advertisement
Reply
Thread Tools Display Modes
AmberShaman
Member
 
AmberShaman's Avatar
AmberShaman Is tired of unreliable people
 
Member Since: Mar 2019
Location: Dunno
Posts: 62
5 yr Member
25 hugs
given
Default Mar 24, 2019 at 02:14 PM
  #1
First of all I apologize if this isn't the right place to be posting on here. I'm on a smartphone which makes it kinda hard to browse.

The reason why I'm posting as the title indicates, is that my father recently passed on, and he had mental health issues his whole life. It's hard to pinpoint exactly who or what he was, but I'm certain he fit the cluster B category.

When he was alive, I was under the impression he had BPD. However after his passing, pandora's Box unraveled as I went through his things to find papers that we would need for the inheritance. I'm not mourning properly. I'm mourning the loss of someone who wasn't who I thought he was when he was alive, and I'm struggling to cope with the idea he didn't love us afterall, meaning my mom and I.

Why I concluded this is because, despite his suspicious behavior up until the last day of his life, I had no idea of who he truly was because he never allowed me in, and I didn't know he was seeing multiple women behind our backs, and placing more value in them than us, his own wife and his daughter. I'm hiding what I discovered after his passing from my mom, because she isn't that young anymore and is emotionally fragile from having been brainwashed her entire life with him.

While I haven't been mentally capable of going through all of his things yet, my discoveries after his passing have rattled me through my core. I feel like I've lived a lie my whole life. These women I highly suspect, were prostitutes. To one of them, he had been sending large amounts of money for -at least- 2 years, and she was my age to top it off, as if that wasn't a hard pill to swallow as is. Another he took on a trip to an Eastern country, while lying to everybody about it. He had suddenly to travel to the Emirates on the pretenses of a job prospect. And he said that lie to everybody around him; my mom, his friends and myself. But my mom found out he had lied and went to that Eastern country because he left the invoice of his hotel there; a 5 stars hotel might I add, laying around. When my mom confronted him, he tried to deny it, but she had irrefutable proof, so he asked her for a day before telling her the "truth". The next day he told her he went with his sister, which as I found out after his passing was far from the truth. He went there with an Ukrainian woman, whom he has sent money to as well.

While he was still living, I confronted him, and while unknowing of the truth I suspected he was lying. But I hadn't foreseen the depths of his deceitfulness. He seemed unable to make distinctions between me and my mom, and in his discourse "we" were judging him, we were this and we were that, that I very well knew my mom was unsufferable because I had had issues with her myself that drove a wedge between her and me. But these issues I've had with her were nothing like theirs. Essentially all he did say, even when I saw him in person was to manipulate me. I was aware of it at the time, but considering I felt he was at the end of his life, my reactions were tame as opposed to how I would have normally reacted.

At the end of his life, he had become obssessed with his physical appearance. He had been obese his whole life, eating what seemed like his inner turmoil away. So about 8 or 9 years ago he went through a gastric bypass surgery, and he lost a lot of weight. But because he was unable to prevent himself from eating compulsively, he regained some of his weight. And one day last year, without so much as letting us know anything he scheduled another surgery to readjust his bypass in his home country, not allowing us to be there for him. It is as if he truly despised us, and tried to make us look like we didn't love him, so he could spin his web of lies and appear to be a victim. Ultimately, his obsession with weight is what killed him. He lost about 30kgs in the span of 5 months. I told him he was too thin, but he denied it saying he was fine. Even a couple of hours before his passing, he told my mom that he was in great shape.

My half sister, my mom and I all suffered from the mental, emotional and physical abuse he put us through for decades. I became aware of the depths of the physical abuse he put my sister and my mom before I was born after his passing, because she spoke to me. My mom doesn't know that I know. Some of the abuse I went through as a child, I've occulted to myself and "forgot" or blocked it out. But I could never accept the way he treated us, so our relationship became strained early on, because I started to rebel and fight back. Also I found out, he abused a cat he had gotten my sister to make her forgive him for the physical abuse as though, sometimes he was capable of a degree of remorse and introspection; he broke the poor thing's leg from throwing it violently and that cat had to be taken to a vet.

