The Manipulation of Minimizing

I’m starting to see the patterns now.

The ways my mum kept me from seeing the truth clearly weren’t accidental—they were practiced. Rehearsed. Like go-to moves she knew would work on me.

The first was always to minimize. Whatever I brought up—feelings, concerns, pain—she’d say it wasn’t a big deal. Dismiss it outright. Like everything I said was dramatic, overblown, or just not important enough to register.

The second was comparison. “Well, so-and-so went through worse.” Or, “they turned out fine, why can’t you?” As if someone else’s resilience or silence somehow canceled out my pain. It made no sense. But as a kid, I tried to believe it—because believing it meant I could still believe my mum loved me.

And what child wouldn’t want to believe that?

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But it didn’t stop there. Her most effective, and most manipulative move, was apologizing before anything even happened.

She’d say sorry in this pitiful, anticipatory way. And somehow, even before I opened my mouth, I felt guilty. Like I’d hurt her just by existing. Like I was the problem. She never changed her behavior. The apologies weren’t real. They were a preemptive guilt trap. And I fell for it so many times—it’s embarrassing.

Except… maybe it’s not.

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The more I grew into myself, the more she shifted her tactics. If she sensed she was losing my attention—losing the emotional pull—something strange would happen. She’d get hurt. Or fall. Usually in a way that could somehow be traced back to me.

Once, we visited a waterfall. I warned her the path was a bit sketchy, but she insisted she could handle it. When we stopped for a picture, she edged herself backward, slowly, into a fall. It looked fake. Like she chose a safe place to fall—just enough to dramatize, not enough to get hurt. And then came the guilt trip: “Well, you shouldn’t have brought me down here.”

Another time, she was on the decking I’d built. I told her to be careful—there weren’t planters at the edge yet. She backed her chair right off it and fell into the fence. It was dramatic. Coordinated, almost. And again, the look—like I’d failed her somehow. Like she was the victim of my carelessness.

And in the moment, I did feel guilty.
But now? I don’t.

Now, I see it clearly.

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I see how these “falls” weren’t just physical. They were cries for attention, bids for control, guilt grenades lobbed into the spaces where I was finally stepping back.

And yeah, I used to feel embarrassed about it. Embarrassed that I fell for it. That I didn’t see through it sooner. That I believed her apologies meant something. That I trusted her.

But maybe that’s not embarrassment.

Maybe that’s just deeply, deeply, deeply sad on a primal level.

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