Boundaries that are reasonable

I very much appreciate your insight and ability to articulate both sides. I can only imagine what it must be like to parent a child with SMI. It does scare me a little to hear you say that this behavior from my in-laws is normal. The guilt trips, yelling, emotional manipulation and demands that we ignore medical advice in order to include my sister in law doesn’t feel normal or healthy to me.

I fear that as they get older (they are in their 70s) the situation will get worse. I’m also scared of what happens when they are gone since there is no plan in place for the future. We’ve started a special needs trust and I fund it monthly with what we can, and we’ve talked to lawyers and collected what they recommended for an eventual guardianship petition. But otherwise all we can do is sit and watch the situation deteriorating.

It also scares me that I can’t tell what boundary, if any, my in laws would accept. If being unmedicated and escalating to physical violence is not enough for them to accept she can’t be around our kids, what would be? She’s injured them already - what has to happen before they stop pushing? I’m honestly afraid they will only accept boundaries if something really bad happens.

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Thank you for this! Sometimes because of the family dynamics I feel like I’m the odd person out and the one who is being unreasonable.

One core issue is that they refuse to acknowledge that hitting them is violent behavior. During our last visit sister in law walked up to her dad and punched him in the head. When he told my mother in law she replied “no she didn’t hit you! That didn’t happen!” Even though we all saw it. It became this unbelievable conversation where he kept telling her sister in law has been hitting him and she kept saying it wasn’t true. My mother in law just can’t accept reality and that’s why I don’t trust her judgment - she’s desperate for things to be different and seems to have resorted to denying anything that’s too painful for her to deal with. And expecting everyone around her to do the same.

I hear you. And the word “denial” suns up how many if us feel when our lived ones assault others.

My 52- year-old son now lives on a Group Home.

He doesn’t recall:

  • Chocking/smashing family members

-Abusive sexual behaviors with family

I can’t go on. It would take up a lot of your time.

-I was in denial about his behavior for a long time.

   IT is SHOCKING!!!

This site is a good support and vent for those of us who struggle, often helpless with our SZ loved ones.

It also is very beneficial to have a professional councelor outside of the Family.

:broken_heart::broken_heart::broken_heart::heart::broken_heart::broken_heart::broken_heart:from Vermont​:sunny::sunny::sunny:

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I’m so sorry for what you, your son and family are going through. It is heartbreaking.

@BDinVA1 Our stories are so similar.

My parents were neuro diverse with bipolar, its a large family, I also have two bipolar siblings. Nobody in my family even believed me that things in our family were wildly wrong until one of my siblings had a severe manic episode threatening to kill his boss and his boss’ children and ended up diagnosed with bipolar. I grew up in the middle of constant storms and the storms in my original family have never stopped.

My husband’s mom was neuro diverse with schizophrenia and like my family, there was no label in place. I thought my MIL was simply an extreme alcoholic who said and did ridiculously mean things. They thought their family was normal and my husband and I did disagree about his parents and boundaries. I hated visiting my inlaws and I really hated having my children exposed to them.

It makes sense that my husband and I found each other at a young age, neither of us ever wanted to go home. We got married, moved to a town nearby and set up our own lives away from our families. His family didn’t seem to notice he was missing until our children arrived. At that point they demanded we spend part of holidays with them. We were already heavily limiting the exposure my family had to our kids.

I was fortunate, my husband agreed that we needed to get away from both families and give our children a different life. We moved across the country and loved it. Trips back to see family were rare and very messy. A lot of anger was always directed our way from his mother and my husband asked that I endure the abuse.

We are still glad we moved our children away from our families. It was probably the best decision we made in our lives.

At a certain point, I grew stronger and I refused to endure anymore personal verbal attacks from my MIL. My husband would go by himself to see them. The children were jr high age and initially went with him for short visits. After a couple of visits, both refused to join him on the visits.

I kept my children further away from my family. My husband was far more sympathetic to his parents than I was towards my parents and siblings.

Of course, as neurodiversity is genetic, we discovered you can run, but you cannot hide. Our son developed schizophrenia while he was in college. When I was young I wanted to have lots of children, that would have been a mistake.

I treated my MIL quite differently late in her life. She developed vascular dementia and an entirely different personality. She even called herself by a different name. My husband ended up her guardian and we made sure she had good care.

