My parent always had a number of narcissistic traits, but was never a full-blown narcissist. They (singular) supported me financially and always seemed to legitimately care about how well I was doing academically and professionally. However, they had a habit of lowering my status by verbally critiquing my actions, and sometimes made odd demands of me, such as demanding that I share some of my passwords with them, or demanding that they be present every time I go to the doctor (I’m 25).
Right now, I think that I’m either going to severely limit contact with my parent, or cut contact completely. I think that cutting contact completely is likely to be more pleasant and easier on me, but I’m really not sure about that yet. I’ve had a few family members tell me that I’m obligated to keep in touch with my parent. Since LW is my in-group, and since I share lots of values with the kind of people who tend to post here, I’d prefer to get advice here, rather than elsewhere. Specifically, I’m not sure if I have a familial obligation to remain in contact with my parent, given that they’ve only been somewhat emotionally abusive to me; it’s probable that they don’t even realize/ are incapable of realizing that I find their treatment of me to be hurtful. Do you think that I have any such obligation?
Complicating factor: if maintaining a good relationship with my parent might slightly increase the amount I expect to be able to donate to effective charities at the cost of (in expectation) making me less happy, does this change my obligations?
I was in a similar situation with my parents in my early 20s (although their motivations and characteristics were probably very different). Looking back I think they were not ready to deal with my independence (I was the oldest) and tried to deal with things in the same way they did when I was a child. Your mention of medical appointments really rang a bell with me—my parents did the same and this made me perhaps the most uncomfortable of all.
In my case, severely limiting contact was a highly successful approach. I didn’t do this explicitly; we had no conversation “I am limiting my contact with you”. I took a job in a different place, got my own (tiny, horrible) room in a shared flat and just started being more independent in my life. I must admit I used the workload of my new job as a convenient excuse to limit contact—just the occasional phone call to let them know how things were going (back in those days my parents didn’t have email). I also didn’t visit nearly as often as before—I found myself reverting back to a teenage mentality, they would treat me like a child, I would get very angry/upset.
Now many years later (I’m approaching 50) I have a somewhat positive relationship with both parents—perhaps in large part because I live in a different country. After a lot of time had passed we were able to discuss the earlier issues more dispassionately (although not entirely) & get a better understanding of each other’s motivations.
Instead of simply cutting contact you can tell your parents how you want to be treated. As long as they are willing to act that way you interact with them. If they don’t then you don’t and you retry after half a year.
Clearly explicitly communicating your personal boundaries isn’t easy but it’s a very important skill. It’s a challenge that provides a lot of personal growth.
I’d add a warning here that this may require “eternal vigilance”. Just because the personal boundaries were clearly communicated and respected today, it does not automatically mean that the parents will respect them tomorrow, if they will feel the greatest threat is gone and one is losing their original momentum.
Agreed. If you’re not willing to say “Nope, you crossed the line. See you next time, I’ll decide when that is, goodbye” (or similar) and leave (cut them off to whatever degree is needed to stop the harmful behavior), then you need to not give them an opportunity to start again. If you are willing to do so, though, or some other approach to ensuring your boundaries are respected, go ahead.
For the record, while I have a pretty good relationship with both my parents, I do not buy the line that a person always has an obligation to their parents. Sure, there usually is one, but your parent(s) put a finite amount of utility into your life, and negative utility is a thing. Parents trying to run the lives of their adult offspring drives me up a wall. Unless there’s something unusual about your capacity for self-reliance, at 25 you should not be living under anybody’s thumb to the degree described even without the negatives such as undesired/inappropriate criticism.
Agreed. If you’re not willing to say “Nope, you crossed the line. See you next time, I’ll decide when that is, goodbye” (or similar) and leave (cut them off to whatever degree is needed to stop the harmful behavior), then you need to not give them an opportunity to start again.
Yes, that’s important. You actually have assert boundaries and simply communicating them might not be enough.
At the same time it’s very valuable to go through the experience of asserting those boundaries.
Parental relationships do have a strong effect on the human psychological system.
