When “Love” Becomes Control: A Mother’s Betrayal Disguised as Care

Dick Gariepy | Big Thinky Ouchey

“She called it care; I call it betrayal. Love doesn’t put you in handcuffs.”

The Day Love Became a Police Matter

Every child grows up believing their mother loves them unconditionally. I certainly did. That belief shattered on July 5, 2022, when I found myself pulled out of my Bioethics lecture by police officers handcuffing me – all because of my mother’s actions. Two days earlier, unbeknownst to me, my mother stood in an Alberta courtroom and swore under oath that I was a danger to myself, incapable of caring for myself, and refusing all help. She petitioned for a warrant under the Mental Health Act to have me apprehended and involuntarily institutionalized. In that moment, the woman who gave me life weaponized the mental health system to take away my freedom. Her justification? She claimed it was out of love and concern. But love doesn’t compel you to lie to a judge and send armed officers to publicly arrest your child, especially after they warned of the life threatening risks involved with mixing police and mental health concerns. That isn’t what love looks like – it’s what control looks like.

When the police arrived, I was shocked and confused. I knew immediately who was behind it. I hadn’t committed any crime; my “error” was that I had set firm boundaries with my mother. For months, I had limited contact with her because our relationship had become unhealthy for me. I was focusing on my mental health and recovery, with the support of professionals. My mother didn’t approve of the distance I created. In her view, a good son must not set boundaries, he must obey. So, when she found she could not reach me on her terms, she chose the most extreme, coercive measure: telling the authorities I was a mentally unstable, helpless adult in decline. Two days later, only three days before my 32nd birthday, I was in the back of a police cruiser on the way to a hospital for an emergency psychiatric evaluation. I was confused, humiliated, and heartbroken that my own mother had engineered this nightmare.

Boundaries Rejected: “You Just Won’t Go Down That Path.”

To anyone hearing this story for the first time, my mother’s actions might sound like a well-intentioned mistake. Perhaps she truly thought I was in danger and felt she had no choice. That narrative is false. The full timeline of our communications shows that I gave her every opportunity to reconnect with me in a healthy, voluntary way. I was never “missing” or out of touch, I had simply insisted that any reconnection happen on my terms, in a safe context.

In fact, just 2 weeks before the courtroom ambush, I spelled out exactly how she could see me again. In an email dated June 15, 2022, I told her plainly: “I don’t believe you when you say you want to see me… I have told you how to go about seeing me again and you don’t do it. If you really wanted to see me again then you would’ve booked family therapy and you would’ve seen me there by now. But you haven’t, because you don’t want to see me. You want to control me… I have laid out the path very clear for you. You just won’t go down it. … Do not contact me again unless it’s with details of how we’re going to meet in family therapy.” I could not have been more explicit. I was not refusing to see her; I was asking for us to see a family therapist together first, so that any reunion would be safe, structured, and mediated. This was a reasonable boundary, a compromise that allowed for reconciliation if she truly cared to repair our relationship. My mother chose to ignore that offer completely.

Instead of accepting “Let’s go to therapy” as a loving olive branch, she saw it as an affront to her authority. Narcissistic parents often perceive their adult child’s independence or conditions for contact as rebellion, triggering their need to reassert dominance. In hindsight, it fits a pattern of narcissistic family abuse: the parent will violate boundaries and even use institutions to reel the child back in. Psychologist M. Wakefield described it perfectly: “Children of narcissists learn that love is abuse. The narcissist teaches them that if someone displeases you, it is okay to harm them and call it love.” (Wakefield, n.d.). My mother was displeased that I insisted on boundaries – so she sought to harm me “for my own good,” calling it concern.

Crucially, in the weeks leading up to the incident I had fully informed Ann of my well-being. I was voluntarily seeing a psychologist and a physician. I was upfront about this, emailing her updates that I had professional support and any crisis i was in was due to the ongoing emotional and psychological abuse i was suffering at her hands. At one point, my mother even involved a Mobile Response Team (a psychiatric outreach service) to do a “wellness check” on me, presumably hoping they’d find me unstable. I was annoyed at the mobile response teams intrusion, and their pathologizing of my distress at being the victim of my mothers lies. In an email exchange afterward, I reassured my mother I was already getting help on my own terms. I even tried to educate her: I sent her the famous 1973 study “On Being Sane in Insane Places” by psychologist David Rosenhan, which shows how easy it is for sane people to be misdiagnosed as insane in psychiatric settings and how such labels can trap and harm people (Rosenhan, 1973). I wanted her to understand that forcing someone into treatment can backfire terribly. In that June 15 email, I wrote to her: “You’ll see that being committed is really dangerous. Because once you’re labelled as crazy it doesn’t matter what you do… that label stays with you and you’re trapped. But I think that’s what you want for me. You want me trapped under your thumb so you can control me. I’m not insane. Because if I was, the mental health professionals that I’ve been working with would’ve already had me committed.” Those are my exact words to her. I had a chilling sense, even then, of what she truly wanted – to have me “trapped” and under control.

