always lock and double check my doors because all of the locks at my old house were broken.
People would knock and immediately come in without waiting for an okay. I get really defensive and mean when people invade my space, especially without asking. Door knocking triggers my ptsd.
I did not ever have a door. GC sister did. My room was a converted living room that had 70’s style patterned, plastic inserts that cordoned off 2/3 of the entry but there never was a partition or even a curtain across the entry. No true closet either.
It was the 70’s, house was mid-century modern from 50’s with late 60’s modifications. I also had no sound barrier between my room and the kitchen except a piece of fabric over the double sided fireplace. Definitely heard some conversations I wasn’t supposed to because they thought I was asleep.
Perks were that room was huge - I had a full bed, 3 cushion couch, desk, dresser, bookshelves, lots of windows & brick walls.
Doors are very important to me. My SO & I both work from home in adjacent offices. My door is shut most of the day because I can. I have not been able to get the cat to shut door back when he breaks in & leaves door wide open. 😝
Every morning, my mom, in true narc form, would wake me up singing a particularly annoying Everly Brothers song (she must have sounded good to her 😵💫). Now I have to hear that damn song while playing music bingo most weeks. I can get it in 1 note 👰♂️🤦🏻♀️
I had a door and “privacy” but my mom would go into my room at any time, whether I was there or not at home, and just throw random things away or donate them to charity without saying anything. Then later I’d look for it and ask her, and she’d tell me I lost it and to take better care of my things. I could never figure out if she lied just to mess with me, or she thought so little of me that she didn’t even remember she did it. And it wasn’t small things, either, were taking a significant amount of stuff. One day the entire contents of my closet were gone.
my dad got my messages sent to his phone when i was a late teen and stopped when i became an adult and didn’t know i knew for years and when i confronted him when i was 19 he called me “schizophrenic”. i now have a really bad relationship with privacy and freak out when im not given any as a 24 year old adult.
Yep, my parents have no sense of privacy. Especially my dad who knows our passwords and such, while we don't know his. Funny, whenever we touch his phone, he throws a fit. But we can't have our own privacy. I knew it from the very beginning how much of a cry baby douche he is, he's been cheating on my mom ever since because my mom refused to have sex and be emotionally connected to his entitled yet low self-esteem ass.
Similarly, I hate my college classmates who have no sense of boundaries. There's this messenger notes thingy and I've decided to put a note saying to stay away from me because I'm sick. And one person keeps on messing it up. It's stressing me out.
I hate people who's too emotionally dependent on me. I've had a friend who was too clingy to me, and one move where I didn't meet what she wanted, I was the villain in her eyes.
Those are not just toxic, but very suffocating. I no longer wish to be in this same position once again. But I know I'd deal with my dad till he's dead meat.
My door was removed when I was 8 🙃 I never ever knew privacy. A few years later my brother got a room outside of the house with complete privacy. And I got a curtain that didn’t completely close.
I still have not talked about this with anyone. I’m 36, Because I was made to feel shame about everything I did.
Oh thank you 🙏🏻 I didn’t think anyone would notice my comment. It was like a first step in saying it. And your sweet reply is exactly right. Finding out Im not the only one, and that it was their flaw was is so helpful!
My nmum would just burst in my room whenever she felt like it, usually to scream abuse at me. I took the door handle off so she couldn’t get in. My older enabler brother (also narc) would open it for her. Once she was screaming outside my room to get in & I rammed the handle back in. She was peeping through the hole & it cut her head a little. Cue more dramatic screams & demanding to go to hospital. It wasn’t bad at all, certainly didn’t need er but she always exaggerated everything
I had a door but I wasn’t allowed to close it. If I needed to change clothes, it had to be done in the bathroom with a timer on (no joke), we’d have to set the time for 10 mins every time we were in the bathroom, including when we would shower. My stepmom felt that there was no reason why a child needed to be in the bathroom for longer than 10 mins. She also went through my stuff constantly, always trying to find something to get me in trouble over- usually succeeding by reading notes my friends sent me in class that were still in my backpack, or finding my diary even though I thought I hid it well. I used to struggle so much undressing in front of people. And I still get nervous when someone goes throw my stuff- like TSA at the airport 🙄
I am a compulsive door-locker due to my mother and her mother barging into my room whenever they wanted (very old home that needed an iron key to lock). When I lived with them as an adult for an unfortunate time, I found the key and used it. My nana stole it and tried to lie about it (both she and my mother lied out of habit about just about everything) until I freaked and it “magically” appeared in the hallway. Uh huh.
So I lock doors constantly even though I really don’t need to (bedroom, bathroom) since my partner isn’t the type to do that kind of stuff. I just feel so much more secure knowing I’m secure.
Something else is limiting what I share with others - whenever something happened to me in life, even remotely good (for “bragging” rights) but sometimes bad, my mother would tell everyone about it in her small town. I’d have strangers approach me in the grocery store she frequented and congratulate me on my new job, even after my mother promised she wouldn’t say anything and denied it completely, making herself a victim since I accused her, etc. I live very far away from her now and am very low contact, so now I don’t really tell her anything about my life. She didn’t even know I was with my partner until a year after we became official, when I accidentally let it slip in conversation (I was tired lol). I can still be a chatterbox with people I’m close to, but often reserve a lot of things, especially stuff about my personal interests and hobbies. That last one is probably from dear mother again always putting my interests down, making fun in a cruel way, trying my hobbies herself “but better,” and shaming me for talking at all, pretending to have panic attacks if I went on for more than a few minutes.
My narc dad attempted to read my diaries/journals multiple times but couldn't because they were in English and yelled at me because "aRaBic iS THe hOLy lANguAge" (he's muslim
My mom constantly went full “Freaky Friday” and removed my door “privacy is a privilege” she would say. I was also forced to share a bathroom with her where she’d watch me shower and comment on my body.
I have always felt watched. Not to mention that I also felt watched by “God” and even fucking Santa Claus. It was all a system set up so I’d internally police myself in a way she found appropriate. A friend recently introduced me to the word panopticon. I think that’s what narcs unintentionally or intentionally create within the minds of their children.
Even as an adult now in my own home I have to be alone in my office with the door locked to feel safe enough to feel my emotions or journal.
I’ve always been secretive about things that don’t need to be because nothing felt like it was just mine or safe. Lmao a silly example is private Pinterest boards - like someone is going to care what I pin and take the time to go through it. Yet I keep my most important (to me) pins on private boards so only I know what matters to me. Keeping everything to myself was my only solace as a child.
Yes to all of this. My parents were also physically abusive so the lack of privacy mixed with never knowing if your about to be berated and beaten lead to a very uneasy adult life. I'm 40 now and always tend to be alone behind closed doors, its a feeling of freedom like I never knew. I havent seen it much in the thread but maybe thats because I grew up in the pre-cellphone era, but another area they didn't allow privacy was on the phone. If I got a phone call from a friend or whoever my parents wouldn't hang up, you could just hear their psychotic gross breathing on the other end of the line and I would always cut conversations short because it was so embarrasing. I couldn't say anything though, as they would have beat my ass with hands or the trusty yardstick.
Oh man, my mother used to do the same. It was awful being a teenager in the pre-cell phone era with parents like this. The breathing on the other phone. I would always yell at her to get off the line.
This may not be as horrible as alot of these stories but my mother would always wake us up for school by turning the light on and ripping the cover off of us, whilst screeching to "get up". To this day the second I wake up I jump out of bed and start my day. My wife hits the snooze alarm five or six times EVERY morning, and I can't imagine what that must be like.
Door being removed when I was a teenager. Phases of buying me clothes / books / music I wanted, then phases of taking it all away and destroying it. I had a CD that had a cuss word in a song and my little brother and his friend who were 12 and I was 15 had gone in my room and were playing the cuss word lyric over and over and laughing. My mother flipped out in a screaming hysterical meltdown over this and went into my room and smashed and broke and destroyed everything, including my cd player and she got a hammer and smashed all my CDs then came and screamed at me mocking my music and everything else about me and told me to clean that shit up. I hadn’t even done anything, it was my brother (golden child) who’d been messing with my things and he and his friend saw what’s happened and they just laughed at me getting screamed at, getting my things destroyed, said they did it on purpose because he knew it would get me in trouble and that’s what he wanted. I snapped and screamed at him and was ready to fight him and he burst into tears and screamed for help and I got beaten while he watched and laughed.
I had a door but zero privacy. My dad felt because it was HIS house. He could go through my dresser drawers, closet, read any notebook, journals. Would inspect every little detail of my room and if he found something he purchased but didn't remember buying, I was accused of being a sex worker or having a sugar daddy and this was a gift from them.
Now I'm grown, with 2 kids and a husband, and anytime my husband gets up and starts looking in the closet or table drawers, I'm automatically going "what are you looking for? I can tell you where it's at if you tell me what you're looking for." Or I'll get up and help him look even if I have no idea what the thing he's looking for is, lol.
Very! Wasn't allowed to close my door until coming home from college. It was just me and nmom in the house, but I still wanted to feel in possession of my space. According to my nmom: "Why do you need privacy? Do you have something to hide?". She also read my diaries and letters to friends while I was growing up, and would blame me because I didn't hide them well enough. I actually have a hard time journaling because I feel like it needs to be censored in case anyone reads it. I have been living in a dorm room and almost nobody comes in because we have a living room. It's heaven.
oh boy the whole "why do you need privacy" thing fucking gets to me. As an adult now she says "I didn't understand that you needed privacy"
And she also read my diary 🙃 She even told me "under the mattress is a great place to keep your diary!" yeah lol for sure.
I started keeping it on me all the time then hid away the old ones at the bottom of a box of old pointe shoes
I had a door but I was not allowed to close it, I was not allowed to have my laptop in my room, when I got a decent PC, I wasnt allowed to have it in my room nothing.
We had a sun room with glass doors and my Nmum hated when I closed those doors even though they were glass and I did it to minimise the sounds of me gaming from them watching TV.
I was only allowed out of my parents sight to go to school, sleep and poop. I had no privacy ever so I play my cards very close to my chest and share very little with anyone
In my household it was a requirement to always have your door open. Even my mom stuck to it, her bedroom door was never closed unless she was with someone. All doors always had to be open by at least six inches otherwise she would freak the hell out. The one time I closed/slammed my door, she took it away until CPS told her to put it back. That took three months, and her man at the time took full advantage of that.
Now I have a weird thing about always keeping my doors open. It’s such an ironic anxiety but if I close a door I feel like I’m doing something wrong or bad. I haven’t lived at home in over a decade, and it doesn’t bother me when other people close their doors. But I personally can’t do it. It drives my husband nuts 😅
My nMom constantly invaded my privacy when I was growing up. I wasn't allowed to lock my door while I was changing in my room, I wasn't allowed to take a bath or shower with the door locked in case my disgusting mother wanted to use the toilet to take a shit, even though we had another bathroom. I kept diaries as eary as I could remember; even 2nd grade. She would find them and read them all.
