hey everyone patrick t and li csw and welcome back to the channel and welcome back to another role play video in this video i'll be doing a role play about a codependent mother with the focus being on her codependency with a toxic husband and the role play is between a daughter and this highly co-dependent mother who is not real about or protects her children from a narcissistic husband who rages and the focus is not the codependency between the mother and the daughter although that could be a whole other video role play unto itself as we're just looking at the codependency between the mother and the toxic husband in a recent video that i did on flying monkeys the father in that role play is very similar to the codependent parent that i'm presenting today he's like the classic codependent soldier for a narcissistic wife in that video and this is sort of a very similar dynamic with the mother in this video if you're new to me or new to the channel welcome if you find this video helpful to you you can take a second hit the subscribe button the like button or share the content if you think that it's interesting and if you find these videos helpful to your recovery you can support the work that goes into this channel of this video as well as my social media links where we can connect so the scenario is here we go yo here we go yo um i have been dying to do that joke it's such a dad joke and i'm sorry don't delete me but i just had to so the scenario in this video is um a daughter calls her mom to try to challenge her about the father's rageful behavior at a recent family event which is the daughter's sister's baby shower and i'll run the role play in three parts first is the with the co-dependent mother as the mess of it sort of usually unfolds the second part is what the same scenario would look like with a healthy mother and the third part is where the daughter who would be more sort of boundary setting and empowered in this discussion and as always guys comments that point out that we shouldn't be making these calls to begin with with a mother like this are really judgy and not necessary everybody has to start somewhere and the point of these videos is to highlight how toxic these family dynamics are so that people can like look at it as a first step to the beginning to disengage so just wanted to put that out there so here we go and at the end of the video we'll do a recap about a little bit more of psychoeducation about what's going on for a mother like this hey honey i'm calling to get your friend kate's address i'm helping your sister put together the thank you notes from all the generous gifts from the baby shower yesterday hi mom yeah i think she's moved but i can text her later okay can you just let me know because i'd like to get these out sooner than later you know me yeah mom i can get it to you today you know mom did did you talk to dad at all about what he did in front of everybody yesterday like the screaming and the swearing about the cars i don't think he saw that i had to go cry in the bathroom when he started screaming like that that he was blocked in oh honey he was just upset you know how old he is he was blocked from all your sister's friends cars in the driveway and on the street yeah but but mom he made us all so uncomfortable and you know like poor jill was shaking when she realized it was her car behind his and he kept swearing and screaming about it oh i think she was all right she said such lovely things about how we put the shower together when she left mom she was freaked out and left early honey why are we talking about this i think everyone had a great time didn't you no no i don't think you're hearing me dad threw a rage tantrum because he hates having any guests in the house or god forbid her schedule gets interrupted that's why i was offering to have the shower at my place mom oh you know how your father is you know he just gets upset and you know so what you know i spent years trying to get out of his way and he just forgets about it but mom that's not normal he gets abusive geez you know i think you have a lot to learn about marriage honey i just understand your father better you know i think i understand him more than anyone else does he gets a little bit cranky and it's just best to not fight with him and you just kind of get out of his way so you see nothing wrong with that you saw nothing wrong with what happened yesterday or what he did at my graduation or how inappropriate he gets when i had to introduce michael to you guys and mom dismissed next door moved because they were done with dad going into rages about the property line and the mowing remember i don't know why we're talking about this i just asked you nicely to get kate's address to get the thank you cards out honey the smith couldn't work with your father about the grass listen you need to understand that he's a complicated person but he's got a really good heart and i don't know why people just don't see that he's provided for us all throughout these years and where would any of us be without him watch what i do with him you know he gets cranky but he usually has a good point and he just likes it when you agree with him it helps him not get so upset and you just make the situation better jill immediately apologized she quickly moved her car and she was fine and easy peasy i don't understand what's so hard for you about that mom that's not the point honey the point is is you have a lot to learn about your father why do you always have to push the issue with him you always made it so much worse for yourself growing up i never understood why you upset the apple cart so much i think that that's just your personality and it just doesn't jive with his i always watched you lose when it came to him well mom if you knew i kept losing why didn't you ever say anything or talk to me about it or help i thought i was helping i didn't want to get in the way between the two of you i'd be making waves when the two of you can figure it out i was just hoping that you'd eventually learn that you know no one's perfect and it's helpful to everyone to just work with what you got and see the good in people honey he loves you deep down he loves us all honestly i think it's cute when he gets cranky like that it's like a little boy needing a nap okay okay mom you know maybe it's me you know there was a lot of people in the house yesterday i'm