What really made my stomach turn is that my Aunt had a smile on her face. At first I took it as maybe she’s trying to stay positive about the situation or having some odd nervous reaction but it was a huge huge smile as if she won the lottery. My grandma was not well off by any means so I highly doubt she had much in her will and my uncle was clearly not smiling in the picture.
She was also extremely unempathetic when my dad passed away during my mid 20s, telling me I need to man up and do better in life. I was working, in a relationship and doing my best to help my mom out. Am I overreacting or does she come off as a full blown sociopath?
Nobody here can really give you specific advice based on the few facts. You’re part of this family, you know them better than all of us. If you feel off about it, there’s a reason for it. You’ve come here to ask the question. So I think you’re well within your rights to reduce contact with that side of the family. I would only suggest you quietly ghost rather than making a big stink.
Ya I get what you mean, it’s just keeping me up at 2:30 am so I thought I may as well try to get a third party opinion if possible to see if I’m overthinking, I agree with the ghosting
Most of us don’t have the luxury of choosing our families. We can just try to do the best with the hand we’re dealt. I’m sorry for your loss.
Maybe delete the picture, put the phone down, and try to think of 20 great things about your grandmother.
Thank you, you’re right, I need to put my phone away and distract myself for a bit.
Nah fuk that.
I stopped talking to the rest of my family after my grandmother died.
My father and brother died first actually.
And nobody was there for me.
Similar snubs at me for not visiting in hospital when I’m working to not starve/be homeless.
😰😓🤬😖
I had to work day of her funeral actually. Lol
Venting over…my mum sent me a picture of our dead family cat Fred in a shoebox to let me know he was dead. Also posted it to Facebook.
I personality took a picture of my father after he passed, in his hospice bed, before the Funeral Home took him away. But I sure as shit didn’t post it anywhere.
Older I get the more I know I need to accept that blood don’t mean shit, people are going to be terrible regardless of your relation
Well, if you want a good third party opinion, you should probably write up a few paragraphs about your aunt, include multiple key experiences that can show a couple things about her character, show the photo she took, show the reactions to the photo by others, talk about how the other people in that photo felt why they wanted to take the photo, and probably a couple more personal questions about you and others of your family.
Reading the main post and other comments you’ve made giving more context, IMO you are correct, your aunt is a narcissistic sociopath.
Ya I’ve decided I’m not talking to that side of the family at all anymore, there’s been too much BS and this camel’s back is now FUBAR
It always sucks to have to cut off or go no contact/ghost absurd family members… but after a long pattern of concerning, manipulative and/or abusive behavior… that’d you really only put up with because they’re family… after a while, that reason/excuse becomes worthless.
I had to gently tell my mom to stop fucking posting pictures of me intubated at the hospital and various other states of literally dying on facebook, not only because I didn’t consent, but also because that shit is weird. Never mind that if that had ended up being the end, I don’t want my hairy man boobs to be the last thing people see of me.
present day society, tirelessly capturing everything
“Victorian Death Photos” are a thing, and were probably more socially acceptable then than in present-day society
Did they throw up a peace sign?
Your aunt sounds awful though.
You prick, I was just about to put my phone down and you made me laugh
IDK them but a charitable POV could just be that they reflexively smile when taking a picture. Taking that picture is very weird to me though.
My aunt asked us to do the same thing when my father passed away. I was too emotional to decline, but yes it’s fucking weird
My paternal grandma died last year. And my dad remarried in 2017.
Not really enough time for his new wife to establish much rapport.
Dad had always been a Mama’s boy and lived most all of his life clinging to his mom’s skirts anyway.
Yet when grandma died it was the new wife who casually sent me a picture taken with her phone of my grandma’s corpse in the hospital bed.
Horrifying, and very inappropriate. All of this is to say that I can relate to your situation and no, you aren’t overreacting.
Thank you, I’m sorry you have crazy relatives too
When my grandparents were in hospital all my aunts and even my mom started taking pictures of them in the bed hospital. They both were alive by the time, but it was clearly not a good situation (both died short after). I felt grossed that they were taking photos of them in that state. But their reasoning was to take as many photos as possible while they were alive.
People do weird things.
Grief makes people do weird things and pictures can be misleading. That said, this is creepy as fuck and you should trust your gut if you ever feel unsafe around her.
Not so much unsafe but more disgusted
Regardless of your aunts motives, you are allowed to feel the way you feel, and to speak up about it. Best that can happen is she’ll understand and apologize, worst is she’ll be ashamed and defensive.
She’s not one to apologize so I just didn’t say anything. Mostly out of shock and grief at the time.
“I was really quite shocked and appalled by the picture you sent after grandma passed away. I especially wonder why you’d be smiling like you were. What was going through your mind/what were you thinking?”
Would be a very valid question in my opinion, asked in an adult way.
Maybe one day
Yep that’s weird.
First, I’ll just say this: How you feel is valid.
Secondly: I can’t diagnose people because I’m not a doctor. It’s also the internet any mental health professional would know how unprofessional and as such they wouldn’t be diagnosing online based your version of events instead of hearing your aunts as well. If you went to some joint therapy sessions, the way she acts could likely get a diagnosed disorder and the therapist would be a lot better in figuring out what the issues are with your aunt.
Thirdly, everybody deals with grief differently, and while from your end it seems narcissistic, a therapist might connect her behavior to how she was raised. It might be that the way she was raised makes her think these kind of things are “normal.” That’s how generational trauma works, and some people never have enough self reflection to get past it and keep dumping the generational trauma down on people like yourself.