Everything in this chain of comments has now been proven true in my particular case. Thank you for the advice. This bit sums it up pretty well:
Instead of simply cutting contact you can tell your parents how you want to be treated. As long as they are willing to act that way you interact with them. If they don’t then you don’t and you retry after half a year.
Clearly explicitly communicating your personal boundaries isn’t easy but it’s a very important skill. It’s a challenge that provides a lot of personal growth.
My parent always had a number of narcissistic traits, but was never a full-blown narcissist.
Narcissism is one of the “Cluster B” personality disorders. Other disorders have some similarities and some differences. (I don’t even know if they are clearly separated in the territory. The psychological definitions keep changing.) So if there seems to be a serious issue, but it only partially fits the definition of narcissism, and partially it doesn’t, maybe it is something else. My quick uneducated guess would be borderline personality disorder.
If you are not sure what to do, maybe it would be better to not burn the bridges, only build clear fences. (You can still burn the bridges later if you decide to, but maybe with good fences it will not be necessary.) For example, move to your own place, and visit your parent once in a month, for an hour or two. Also decide which parts of your life you don’t want to share with them, and simply don’t talk about it. Maybe find a topic that is not painful for you, and always switch to that one (e.g. talk about work, or news, or latest science; don’t talk about your health and relationships). Maybe this will work.
Complicating factor
Uhm, I think your decision should not be influenced by this. Solve your personal problems first, optimize the world later. (Having your personal problems unsolved will also harm your world-optimizing abilities.)
My first question is the social equivalent of asking whether you’ve turned your computer off and on again: Have you spoken with your parent about this? No matter how unpleasant it may be (turning my computer off and on again is a chore :P), it is a good first thought when it comes to interpersonal issues, and one I would highly suggest, especially as by your words they do not seem to be aware of how they’re hurting you with their lack of trust.
The answer to your questions depends mainly upon your values. How much do you value your family? How much do you value (close) non-members of your family? If the amount that you value each of those is similar, ask yourself instead if your obligation toward a friend would prevent you from breaking contact with them if they were (seemingly) toxic to you as your parent is.
The obligation you have to maintain in touch with your parent depends mainly upon: how much you value them; how much you value those that would judge you poorly based upon your disownment of them; and how much of your identity is tied up in the situation. I find myself personally incapable of ending a somewhat toxic friendship with two people I care deeply about because it would be difficult for me to fathom not having their company at times, and I don’t want to see myself as the kind of person that would be willing to abandon them for their issues.
Regarding the complicating factor, there’s a lot that would go into a cost-benefit analysis. How much do you value your happiness compared to what the small amount of money you contribute might do? How do you factor in how poorly the stress affects your health? You might get sick because of a compromised immune system because of how stressed you are. Or you might die five years younger, and your charity of choice would lose those years of income. Regardless, I don’t think that it should factor too much into your decision, though that’s more a personal belief than anything.
Feel free to answer any of these questions, or not. I provided them more to give you food for thought.
I’ve also been raised by a parent who was similar to what you described, and have navigated the issue to my liking. I hope what I have found to be a good way to analyze the situation proves useful for yours.
First I might suggest not only considering two options. Might be a better third, in the “middle” somewhere. Now to address your first question; familial obligation. A lot of people start to treat the concept like it is selectively separate from where you in particular are feeling lacking, and end up with a floating belief that says you should stick with family no matter what. But, like your intuitions are pointing out to you, the concept does have real weight, through your interactions. You only need heed familial obligation as much as it is heeded by the other party. If you can take that and run with it, good for you.
If you want a more thorough suggestion, the following is how I came to judge my own relationships. Second question is following, if tl;dr
What is the net balance of interactions?; Here you can consider if you are better off, or not, as a whole. From your entry I suspect your parents feel like a net loss (You have my sympathies, I really hated this being a fact with me). You can also consider trying to isolate portions of the relationship you favor and avoiding situations that hurt. Shabby example being to not tell your parents when appointments are, if you could manage it, but watching movies as a family, if you can manage that.
Which world-state concerning-your-family do you really ultimately wish for?; This can be hard, depending on how far away it is. What do you wish your relationship was like? At what point would you be satisfied? Sorta-satisfied? This is important (obviously), as you’ll see shortly.