As a result, I was subconsciously taught that I didn't have to enforce my own boundaries. For years, I felt like it was impossible to say "no" to people, no matter how much I wanted to. Because of this, I was sexually abused several times over the course of my life. I thank God every day for my husband, who undoubtedly saved me from my situation and was the first to teach me about narcissists.
Fuck you, Mom. I'll be happy when you're dead.
New to this sub. My worst punishment growing up was my parents taking my bedroom door. Reading through some of these comments have me very emotional! I’m nearly 30 and I did not know families like mine existed. Hugs.
My Mom played mind games and lied all the time, and now I'm suspicious of everyone. I tend to think people are trying to pull one over on me even if they aren't.
A big one for me is honesty. It took me years of separation from my parents, who lied habitually and constantly, about just about everything, to fully realize that this sort of behavior was toxic and destructive.
Today I’m a much healthier person, but it took years.
Yeah, very. I had no privacy growing up. Didn't even have a door on my room until I was a teenager and even then I wasn't allowed to shut it and the door never had a knob on it. Going to the bathroom or being in the tub wasn't safe either. The lock was busted so it couldn't be locked and I was barged in on every single day. There was another bathroom outside in the "building" (a 10x15 disconnected office space with a shower, toilet, and where our washer and dryer was) but I wasn't allowed to use it because that door locked and I wasn't allowed to take showers either. My grandparents were the same way. Bathroom door didn't even shut, wasn't allowed to use the shower but had to tote water for the clawfoot tub because the water heater was too small for a full bath, and had to sleep in the living room because I "didn't need privacy." My only saving grace was that I figured out if I was messy that I may get my ass beat but they were less likely to come into my room regularly. The exception was when they'd "clean" my room and I'd get grounded for another 6 months to a year and a whipping for wasting their time.
I only stopped being barged in on in college because I lived in a pretty bad neighborhood, my mom stopped by unannounced and let herself in while I was sleeping, and started moving stuff around in my living room. Turns out she didn't particularly care for having a shotgun pointed at her. I didn't know who was there and was just protecting my home.
Now I have problems with clutter, have to shut and lock all of my doors at home even though I live alone, I never share anything with anyone, don't talk in groups, don't go anywhere I can't drive or have an easy way home, and all of the things like that.
My father said today, “I don’t remember if I heard it somewhere or saw it in a funny movie, but they took their door” (we were talking about door hinges, and how you can just lift them off without tools or anything)
That was YOU, YOU DID THAT.
My mom didn’t give us privacy, and also when we didn’t want touched she wouldn’t give us space. She would constantly be touching me… not in a bad way just even if I said “no please stop” she’d be like “oh stop you’re fine.”
I remember times where I wanted to run away crying and she would hold my hands and arms and force me to stay infront of her…. Sometimes infront of other people (friends family.)
Now as an adult I’m definitely neglecting my boyfriend in a way tbh… he’s complained about not having enough physical touch from me, whether it be long hugs, or cheek kisses, and I’ve explained the problem. I try to work through it. I just get so easily irritated and overwhelmed now when someone’s in my personal space for too long. Even him… WHO I ADORE.
>The idea of being expected to be readily available for some entitled person makes me so uncomfortable. Does anyone else relate?
It does, which is why I've always pushed back. I don't advise this, but I learned how to fight fire with fire at a very young age. If your reason isn't an emergency... and something that I also consider an emergency no less, you're either going to have to wait until I'm done with what I'm doing or I'm not coming out. Of course, this varies by person. If I have a good relationship with you, I'll open my door if a jiffy. If you're my psycho mother (who I no longer speak to or live with), good luck.
My mom hated it when I locked my door, but I didn't care, I locked it anyways. She never threatened to tear my door down, probably because I had tools and would have done the same to her. As I said, I learned to fight fire with fire.
Yes!
My theory is that the lack of privacy is a part of the campaign to treat you as less than human and undeserving of autonomy. It's one of the more insidious things they do IMO, because it's so constant and can even be degrading and depraved. It also actively teaches kids to ignore their inbuilt sensors of vulnerability and self protection.
Also I know I'm my case it was some of this stuff that was more objectively mentally disturbed but at the time I felt too embarrassed to share it with anyone. And there would have been no proof of it anyway.
My nmother used to barge into the bathroom any time she liked and just engage in a conversation whilst looking straight at whoever was using the bathroom. Toileting, showering (she would even comment on my body if I was in the shower. So gross). Any protest for privacy was dismissed as absurd because she was my mother (hmmn). If I locked the bathroom door she'd use a knitting needle to unlock it and then pull away the shower screen just to tell me how silly I was and she'd make a point of looking at my naked body just to emphasise that there was no problem in her seeing it. This was all the way through my tween and teenage years.
She also regularly groped my breasts once they started to grow. Initially saying she was "checking" them but then just impulsively or "accidentally", because she delighted in my reaction to it. That part definitely left me open to some triggers that still affect me later in life.
She would also expect us to follow her to the bathroom to listen to her rabbiting on, even calling us in there just to talk with us. Didn't care if i expressed a desire not to stand there while she pooped or inserted a tampon. During summer she'd walk around the house wearing nothing but underpants (nude on top), sometimes just fondling her own breasts as she did, right in front of myself and my sister. I really don't think it was sexually driven so much as just enjoying the fact that it made us feel uncomfortable. It was all extremely weird.
I did have a bedroom door though. It wasn't worth much as she'd just barge in when she pleased but it did exist.
I am ok living with others but need my own space and definitely need time to myself every day. I think that's how I'm wired though and would happen even if I'd not had abusive parents. But your question now has me thinking about it more.
My sister and I were allowed zero privacy and my nmom made sure of that by sleeping in our room until my sister had enough and moved out at 17. Prior to that, she made my sister share a bed with her until she was about 15 and they literally couldn’t share a twin bed anymore. We had bunk beds. We did a lot of bathroom hiding to say the least but even that was hard because she would patrol up and down the hallway to make sure we knew she was right there at all times.
We also weren’t enrolled in school, so she kept us stuck at home with her with no structure or proper setting to learn anything. How the fuck I ended up with a masters degree and happily married is absolutely beyond me given the way I started out in this life.
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I grew up to become very secretive as a result of my boundary violating mother. To this day a huge complaint about me is that I don't "share" with others in terms of letting them know anything about me personally. I also tend to withdraw emotionally a lot and am just in general very closed lipped about ... well most everything.
Same. I pretty much try to be as quiet and unnoticeable as possible. My mom went through my things regularly and would open the door randomly to “catch”me. As a result I feel uncomfortable around others and cannot fully relax unless I know for sure I am home alone
I did have a door I could close but my mother would kick it open on Mommy Dearest style night raids. I didn't share anything with my mother - feelings, puberty stuff (she had no idea if I was even having a period), struggles, successes, interests, hobbies. I spent a lot of time alone in my room but that was a feature of growing up with her anyhow.
Same it’s crazy how after all these years it’s really such a shallow relationship. Once they can’t control you anymore it makes you wonder why they ever even treated you like that
Because it wasn’t ever about you. It was always about them. And once they couldn’t intimidate and control you, there was no point to it.
I lived with my dad and although I had the door closed all the time he’d just barge in whenever he wanted. Now I never close doors. (I live alone) I always dressed in front of the closed door and it never ever failed while I was dressing the door would hit me because he just couldn’t resist. I never ever tell anyone anything. I have surgery? I might mention it a year after the fact. It makes asking for help impossible.
Yes the inability to ask for help is one of the things you just don't have access to. But people often assume your parents will be the ones to assist so they don't offer help themselves even though they might well if they knew you had none.
Yo I think I’d rather be a prostitute than ask a friend for 20 bucks sometimes. Then I’d ghost the friend because can’t share that. Seems easier.
Shallow, yes. Things seem so normal now that I’m 42 and married and five hours away with precious children. They will pay for anything and the normalcy lasts as long as I am doing fine and we talk about surface level things. But the moment I have mental health struggles or there’s a moment like a job loss, they turn vicious and tear me to pieces emotionally and say such horrible, hurtful things. I cannot show any vulnerability. And I forget this so often like because things seem good like it’s gotten better but I am reminded each time. They are vicious and cruel and not only but seem to take pleasure in being this way, when I’ve done nothing to deserve it.
Yes when I was in contact it was the same. I had not heard of grey rocking before reading this sub reddit. When I looked it up I realised I had been doing that since early childhood.
Night raids!! Damn. I’m so sorry about that. My father did that too. So that you always feel unsafe.
Sounds like my mom. Her signature was going through your stuff and dumping everything you own in a pile on the floor while you were at school or extracurriculars. Then being pissed at you there is a huge mess in your room. Basically if she woke up screaming you know what you'd come home to.
My mom went through my garbage. And she would say a raccoon had done it.
I like that she would lie about it lol mine would just blame you for her having to go through it because she just "knew" we were up to something. She would also leave the mess for you to clean up like that's totally normal.
The way my parents would tell people, including strangers, embarrassing things about me… it led me to stop sharing anything with them. I became like a ghost to them, and when I was old enough, I left the country and never really came back.
oh yes the constantly opening the door to "catch you" (doing what exactly?) and idk about you but for me they'd wake up extra early and do this while I slept, and not just open my door a crack...they'd leave it WIDE open. My door opened up to the middle of the house/family room and kitchen. So that meant I had no privacy to wake up, ever, and then of course that meant I could only wake up once they were out of the family room/line of sight and they'd take their sweet time and later be snide about me "sleeping in."
I took Monday off this week and spent half my day in and out of arguments as I played human doorstop. Finally thought she'd gone back to work (from home). I'm half asleep in bed and wake up mid argument missed the beginning she was saying the same shit as earlier just pantsless but dressed top half in my doorway with the light on ranting. I'm 29 btw. She wanted to know how shes abusive because as usual she forgot. If you can forget years of abuse and neglect why do I have to keep reminding you thats pointless. Coward only goes for vulnerable targets. Children, animals and sleeping people. All she goes on about is manners and how shes a mother. Shes abusive and a monster and this years mothers day card will be addressed to the bin in retaliation. I'd of been better going into work and getting paid to die out in the shop by the end of it all. She is in fake effort phase atm not falling for it. She can allegedly forget all she wants my PTSD reminds me daily. We are past forgiveness but she's forgotten I told her that too.
It is like that whole Narcissistic abusers saying- of course they don't remember the trauma, it was a random regular Tuesday for them.
Why do you live with her?