My mother received and acknowledged all these communications. In fact, she replied to me, “I’m glad to hear you have support.”  I was calmly and coherently telling her my needs and conditions. I was engaged in care, setting healthy boundaries, and rejecting only coercion, not care. Despite having this crystal-clear picture, my mother proceeded to build a false narrative that I was a gravely ill, uncooperative, incompetent person.

Betrayal Under Oath: Turning Lies into a Weapon

On that July morning in court, my mother chose to lie. There is no softer way to describe it. She swore before a judge that I was “refusing all psychiatric and medical care, unable to function independently, in psychological decline, and a danger to myself.” She presented herself as a desperate, loving parent fearful for her son’s life. And she omitted every inconvenient truth: that I was actually in treatment voluntarily, that I had explicitly told her what would help our relationship, and that I was of sound mind simply seeking boundaries. By lies of commission and omission, she painted me as a helpless madman in need of rescue.

This was not a misunderstanding or a heat-of-the-moment exaggeration; it was a deliberate and premeditated act. In legal terms, what she did meets the definition of perjury, knowingly making false statements under oath (Criminal Code, 1985, s.131). It also constitutes an abuse of process akin to public mischief, which in Canada is the crime of inducing police action by false information (Criminal Code, 1985, s.140). To be very clear: my mother knew her statements were false. She had written proof of the contrary sitting in her inbox. She proceeded to tell those lies with the specific intent of having the state intervene in my life. That is why I see her actions not as a mistake born of love, but as a betrayal born of the desire for control.

I also need the record to show how the Form 7 itself was engineered to escalate risk. Ann marked “unknown” on multiple questions where she knew the truthful answer would have lowered urgency, and she altered prompts to invite a more alarming read. Where the form asked whether I feared people in uniform, she wrote “has a strong dislike of police.” Weeks earlier I had told her, in writing, that I feared being harmed during a wellness check because police involvement in psychiatric calls increases the risk of lethal outcomes. I even sent her reporting on those rates. My concern was rational and specific: I feared being shot. She reframed that fear into hostility. That recoding primed responders to treat me as oppositional rather than safety-seeking.

The next choice crossed from spin into foreseeable endangerment. Asked whether I might possess a weapon, Ann answered that she “didn’t know.” She knows I have never owned a weapon. She also knows—through long work as a rural hospital site manager and through family ties to law enforcement—that “unknown” in that box triggers “assume a weapon” protocols for officer safety. She told the court I hated police and might be armed after I had told her I feared being harmed by police. Those two marks on a government form choreographed how officers would approach my door. That choreography put me at greater risk.

These entries matter for intent and knowledge. They are not the errors of a panicked parent guessing in the dark. They are choices that inflate perceived danger where the file contained contrary facts already acknowledged by the same hand. “Unknown” where she knew, “dislike” where I had documented fear, edited prompts to amplify urgency—each decision narrows any charitable reading of her state of mind. The pattern supports willful blindness at best, and purposeful misrepresentation at worst. Reasonable doubt about motive remains a debate for bystanders; reasonable doubt about knowledge dissolves when the email thread and the form sit side by side.

Why would she do this? Because escalation served her aim. An inflated risk profile guaranteed swift state action, maximized pressure on me to submit, and laid down a paper trail that cast future resistance as proof of instability. It recruited police procedure as leverage where relationship work would have required accountability. It also purchased a kind of reputational indemnity: once the record branded me as dangerous, every later disagreement—academic, professional, domestic—could be reinterpreted through that label. In short, the form was not information; it was a script. It scripted officers to approach as if I were armed, scripted clinicians to expect noncompliance, scripted institutions to doubt my credibility, and scripted a path where my plea for safety could be read as contempt.

Set against the rest of the file—my documented voluntary care, my written boundaries, my explicit warnings about police-involved wellness checks—the form’s language becomes its own exhibit. It shows how a single page can be tuned to raise the temperature of a situation until force looks like prudence. It shows how “unknown” can be used as a weapon when the truth is known. And it shows why I reject the claim that this was clumsy concern. The edits reflect design. The design reflects control.

