Why do Ns refuse to acknowledge that they caused NC?

My mother does this too. She'll go batshit crazy and swear she hates me, call me repeatedly, literally screaming at me so loudly that I have to hold the phone away from my ear on low volume and I can hear her voice becoming hoarse over the course of the messages, it's that bad. Of course, I ignore her. Then a week later I'll get a phone call and she'll leave a message that is conversational and casual, as though she forgot all about her previous episodic rage.

It never made a lot of sense to me until I started thinking of my mother as a bratty child. I recommend you do the same because it helps a lot. In that context, I think of my mother's episodes as tantrums, and the calm after the storm is simply because, like a bratty child, she doesn't see anything wrong with her previous conduct and thinks everyone should just be able to move on - i.e. no consequences.

What do you do when a bratty child acts this way? You force them to be accountable for their actions. Of course, with a grown woman you cannot sit her down, explain why she's in trouble, and send her to time out. But when you reward your mother with attention - good or bad - when she is not showing signs of remorse and attempting to improve, then you are telling her that she does not have consequences and she does not have to stop her behavior. All she learns is that her behavior might earn her a month of silence, but soon enough things will be back to normal and she can continue being an abusive jackass.

Personally I got fed up with it. I've got too much going on and I've got a lot of loved ones in my life who treat me with respect and dignity with whom I'd rather spend my precious free time. I tried to set up boundaries for her but she continued to violate them so I cut down contact more and more, until for a while she was on very good behavior when talking to me, better behaved than she was around anyone else because she knew I wouldn't put up with one moment of her shit. But then she did it again. Maybe she was testing me, I don't know. I don't know what she expected to happen since I made my expectations quite clear to her. So, as promised, I went NC once and for all. The rest of the family - her husband, my sibling, etc - might continue to put up with her and enable her tantrums, but I won't do it.

/r/raisedbynarcissists Thread