I should also mention, that whenever my mom or I needed money, it was like pulling teeth, and the amounts were always limited. But he had no issues sending prostitutes over 10's of thousands of dollars some months. I feel we were objectified. He was incapable of showing me love or care as I grew up. The only way he knew how to was through buying me gifts, but even that stopped eventually. It made it easier to cope when he feigned a small degree of empathy or remorse for his actions. But now that he's dead, I'm convinced he was just incapable of love. All my life , I was under the impression he had been fighting his inner demons, but now I'm lost. I thought he was BPD, but after everything I've discovered since, I'm more inclined to believe he was NPD or ASPD.

Being unable to know, having no closure on that has been eating up at me, on top of knowing he never ever cared about me and that I was just an accessory in his life (something I told him a couple weeks before his passing, to which he said my reproaches were nonesensical and that I wasn't understanding.) I've been mourning the loss of someone that didn't exist, something I could never have, and that was my father.

Mainly, what I'm trying to find here is some perspective from outsiders, because Cluster B disorders seem hard to distinguish from each other, with traits overlapping. I feel this could help me mourn in a healthier way if I knew what he was, and knowing others went through something similar might help me keep what little sanity I have left...
AmberShaman is offline   Reply With QuoteReply With Quote
 
Hugs from:
nonightowl, zapatoes

advertisement
Skeezyks
Disreputable Old Troll
 
Skeezyks's Avatar
Skeezyks has no updates.
 
Member Since: Oct 2015
Location: The Star of the North
Posts: 32,762 (SuperPoster!)
8 yr Member
17.4k hugs
given
PC PoohBah!
Smile Mar 25, 2019 at 07:31 PM
  #2
Thank you for sharing this difficult story. I'm sorry there's really nothing I myself can offer with regard to this. But I noticed no one else had yet replied to your post. So I thought I would. Here are links to 5 articles, from PC's archives, that compare NPD & ASPD as well as NPD, ASPD & BPD. Perhaps this can be of some help with sorting out what may have been behind your father's behavior:

Comparing Narcissism to Antisocial Personality Disorder

What's the difference between a narcissist, sociopath, and borderline?

The Differences Between Abusers with Narcissistic Personality Disorder vs. Borderline Personality Disorder

Are You Dealing with a Sociopath or a Narcissist?

How to Differentiate between Different Personality Disorders | The Exhausted Woman

My best wishes to you...

__________________
"I may be older but I am not wise / I'm still a child's grown-up disguise / and I never can tell you what you want to know / You will find out as you go." (from: "A Nightengale's Lullaby" - Julie Last)
Skeezyks is offline   Reply With QuoteReply With Quote
 
Thanks for this!
AmberShaman
AmberShaman
Member
 
AmberShaman's Avatar
AmberShaman Is tired of unreliable people
 
Member Since: Mar 2019
Location: Dunno
Posts: 62
5 yr Member
25 hugs
given
Default Mar 26, 2019 at 02:37 AM
  #3
Thank you Skeezyks

It's still hard for me to discern objetively what he was, because there are so many symptoms overlapping. For example public outbursts which is something that made me think he was BPD is something he was prone to, but apparently it can happen with NPD or ASPD too, so I'm lost really
AmberShaman is offline   Reply With QuoteReply With Quote
Anonymous56789
Guest
Anonymous56789 has no updates. Edit
 
Posts: n/a
Default Mar 26, 2019 at 08:02 PM
  #4
He sounds like was someone who suffered childhood trauma. People turn out different from trauma, but not having the capacity for love is a common trait. If I were to pick one, I'd pick NPD. I don't think it matters because you are describing symptoms that come out of someone's inner world. It's the inner world, which doesn't get assigned a diagnosis, that's what is wrong .

You described feeling objectified. That's something I've frequently felt around someone antisocial and another NPD, but those who have dependency issues can also provoke similar feelings in others just the same.
  Reply With QuoteReply With Quote
AmberShaman
Member
 
AmberShaman's Avatar
AmberShaman Is tired of unreliable people
 
Member Since: Mar 2019
Location: Dunno
Posts: 62
5 yr Member
25 hugs
given
Default Mar 27, 2019 at 12:43 AM
  #5
Hi octoberful,

Childhood trauma is 100% sure. He didn't open up to me, but he has sometimes with my mom. But I don't know if everything he said was true. What I know for sure, is what I experienced myself with my grand parents, and how his siblings turned out. They've all been traumatized, with some developing personality disorders. I'm under the impression only one of them isn't disordered but it's too soon to tell.