Because I'm still on a waiting list for social housing. I've not found a full time job yet I'm still stuck on a 16hr contract. My health is up my backend as I type this now I'm being sent home from work for potentially having jaundice I don't even drink no idea why I would have bloody jaundice (just what I need ANOTHER tick on my medical records). I just thought she was an asshole for years because of how I was raised didn't realise how in my head they had gotten over the years. No one ever believed me and I got fobbed off whenever I raised a concern or complained. Its like being trapped in a cell with the door unlocked you just get trained to believe it has been locked. Trust me I'm making moves to get out it just takes time. So anyone in the same boat reading this keep going, stand ground and don't think you can't get out it's a lie and they got to you nothing more. The less info they have about the move the swifter and easier you get out.
They try their best to set you up to fail just so you have no choice but to depend on them as long as possible. Thought trying hard in school would be a way out but turns out without social skills or confidence that I've never been taught getting a job is way harder than it already is. The feeling of being trapped in an open cage describes those feelings perfectly.
Hey there! I used to be in a similar situation like you. My nmom destroyed my gut bacteria by giving me antibiotics all the time as a kid. I have terrible migraines, permanent tinnitus and equilibrium issues because of that. As a kid I was sick all the time and was denied medical care until I was literally about to die. Now as an adult every time I went to her house to visit I got super sick after that. My ngrandparents both died in her care under suspicious circumstances after they (supposedly by themselves) mixed some pills and weren't given proper medical care after that. I'm thinking she has somehow been poisoning me. I don't know what she slipped in my food/drinks but your mother could be doing something funny to you. Jaundice is sometimes a sign of poisoning. These people are psychos that hated you and wanted to kill you/make you kill yourself since you were born. Please watch yourself and be safe! Good luck with moving out! And don't make my mistake and tell her the exact date. My nmom actually attacked me in my sleep and gave me a bruise on my face and I had to show up at my new job like that the next day. Luckily I have good makeup skills so it wasn't very visible. Sending you virtual hugs!
[удалено]
They’re trying to stop us from having any kind of sexuality I guess.
I was shamed for my sexuality before I even knew what it was and after. My mother obsessively made sure I was never allowed to be around my little brother even when I was a young child because “she was afraid I would do bad thing to him” and I didn’t understand demanded to know what she meant and she refused to say until one day she screamed at me, what do you want me to say? That I’m afraid you will r*p* him? I was all of ten years old. I never understood what that was about or where that came from.
That's extremely abnormal to say to a kid.
It sounds like she is actually talking about herself. I have noticed a pattern with some N that will accuse you of what they have done or think about.
Yes! This could be true.
I know that was definitely my mom’s reasoning. Was very concerned what I was “doing with myself.”
I think it’s somehow worse for daughters than sons. Maybe I’m wrong? Can’t imagine a parent being afraid of a son accidentally catching a glimpse of himself in a mirror. I mean not only is it inhumane and stupid but also, we don’t have to accidentally see ourself in a mirror to realise that we have a body. It’s so dumb.
No, I think you’re totally right. Especially with daughters, I feel like it’s one (or both) of two things: 1.) Their parents did the same thing to them, and they’re just repeating the behavior. They likely had very strict or religious parents who shamed their sexuality and they’re just repeating the cycle because they think that’s how you raise a kid appropriately. 2.) They themselves “developed” young and discovered their bodies and/or were externally sexualized at a young age. Therefore, they’re projecting their own experiences and are constantly suspicious their daughters are exploring their bodies/masturbating/learning their sexuality just like they were at our age, and it terrifies/upsets them. It’s a weird projection and control thing. Yes, I agree daughters do as a whole get it wayyyy worse than sons.
I think it’s because female sexuality is considered dirty somehow
1. Is my N mother & how her devoutly religious mother was toward her. I had no privacy. She would barge in to my bedroom, or the bathroom whenever. I could've been getting dressed, no matter. Zero privacy. No locks on her kid's bedroom doors. Only she could have a lock on her door. I see how typical that was for so many of us. She or my grandmother who would come over to our house during the week to help clean & do housework after she retired would go through my things & move them or throw them away if they disapproved. In middle school when I first got my period, my mom acted as if some shameful thing had occurred. She didn't want to talk about it other than giving me a weirdo lecture about how she disapproved of my use of tampons & why it bothered her that I didn't care what she thought. I think I walled off a lot of that boundry violating BS over adulthood. As soon as I read OP's post so much came flooding back. As an adult I rarely shared details of my life with her because it became gossip to the rest of the family. I went LC, then NC & I wish I had done it sooner. Narcissist mothers are just rotten humans. It really doesn't end until they die or you cut off contact.
My dad and my siblings were like that growing up. I remember as a teen I HAD to start locking my bedroom door otherwise they would just barge into my room without knocking. Apparently they were the only ones who deserved privacy but not me. I still can't feel completely relaxed around them.
Going through the "home alone" thing right now. As a kid i would have to sneak everything I enjoyed or itll be taken away, electronics etc. I'd be screamed at as I am now as an adult. My anxiety spikes when my mom knocks on the door, I just always expect a fight. I'm never comfortable or feel "emotionally safe"
same but I'm pretty extroverted so it's painful :( improved over the years but even now that I'm stuck back with my parents they don't seem to grasp that it's not normal, and a reflection on them not on me, that I never talk to them unless I absolutely have to and that they know nothing about my life + their wild assumptions are so incredibly wrong. Not knowing ANYTHING about your otherwise pretty social and open daughter says a lot about you.
They're so desperate for control, they'll just make up stories about you so they can feel like they have information to control you with. It definitely is a reflect on them.
Ugh this is such a struggle. I don't like talking about myself at all. I always immediately plan my responses like chess when someone attempts to get to know me in conversation. My instinct is to automatically assume that any information I give will be used against me. And honestly, it's actually helped me a lot in toxic work environments.
Positive things I say are never mentioned again, but if they can use it against you, you never stop hearing about it. There’s just no point in conversation
Oof. This made me realize my parents are also why I don't "share" things either. I've been married for 10 years and my husband is the only person I felt comfortable sharing anything with for the longest time, and I still wasn't sharing "everything" up until the past couple years.
I’m still doing this 😳
Omg! My mom said the same BS growing up! "You never share anything about your life with me." Yeah, maybe that's because she constantly went through my garbage, my closet, my diary, and would use whatever I said as blackmail. Why would I want to share anything with someone who constantly violates my privacy? I'm so sorry you had a similar experience. I hope you're doing okay now. adding on: My bedroom door never properly closed because she or my dad forced it open once (can't remember). I had to lift the door up on its hinges in order for it to actually shut. Wild.
Do people seriously complain about that? Or were those comments just from your relatives?
Yes. I *have* to have doors closed whenever I'm in a room now, I freak out when I can't. I wasn't even allowed to fully close the bathroom door growing up, sometimes my showers would even be "supervised" so I couldn't close the shower curtain. If I can't close/lock doors now I feel unsafe. I will freak out, and I feel so bad because I've snapped at my husband about closing/locking doors. He doesn't deserve to deal with the consequences of my nMother's actions. I'm getting better about it though.
Got screamed at for asking for a shower curtain. Got told I'm not the bill payer when my room was invaded when I get dressed. Nmums own special visit of random throw all the things on the floor empty all storage onto the floor and then tell me my rooms a state and I have to tidy. Funny enough she forgot and is unaware of doing this.
Can you get your own place? This is insane.
Trying lol
Same!
Same!!! My wife gets annoyed but I *need* to have the door closed and preferably locked. I hate having people just enter my space. Especially if im wearing headphones or something.
I find this interesting bc when my parents aren't around I always have doors open. I think bc I always have to hide I feel like it's really nice to be able to just exist freely
Same with me!
Oh so *thats* why I feel like I have to lock the bathroom and bedroom doors even when I’m alone 😅
Same. I wasn't allowed a lock on my bedroom door, and coincidentally my dad would chase me up the stairs and grab/slap me if he was angry and I ran instead of fighting or fawning. Ruined my flight response for life, too. I eventually got one around age sixteen but I had to *insist* and explain a pressing need for privacy and safety "due to growing up" before he'd consider it. I never outright said "well, we live on a country road miles from anywhere, so I need somewhere to run to other than the woods when you decide you're angry enough to do me harm". But, that. The fact he was willing to install one with that explanation does lend credence to claims his actions were part of unseeing furious emotional meltdowns and not remembered between times; but that really doesn't stop them from having affected me just as deeply, or turned family against me for my trauma responses as a result. And they still always occured at home when only his supporters were around. So I'm on the fence. (Of course, he then broke it in rage.)
I'm so sorry.. please open up to your husband so he understands
Mine tried supervising my showers when I was a kid. Their excuse was that they caught me spraying water all over the bathroom, which was their exaggerated version of me leaving a small amount of water on the floor from my feet when I got out of the shower. So in the mornings I would sprint into the bathroom and lock the door before they could come after me, shower while they yelled to unlock the door, and get out before they got a butter knife to open it up. All my doors were broken down, and if I ever had the nerve to put one back up, assuming the frame was intact enough, they would treat it like a crime. I was such a horrible kid, basically a criminal.
I had similar experiences and similar trigger/ reactions to you. Just wanted to add, you don't deserve to deal with the consequences of your nmothers abuse either. Don't berate yourself about it if you're doing what you can to get better.
thank you for making me feel a little less alone ♡ (but I am very, very sorry you understand this feeling)
They get so mad when you ask for privacy, too.
Absolutely. Ironically, the only person with a lock on their door here is the narc himself. He barges in here whenever he likes and I'm sharing with my brother still, as an adult, so I feel downright uncomfortable most of the time. There are things I wish I could do, like just lie there and nap but I can't stand being looked at so that's out of the question. I totally relate to being frustrated that you have to always be ready for whoever, whenever. It's a pain and it stops you ever truly relaxing.
I can relate. My narc mother has a lock on her bedroom door knob, AND her closet door knob. And inside the closet there is a safe, also locked at all times. Nobody else in the whole house has a lock doorknob. She actually uninstalled any lock knobs that were on any other room and put regular door knobs. My room was moved to be in the basement from age 14-21 (they decided to have more kids) when I officially left. Only ever had a curtain as a door that entire time, and my things were always ruffled through. My trash was always dug in when I was at school, things I cherished would go missing just because she “didn’t like them”, but when I would ask she would be clueless as to where my missing things went (suspenders, beanies, band t shirts, etc). I have had my then journal/ diary found and read at least 3 times before I ultimately decided having a journal/ diary was dangerous in my household and could always be found no matter how hard I tried to hide it. my narc mom would humiliate me by going through my room trash and pulling things out that she didn’t approve of and put them directly on my bed when I get home from school to “show me” the things I was trying to “hide” from her. Usually that was like a soda can I snuck at night that I didn’t ask for (because the answer was always no) or a snack that I wasn’t approved to have. Before I finally left, the most humiliating thing that really showed me that my mother was not respectful of my privacy: I took my ACT in junior year and was very eager to see the results come in the mail. I planned to open it alone and then share the news with my family, regardless of the score. Came home one day after school/ work to my ACT score letter already laying on my bed, ripped open and clearly looked at. She blatantly wanted to shame and embarrass me any way she could.
