Over the last few years my estranged father, late 60s, has been subject to increasingly irrational thinking. He imagines a family conspiracy against himself and his grandkids (characterized further within). It's coming to seem that in order to protect ourselves from him my siblings and I may need to turn him into a social outcast. But he's our dad!
The imagined family conspiracy is about incest among his adult children (men and women), including pedophilia and ongoing willful protection of pedophilia.
My dad suffered physical and emotional abuse by his parents throughout his childhood and very likely sexual abuse by the Catholic church. He has an undiagnosed personality disorder, cluster B. He was a difficult, abusive alcoholic in his early adulthood but quit drinking completely until near his retirement several years ago when he began to drink socially. We believe he often drinks to excess now, though he hides it well.
He's a friendly, charming person. But he also often misunderstands social situations, has no capacity to self-reflect or change his mind, and cannot discharge his grievances or resentments. He cannot learn from constructive criticism. He does not understand other people's feelings and he sees his own feelings as inarguable truths. He doesn't even seem to be able to hold in his mind the concept that there is a distinction between his subjective feelings and the objective facts of reality. For him, therapy is completely out of the question and how DARE you.
He's a very hard-working person and he provided well for his kids. He's become estranged by all of them. He can't conceive how this could have happened, even when it's explained to him in simple, soft, careful sentences. Whence, we believe, this conspiracy: the estrangement is not because he's an asshole, it's because we are all pedophiles, traumatized by our own sexual abuse (mostly but not entirely his invention), and in trembling fear of his righteous nature. Well. We're not pedophiles, but we do most certainly fear where this is going.
The charge itself is the type of slander that doesn't even need to be plausible in order for it to affect other people's views. (I know this because I can run the thought experiment on myself and that's how it works for me, to my chagrin.) Already his actions here have hastened the dissolution of the marriage of one of my siblings. The only thing holding him back from a public airing is his own narcissism; his children are a reflection of him. But as his isolation and alcohol abuse worsen, so does his anger and recklessness.
The only mitigation would seem to be to preemptively discredit him. To go to the extended family and our mutual acquaintances and warn them that he is aggressively losing his grasp on reality. Though that fact is true, this would be such a vicious action. It would be emotionally draining for me. And he's not a danger to these other people. It would further isolate him, and it's exactly the scheme his wounded, disordered mind believes has been happening behind his back his entire life.
He truly believes his conspiracy - it's not a ploy to punish his unruly adult kids, or at least it isn't strictly that. He is trying to protect his grandkids (who, of course, he can no longer visit). His life has been a prolonged tragedy full of pain and confusion. I have felt very sad for him ever since I learned how to know him. This compassion being balanced currently with the understanding that he wishes to do me and my family real harm.
Is there an option B here? After writing this out I am leaning toward doing nothing - watchful waiting. Yet I'm aware there is a tumor growing. |
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