The aftermath of her testimony was swift and severe. The court, hearing only her horrifying portrayal of my condition, issued a Form 10 apprehension order, essentially a pickup order for police to detain me for psychiatric evaluation. two days later the Calgary Police Service came to apprehend me. I still remember the confusion and fear as I pleaded they let me finish attending my lecture. I felt a deep shame, even though I had done nothing wrong, a shame that wasn’t mine to carry, that belonged to the situation my mother created. At the hospital, I went through the indignity of an involuntary psychiatric assessment. Imagine being a competent adult, forced to prove your sanity because your own mother cried “wolf” about your mental health. It was surreal. And just as I and my treating professionals already knew, the hospital found no evidence that I was a danger to myself or anyone. After a thorough evaluation, I was discharged the very same day, with the psychiatrists concluding that no further action was needed. In other words, my mother’s dire claims had zero clinical basis (and this outcome was entirely predictable, given that her claims were fabricated).

I walked out of the hospital traumatized but vindicated medically. Yet, the damage was done. I had been deprived of my liberty, dignity, and peace of mind. I had to endure the trauma of detention and the stigma of others thinking I’d been “taken away.” All of it was based on my mother’s testimony, testimony that she knew was false. This is what betrayal looks like. It is a parent using the trust society places in them, the assumption that a mother would never deliberately harm her child, to harm her child. It is a profound violation of trust and ethics. In that single day, my mother didn’t just break the bond of parent and child; she broke the basic covenant of honest society.

Not an Act of Care, an Act of Control

One might ask: Why would any parent do this? From the outside, it’s hard to fathom. Loving parents have indeed had to make painful decisions to hospitalize adult children who were truly in crisis, and sometimes that is done out of genuine care. But those cases are marked by good faith, the parent genuinely doesn’t know the child’s state, fears for their life, and doesn’t have other options. My case was the opposite. I had given my mother other options on a silver platter, and she flat-out rejected them because they didn’t give her unilateral power. Family therapy, by design, would have meant an impartial professional witnessing our dynamic and guiding our communication. It would have required her to hear hard truths and respect boundaries, things a narcissistic mindset cannot tolerate. She didn’t want reconciliation; she wanted submission.

It’s important to understand the difference between motive and intent here. Legally, to prove her wrongdoing, what matters is intent: she intentionally lied and misled the court, which is evident from the evidence that she knew otherwise. Her motive, the why, might be debated by those who can’t imagine a mother acting out of malice. Perhaps she convinced herself she was “saving” me; perhaps she was driven purely by anger and revenge for my defiance. We may never know her inner rationale. But psychologists who study narcissistic family dynamics note that a parent with narcissistic traits often cannot differentiate between caring for someone and controlling them. In her mind, my refusal to meet on her terms was an insufferable challenge to her authority. Research in family psychology shows that narcissistic parenting is defined by the parent’s focus on their own needs and control, at the expense of the child’s well-being (Miller, 2018). Such a parent may truly believe “I know best, I must intervene by any means,” but that belief is wrapped up in their own ego and fear of losing influence. My mother’s actions align with what experts describe as “coercive control disguised as concern.” It’s a twisted logic where violating your autonomy is justified as “for your sake.” But altruistic intentions do not excuse perjury and force. Even if one gives her the benefit of the doubt about wanting to help, the methods she chose are indefensible. Good intentions do not nullify the harm of lies and abuse. In any case, I firmly believe based on her long pattern of behavior, that this was less about saving me and more about punishing me for asserting independence. Recall that in a narcissistic family, love is conditional on obedience; when I revoked that obedience, she moved to reassert dominance in a devastating way.

Some members of the community we once shared (friends, relatives, neighbors) might find this all hard to accept. After all, my mother can be charming and persuasive. Narcissistic individuals often have a “public face”, kind, concerned, the model citizen, and a very different private face (Eggshell Therapy, 2021). She likely told people she was “desperate to get me help” and that I was out of control. It’s a classic smear campaign tactic: paint the estranged adult child as the unstable one, so any drastic action seems justified. If you heard only her side, you might even have applauded her for her bravery in “doing the right thing for her son.” That is why I am telling my side now, with evidence and specifics. This is not a he-said, she-said situation. I have the emails, the documents, the hospital report. A paper trail of proof that she knew I wasn’t a danger and chose to misrepresent the facts. My goal in sharing this is not revenge. I am not writing out of a desire to see my mother punished for punishment’s sake, nor to air dirty laundry without purpose. I write this as a plea for recognition. Recognition of the truth and of the injustice that was done. The community we once shared cannot truly be “community” unless it is grounded in truth and accountability.

Recognition, Not Revenge: The Refusal to Disappear the Past

I have learned that forgiveness and reconciliation are not only distinct, they obey different temporalities. Reconciliation supposes time itself can smooth over rupture. But some ruptures are not wear; they are breaks. And some harms do not recede just because the calendar turns. Forgiveness, when offered under moral blackmail, “because she’s your mother,” “because enough time has passed,”, is not a gesture of peace. It is a surrender to the clock.