How do they fit in with this manipulation of yours?; I know you said they may not be capable of being directly involved in repair efforts (mine wasn’t), but it doesn’t have to be on the core of your issues. If they enjoy things that feel even just vaguely good-family-time, then try to encourage those things, if it suits you.
Methods of Repair; If your going to try at actually fixing the problem at all it is important to maintain a humanly realistic (psychologically) model of them. If they grate on you in their behavior, it is probably for reasons other than bothering you. Internally consistent, is the key phrase. They might think pointing out flaws is useful. I don’t know if they have any behaviors that bother you, that are not aimed at you, but it might be best to “translate” those sorts of occurrences into the language you speak. If they get road rage, why should that bother you? Not like you can explain they are shortening their lifespan, et cetera, and they aren’t doing it to fuel Asmodeus, Prince of Devils. I hope. They are probably doing it because they feel stressed, and are venting (right next to your face, but again, not to try and cook you where you sit).
Cost of Interaction vs. Available Energy; Humans are imbedded in the physical universe, so they can be manipulated, and probably to whatever simple aims you care for (like a stable relationship). The question after that becomes how much energy you are willing to put in for this. Depending on what else you are doing with your life you may wish to abstain entirely, or turn efforts up to 11. Most likely something in the middle; cognitive dissonance might bug you if you try either end of extremes. What points on the dial give what results? And remember effort has at least a few sub-efforts, and don’t scrap a project that is only failing along one dimension.
Second Question!: I think this consideration, channeling towards a net good in the world, is worth having. BUT; It really depends on the rest of the issue, which is based around system 1 feelings based around system 2 justifications. That system 1 portion does not take well to being ignored, so the effect of altruistic aims, at least concerning this, should probably remain small.
And finally, at the end of all this thinking, you have to settle with what you decide. You are the most foundational portion of this issue (I suspect), so for your own sake, be stable. Message me if you have questions, or want to berate me over some assumption. Hope I helped.
If it is not a case of malice but incapability of realising what they are doing you might want to be on the lookout for chances to support their social development whereever possible. That is if you are in a interaction that is clearly hurtful to you but they don’t seem to see it as hurtful it would be important to make seeing the hurtfulness as easy as possible. However this should be done in a manner that doesn’t step on any triggers (ie being attacking/accusing about it won’t likely get results). If it is only a “technical” matter that they simply don’t understand some key social fact pointing it out should not be a big drama event. Think of pointing out to someone that they missed a minus sign.
It’s also easier to offer people alternative, potentially more effective, ways to get what they care about than to demand that they cease activities that get them what they want currently. It might feel silly to even having to talk about some basic things but if there is a need to talk about it then talking about it is likely to do good. The alternative on relying that people should get some social basics right on their own can leave you uncomfortably adapting to malfunction.
qsz’s suggestion of doing it by stealth isn’t bad. If you want to make it explicit, though:
If (1) you are considering cutting off contact (near-)completely and (2) they have no idea that this might happen, it seems like an obvious first step would be to tell them that it might. “I don’t know how aware you are of this, but it seems to me like you’re for ever criticizing me, and you keep making these unreasonable demands. I am finding this unpleasant and difficult to cope with, and if it goes on then I think I’ll have to stop communicating with you altogether. That would be an extreme step, and it would be better if we can avoid it, but I’ll do it if the alternative is a constant stream of criticism and inappropriate demands. Please think about this, and let me know whether you think you can stop doing those things.”
Or something along those lines; I (mercifully) have no experience of negotiating with (semi-)abusive parents and have made no attempt to optimize the wording because I don’t know what I should be optimizing for.
If you think they really have no idea, perhaps the first step could be even smaller. “Look, I don’t know if you’re even aware of this, but it seems to me like you’re constantly putting me down and making inappropriate demands. I’m 25 years old, and I really don’t need you to accompany me to the doctor or keep me safe online any more. I’m finding it unpleasant, and I’m sure you don’t want that. Could you please treat me as the adult I am, and stop doing those things?”
Again, I make no claim that that’s a good way to word it. But this lets you make sure they know (at least in theory) without anything they need perceive as a threat. Then, if they don’t improve, your next escalation can begin with “You may remember that a few months ago I told you …” which will give them less excuse to see it as unreasonable.