most stressed oh see you know easy peasy you know i'll talk to you later about kate address okay all right hey honey i'm calling to check in with you about yesterday that was awful and i'm so embarrassed i'm so sorry about the scene he made and i'm totally disgusted with him hi mom i knew having the shower with him there was a mistake i'm sorry i should have listened to you and listen to my god he can't be trusted to not ruin things and especially his important moments i couldn't sleep last night i kept thinking about poor jill shaking about the car in the driveway you must be livid sweetie your sister and i broke down after we left and all of her friends were so freaked out i am livid mom and mom i love you but i'm sorry but i can't be involved with dad anymore it breaks my heart to see what he does to you and what he does to all of us it's just too toxic oh honey i get it you know of course of course it's taken me years but i'm finally seeing it now and i'm sorry for not seeing it sooner ever since you were litter i think you were trying to tell me that but i couldn't handle you telling me i'm so sorry i needed things to stay afloat and that was selfish of me mom i really really appreciate you saying that what are you gonna do well i didn't tell you yet but i've started to see a therapist and i'm reading this book called codependent no more it's like this woman knows my life and i'm also talking to my sister about maybe moving in with her for a little while before i move forward with a divorce mom that's incredible i'm so proud of you does dad know you're doing that not yet but i'm only learning to get real and speak my truth from the therapist but i'm also learning that you've tried harder than i have to get me to this point i think i know what you mean mom but you know you can just leave now if you wanted to you're welcome to stay with us tonight you're sweet honey but that's what i mean i don't think it's good for you to take care of me or be such a big part of helping me or trying to get me out of this you've been so much more aware of this when i should have been this is my responsibility now i need to do this on my own and take action how about i tell you what my next steps are when it's done
i don't want you to have to take care of me that's my job you know your father will react like he reacts to everything else so i'm learning that it doesn't really matter if i go versus i stay he's miserable either way which is kind of the good news i guess mom that's so true go mom you sound amazing i'm not out of the woods yet you know but i've been codependent for so long that i'm learning that i'm just building up to leaving which is a process um and it's progress
are you sure you don't need anything though i think i just need you to sit tight and think if there's more stuff you need to tell me about like not how i've made you feel about how i've had my head in the sand for so long i need to hear that i didn't protect you at all
mom it might be hard to say that stuff but you've already given me everything that i need right now well good how about i call you in a few days about how it's going i love you i love you too hey honey i'm calling to get your friend kate's address i'm helping your sister put together the thank you notes from all the generous gifts from the baby shower yesterday hi mom we need to talk about yesterday oh oh honey what do we need to talk about
don't do that mom dad made a scene and freaked everyone out because he can't manage his own rage and he thinks family life should be done without him that's what about him he was just upset you know how he is and he likes to have the house to ourselves and we blocked him in from all the guest parking he had a point honey he made everyone uncomfortable mom jill was shaking when she realized it was her car behind his and he just kept swearing and screaming at a baby shower for his first grant come on she was all right and you know she said such lovely things about how we put the shower together when she left
mom she was freaked out and left early that was her trying to take care of you why are we talking about this i think everyone had a great time didn't you no mom i didn't i had to cry in the bathroom in fact it's gotten so bad i'm not gonna be involved with dad anymore he's volatile and you aren't real about it you can't just not be involved with your own father that's preposterous and it'll only complicate things for everyone else you know how your father is he was just upset so what i spent years trying to get out of his way and he forgets about it i don't get what's so hard about that he's abusive no i think you have a lot to learn about marriage i just understand your father better i think i understand him more than anyone else does he gets a little cranky and it's best to just not fight with him or get in his way
mom it makes me sad that you don't see your part in this you're a co-dependent mom you make excuses for him and you don't see how abusive he is you're fine with him being abusive now and you were fine all the way through our child geez you know i don't know why we're talking about this i just asked you nicely to get to kate's address just to get the thank you cards out i will say you've always made things harder on yourself with him yesterday i was reminding everybody to just have a good time and enjoy the moment how mom do you think that more onion dip helps distract everybody from the raging lunatics swearing at us about who owns the great camry in the driveway