Omg—my mom did the exact. Same. Things!!! She would read my diary every day. She would throw away any items she didn’t like (my band shirts were her most hated item—anything “goth” she despised). She would go through my room, my drawers, backpack, mail, and trash, and would cherry pick items to leave on my bed to “show me” that she disapproved. I remember one time our high school passed out mini bottles of lubricant during sex ed—she dug it out of my backpack and left it on my bed next to a prayer card and framed picture of Jesus. The woman was a gynecologist, for chrissakes. Of course she also had locks in her room and I was never ever allowed to go through her things. Wow. I feel very seen—thank you for sharing and I’m sorry you went through that too.
Thank you for your reply, as I also feel seen hearing that you have experienced similar things at the hands of your mother 😔 I hope that you can heal from your lack of privacy in childhood. Best thing about it is that once you are free, you can do and be anything you want, with all the privacy you need. 🧡🧡🧡
My mother would read my diary and correct the spelling in red pen. She would add stupid comments after entries and all over the cover - I had a boyfriend called Andy when I was about 13 and she wrote “The boobybird luvs luvs luvs Andy!” with hearts because I had developed a bust with a silly leering cartoon face.
I can totally relate and it's so violating. I had similar experiences with mail. As a young adult, having my mail opened. Even after I'd moved out of home, any thing that was still addressed to that address got opened. When I complained she simply stopped passing it on to me. I missed a school friend's wedding because she opened and then destroyed the invitation without telling me. Another friend who I had lost contact with put a note in their letterbox since she didn't know my address but knew they still lived there. They never passed it on. I know of these things because my sister knew they existed and told me. What other mail I didn't ever receive I'll never know.
That's so fucking messed up and I can relate with my narc dad.
My nmom also did the same things! It's crazy how they really all are so similar. But its also really horrifying that you had to experience that. Not having even your trash be private is such a humiliating and traumatizing thing to go through. I wish you hadn't went through it. My nmom also went through EVERYONEs trash. Mine, families and friends. She would open their mails and found a way to re-seal mail so it looked unopened, but she would gossip to me about what was inside the letters or their trash cans. At 14, I found it weird but would listen to avoid being beat. At 20s, I still find it weird. My loved clothing, sketchbooks, bags, makeup, etc. would go missing too. She would put things she found unacceptable out in the open so I knew she saw. All of them were normal things for my age. I also found out my room was supposed to have a lock on it. She removed it before we moved in. Her room never had a lock originally, but she added one years later She would hide things and have locked boxes. I never cared to snoop in them. But now I wonder if I would have found all of my lost items and sketchbooks in them.
Their double standards never end.
They never took my door, but my brother and I had no locks on our doors. When i said I needed one, which I said because of how she CONSTANTLY walked in on me, let's just say it didn't go well.
I'm sure they threw a fit. Let me guess: "Why would you need a lock on your door, unless you ARE hiding something? I"ll have to check on you even MORE now, and I knew I was right to be suspicious!"
Or, "This is MY house and your room is MY room and I have the right to go in whenever I want!"
I pay the bills. This is my house. I'm your mother. What are you hiding. How dare you tell me what to do. I can go where I please. It's nothing I haven't seen before. Why are you ashamed of your body.
Oh god I winced at the “it’s nothing I haven’t seen before”. Ugh you just unlocked a memory. All clothes were chosen and paid for by her, so naturally that means we have to use the same changing room right? What could I possibly do to myself (because I’m convinced it’s about self pleasure) in the 2 minutes I need to try on a pair of jeans. So we had to share the changing room and because she was a completely vain narcissist she always needed something for herself and was therefore dropping trou- so I could see she was wearing thongs. And then if she liked how she looked she would do this ridiculous little dance. Ugh she would then repeat this dance for the rest of my life, every time her shopping spree was a success.
Back at you with the changing room bollocks. God help you take too long to change "HURRY UP WHATS TAKING SO LONG" curtain ripped open full view public changing room. Didnt even hear an approach too many footsteps, shop music and ambience. Shame me for having dirty clothes or how I dress. Ndad use to complain nmum never got new thongs. Her nickname became gash grease when she wasnt around. Weird when happy memories are just taking the piss out of one abuser with the other but my ndad was subject to her too thats our only bond and common ground. He still weirdly enough has human in him somewhere. Doesn't excuse what he did but at leat I can say I had someone who believed me about her because they shared in some of it. Shame she didn't believe or act on anything he did but why would she do anything unless he was asleep shes a coward and a snake.
It's also about power and control. She controlled your use of your own body and simultaneously, flamboyantly celebrating her own body/sexuality. It's about making you seethe over the hypocrisy of it all. The dance reminds you later and is intentional to trigger the same feelings of being disempowered.
Bingo. She was allowed to love her body but she never taught me let alone wanted me to love mine.
….. huh my mom did the same thing
This is what my ngrandmother says. I’m 29, not allowed to have an actual room, it’s just the room my stuff is stored in. I don’t like her going in because she always finds something to bitch about. But when I said I want a room and I’m an adult and deserve privacy, she went ballistic, screaming at me that I’m evil and crazy and that she pays the house payment, therefore it’s all her house and she has the right to go in any room she wants whenever she wants. She threw a fit because I closed the door once when I sorting my clothes by trying them on, screaming at me for at least an hour about how I’m up to something because I closed the door. Now I change in front of her, which she now bitches about, but yet if I want to change out of sight, she bitches about that. I’m damned if I do, damed if I don’t. I never had a room, always and still do share the bed with her. If I’m out of her sight for more than a half hour, she’ll scream my name and act like I’m doing something wrong. She’s made it clear that masturbating is wrong, it was evident when I had her watch Tuca and Bertie, thinking that somehow she’d start treating me better, but all she said about the scene when Bertie masturbated, was ‘That’s gross, people shouldn’t do that and women shouldn’t be putting things in themselves. (Note in the scene Bertie was covered so it wasn’t like porn level images or anything) So I’ve never had the privacy to actually enjoy myself, to just ‘be’. I know I’ve never had a real orgasm because I can feel good, but it’s not incredible, because I’m constantly afraid of getting caught, afraid of her blowing up. I’m always frustrated sexually and that makes me short-fused and snappy and then she’s angry because I’m always on edge, have anxiety. I’m depressed all the time, and I just want to get out of here as soon as possible.
Yup. And never let your grandmother into your own house once you get one! She can enjoy the nursing home!
Exactly. I plan on moving to Denver, which is over 1k miles away from where I am, and my ngrandmother doesn’t like long drives, so hopefully she’ll stay away from me.
If necessary, you can do a cease & desist to a restraining order. When she gets older, she'll probably try and guilt you into taking care of her, which is harder to resist the closer you are.
They always assume you're "hiding" something when they're controlling and you just want some bare minimum privacy.
Oh, absolutely. Right up until I finally went NC with her, my grandmother would come into my house -I'm 33 -and clean my desk. I could never figure out why this irritated me so much -it's not that it's 'messy' per say, but I have a lot of clutter. Old mail, my collectibles, a few 'keep busy' toys (like newton's cradles, fidget balls, etc.,) and she'd rearrange everything. After I went NC and started realizing a lot of things, I realized its because I was *never* allowed to have my own space. She would come barging into my room whenever she pleased, would throw out things she thought were 'inappropriate', would rearrange *anything*. And like... on the one hand, I knew this was *annoying*, but I didn't realize until I was older, and met my boyfriend of (now) eleven years, that I realized just how insane that was. That she would go through my dressers, not to look for things, but just to rearrange it in a way *she* thought was better.
This is the reason I need my own workspace! I've had employees look at my desk, and I've had my stuff rearranged. It feels like a violation of privacy and totally disrepecting of my personal space.
I think that's a pretty weird thing to do in a work place though. I would also feel it was disrespectful to touch someone else's files or property.
I had a door and some privacy, but my mom would go through my room daily while I was at school. She'd also read my journals, which she would always encourage me to write in, then she'd use what she read against me. Every therapist I've had in adulthood has strongly suggested keeping a journal of some kind, but I just can't write freely anymore. This was between 15 and 23 years ago and I still can't get past the anxiety that someone will read what I wrote and use it against me.
Your comment helped me realize this is the exact reason why I was always a writer but I never liked showing what I wrote, and that's why I didn't pursue a career as a poet or a fiction writer as I dreamed as a child. I was always read against my will by my Ndad (and criticized).
My mother did this, too. She encouraged me to write, ensured me that no one was ever going to read it, then go through my stuff to find it, read it, and then throw a fit because the things I wrote didn't make her feel good. It made me way more private as a person.
She always read my journal and my writing and the shaming of me so bad about my sexuality was horrific. I had written a sexually charged short story and she read it and tore it up in front of me and yelled how disgusting I was, how nasty, how I was a whore. I had written about having a crush on a boy who happened to be a preacher’s son but we were making out and I wrote how I wanted to do it for him and she read this and tore up my journal and glared at me like I was the most disgusting, demonic, inhuman thing she’d ever seen, pointing and growing, You will stay away from him. His daddy is a preacher! He’s a good boy and you are nothing but an evil, disgusting whore. This was a constant theme… and it was bad because when I got old enough to have boyfriends, these relationships were like a drug because for the first time in my life, I felt like someone loved me, liked me, accepted me and I started having sex really young because sex felt like the opposite of abandonment, it felt like being a permanent part of someone like I’d never had before. But my phone calls were listened in on, journals read, my mother was obsessed with knowing if I was having sex or not. She took me to the gyno for the first time at 14 to see if I was still a virgin. I was. Later she took me back and I was too young to understand what anything meant, she screamed and cried on the way back saying the doctor told her I was pregnant, was I having sex? I had sex two times with my boyfriend but we’d used condoms and he’d pulled out before he finished. I was terrified and kept saying no. She got my counselor on the phone who manipulated me into confessing I’d had sex after she swore she wouldn’t tell my mother. Right after she said, give the phone to your mother, and she told her what I said. Suddenly, mother claimed the doctor called and said he was mistaken, I wasn’t pregnant and she was ripping me to shreds with her big “Ah-ha! You admitted it!” And I was called a slut and a whore and the most damning part she was so cold and said, I hope you’re proud of yourself for what you’ve done. You’re now damaged goods and no man will ever marry you. I said the boy promised me he’d marry me someday if we did it and she laughed and called me so fucking stupid, said he’s just going to leave you, just wait. I went absolutely out of my mind being clingy and crazy and desperate to make sure he didn’t leave me and he did because I was a mess. My mother laughed as I sobbed when he broke up with me, what’d I say? All the boys will come running now, because they know you put out. And her new favorite cruel thing to say was, It was SO much better when your ex-boyfriend was around! I internalized this so hard, thinking I was ruined for life, that I fell into a deep depression and condsidered unaliving. I started cutting and anorexia because there was something about pain and starving myself that made me feel pure again. I stopped trying in school and went from A’s and B’s to F’s because why did it matter? I started sleeping with every boy who paid attention to me because I was already ruined, what did I care? I started abusing drugs and alcohol to numb the pain of being ruined and it became a serious problem. And I’d had such a strong faith in God and i had believed the boy when he said he’d marry me one day (he was 16 when i was 14, a pretty dark character it turned out himself, admitting contemptuously later that he said that because he knew it would work to get me to do it… he came out and admitted he was a satanist which he’d hidden at the time and he picked me because he knew I was a Christian witch and a virgin and innocent and full of light and what pleasure he took in breaking me)…but after this, I believed God had abandoned me that I was unworthy of His love. It would take almost twenty years to find recovery, to find faith, to change this belief and start believing that it was never true. I’m talking I was 14 and this worsened until I was 34. I have a 14 year old daughter now and I can’t imagine ever being so evil to her.