I guess I am saying that she may be broken mentally and emotionally, and she will struggle to change without good therapy. It doesn’t and shouldn’t invalidate your feelings about her and how the death of your father was dismissed with cruelty. It’s just, if she’s fucked up like that, that may really just be how she was raised and is dragging up her pain and trauma, and then dumping it on you.
You can force her to get help, but what can do is do your best to minimize contact with her, because you clearly don’t have the same values as she does.
I’m with you thinking that behavior is terrible, but I also try to remember that other people are always dealing with their own shit. It’s like being cut off in traffic from asshole driving aggressively. I can’t and shouldn’t make assumptions and say they’re a selfish asshole, even if I feel that. For all I know they’re rushing to the hospital to be with a family member, or any number of things that distract them because of being over-stressed.
So I would be trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, but it also doesn’t mean I have to be their friend and pay attention to what they do. Forgiveness isn’t the same as trust. You hopefully can find it in yourself to forgive your aunt because you recognize their own trauma who made them who they are, but I also hope you find the strength to walk away and cut her off if you need to. Recognizing their trauma and treating them like a human matters, but also your own feelings matter, and so the trauma she is giving you is unacceptable, whatever she has been through.
I may be rambling because I’m still recovering from a surgery earlier today, but the TL;DR:
She is very likely broken and it’s a good thing to think about how she became the person she is, but that empathy doesn’t have to extend to forcing yourself to be around someone who won’t deal with her own trauma and instead gives you trauma.
I appreciate you putting the time into that message. From what my dad told me, my grandpa wasn’t a very nice person and I knew since I was a kid that my dad was not well adjusted because of it so I’m sure the same goes for his siblings. I have always been patient with them and I guess It’s hard for me to understand why they would want to pass trauma onto me.
My childhood was full of abuse and neglect but I knew I didn’t want to put others through that. So it’s odd to me that someone can experience pain and want to pass it on, knowing how it felt to be hurt. Especially by the people who are supposed to protect and guide you through life. I’m no saint, I just don’t understand why they would hurt me when I have tried to be nothing but cordial with them.
I’m no saint, I just don’t understand why they would hurt me when I have tried to be nothing but cordial with them.
Oh I hear you on this one. I don’t have the best relationship with my family because of similar behaviors. That’s kind of where I learned the value of forgiveness and the difference between forgiveness and trust.
So it’s odd to me that someone can experience pain and want to pass it on, knowing how it felt to be hurt.
A lot of the time it isn’t a choice. I don’t get pushed to a wild rage of abusive language very often, but I do occasionally. Both my parents were wildly angry and rude to each other. I didn’t and don’t want to be that person, either, but I can also see that childhood exposure to such loud anger taught little boy Snot this is how you deal with stress, frustration, and anger at selfish disrespectful people. I am in therapy because I want to be more stoic. I don’t want to make others feel pain, not really, but in my worst moments I do whether I like it or not, which is why I want to get past my own issues and get better myself.
Other than that, I learned good things from mother (my dad is a lost cause and always was) and I can see her own brokenness that was given to her by her own parents. She never wanted to teach me through trauma, either, but she accidentally did. She’s cried about her regrets as a parent a lot, but that’s because she genuinely is trying to put the work in to get better herself.
I have cut off my dad because of his selfishness and narcissism. He still doesn’t understand why, I don’t think he’ll ever truly make the effort to understand why. I know he had trauma, too. His whole chest got melted from a pot of boiling water dumping all over himself when he was a child, and those scars are still visible to this day. None of the bad things that have happened to him justify his behavior, especially since he won’t make apologies and then turn around and steal something from you when he gets a chance.
The difference between the two is my mother feeling and expressing deep remorse for it, and my father not giving a single shit. My mom still drives me up the wall, but not enough to go no contact because there’s still something good and healthy to salvage from it.
I can give people who feel remorse, who are listening, who want to change the benefit of the doubt. The stubborn selfish jerks can just go if they don’t wish to change, and there is only so much stoic attitude I can muster to deal with them.
why they would want to pass trauma onto me
It’s not like it’s intentional, usually. Everyone has a different way of coping with trauma and sadly, one of the brain’s most usual defenses is repeating the same behaviour, because that makes what happened normal - if I do it too, how could it be something bad?
People who do that need a therapy to stop repeating the abusive behaviour, but as with alcoholism, the first step is to admit you have been abused. You would be surprised how many people don’t get past the first step. And that’s how abusive behaviour in people who are not necessarily psychopaths occurs.
As an aside, being a psychopath (not a sociopath, that term doesn’t exist in psychology) is also a defense mechanism, although one on the extreme side of things and it’s generally incurable past a certain age.
What’s your uncle like? Is he a pushover or is he conniving?
I find people often seek themselves out in a relationship. That may shed some insight on your aunt’s behavior.
Grief reactions vary, obviously, but prior acts seem to reflect poorly on her character.
Tbh, pretty narcissistic. He disowned my cousin, reasons unknown but I do recall he occasionally gave her alcohol as a kid to make her sleep, he’s on his second marriage now. Everytime we’ve talked, he’s said I should come by so he can teach me how to be a man.
That side of the family is a mess in general. Well the other side is also a mess, my uncle on that side made me arm wrestle him when I was 19 and when he lost he slapped me in the face and tried to fight me so I had to put him in a kimura until he started crying.
Edit: oh sorry i should have specified, the aunt and uncle in the picture were my grandmas kids, not a couple