For over 20 years I hadn't heard anything about them, by the way. It's at his passing, that they deemed it was time to include me in the family again. They claim it was my father's doing. I can believe it to a certain degree but not completely. I was shunned as his kid by my grand mother who had a very strong hold over him, and abused him. What I mean by this, is I feel I was treated on equal terms as him by proxy. She hasn't laid a hand on me (that I can recall), but my experience with her and her children, sort of echoes what he was telling my mom about his childhood. He wasn't the favorite, and therefore my cousins were always getting better treatment than me.

Now that he passed on, some of them claim he was s fsvorite of my grand mother. It's very easy to say things like that, now that he can't defend himself.

It doesn't help that he grew up in a war torn country, and lost his older brother very young (on top of how he grew up at home, with an unloving and abusive mother). Those are my conclusions, because he never told me anything himself.

Even though a lot of times, he seemed to display a blatant lack of empathy, I struggle to conclude whether it was simply a result of the culture he was raised in (machist and patriarchal), or if he was actually capable of feeling something, at least for us. He reproduced a lot of what he saw in his childhood. For instance, he'd get into a rage where he'd insult us, and after a very short time span, would try to act like nothing happened. His mother was doing that a lot and this is first hand experience from me. At times, it seemed like he genuinely feel something, he seemed to like affection and was demanding of it, and he seemed like he wsd capable of remorseful reactions when he misbehaved. It could have been an act, because what I discovered after his passing is obvious proof that he could go far in his lies...

To me, it's as though the older he became, the worse his mental issues got. At least, he was less physically violent as he aged, but he'd start yelling about the stupidest things and insult more often, and insist he was never at fault for anything, he wouldn't take responsibility for a lot of the wrong that he was doing. However, sometimes he indirectly acknowledged his past errors. For instance, he could never keep a job for more than a few years, so even if he was brilliant at it, he would self sabotage his career through his interpersonal relationships with other employees. He told my mom that he was going to behave at his last few jobs, but his need to find flaws in others and being unable to trust anyone is what ultimately made him lose his positions...

Last edited by AmberShaman; Mar 27, 2019 at 01:07 AM..
AmberShaman is offline   Reply With QuoteReply With Quote
AmberShaman
Member
 
AmberShaman's Avatar
AmberShaman Is tired of unreliable people
 
Member Since: Mar 2019
Location: Dunno
Posts: 62
5 yr Member
25 hugs
given
Default Apr 03, 2019 at 06:48 AM
  #6
I had a bit of a talk with my aunt the other day. She explained some things, trying to explain the statement the other sister had made in regards to my father.

According to her, even though he was abused like the others, my grand mother had an unhealthy overprotective tendency with him, because he'd become prone to aggressive and violent tendency early on (I suspect early abandonment and lack of affection because his next brother was born not even a year later). So instead of letting him figure out things by himself, she'd tell his siblings to do this and get that for him.

This would make sense with his sense of specialness and entitlement later on as an adult. He had this cognitive dissonance where often he'd complain that he was always doing everything for everyone... Yet in his need for control would take over any task that he could do for others.

Another thing that is a little weird is his parenting style or ñack thereof. He was very lax over some things, (the way I looked or dressed, he never said anything much critical), when I started getting piercings and tattoos, he never said a thing about it, my mom was worse than him in that regard... My T thinks he likely had a mix of disorders and it's going to be hard to be sure...
AmberShaman is offline   Reply With QuoteReply With Quote
All times are GMT -5. The time now is 10:42 AM.
Powered by vBulletin® — Copyright © 2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.



 

My Support Forums

My Support Forums is the online community that was originally begun as the Psych Central Forums in 2001. It now runs as an independent self-help support group community for mental health, personality, and psychological issues and is overseen by a group of dedicated, caring volunteers from around the world.

 

Helplines and Lifelines

The material on this site is for informational purposes only, and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis or treatment provided by a qualified health care provider.

Always consult your doctor or mental health professional before trying anything you read here.