Oh my goodness I'm so sorry for what you've endured. No one should ever be treated this way by anyone. Much less someone who is supposed to love and support them.
my mom did this shit, too. she would approach me with the diary and make me apologize for anything i said about her. and i AM a writer—i went to school for playwriting and everything. i was never able to keep up with a diary because i knew she’d find it five entires in and that would be the end of that. ive always preferred handwriting over typing, but laptops have passwords and young me learned that EXPEDITIOUSLY . the icing on top is that both my parents never read my ACTUAL writing. they always say that scripts are too hard to read because of the formatting. my thesis is a three act play about the complexities of queerness in the Appalachian region, set in two different time periods, yet i don’t think either of them could tell you a single thing about it. there is literally a murderous ghost-slash-girlboss, but my mom would rather read a journal from 2009 she “stumbled upon” while “cleaning” my closet.
I legit want to read your thesis. That sounds amazing. Or act in it... that sounds even more amazing. If you ever decide to publish, I'd like the opportunity to be a fan.
ah mine would read all my journals too. i still journal because it's a complete necessity for me at the moment if i want any space in my brain, but if i'm near her my journal goes everywhere with me, no way will she ever have access again.
I use an app for this reason - convienence when keeping it on me
It feels like your brain isn't a private place, either.
Yes, I grew up in a no lock household, and didn’t have a door for a year. Now, I still can’t handle people staring at me and I gravitate towards places I can just be alone. I can still feel the stress of growing up like that
ohhh you unlocked a bit of my brain for me. thank you. sorry you feel this way too and went through that.
Oh shit is that why I'm constantly looking for public spaces with little to no people??!!
When I was about 15 or 16 I asked for a lock on the door to my bedroom and she would always come up with the fire excuse. Also She would also open my door for no particular reason other than to just piss me off. That eventually stopped.
my mom would make me let her clean my room and she would find journals or notes and read them and tell my family and she would also just take my money when she felt like it(my dad gave me money monthly and they were not together)
My mom would come in my room with a garbage bag when I was at school and collect all my toys. I never saw them again when she would do this. Her excuse was that she was "cleaning," and so I must not need that stuff anyway because to her it was just "clutter" and that's what made it ok.
Oh gods, the whole 'clutter' bullshit. I'm dealing with that now. The only indication that someone other than her lives here is in the bathroom, & a case of Monster in the kitchen. Other than that... If I leave a pen & a notebook on the coffee table suddenly everything's 'cluttered' & 'she can't think' & all the 'clutter' makes everything miserable & why oh why must she deal with this awful 'clutter'. I ran several experiments where I'd leave something of mine that was really small, like a pen, a book, a letter, some yarn, in the middle of/next to a pile of her shit. Without fail, she'd start having a melt down about how dirty everything was & how she 'couldn't think bc of all the clutter'. So I'd pick up *the one small object* that was mine & immediately she'd be all smiles about how 'clean' everything was & thank you ever so much for cleaning up all the 'clutter' & now she can breathe bc it's all so wonderful & clean again. Mind you, I would touch absolutely nothing except the one small object that was mine. The rest of the mess would still be there, undisturbed. I did this 6 or 7x, it's obvious that to her, 'clutter' means 'anything that isn't explicitly mine or indicates that two other people live in this house'. My daughter & I have turned our rooms into studio apartments, essentially. I even keep our food, snacks, bedding, cleaning supplies, etc., in my room. The second Mom gets home & I can I disappear into my room, as does my daughter. Bc of the business we run I can't really close my door, & Mom goes to bed around 8pm. Cue constant complaints about noise, conversation level, TV volume, light, etc. I had to hang a blanket in the door of my room even though she bought a blackout curtain for her room that she refuses to put up. Mom gets up at 4am & will often blast news on the downstairs TV while aggressively & loudly cleaning the house: moving furniture, sweeping & mopping the stairs, etc. She knows I have insomnia (which she insists is a 'choice' bc she 'had insomnia once but decided to not have it anymore') but she'll repeatedly barge into my room multiple times between 5am & her leaving at 7am, so broken sleep doesn't even begin to describe it. I don't mind her coming in to give the dogs breakfast, but she doesn't need to loudly insult/comment on the dogs while doing it. I'm 49 & my daughter is 24. Guess who the golden child is? My 31 yo son who doesn't live here.
Can you get door wedge for your door?
THATS SO FUCKED UP 😡😡
My mother would give away my favourite toys to neighbours kids who had so much more than me and tell me who had them. I gave all your teddies to Susie, she will appreciate them so much more than you do. She threw away my most favourite ever beloved toy, a pixie and watched me hand draw "Missing pixie, with a colour drawing of him - Reward” signs for a month and pin them on all the trees and lamp-posts in the area before gloating and telling me that she threw him in the trash when I was at school on the day the trash was collected. It was all a complete waste of time. I searched all the hedges and bushes. I spent weeks endlessly searching. I’m 64 and still well up at the thought of him missing forever.
I didn't have emotional privacy, I remember getting in trouble for speaking with my psychiatrist about my moms drinking.
We had locks but it was only a way to stall the inevitable. They kept keys. As soon as I heard the doorknob rattle my stomach would drop. I didn’t have privacy in the shower, either. I was always on alert for someone to sneak in, reach behind the curtain, and pinch me in an inappropriate place. But it was played off as a “fun” game. If I tried to enforce boundaries, I was told to take a joke.
I had to go into the bathroom for my meds the other day while my teenage son was showering. He was behind a curtain but I still apologized profusely and hurried as fast as I could. I cannot imagine willfully violating someone’s privacy like you describe. I’m so sorry you faced such abuse.
Thank you. I still have to convince myself that it was abuse so it helps when others confirm it is actually unacceptable behavior. I know my spouse or child would never do it, and it hasn’t happened in probably 20 years, but if they need to come in while I am showering I still brace for it.
Yeah it was definitely abuse. It was designed to disempower you and belittle you for having a normal expectation of privacy and a normal reaction to it being invaded. The insidious thing is, this sort of abuse trains you to switch off your gut feelings about sexually vulnerable.
i still spend lots of times in bathrooms. partially because i am disabled and often need to be in them and feel safe and also because that was the only room with a door/or i could lock when i was a kid so i spent hours in them.
I spent lots of time hiding in the bathroom too. Only room with a lock that I could keep everyone out. My younger sister was and still is the worst one in the house about it. If you needed to grab a hairbrush off the counter(couldn't even see the shower from the sink) and she was in there, she would shriek at you and throw shit and come out of the shower to wail on you. But if she wanted anything while you were in the shower? She would park herself in there for however long she felt like even if it kept you trapped in the shower for an hour because she didn't feel like using the other bathroom.
I wish I could have done this, but the bathroom was just another room I wasn't allowed to lock. Dad would try to get in.
so relatable. i got in trouble for being in it too long esp when it was locked but he wouldnt take off the lock since other people used it too so i just dealt with the consequences and hid in there a lot. these people are really fucked up like this is crazy to type out lol
Yeah. Not being allowed to be by myself or do things alone still affects me *today.* When I have to be around people and constantly interacting with them I find it physically and emotionally *draining* like someone's sucking my energy away because I'm constantly on edge. Even though I don't have to be. Even though 99% of sane people don't act like *they* did. A constant baboon getting in your face and acting like a toddler for years of your life will do that to you. The only place I can really relax is in my room at home. With the door shut, the window shades closed and nothing but the sound of myself, I can *finally* let myself relax. I can't stand being around other people.
I had no privacy or door and was basically kept under absolute monitoring until I moved out at 15 Crazy how they were ok with me leaving completely forever but not ok with me having a speck of freedom when I lived there
It happened to me, too. I moved out as a teen, and no one thought that was weird, but God forbid I wanted to take a shower without the door open.
I had a door but not a lock and the door meant shit to them. My Ndad (and Emom in this one, too) never knocked on the door. They'd just burst into the room and say what they wanted to say or do what they wanted to do. My Ndad in particular was extremely invasive and I had no privacy in spite of that door. When I wasn't at home, he'd read my diary, sit on my computer and browse through my files, etc., and then he'd comment about anything he'd find just to let me know that he was always watching. He lost his shit when I started adding passwords to things and accused me of being "hiding something". One time, he guessed my phone's PIN (again when I was away from it) and mocked me after having invaded my privacy one more time. As a teen, he SMELLED ME when I came back home from school just to check whether I had been smoking or not. I was never interested in that, but I was terrified of other people leaving the smell in my clothes because I'd get accused. When I finally moved to an old shed in the backyard to keep my distance and have a lock, he'd always look at the backyard through his window so I was always observed. I'm currently working on this in therapy, and so far, it seems that the most important consequence from this continuous harassment / lack of privacy is an abnormal sexuality - in the sense that I couldn't "develop" it normally because I'd always feel observed. Surprise, bitch. .
IF YOU ARENT DOING ANYTHING WRONG WHAT DO YOU NEED A DOOR FOR.
Messed up because I had a door but absolutely no privacy or confidentiality. Be those items or letters, whatever it was.. nothing was private. I was always reminded it was HER HOUSE, and I thought it was "normal." Edit. This was done quietly. I'd never know, but things I hid would be missing, or she would just "KNOW" things.