look jill immediately apologized and quickly moved her car and we were all fine what's the problem mom you're not real about him because you'd have to feel embarrassment and shame about it you'd also have to feel how responsible you are for what he does in this family i think i'm quite real and responsible you have a lot to learn about your father you always tried to push your issues with him you always made it so much worse for yourself i've never understood why you upset the apple cart so much i think that's just your personality and it just doesn't drive with it look mom we're going in circles you're trying to get me to feel like what happened yesterday was no big deal and that i'm causing the problem and it's not happening i'm not involving myself with dad anymore and you're committed to put your head in the sand about it the abuse and i'm done trying to convince you also i'm setting a boundary with you you no longer get to preach to me about how i don't handle my abusive father like you do you don't handle him you enable him and you placate him and then you act superior to people who are generally scared of him that is so gross listen honey you're upset and i think it's best if we talk later this week you know why don't i get kate's address for me i gotta go mom we're done bye so there you have it and i just want to talk a little bit about some of you may be wondering when you when you see that role play play out and this codependent mother some of you may be wondering is that covert narcissism is that something else like what is going on there and this is what makes the codependent parent like this who is morally superior and super polite very tricky to sort of understand but there is a lot of mental health issues going on underneath but i don't see somebody like this as sort of falling into the realm of cluster b symptoms what i do see or what is usually how my brain works about a mother like this is that somewhere down the line in this woman's history she became extremely compartmentalized and driven by repressed exiled shame and that for me would fall into sort of complex post-traumatic stress disorder something i think happened to this woman or she learned how to be like this and what's hard about it is they're so compartmentalized which i'll explain in a second that they really come across as like um really well put together they come across as really like having it together and they as you could see in that video like she's sort of instructing like why can't you be like me everything works for me so that's what i mean about it com i see this mother as being highly compartmentalized and if you're familiar with a japanese bento box it's like a lunch box it's sort of like a or a cafeteria tray where the there's walls around the compartments where everything kind of goes into is that's i know that's a weird analogy but that's how i would see a mother's sort of emotional experience like this where the party and the father's behavior are totally separate they are totally walled off and she has her head so far in the sand are so removed from the situation that they do not add up she is not able to sort of really be real about everyone being freaked out at the party about what the father was doing and that actually keeps her emotionally sort of stable and she doesn't have to feel anything bad if the two things are separated when someone is compartmentalized like they may have an extreme sort of religious experience but they may all you know a moral religious experience but they may also be it'll be a sex addict and those two things don't overlap i'm not trying to be funny about it i just mean that the person um is they kind of know what's going on but they live like a double life they live a very sort of um separated experience so complex uh cptsd complex post-traumatic stress disorder and cluster b symptoms if coming back to the confusion about watching this there's a lot of overlap to those two things and i could do a whole video series on that and that is on my list of things to do so it's not really accurate i think to look at sort of someone like this as having sort of cluster b symptoms i would be looking at their childhood trauma history to figure out where did they learn to be so compartmentalized and so removed from their shame and what i mean by exiled shame or being removed from their shame is a mother like this will never let up on that she had any involvement in it or needs to be doing anything sort of different about it and um where this does kind of align with with cluster b symptoms is being exiled from shame is shame still runs the person for example a narcissist needs to tell you up front how great they are because underneath way underneath all that stuff they are not connected with this issue at all is there some shame in there or vulnerability in there that they have to tell you but they will most likely never make that connection between the shame and the behavior and what's driving them and that's i see the mother in a similar way to this is sort of shame being what what kind of shame could be sort of running her is the shame of sort of maybe this mother grew up in an extremely abusive chaotic environment or had to pick between a violent sort of mother and another sort of thing like we're picking and choosing compartmentalize i know i'm rambling here but i think that these this kind of codependency just doesn't happen in a vacuum i think that someone would something would have happened to this person but it's frustrating because they will never let up to anything being wrong about their family system or whatever another type of codependency that is similar um to the issue of codependency is what i call viciously codependent like the mother could have been very attacking with a knife out about like you you respect your father and i can't believe you and they will even further be more into cahoots with sort of the drama around the narcissistic sort of spouse i see this in a similar dynamic like let's just say there is a family system the mother is viciously codependent and then one of the other family members has a substance abuse problem and the viciously codependent person will take over the recovery of the substance abuse person and sort of say in a similar way i'm the only person that understands you know this this family member their mind everyone else is a jerk everyone else has got it wrong even the clinicians that's what i mean about viciously codependent which is sort of in the realm of this sort of stuff and again it's confusing about whether that's cluster b or trauma but that's another similar presentation to this well i hope that this video was enlightening to you guys are helpful this is a very tricky presentation to make sense around because usually when you're on the receiving end of it like in that first role play you just feel like you're a jerk you just feel like you've got it wrong and they've got it right you just feel like you've done you know like you just feel like what you see and what your emotions are or don't line up when the daughter was correct to be like what the f with dad and the mother just totally took that reality away because she was compartmentalized so um as always guys there'll be a clinical analysis following this video at some point