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Your story sounds so familiar. I am lucky that the storms in my family of origin stopped when I was in my 20s and my father got medicated and started therapy. But growing up I remember hiding with my siblings as soon as we heard his car door slam when he got home. Living for 15 years with the sudden anger and outbursts, verbal abuse and fear left scars. It also taught us all a very toxic lesson that in the name of “family” we had to endure mistreatment and be around people who scared us, even if we didn’t want to be. That’s a horrible lesson to teach a young child and one that I won’t impose on my kids. Just because someone is family doesn’t mean you have to be their physical or emotional punching bag, even if they are sick and the illness is the cause of the behavior. I wish I had learned that lesson much sooner in life. My 2.5 year old is already afraid of my sister in law, especially after seeing her yelling about stealing organs and hitting her dad. He’s too young to understand she’s sick and I won’t force him to be scared because my in-laws want to play happy family.

How did you help your husband understand that asking you to endure mistreatment wasn’t ok? Were you able to keep your kids away until they were in junior high? Your path seems so similar to what I’m trying to navigate now - any advice you have would be so appreciated.

You have written my family’s creed in that sentence. And always, always, in my family, the complaining person is in the wrong and they are vilified.

I don’t think my husband ever did understand I was being mistreated - he and his family “normalized” his mom’s behavior until she was finally diagnosed in her 70’s. I had to claim the right to not be exposed to it for myself and my children. Moving across the country when the kids were less than 3 years old was brilliant for us. We rarely went “home” we took vacations with our children to other places besides our parents’ homes. We had holiday celebrations with just the 4 of us. That may not be feasible for your situation.

The thing that changed was that I grew stronger and calmer. I didn’t need to convince anyone, I knew it was the right thing for the situation and I held my position.

That’s exactly the right word “normalized”. That’s what my in-laws have done and it’s now so normal to them that they don’t realize how dysfunctional and unhealthy the situation is. As a result they demand that others normalize the same behavior and get upset at anyone that doesn’t go along with it. They are adults and have every right to decide what they will tolerate. But I have the same right. And they ad grandparents, have no right to dictate what my children “must” do. Honestly I’m getting to the point where moving across the country sounds like a great idea.

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Well it didn’t take long for my in-laws to rewrite things again. Despite multiple family members having witnessed the hitting over the course of several months they are now saying it “only happened 1 or 2 times”, which we all know is a lie. However, someone must have called it in because a social worker showed up at the house to check on them (another thing they tried to hide) and told them to document the hitting to get SIL help and protect themselves. They said they would “next time”.

At that point I told them that I knew she wasn’t medicated and that she was hitting them, and that we will not take the boys to see them anymore so long as SIL is living there and not med/treatment compliant. They immediately started saying they had booked a trip to see us (without asking) and were bringing her. I told them they were welcomed but she was not. If they continue to choose not to visit unless SIL is included then they are choosing not to see their grandkids, I’m not “keeping the boys from them”. It is sad, but she is not a safe person and I cannot trust the judgement of 2 people that are so deeply in denial and rewriting history.

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@BDinVA1 You are right. They are wrong. Your SIL and that family have rights. But those rights end when your family’s rights have been abused.

I’ve faced the same situation from the other side. Meaning when our son (now properly diagnosed and medicated) was younger, and clearly out of control, I had my own brother questioning my other kid’s safety. And questioning his kids around my violent son.

I took such offense. How could he not be compassionate?!? How could he not see we were doing our best?? We’re all barely holding it together and my own brother questions me?

Sucked. Be he was right. Took me awhile to accept. And it will take your family awhile as well. But, you are 100% in the right. Stay strong.

P.S. I would encourage an extra dose of compassion from you in communications with them. Even though you are right, simply keep the dialogue civil and calm. They are in denial but they will need to reach that enlightenment on their own. Take the high road. Explain the boundaries without drama. #lovewins

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Thank you @Sando

I am trying to do what you say and keep discussions civil and compassionate. Half of my time in therapy is spent on fighting compassion fatigue (they have not been kind in how they talk about me to the rest of the family) and to keep resentment at bay (we are expected to accept whatever they do and never question it, but also to take in SIL in the future). I’ve found the best thing to keep my emotions in check is to come up with a simple, matter of fact statement and just repeat it word for word every time they push. I sound like a broken record, but it keeps me grounded and maybe if I repeat myself enough the message will get through.

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Dear sasone2one I’d like to know as well where the voices come from and your source of information; in my son’s case I kind of know where the voices come from; obviously from within, confusion and trauma.

I’d like to know what to respond to my son when he’s screaming in the bathroom all those things that are scary for him and everyone else; by now after so many hospitalizations and the same type of education from the stuff when he lands there he has learned to ‘go along’ but once he leaves the hospital he just doesn’t follow up as an outpatient.

I’d love to have you in my area! There’s is plenty of similarities but at the same time our response is unique.
I hope I can still learn how to communicate with him, it’s not easy for me and I believe that’s why you became a support worker. What are the main keys to survive the nightmare!