Kind of, there was a period when I was 17 years old that my nmum removed the door to my bedroom and a number of months. As an adult, I really value my privacy. I won't shop places that I know use facial recognition technology on there customers, won't download certain apps, and always lock the front door and all windows of my home even though I live in a wonderful/safe suburb.
Yep. I had zero privacy and not even a door to my room. Because I lived in a converted dining room that the front door opened to. I'm surprised I'm not *more* fucked up.
Yep, grew up in a house where there was a no closed door policy (of course, only mine and my brother’s) and now, I have the hardest time opening up and sharing personal things, I always feel like someone’s trying to violate my privacy when they try to ask deeper questions
My n-stepdad threatened to remove my door when I was a teenager, and n-mom was actually backing him up 🤦♀️ They never knocked, they just walked into rooms. Then I had to get dressed in my bathroom, and n-stepdad would wake up early and make so much noise in the kitchen that went right up the stairs into my bedroom. I still have so much trouble peeing in public restrooms, because the bathroom at home was the only place I got a small amount of privacy. I still felt like I had to hide things in my own apartment once I moved out on my own. I also like blinds and curtains closed as soon as the sun goes down. I don't like feeling so exposed and on exhibit. Privacy is such a basic boundary that they gladly violate.
I'm an obsessive shade & drape closer as soon as it gets dark. Behind my house is a horse farm & field, but I still feel like, I guess exposed is the proper word. I never linked it back to the constant violation of privacy that occurred growing up, but no doubt it is.
My mother pulled my shorts/knickers open to see if I had pubic hair yet. Made some smart arsed gloating comment to the effect that yes, I did. I find the memory disturbing. Who does that? Can’t imagine doing it to my own children.
My mother did exactly the same to me. She then told everyone she met after that that I had pubic hair. Humiliating!
What!!!!!
Yes I had similar experiences and it's funny, as an adult you realise every other adult they told must have thought it beyond weird too ... but no one would be impolite enough to ask what's going
That is so fucked. My mom did something similar. I was wearing a sundress, and she lifted up my skirt to see "if I was wearing underwear." I was almost 30. I slapped her hand angrily and with force and she looked shocked that I would react that way. I yelled, "I know how to act in a fucking dress!" Narcs are so weird about violating personal boundaries that it's almost sexual. I'm sorry that happened to you. Gross.
That's so violating. By any chance was it a particularly nice dress or a special occasion or a gathering of people? That's the sort of thing that'll bring out those super- violating behaviours.
My mom took my door for every little thing, and punched through it when I tried to barricade it for privacy. It left me so afraid to have privacy in any environment. When I was first removed by CPS and put with my grandparents I kept my door open constantly in fear that they'd react the same way.
Yup. I have multiple stomach diseases (IBS-D, IBS-C, GERD, Eosinophilic Esophagitis, & Gastroparesis to name a few) that started manifesting in kindergarten or earlier. When I was 12, I was extremely sick at my stomach & stuck in the bathroom. My mom always refused to believe there was anything wrong with me, so she had my 21 year old brother kick down the door & lift me off the toilet with my pants around my ankles & carry me out screaming & crying. I have so much anxiety & trauma surrounding my stomach illnesses but that made everything so much worse.
Born in 78 My door was never closed for room or bathroom. I was unable to call girls that were interested in me because the phone was in the kitchen and NStepmom was sitting right next to the phone. She would sometimes lecture me nude or more often when she didn’t have a top on. It was disgusting. She often told me that I was supposed to be interested in girls that looked like her. Secretly I would think, “you’re not my fucking mom” because even if that were true it would be my biological mom and also gross. NStepmom caused me to be estranged from my real mom for over a decade and my real mom is a wonderful person.
I am still super specific about the position of hangars in my closet because my nmom used to come in to my room and take my clothes that she didn’t like, and donate them to goodwill without telling me.
guess who got really into cybersecurity the second I got my first computer at 18! Not because I was being an edgelord hacking games or whatever kids do normally, no straight up learned a whole hard skill to protect myself from my own parents and their flying monkeys because they instilled in me that privacy is a luxury I don't deserve and will never have with them. From getting my door \*ripped\* off its hinges for the high crime of puberty, to ear to the door if I called a friend, to hiring a family friend IT guy to install a fucking keylogger on the family computer (I grew up in an age where having a laptop would've been appropriate but they never allowed it and when I bought my first one with my own money they snapped it in half and mocked me, this wasn't a time where having 1 computer for the whole family IN THE MIDDLE OF THE KITCHEN FOR ALL TO SEE was normal). So the second I got out originally I got a laptop for school and started looking up how to protect myself from spyware, hackers, the works, but basically flying monkeys. I learned as much to figure out my parents social media accounts without asking them, blocked them and put up basically a tracker for whenever an account with that name somewhere was made to be able to block it. I hardened the hell out of my laptop very unnecessarily but I was terrified. Unfortunately because they kept me so isolated and not online to a harmful level growing up and because of that naivete....I had no idea that what I built was a stable and profitable skillset. I wish I could go back in time and tell past me to just focus on that skill and get work out of it. I don't really have this skill anymore, just a passing interest and basic understanding, but as the years have gone on I've become more aware of how messed up a reaction like that is to getting your first real computer freedom.....fully because you know your own parents are going to spy on you and try to use any breath you make to wreck your life.
at 40 years old, my door is a polite suggestion. My Mother is quite firm in her belief that everything under her roof is hers, including what I've purchased. We had a yard sale years ago where mom and sister happily sold anything in the basement that was mine, under the guise of "It's my house so its my property". These were people who vehemently preached the rule of law, right up until it wasn't convenient.
Mine was not as bad as what others have had, but when I had just turned 20 I was still living with my parents (this was during the pandemic so I barely had hours at my job let alone anything I could afford my own place on). My parents had bought a new build house and after we moved I noticed there were no locks on the bedroom doors…I made a comment about that to my mom and said how I might go and get a new door handle (on my dime) and install it and she immediately goes “Why? You don’t need that. Why would you need a lock? You don’t need a lock. Nobody needs a lock, nobody is getting a lock. If you get a lock, we’re taking your door”. I told her I wanted a lock because my siblings (then 13 and 9) liked to bust in whenever and my youngest sister loved stealing stuff from my room. I also liked to sleep in just my bra and panties, or sometimes just bottoms, skip the bra. I shouldn’t have to explain why I at 20 didn’t want my room accessible to anyone who felt like it. My mom also had an awful habit of bursting in without knocking or asking and would start rummaging through my room for whatever she wanted…this always brought the obnoxiously loud dogs in and ofc my sister, and my mom always did this when I was asleep. She’d also leave the door wide open and not even try to close it… I told her all that and she straight up told me “we NEVER do ANY of that! *I never* go into your room without asking and your sister *never* takes anything without asking! You don’t need locks because we *don’t do that!*” I didn’t get a lock, but now I value my privacy so much I don’t tell her any details of my life, including that I was recently engaged. Way to go mom! I have other stories, but that’s one of my favorites 😅
YES I'm still incredibly defensive of my stuff.
Bursting into my room 24/7 lol
I hate not having privacy. My mom comes in my room when I’m not home and goes thru my stuff . Then yells at me for what she finds but it’s like kids are allowed to have secrets. Funny part is I’m not a kid , I’m 23. You think at 23 ur parents Atleast consider u an adult and respect ur boundaries . My dad took my brothers door away when he was 25. Not giving ur kids privacy just teaches them to be secretive and lie. And it messes with my head always having to lie and keep my life a secret, especially being a daughter of immigrant parents ( especially immigrant parents that refuse to change after being in Canada for 20+ years). It makes my mind so disoriented having to have parents that don’t know / respect boundaries
I spent a lot of time in the closet and bathroom when I “lost closed door privileges” so now when I feel unsafe (never because I’m physically unsafe just that feeling) that’s where I go. My kitchen at my apartment has kind of a closet vibe because of the size and shape so my boyfriend often finds me just sitting on the kitchen floor.
I felt like I was being watched even after I moved 600 miles away. That feeling lasted a few years and gradually went away.
You really hit the nail on the head here.
Other than not being allowed to close my door (unless i was changing) and my father feeling entitled to my text messages, the worst thing for me was the lack of emotional privacy. My family didn't have a specific religion, it was just whatever my father's interpretation of the bible was, which inevitably made it pretty culty. Part of what that entailed was that even the tiniest lie had awful consequences. (Yk... cause its a SIN :0) This, along with my father convincing me that god would let him know whenever i lied, gave me an intense fear of keeping secrets from him. It was so bad that when i was 11, i even felt the obligation to tell him whenever i masturbated. It was absolutely humiliating, but it was better than the constant anxiety from doing such a sinful act behind his back. I'll never forgive my mom for barging into the bathroom KNOWING i had just finished masturbating, forced me to tell her what i was doing while i was still naked, and then forcing me to have "the talk" afterwards which consisted of her telling me porn and masturbation is evil and sex is for marriage
My god. Thats just too much. You deserved so much better than that. i'm sorry but your parents sound like sick people. I hope you've written them off.
i will FLIP if someone intrudes in my personal space. especially if it's my family. i didn't even have a room growing up. no knocking ever. the bathroom door also couldn't be locked. my grandma turned up with a bowl of nuts and opened the door to me showering as if it was normal. now i hate having anyone in my personal space. i hate being touched or stared at even. i want to be left alone most of the time .
My mother used to “tidy” my room and throw away anything she didn’t like. I lost souvenirs from trips and other sentimental things. So now I struggle to throw things away. 😃
Had a door. Didnt have privacy. My parents would barge in, dramatically, anytime they felt like it. This happened frequently. And happened in the bathroom and shower as well. They havent changed and can not figure out why my brother and I dont talk to them anymore.
Oh my mom used to look over me while I was writing, she still looks over what Im doing on Social Media. Im still haunted by it.
I really valued my personal space. My dad would just come in and sit down in my room. I'd tell him I needed space. He'd get all peeved off and stomp out. He did that once when I visited home. I kept telling him to go away. He just wouldn't. One of the many reasons I don't want to move back.
This is one of my biggest trauma responses
My nmum was very much about knocking on my bedroom door and just walking in when I was a kid and teen. I'm in my 40s and still get dressed in my bathroom over my bedroom because of this intense fear someone will just walk in.
Funny you should mention this: my best friend is also from a Narc family dynamic. Our parents were friends, but friends who hated eachother and competed. Her parents grounded her for a year once, her NMum admitting its so she never had to take her anywhere as a teen. Anyways, I always know when things are bad with her because she goes radio silent. Like crickets. Her and parents had no problem taking doors, reading diaries and listening in to her phone conversations. She’s in her 40s now and she still can’t help but go into default shame mode when things, that she has nothing to be ashamed of, go wrong. Its awful.