Complicating factor: if maintaining a good relationship with my parent might slightly increase the amount I expect to be able to donate to effective charities at the cost of (in expectation) making me less happy, does this change my obligations?
I can’t lend you any specific advice here, but I’m pretty confident that this is an insane thing to even consider considering in the situation you describe.
I actually see this in my parent; when relating to their parent. My parent still talks to their parent regularly, a lifetime ~45+ years of critical treatment later.
There are two concerns:
The world is a darker place with no parent at all. The day they are gone; is the day you wished you asked them for their advice on something more. (or that seems to be the sentiment from many)
you need to prioritise your happiness. The parent (while being their own person) wants the best for you. Unfortunately that might mean what is not best for that parent.
I’d like to congratulate you for noticing the problem and identifying it. This step was not easy; but by doing so you make things entirely better from here on in.
I believe there are several good solutions to this problem and several more mediocre or bad solutions.
With puzzles that I personally encounter that involve the different perspectives of different people (which I find this problem to be—your perspective VS your parent’s perspective); I find that they can sometimes be solved by folding the puzzle in on themselves. i.e. ask the person of problem (parent) to solve the puzzle for you by clearly sharing the perspective (sometimes via Socratic questioning). You are inside the problem but you can step outside and attack the problem from outside. (its not easy; but I offer my suggestion for you to try).
A technique I would suggest for approaching the problem head on (if you choose to). Develop a spreadsheet, of interactions with the person. consider adding;
Date, time
Subject of the interaction
Either a rating of the interaction (1-10) or a simple scale (positive, negative, neutral)
To do this is to generate evidence. With evidence you can pre-commit to an action given certain evidential findings. i.e. move far away if you find a 10 negative to 1 positive or worse ratio. The second benefit of evidence is it can assist in (as above) folding the problem on itself. By showing an entirely valid perspective, evidence cannot be discounted in the same way an opinion can be (I said, you said, they said, etc evidence).
I would give some weight to a middle-solution. Limited contact (although that may mean you get one day a month of hell-by-critical-parent),
I believe this is a hurdle we must face; overcoming the situations we are burdened by our parents.
Good luck! (happy to add more if you want more clarity on these suggestions)
In the spirit of asking personally important questions of LessWrong, here goes. Please be gentle with me.
Related:
Discussion post by another user on being raised by narcissists
r/RaisedByNarcissists
My parent always had a number of narcissistic traits, but was never a full-blown narcissist. They (singular) supported me financially and always seemed to legitimately care about how well I was doing academically and professionally. However, they had a habit of lowering my status by verbally critiquing my actions, and sometimes made odd demands of me, such as demanding that I share some of my passwords with them, or demanding that they be present every time I go to the doctor (I’m 25).
Right now, I think that I’m either going to severely limit contact with my parent, or cut contact completely. I think that cutting contact completely is likely to be more pleasant and easier on me, but I’m really not sure about that yet. I’ve had a few family members tell me that I’m obligated to keep in touch with my parent. Since LW is my in-group, and since I share lots of values with the kind of people who tend to post here, I’d prefer to get advice here, rather than elsewhere. Specifically, I’m not sure if I have a familial obligation to remain in contact with my parent, given that they’ve only been somewhat emotionally abusive to me; it’s probable that they don’t even realize/ are incapable of realizing that I find their treatment of me to be hurtful. Do you think that I have any such obligation?
Complicating factor: if maintaining a good relationship with my parent might slightly increase the amount I expect to be able to donate to effective charities at the cost of (in expectation) making me less happy, does this change my obligations?
I was in a similar situation with my parents in my early 20s (although their motivations and characteristics were probably very different). Looking back I think they were not ready to deal with my independence (I was the oldest) and tried to deal with things in the same way they did when I was a child. Your mention of medical appointments really rang a bell with me—my parents did the same and this made me perhaps the most uncomfortable of all.