Love to hear from you.

Hugs :heart:

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When i worked out how voices occur, im going back around 20 years. I had lots of questions but the answers were not in one place i had to piece it all together and change the medical jargon used, by searching its meaning and changing it into an understandable language.
Starting with the adrenal gland situated in the stomach which reacts to stress. You get whats classed as good and bad adrenalin, the bad adrenalin builds up with constant stress which triggers glands in the brain to produce chemicals that build up in the brain fluid, the more stress the more chemicals which then causes an imblance in the brain fluid.
The brain fluid runs between the neurotransmitters that send messages from one to the other that controls everything we do, from movement to thinking, feeling pain etc. Under normal circumstances the messages go straight from one transmitter to another. To make it easy, imagine these messages are moving in a straight line.
We also have our subconcious memory where among other things our beliefs are stored, as well as life memories including traumas.
A part of our brain is called the brocas, the thinking part of the brain, like for example reciting the words of a song in our mind. The other part of the brain is the auditory cortex which is the hearing part of the brain, obviously when we hear sound.
The thinking and hearing part of the brain normally work independent of each other.
Now join together the subconcious part of the brain, the hearing part and thinking part of the brain. And go back to the chemical imblance in the brain fluid and neurotransmitters, the chemical imbalance causes distorted messages between the neurotransmitters so instead of the messages going in a straight line imagine they are gojng in a zig zag pattern. These distorted messages cause a short circuit between the thinking part of the brain and the hearing part of the brain and they activate together instead of separately. The thoughts come from the subconcious often linked to beliefs held by the individual combined with past trauma. One story i once read was to do with a male who had been sexually abused by an uncle as a child, as he got older he confided in his friends. He referred to his uncle as being a queer/gay, he eventually developed schizophrenia and started hearing voices. He thought because he had been abuse d by a male, his friends thought he was gay and they had told everyone he was. Apart from other voices he regularly heard peoples voices saying he was gay. To make sense of the contents of voices you need to know the persons background story and links to past trauma. I hope this makes sense and no l’m not an expert but i do did deep when i need to understand something. With my son I over the years i have slowly explained various things i have learnt and he has started to understand. But when he has what i call blips it can be difficult for him to grasp, but i always acknowledge the voices .are real and expkain they are not coming from where or who it appears to be coming from. I always tell him these are symptoms of an illness and the way he reacts to the symptoms are normal and no different than anyone would react. Hes not mad or crazy hes normal xx

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I’m not sure if this link wiĺl work, but here is one of my sources, you can register with them and receive emails on various topics eNews

Thank you sasone2one. I’ll look and register with them. This week has been very challenging for us, our son has been on the abilify maintena injection for 3 months but still delusional/hallucinating and other than trying to bear with him it’s next to impossible to be able to communicate with him since his mood is on the defense all the time. May your support keep on blessing many families, we need that kind in our community.

Thanks again for the link. :heart::two_hearts:

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My son has been on various medications the only one that seems to work for him is clozapine, which is used as a last resort. Xx

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Here is another link, sometimes when registering it will give a list of what proffesion you are. Just click on one, it doesnt really matter as all you are interested in is the information.
http://lb.toc.avesyayincilik.com/eu/v/cq/?i=6debab5cf1b1234196ec67efa22e7b5dc8b7de225d8538fef8fc44876dd9b853ff991c8f0a9bf4ac86f15ae5cf3dbfa5519221377e6f625da69c7048ce82b3170409e6cdf69885ba291ca06028e3ebbfd079b7a82a62d73e6a4c09f7ad82d2c326baa03377d3fe8086372adbf19c9e3c6fe50127c73c4f6c20e28ae235245f4b63fcf40b2927bfcbea649c2eb9311afd

Thank you so much for this link.
Have a good and blessed week! :heart:

Thank you so much for this explanation that was easy to understand. I will share this with my daughter that is SZ. I may copy it and keep it thank you for all your digging in and sharing.

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The first time i told my son about how voices occur, a drew a brain… it looked nothing like a brain so it was a rough sketch drawing a channel between the neutotransmitters to indicate the brain fluid. Adding in the subconcious, hearing and thinking part of the brain. When i had finished, he took a sigh of relief, as it also made sense to him. Its better to talk about these things when the person isnt getting a lot of symptoms in between the blips. I dont know why professionals don’t explain things like this to patients, instead of running with the symptoms. I often wonder if they are taught this sort of thing. I can only imagine how distressing hearing voices is, then those around saying they cant hearing them and they are not real. Im sure this would only add to their anxiety and make the symptoms worse x

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