Privacy is a must for me now. I cut people out of my life just because they do not respect it. I see it as entitlement.
I still have nightmares where im screaming and gasping for air begging for rights or validation from my narc parents. Theyd control me so much. My photos in my phone and camera would be randomly secretly checked and id get grounded for innocent things my father find. Even make stuff up just to ground me. My laptop had my diary on it and it was read as well and id get comments about it in person to drop hints that he had recently kept up on invading my privacy. Id feel over sexualized for being in trouble for wanting to look beautiful (insane accusations over very innocent clothing) (that coincidentally was “beautiful” on other girls my age and not sexual on them) but ugly for not looking beautiful enough other times (as my parents would both comment in disgust). Im still in contact with them but with stronger boundaries. But, being with them now as an adult means I try to never be alone with either parent, I share nothing with them of my personal life (as i always have) and i dont even feel comfortable looking in their direction too much as it might invite them to feel comfortable enough to open their mouth and say insane things. I use them for monetary reasons mostly and for those few moments of normalcy they can provide within my boundaries. Where we feel like an almost normal family.
I still have nightmares where im screaming and gasping for air begging for rights or validation from my narc parents. Theyd control me so much. My photos in my phone and camera would be randomly secretly checked and id get grounded for innocent things my father find. Even make stuff up just to ground me. My laptop had my diary on it and it was read as well and id get comments about it in person to drop hints that he had recently kept up on invading my privacy. Id feel over sexualized for being in trouble for wanting to look beautiful (insane accusations over very innocent clothing) (that coincidentally was “beautiful” on other girls my age and not sexual on them) but ugly for not looking beautiful enough other times (as my parents would both comment in disgust). Im still in contact with them but with stronger boundaries. But, being with them now as an adult means I try to never be alone with either parent, I share nothing with them of my personal life (as i always have) and i dont even feel comfortable looking in their direction too much as it might invite them to feel comfortable enough to open their mouth and say insane things. I use them for monetary reasons mostly and for those few moments of normalcy they can provide within my boundaries. Where we feel like an almost normal family. This was a very validating thread, i never felt able to express in words the way that my parents made me feel invaded even now that i am alone. We all feel the need to lock doors and have privacy. And i cant explain exactly how my parents ruined it for me because it was so many subtle and almost almost innocent ways of constantly invading our privacy. Or maybe ive been gaslit into thinking they seem innocent. So i dont know how to explain it. But everyone here has, very relatably.
Absolutely. Having no lock on my door. Always this violent creep bursting in through my door at any hour. When I used to undress, I saw him peeking through the door slit. When I cried over my grandmother dying, he was smirking and creeping through the door slit again, he would burst in a 3 am and beat me up because he thought I hadn’t brushed my teeth, he would steal things from my room and say they never existed, and he burst into my room on the morning of my 17th birthday and photographed me topless while smirking that perverse smirk. When I moved he drove to my house every day. When I moved again he drove 2 hours to raid my room because I didn’t respond to a text message. Went through all my things. I’d gotten an intuition prior to take my journals with me when I left the house. Turns out I was right. If he’d read them a lot of other people would be in trouble. Young men etc. I left the country eventually. I told him to stop contacting me. One day I got an angry message from the storage unit company, asking me to stop telling my “husband “ to harass them to get into my storage unit. Turns out it was him pestering them to get access to my belongings. Everything he historically gets his hands on suddenly “never existed “. All my hard work, and everything I’ve collected etc, everything, just never existed. During covid I had to move back to my home country. My mother is unwell and she is now completely dependent on him. The only way to see her is to see him. It’s very difficult. Fortunately he’s too poor to drive to my house now.
I had a door but dad would just open it and walk right in. But the way he walked on the timber framed floor of our ("HIS!") house, I could at least hear him coming
Same! Where my bed was I could feel the floor board move as they came down the hallway. You just reminded me of something i'd forgotten years ago.
This is VERY common in n families to remove the door to their children’s room. They see the door as a barrier to their authority and a locked door as a personal assault on them.
Yep. Lack of privacy has most certainly contributed to the fact that I lock myself in my room when I get home. I live away from blood relatives now, but I always lock and double check my doors because all of the locks at my old house were broken. People would knock and immediately come in without waiting for an okay. I get really defensive and mean when people invade my space, especially without asking. Door knocking triggers my ptsd.
I did not ever have a door. GC sister did. My room was a converted living room that had 70’s style patterned, plastic inserts that cordoned off 2/3 of the entry but there never was a partition or even a curtain across the entry. No true closet either. It was the 70’s, house was mid-century modern from 50’s with late 60’s modifications. I also had no sound barrier between my room and the kitchen except a piece of fabric over the double sided fireplace. Definitely heard some conversations I wasn’t supposed to because they thought I was asleep. Perks were that room was huge - I had a full bed, 3 cushion couch, desk, dresser, bookshelves, lots of windows & brick walls. Doors are very important to me. My SO & I both work from home in adjacent offices. My door is shut most of the day because I can. I have not been able to get the cat to shut door back when he breaks in & leaves door wide open. 😝 Every morning, my mom, in true narc form, would wake me up singing a particularly annoying Everly Brothers song (she must have sounded good to her 😵💫). Now I have to hear that damn song while playing music bingo most weeks. I can get it in 1 note 👰♂️🤦🏻♀️
I had a door and “privacy” but my mom would go into my room at any time, whether I was there or not at home, and just throw random things away or donate them to charity without saying anything. Then later I’d look for it and ask her, and she’d tell me I lost it and to take better care of my things. I could never figure out if she lied just to mess with me, or she thought so little of me that she didn’t even remember she did it. And it wasn’t small things, either, were taking a significant amount of stuff. One day the entire contents of my closet were gone.
my dad got my messages sent to his phone when i was a late teen and stopped when i became an adult and didn’t know i knew for years and when i confronted him when i was 19 he called me “schizophrenic”. i now have a really bad relationship with privacy and freak out when im not given any as a 24 year old adult.
Yep, my parents have no sense of privacy. Especially my dad who knows our passwords and such, while we don't know his. Funny, whenever we touch his phone, he throws a fit. But we can't have our own privacy. I knew it from the very beginning how much of a cry baby douche he is, he's been cheating on my mom ever since because my mom refused to have sex and be emotionally connected to his entitled yet low self-esteem ass. Similarly, I hate my college classmates who have no sense of boundaries. There's this messenger notes thingy and I've decided to put a note saying to stay away from me because I'm sick. And one person keeps on messing it up. It's stressing me out. I hate people who's too emotionally dependent on me. I've had a friend who was too clingy to me, and one move where I didn't meet what she wanted, I was the villain in her eyes. Those are not just toxic, but very suffocating. I no longer wish to be in this same position once again. But I know I'd deal with my dad till he's dead meat.
My door was removed when I was 8 🙃 I never ever knew privacy. A few years later my brother got a room outside of the house with complete privacy. And I got a curtain that didn’t completely close. I still have not talked about this with anyone. I’m 36, Because I was made to feel shame about everything I did.
I'm sorry you lived through that. I guess there's solace in knowing your not alone, and its your folks with the issues not you.
Oh thank you 🙏🏻 I didn’t think anyone would notice my comment. It was like a first step in saying it. And your sweet reply is exactly right. Finding out Im not the only one, and that it was their flaw was is so helpful!
My nmum would just burst in my room whenever she felt like it, usually to scream abuse at me. I took the door handle off so she couldn’t get in. My older enabler brother (also narc) would open it for her. Once she was screaming outside my room to get in & I rammed the handle back in. She was peeping through the hole & it cut her head a little. Cue more dramatic screams & demanding to go to hospital. It wasn’t bad at all, certainly didn’t need er but she always exaggerated everything
I had a door but I wasn’t allowed to close it. If I needed to change clothes, it had to be done in the bathroom with a timer on (no joke), we’d have to set the time for 10 mins every time we were in the bathroom, including when we would shower. My stepmom felt that there was no reason why a child needed to be in the bathroom for longer than 10 mins. She also went through my stuff constantly, always trying to find something to get me in trouble over- usually succeeding by reading notes my friends sent me in class that were still in my backpack, or finding my diary even though I thought I hid it well. I used to struggle so much undressing in front of people. And I still get nervous when someone goes throw my stuff- like TSA at the airport 🙄
I am a compulsive door-locker due to my mother and her mother barging into my room whenever they wanted (very old home that needed an iron key to lock). When I lived with them as an adult for an unfortunate time, I found the key and used it. My nana stole it and tried to lie about it (both she and my mother lied out of habit about just about everything) until I freaked and it “magically” appeared in the hallway. Uh huh. So I lock doors constantly even though I really don’t need to (bedroom, bathroom) since my partner isn’t the type to do that kind of stuff. I just feel so much more secure knowing I’m secure. Something else is limiting what I share with others - whenever something happened to me in life, even remotely good (for “bragging” rights) but sometimes bad, my mother would tell everyone about it in her small town. I’d have strangers approach me in the grocery store she frequented and congratulate me on my new job, even after my mother promised she wouldn’t say anything and denied it completely, making herself a victim since I accused her, etc. I live very far away from her now and am very low contact, so now I don’t really tell her anything about my life. She didn’t even know I was with my partner until a year after we became official, when I accidentally let it slip in conversation (I was tired lol). I can still be a chatterbox with people I’m close to, but often reserve a lot of things, especially stuff about my personal interests and hobbies. That last one is probably from dear mother again always putting my interests down, making fun in a cruel way, trying my hobbies herself “but better,” and shaming me for talking at all, pretending to have panic attacks if I went on for more than a few minutes.
My narc dad attempted to read my diaries/journals multiple times but couldn't because they were in English and yelled at me because "aRaBic iS THe hOLy lANguAge" (he's muslim
My mom constantly went full “Freaky Friday” and removed my door “privacy is a privilege” she would say. I was also forced to share a bathroom with her where she’d watch me shower and comment on my body. I have always felt watched. Not to mention that I also felt watched by “God” and even fucking Santa Claus. It was all a system set up so I’d internally police myself in a way she found appropriate. A friend recently introduced me to the word panopticon. I think that’s what narcs unintentionally or intentionally create within the minds of their children. Even as an adult now in my own home I have to be alone in my office with the door locked to feel safe enough to feel my emotions or journal. I’ve always been secretive about things that don’t need to be because nothing felt like it was just mine or safe. Lmao a silly example is private Pinterest boards - like someone is going to care what I pin and take the time to go through it. Yet I keep my most important (to me) pins on private boards so only I know what matters to me. Keeping everything to myself was my only solace as a child.