In my case, severely limiting contact was a highly successful approach. I didn’t do this explicitly; we had no conversation “I am limiting my contact with you”. I took a job in a different place, got my own (tiny, horrible) room in a shared flat and just started being more independent in my life. I must admit I used the workload of my new job as a convenient excuse to limit contact—just the occasional phone call to let them know how things were going (back in those days my parents didn’t have email). I also didn’t visit nearly as often as before—I found myself reverting back to a teenage mentality, they would treat me like a child, I would get very angry/upset.
Now many years later (I’m approaching 50) I have a somewhat positive relationship with both parents—perhaps in large part because I live in a different country. After a lot of time had passed we were able to discuss the earlier issues more dispassionately (although not entirely) & get a better understanding of each other’s motivations.
Instead of simply cutting contact you can tell your parents how you want to be treated. As long as they are willing to act that way you interact with them. If they don’t then you don’t and you retry after half a year.
Clearly explicitly communicating your personal boundaries isn’t easy but it’s a very important skill. It’s a challenge that provides a lot of personal growth.
I’d add a warning here that this may require “eternal vigilance”. Just because the personal boundaries were clearly communicated and respected today, it does not automatically mean that the parents will respect them tomorrow, if they will feel the greatest threat is gone and one is losing their original momentum.
Agreed. If you’re not willing to say “Nope, you crossed the line. See you next time, I’ll decide when that is, goodbye” (or similar) and leave (cut them off to whatever degree is needed to stop the harmful behavior), then you need to not give them an opportunity to start again. If you are willing to do so, though, or some other approach to ensuring your boundaries are respected, go ahead.
For the record, while I have a pretty good relationship with both my parents, I do not buy the line that a person always has an obligation to their parents. Sure, there usually is one, but your parent(s) put a finite amount of utility into your life, and negative utility is a thing. Parents trying to run the lives of their adult offspring drives me up a wall. Unless there’s something unusual about your capacity for self-reliance, at 25 you should not be living under anybody’s thumb to the degree described even without the negatives such as undesired/inappropriate criticism.
Yes, that’s important. You actually have assert boundaries and simply communicating them might not be enough. At the same time it’s very valuable to go through the experience of asserting those boundaries. Parental relationships do have a strong effect on the human psychological system.
Everything in this chain of comments has now been proven true in my particular case. Thank you for the advice. This bit sums it up pretty well:
Some random thoughts:
Narcissism is one of the “Cluster B” personality disorders. Other disorders have some similarities and some differences. (I don’t even know if they are clearly separated in the territory. The psychological definitions keep changing.) So if there seems to be a serious issue, but it only partially fits the definition of narcissism, and partially it doesn’t, maybe it is something else. My quick uneducated guess would be borderline personality disorder.
If you are not sure what to do, maybe it would be better to not burn the bridges, only build clear fences. (You can still burn the bridges later if you decide to, but maybe with good fences it will not be necessary.) For example, move to your own place, and visit your parent once in a month, for an hour or two. Also decide which parts of your life you don’t want to share with them, and simply don’t talk about it. Maybe find a topic that is not painful for you, and always switch to that one (e.g. talk about work, or news, or latest science; don’t talk about your health and relationships). Maybe this will work.
Uhm, I think your decision should not be influenced by this. Solve your personal problems first, optimize the world later. (Having your personal problems unsolved will also harm your world-optimizing abilities.)
Thanks to everyone for the responses! I enjoyed reading everyone’s comments, and this response in particular was very helpful.
My first question is the social equivalent of asking whether you’ve turned your computer off and on again: Have you spoken with your parent about this? No matter how unpleasant it may be (turning my computer off and on again is a chore :P), it is a good first thought when it comes to interpersonal issues, and one I would highly suggest, especially as by your words they do not seem to be aware of how they’re hurting you with their lack of trust.
The answer to your questions depends mainly upon your values. How much do you value your family? How much do you value (close) non-members of your family? If the amount that you value each of those is similar, ask yourself instead if your obligation toward a friend would prevent you from breaking contact with them if they were (seemingly) toxic to you as your parent is.
The obligation you have to maintain in touch with your parent depends mainly upon: how much you value them; how much you value those that would judge you poorly based upon your disownment of them; and how much of your identity is tied up in the situation. I find myself personally incapable of ending a somewhat toxic friendship with two people I care deeply about because it would be difficult for me to fathom not having their company at times, and I don’t want to see myself as the kind of person that would be willing to abandon them for their issues.