Jean Améry, writing of unforgivable wounds, knew this intimately. In Jill Staufer’s words, resentment resists “the natural healing of time.” It demands that we not let the past be past. To forgive, under conditions where acknowledgment and repair have been withheld, is not moral magnanimity. It is a performance that submerges the self in a social narrative that demands endurance instead of justice. Améry warns us against the moral quietism of time: “Yes, the past is past and there is no changing it. But there is no moral sense to that.” The pressure to forgive without reckoning, just because the harm is no longer new, collapses ethics into entropy.

My refusal, then, is not because I can’t let go. It is because I will not collaborate in the pretense that what happened is over. My mother’s actions are not a closed event. They launched a chain reaction whose fallout has yet to clear. What she did under oath is not simply one wrong act, it was a detonation. And she watched, in full knowledge of what she had done, as the consequences unfolded.

She watched while my university, seeing only the stigma she manufactured, expelled me without hearing or recourse. She watched while my reputation with professors and colleagues became a casualty of innuendo, while due process collapsed under the weight of “concern.” She watched me forced to flee my province and start over, stranded in poverty. She watched my home vandalized, my insurance denied, my income disappear. She watched the bank foreclose and leave me homeless. She knew the truth, she had created this false frame—and she chose silence. Not once did she intervene to correct the record. Not once did she offer restitution. She left the wreckage to compound, hoping perhaps that if I fell far enough, I’d come crawling back and give her the absolution she never earned.

This is not ignorance. This is a form of moral extortion. She let my life collapse under the weight of her lie, wagering that my desperation might buy her innocence. That is not a person seeking reconciliation. That is someone playing chicken with a life.

So no, reconciliation is no longer possible. There is no plausible future in which she can undo what she has done, because she didn’t just act wrongly once, she has committed herself to the maintenance of that wrong for years. Even if some new impulse toward atonement emerged now, it would come only after allowing every repairable thing to rot beyond salvaging. Atonement is not a ritual; it is a ledger of actions taken before the damage metastasizes. She let the damage spread.

There is no material restitution that could buy back what I’ve lost: the trust of teachers, the shelter of home, the scaffolding of a career, the stamina that evaporates when you live too long under siege. What remains is the truth. And the truth must be seen, clearly and without euphemism.

If some view this stance as severe, taking legal action against one’s own mother, maintaining permanent distance, I ask you to consider what standard of moral erasure you are defending. Sometimes “keeping the peace” is just a euphemism for asking the injured to swallow the truth whole. I decline. I will not retreat into silence so others can remain comfortable in false narratives. I will not hand over my own clarity in exchange for the illusion of familial harmony.

To the community that once knew us: do not let the mask of parental concern blind you to the mechanics of coercion. What my mother did was not care. It was violence dressed in the costume of worry. It was betrayal from the one person who could have chosen a different path, and refused it. Repeatedly.

So I no longer speak of reconciliation. I speak of record keeping. I speak of moral accounting. I speak of the right to name what happened, how it happened, and what it cost. That is the ground I stand on. That is what I defend, not revenge, but recognition.

And for me, that recognition, the public and private acknowledgment that “what was done to you was wrong” is the first moral act anyone can perform. Forgiveness, if it ever arrives, will be a private decision made in the safety of truth. Until then, my stance is not a grudge. It is a boundary. It is a refusal to let time launder harm into memory, or betrayal into misunderstanding. I remember precisely because I know what was lost. I write because memory is the first architecture of justice.

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Thick Thought Thumper Of The Week-----> Wager With A Life

'Wager With A Life' is a statement against moral extortion. The song confronts a tactic where someone withholds truth and repair, gambling that desperation will purchase their innocence. It rejects the demand to “forgive” without acknowledgment, record-correction, or restitution. Core themes: institutional betrayal, reputational harm, the collapse of due process under “concern,” and the refusal to sanctify silence. It argues that reconciliation without truth is not healing but leverage—an attempt to convert another person’s suffering into absolution. The refrain “This isn’t ignorance—it’s a wager with a life” names the strategy and refuses to fund it. Why it matters: it protects dignity where apology is replaced by PR, where accountability is outsourced to the victim, and where “closure” is offered as a bargain instead of a responsibility. The song is a boundary: name the harm, repair the damage, or stop calling it reconciliation.

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Works Cited

Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women’s development. Harvard University Press.

Holmgren, M. R. (1993). Forgiveness and the intrinsic value of persons. American Philosophical Quarterly, 30(4), 341–352.

Smedes, L. B. (1996). The art of forgiving: When you need to forgive and don't know how. Moorings.

Stoop, D., & Masteller, J. (1991). Forgiving our parents, forgiving ourselves: Healing adult children of dysfunctional families. Servant Publications.

Stauffer, J. (2015). Ethical loneliness: The injustice of not being heard. Columbia University Press

Betrayal Disguised as Care

Betrayal Disguised as Care