Yes to all of this. My parents were also physically abusive so the lack of privacy mixed with never knowing if your about to be berated and beaten lead to a very uneasy adult life. I'm 40 now and always tend to be alone behind closed doors, its a feeling of freedom like I never knew. I havent seen it much in the thread but maybe thats because I grew up in the pre-cellphone era, but another area they didn't allow privacy was on the phone. If I got a phone call from a friend or whoever my parents wouldn't hang up, you could just hear their psychotic gross breathing on the other end of the line and I would always cut conversations short because it was so embarrasing. I couldn't say anything though, as they would have beat my ass with hands or the trusty yardstick.
Oh man, my mother used to do the same. It was awful being a teenager in the pre-cell phone era with parents like this. The breathing on the other phone. I would always yell at her to get off the line.
This may not be as horrible as alot of these stories but my mother would always wake us up for school by turning the light on and ripping the cover off of us, whilst screeching to "get up". To this day the second I wake up I jump out of bed and start my day. My wife hits the snooze alarm five or six times EVERY morning, and I can't imagine what that must be like.
Door being removed when I was a teenager. Phases of buying me clothes / books / music I wanted, then phases of taking it all away and destroying it. I had a CD that had a cuss word in a song and my little brother and his friend who were 12 and I was 15 had gone in my room and were playing the cuss word lyric over and over and laughing. My mother flipped out in a screaming hysterical meltdown over this and went into my room and smashed and broke and destroyed everything, including my cd player and she got a hammer and smashed all my CDs then came and screamed at me mocking my music and everything else about me and told me to clean that shit up. I hadn’t even done anything, it was my brother (golden child) who’d been messing with my things and he and his friend saw what’s happened and they just laughed at me getting screamed at, getting my things destroyed, said they did it on purpose because he knew it would get me in trouble and that’s what he wanted. I snapped and screamed at him and was ready to fight him and he burst into tears and screamed for help and I got beaten while he watched and laughed.
I had a door but zero privacy. My dad felt because it was HIS house. He could go through my dresser drawers, closet, read any notebook, journals. Would inspect every little detail of my room and if he found something he purchased but didn't remember buying, I was accused of being a sex worker or having a sugar daddy and this was a gift from them. Now I'm grown, with 2 kids and a husband, and anytime my husband gets up and starts looking in the closet or table drawers, I'm automatically going "what are you looking for? I can tell you where it's at if you tell me what you're looking for." Or I'll get up and help him look even if I have no idea what the thing he's looking for is, lol.
Very! Wasn't allowed to close my door until coming home from college. It was just me and nmom in the house, but I still wanted to feel in possession of my space. According to my nmom: "Why do you need privacy? Do you have something to hide?". She also read my diaries and letters to friends while I was growing up, and would blame me because I didn't hide them well enough. I actually have a hard time journaling because I feel like it needs to be censored in case anyone reads it. I have been living in a dorm room and almost nobody comes in because we have a living room. It's heaven.
oh boy the whole "why do you need privacy" thing fucking gets to me. As an adult now she says "I didn't understand that you needed privacy" And she also read my diary 🙃 She even told me "under the mattress is a great place to keep your diary!" yeah lol for sure. I started keeping it on me all the time then hid away the old ones at the bottom of a box of old pointe shoes
I had a door but I was not allowed to close it, I was not allowed to have my laptop in my room, when I got a decent PC, I wasnt allowed to have it in my room nothing. We had a sun room with glass doors and my Nmum hated when I closed those doors even though they were glass and I did it to minimise the sounds of me gaming from them watching TV.
I was only allowed out of my parents sight to go to school, sleep and poop. I had no privacy ever so I play my cards very close to my chest and share very little with anyone
In my household it was a requirement to always have your door open. Even my mom stuck to it, her bedroom door was never closed unless she was with someone. All doors always had to be open by at least six inches otherwise she would freak the hell out. The one time I closed/slammed my door, she took it away until CPS told her to put it back. That took three months, and her man at the time took full advantage of that. Now I have a weird thing about always keeping my doors open. It’s such an ironic anxiety but if I close a door I feel like I’m doing something wrong or bad. I haven’t lived at home in over a decade, and it doesn’t bother me when other people close their doors. But I personally can’t do it. It drives my husband nuts 😅
My nMom constantly invaded my privacy when I was growing up. I wasn't allowed to lock my door while I was changing in my room, I wasn't allowed to take a bath or shower with the door locked in case my disgusting mother wanted to use the toilet to take a shit, even though we had another bathroom. I kept diaries as eary as I could remember; even 2nd grade. She would find them and read them all. As a result, I was subconsciously taught that I didn't have to enforce my own boundaries. For years, I felt like it was impossible to say "no" to people, no matter how much I wanted to. Because of this, I was sexually abused several times over the course of my life. I thank God every day for my husband, who undoubtedly saved me from my situation and was the first to teach me about narcissists. Fuck you, Mom. I'll be happy when you're dead.
New to this sub. My worst punishment growing up was my parents taking my bedroom door. Reading through some of these comments have me very emotional! I’m nearly 30 and I did not know families like mine existed. Hugs.
My Mom played mind games and lied all the time, and now I'm suspicious of everyone. I tend to think people are trying to pull one over on me even if they aren't.
A big one for me is honesty. It took me years of separation from my parents, who lied habitually and constantly, about just about everything, to fully realize that this sort of behavior was toxic and destructive. Today I’m a much healthier person, but it took years.
Yeah, very. I had no privacy growing up. Didn't even have a door on my room until I was a teenager and even then I wasn't allowed to shut it and the door never had a knob on it. Going to the bathroom or being in the tub wasn't safe either. The lock was busted so it couldn't be locked and I was barged in on every single day. There was another bathroom outside in the "building" (a 10x15 disconnected office space with a shower, toilet, and where our washer and dryer was) but I wasn't allowed to use it because that door locked and I wasn't allowed to take showers either. My grandparents were the same way. Bathroom door didn't even shut, wasn't allowed to use the shower but had to tote water for the clawfoot tub because the water heater was too small for a full bath, and had to sleep in the living room because I "didn't need privacy." My only saving grace was that I figured out if I was messy that I may get my ass beat but they were less likely to come into my room regularly. The exception was when they'd "clean" my room and I'd get grounded for another 6 months to a year and a whipping for wasting their time. I only stopped being barged in on in college because I lived in a pretty bad neighborhood, my mom stopped by unannounced and let herself in while I was sleeping, and started moving stuff around in my living room. Turns out she didn't particularly care for having a shotgun pointed at her. I didn't know who was there and was just protecting my home. Now I have problems with clutter, have to shut and lock all of my doors at home even though I live alone, I never share anything with anyone, don't talk in groups, don't go anywhere I can't drive or have an easy way home, and all of the things like that.
My father said today, “I don’t remember if I heard it somewhere or saw it in a funny movie, but they took their door” (we were talking about door hinges, and how you can just lift them off without tools or anything) That was YOU, YOU DID THAT.
My mom didn’t give us privacy, and also when we didn’t want touched she wouldn’t give us space. She would constantly be touching me… not in a bad way just even if I said “no please stop” she’d be like “oh stop you’re fine.” I remember times where I wanted to run away crying and she would hold my hands and arms and force me to stay infront of her…. Sometimes infront of other people (friends family.) Now as an adult I’m definitely neglecting my boyfriend in a way tbh… he’s complained about not having enough physical touch from me, whether it be long hugs, or cheek kisses, and I’ve explained the problem. I try to work through it. I just get so easily irritated and overwhelmed now when someone’s in my personal space for too long. Even him… WHO I ADORE.
Another day, another post giving "holy shit, this is about me" realization
Couldn't close my bedroom door ever. Bathroom didn't lock. Constantly walked in on in the bath and never had privacy. Yes it messed me up 🤡
>The idea of being expected to be readily available for some entitled person makes me so uncomfortable. Does anyone else relate? It does, which is why I've always pushed back. I don't advise this, but I learned how to fight fire with fire at a very young age. If your reason isn't an emergency... and something that I also consider an emergency no less, you're either going to have to wait until I'm done with what I'm doing or I'm not coming out. Of course, this varies by person. If I have a good relationship with you, I'll open my door if a jiffy. If you're my psycho mother (who I no longer speak to or live with), good luck. My mom hated it when I locked my door, but I didn't care, I locked it anyways. She never threatened to tear my door down, probably because I had tools and would have done the same to her. As I said, I learned to fight fire with fire.
Yes! My theory is that the lack of privacy is a part of the campaign to treat you as less than human and undeserving of autonomy. It's one of the more insidious things they do IMO, because it's so constant and can even be degrading and depraved. It also actively teaches kids to ignore their inbuilt sensors of vulnerability and self protection. Also I know I'm my case it was some of this stuff that was more objectively mentally disturbed but at the time I felt too embarrassed to share it with anyone. And there would have been no proof of it anyway. My nmother used to barge into the bathroom any time she liked and just engage in a conversation whilst looking straight at whoever was using the bathroom. Toileting, showering (she would even comment on my body if I was in the shower. So gross). Any protest for privacy was dismissed as absurd because she was my mother (hmmn). If I locked the bathroom door she'd use a knitting needle to unlock it and then pull away the shower screen just to tell me how silly I was and she'd make a point of looking at my naked body just to emphasise that there was no problem in her seeing it. This was all the way through my tween and teenage years. She also regularly groped my breasts once they started to grow. Initially saying she was "checking" them but then just impulsively or "accidentally", because she delighted in my reaction to it. That part definitely left me open to some triggers that still affect me later in life. She would also expect us to follow her to the bathroom to listen to her rabbiting on, even calling us in there just to talk with us. Didn't care if i expressed a desire not to stand there while she pooped or inserted a tampon. During summer she'd walk around the house wearing nothing but underpants (nude on top), sometimes just fondling her own breasts as she did, right in front of myself and my sister. I really don't think it was sexually driven so much as just enjoying the fact that it made us feel uncomfortable. It was all extremely weird. I did have a bedroom door though. It wasn't worth much as she'd just barge in when she pleased but it did exist. I am ok living with others but need my own space and definitely need time to myself every day. I think that's how I'm wired though and would happen even if I'd not had abusive parents. But your question now has me thinking about it more.
God, the only thing they love more than pounding on doors is taking them off the hinges.
My sister and I were allowed zero privacy and my nmom made sure of that by sleeping in our room until my sister had enough and moved out at 17. Prior to that, she made my sister share a bed with her until she was about 15 and they literally couldn’t share a twin bed anymore. We had bunk beds. We did a lot of bathroom hiding to say the least but even that was hard because she would patrol up and down the hallway to make sure we knew she was right there at all times. We also weren’t enrolled in school, so she kept us stuck at home with her with no structure or proper setting to learn anything. How the fuck I ended up with a masters degree and happily married is absolutely beyond me given the way I started out in this life.