Regarding the complicating factor, there’s a lot that would go into a cost-benefit analysis. How much do you value your happiness compared to what the small amount of money you contribute might do? How do you factor in how poorly the stress affects your health? You might get sick because of a compromised immune system because of how stressed you are. Or you might die five years younger, and your charity of choice would lose those years of income. Regardless, I don’t think that it should factor too much into your decision, though that’s more a personal belief than anything.
Feel free to answer any of these questions, or not. I provided them more to give you food for thought.
Hello Sithlord_Bayesian.
I’ve also been raised by a parent who was similar to what you described, and have navigated the issue to my liking. I hope what I have found to be a good way to analyze the situation proves useful for yours.
First I might suggest not only considering two options. Might be a better third, in the “middle” somewhere. Now to address your first question; familial obligation. A lot of people start to treat the concept like it is selectively separate from where you in particular are feeling lacking, and end up with a floating belief that says you should stick with family no matter what. But, like your intuitions are pointing out to you, the concept does have real weight, through your interactions. You only need heed familial obligation as much as it is heeded by the other party. If you can take that and run with it, good for you.
If you want a more thorough suggestion, the following is how I came to judge my own relationships. Second question is following, if tl;dr
What is the net balance of interactions?; Here you can consider if you are better off, or not, as a whole. From your entry I suspect your parents feel like a net loss (You have my sympathies, I really hated this being a fact with me). You can also consider trying to isolate portions of the relationship you favor and avoiding situations that hurt. Shabby example being to not tell your parents when appointments are, if you could manage it, but watching movies as a family, if you can manage that.
Which world-state concerning-your-family do you really ultimately wish for?; This can be hard, depending on how far away it is. What do you wish your relationship was like? At what point would you be satisfied? Sorta-satisfied? This is important (obviously), as you’ll see shortly.
How do they fit in with this manipulation of yours?; I know you said they may not be capable of being directly involved in repair efforts (mine wasn’t), but it doesn’t have to be on the core of your issues. If they enjoy things that feel even just vaguely good-family-time, then try to encourage those things, if it suits you.
Methods of Repair; If your going to try at actually fixing the problem at all it is important to maintain a humanly realistic (psychologically) model of them. If they grate on you in their behavior, it is probably for reasons other than bothering you. Internally consistent, is the key phrase. They might think pointing out flaws is useful. I don’t know if they have any behaviors that bother you, that are not aimed at you, but it might be best to “translate” those sorts of occurrences into the language you speak. If they get road rage, why should that bother you? Not like you can explain they are shortening their lifespan, et cetera, and they aren’t doing it to fuel Asmodeus, Prince of Devils. I hope. They are probably doing it because they feel stressed, and are venting (right next to your face, but again, not to try and cook you where you sit).
Cost of Interaction vs. Available Energy; Humans are imbedded in the physical universe, so they can be manipulated, and probably to whatever simple aims you care for (like a stable relationship). The question after that becomes how much energy you are willing to put in for this. Depending on what else you are doing with your life you may wish to abstain entirely, or turn efforts up to 11. Most likely something in the middle; cognitive dissonance might bug you if you try either end of extremes. What points on the dial give what results? And remember effort has at least a few sub-efforts, and don’t scrap a project that is only failing along one dimension.
Second Question!: I think this consideration, channeling towards a net good in the world, is worth having. BUT; It really depends on the rest of the issue, which is based around system 1 feelings based around system 2 justifications. That system 1 portion does not take well to being ignored, so the effect of altruistic aims, at least concerning this, should probably remain small.
And finally, at the end of all this thinking, you have to settle with what you decide. You are the most foundational portion of this issue (I suspect), so for your own sake, be stable. Message me if you have questions, or want to berate me over some assumption. Hope I helped.
EDIT:ing to fix formatting errors; I’m new here!
If it is not a case of malice but incapability of realising what they are doing you might want to be on the lookout for chances to support their social development whereever possible. That is if you are in a interaction that is clearly hurtful to you but they don’t seem to see it as hurtful it would be important to make seeing the hurtfulness as easy as possible. However this should be done in a manner that doesn’t step on any triggers (ie being attacking/accusing about it won’t likely get results). If it is only a “technical” matter that they simply don’t understand some key social fact pointing it out should not be a big drama event. Think of pointing out to someone that they missed a minus sign.
It’s also easier to offer people alternative, potentially more effective, ways to get what they care about than to demand that they cease activities that get them what they want currently. It might feel silly to even having to talk about some basic things but if there is a need to talk about it then talking about it is likely to do good. The alternative on relying that people should get some social basics right on their own can leave you uncomfortably adapting to malfunction.
qsz’s suggestion of doing it by stealth isn’t bad. If you want to make it explicit, though:
If (1) you are considering cutting off contact (near-)completely and (2) they have no idea that this might happen, it seems like an obvious first step would be to tell them that it might. “I don’t know how aware you are of this, but it seems to me like you’re for ever criticizing me, and you keep making these unreasonable demands. I am finding this unpleasant and difficult to cope with, and if it goes on then I think I’ll have to stop communicating with you altogether. That would be an extreme step, and it would be better if we can avoid it, but I’ll do it if the alternative is a constant stream of criticism and inappropriate demands. Please think about this, and let me know whether you think you can stop doing those things.”
Or something along those lines; I (mercifully) have no experience of negotiating with (semi-)abusive parents and have made no attempt to optimize the wording because I don’t know what I should be optimizing for.
If you think they really have no idea, perhaps the first step could be even smaller. “Look, I don’t know if you’re even aware of this, but it seems to me like you’re constantly putting me down and making inappropriate demands. I’m 25 years old, and I really don’t need you to accompany me to the doctor or keep me safe online any more. I’m finding it unpleasant, and I’m sure you don’t want that. Could you please treat me as the adult I am, and stop doing those things?”
Again, I make no claim that that’s a good way to word it. But this lets you make sure they know (at least in theory) without anything they need perceive as a threat. Then, if they don’t improve, your next escalation can begin with “You may remember that a few months ago I told you …” which will give them less excuse to see it as unreasonable.
I can’t lend you any specific advice here, but I’m pretty confident that this is an insane thing to even consider considering in the situation you describe.
I actually see this in my parent; when relating to their parent. My parent still talks to their parent regularly, a lifetime ~45+ years of critical treatment later.
There are two concerns:
The world is a darker place with no parent at all. The day they are gone; is the day you wished you asked them for their advice on something more. (or that seems to be the sentiment from many)
you need to prioritise your happiness. The parent (while being their own person) wants the best for you. Unfortunately that might mean what is not best for that parent.
I’d like to congratulate you for noticing the problem and identifying it. This step was not easy; but by doing so you make things entirely better from here on in.
I believe there are several good solutions to this problem and several more mediocre or bad solutions.
With puzzles that I personally encounter that involve the different perspectives of different people (which I find this problem to be—your perspective VS your parent’s perspective); I find that they can sometimes be solved by folding the puzzle in on themselves. i.e. ask the person of problem (parent) to solve the puzzle for you by clearly sharing the perspective (sometimes via Socratic questioning). You are inside the problem but you can step outside and attack the problem from outside. (its not easy; but I offer my suggestion for you to try).
A technique I would suggest for approaching the problem head on (if you choose to). Develop a spreadsheet, of interactions with the person. consider adding;
Date, time
Subject of the interaction
Either a rating of the interaction (1-10) or a simple scale (positive, negative, neutral)
To do this is to generate evidence. With evidence you can pre-commit to an action given certain evidential findings. i.e. move far away if you find a 10 negative to 1 positive or worse ratio. The second benefit of evidence is it can assist in (as above) folding the problem on itself. By showing an entirely valid perspective, evidence cannot be discounted in the same way an opinion can be (I said, you said, they said, etc evidence).
I would give some weight to a middle-solution. Limited contact (although that may mean you get one day a month of hell-by-critical-parent),
I believe this is a hurdle we must face; overcoming the situations we are burdened by our parents.
Good luck! (happy to add more if you want more clarity on these suggestions)