I am worried that the ads will make me feel better and so then when i go to therapy i will say oh yes i am fine, i feel ok etc. So basically its a sticking plaster and im not dealing with why im depressed......

Just so broke and the therapy costing me a fortune!

Do what you can to make it easier for you, what's wrong with that? I tried ADs but they didn't work on me. The therapy and new ways of thinking is what worked. They work on lots of people though.

Sorry i havent posted. Wanted/needed a break fom it all. i SO FEEL THE SAME RE FRIENDSHIPS ETC ITS JUST ALL SPOOKY BUT GREAT TO HEAR IM NOT THE ONLY ONE!

sorry had caps on dc is on my lap! My question here is who is on ads? I think the therapy is good and i hear what is being said and feel i can make changes in my life but i just feel so rubisdh and tired all the time, is it woth cobining it with sertraline or am i trying to cut corners?

thanks

I am starting to see how problems in my friendships/relationships have been caused by my tendency to throw myself into too intense friendships which cross the boundaries of friendship into something else.

I have done this because of my craving for the intense bond I didn't have with a parent. When I've got into friendships/relationships I've pushed and pushed it because of a feeling of never being able to get enough to satisfy the craving. It has led me into doing things on occasions which are wrong wrt my marriage.

When these boundaries are crossed, one person can expect too much of the other and become disappointed when it is not possible for the other one to live up to the expectations. Also one person can feel too overwhelmed by the other or too demanded of, or too taken advantage of.

I think I have sometimes gone into friendships with an intensity comparable to a boy-girl relationship. The closer you are the easier it is to get hurt, especially when you have impossibly high expectations that you get disappointed by easily because those things are very difficult for the other person to achieve. Also, the closer you are the more it hurts when it goes wrong.

Also the easier it is for the other person to get hurt, when you have made them feel so important by getting so close to them, then if you lessen the intensity for any reason, eg making another intense friendship with someone else, it could hurt the other person almost as much as infidelity in marriage. Or, eg. if you lessen the intensity because the other person has come to expect so much from you, because they have got used to it, but you can't keep up all that you do for them because it is such hard work so you start doing less for them.

If one didn't make the friendships so intense in the first place and allow healthy boundaries to be crossed both ways, the people involved would find it easier to cope with each other's imperfections, because they would be expecting less from each other.

I'm starting to think that one shouldn't expect as much from friendships as from marriages and one shouldn't expect as much from marriages as from the bond you should have had with your mother.

When I think about the bond between a mother and child, you can't get much closer can you! You grow inside your mother, feeding off her! You come out of her most intimate area! You suck on her breasts for food! (if breastfed that is). She puts up with all your crying and screaming and puking and shitting all over her and keeping her awake at night because you are her child and she loves you! She puts up with all your bad behaviour and imperfections and loves you anyway, unconditionally, just because she is your mother. She helps you to learn how to behave properly. She puts up with any way you want to treat her and forgives you for it and tries to sort it out however badly you've argued because the relationship is so important to her and she will not let it go. Well this is how I see the 'ideal' relationship between a mother and child anyway.

If you never had this, and you are still craving it, and you are trying to get it from people who should just be friends, of course it is going to be too much and a recipe for disaster!

Friends can not replace parents. They can fill some of the gap from the loss of parents but I'm thinking we must be careful not to expect them to fill too much of the gap. We should also be careful not to let other people expect so much from us that it goes beyond the boundaries of friendship.

I'm also thinking that when I feel I HAVE to help people and do more and more for them that is because I am projecting my needs of what I would like a mother to do for me onto them and I'm trying to be like their mother! Then I feel overwhelmed by it because it is too much to do for someone who is not your child.

I really need to get to grips with this boundaries and assertiveness thing.

Hi NewPenName. I think it is often because people are worried they will be seen as too self pitying and blaming that they hold back from getting the help they need.

But once you get the help you need you are less likely to be holding on to so much bad feeling and less likely to take it out on your new family (DH and DCs). I don't think most people take it out on their new families on purpose but it is very hard to stop feelings leaking out onto them.

I don't think getting help is a self absorbed thing to do because I think it improves your relationships with your new family. I feel so much better since I did blame the people who caused me emotional damage and felt listened to and believed by my therapist, and that he was on my side and was disgusted by the behaviour of the people who hurt me.

I think the key for me was focussing my blame onto the right people so that I didn't scapegoat my DH and DCs.

sorry to hear all these stories and how ongoing the effect is of our parents. Can I join in? Not sure I can go into details right now but have real issues with my NPD mother - full of rage and deep sense of loss at the moment. Feel the effect in all areas of my life, esp w female friends - boundaries/expecting too much/overly cautious etc etc.

wanttostartafresh - I just wanted to say thank you so much for your posts on this, they made me cry but also brought a clarity to the issue which 2 counsellors and much navel-gazing on my part failed to do! I think I'm coming to the realisation that my dm well and truly messed me up in middle childhood onwards and continues to deny me the right to have my own feelings/views/memories heard in collusion with my (enabling?) father and sister. God, I realise this sounds so self-pitying and blaming yet to have any chance of sorting myself out I have to blame the bloody woman!

Hahaha, thank you for your thoughts Bop, I am thinking about them before I respond fully. I'm not sure why I find it funny, it's not really, just that I was expecting people to think I was a bitch! I think it is really kind that you have tried to make me feel you are 'on my side'. It feels like something I always wanted. I wish someone would have been on my side back when I was the child being bullied. You have made me feel a bit comforted, so thank you as that is quite a big thing for me.

I was thinking that maybe what happened could push me into the next stage of my processing of everything and that would be something good to come out of it.

I feel a bit reassured that someone else could be friends with someone for years before they suddenly think there are things about the friendship they aren't happy with. The fact that we had been close friends such a long time and I had never really felt the negative things I felt til recently was making me doubt my judgement.

Sorry have been so quiet for quite a while now. Have been trying very hard to get to grips with my rage, and also trying very hard to get to sleep earlier, which has made getting on here problematic. Am still reading posts though and rooting for you all. Re the friends thing - I've been in that situation a lot, where the power balance is completely unequal - no surprise when you grow up in a family where the power balance is so utterly skewed - and it's still not fully resolved, but I'm a lot more aware of what's going on these days. I had one friend who was in my life for years and years and years and once I realised that I was unhappy with the way she treated me on some occasions, I started trying to raise it with her, thinking she would want to communicate and improve our relationship blah blah blah. EXACTLY the same thing I tried to do with my parents and brother, proceeding from exactly the same flawed reasoning - ie that these people fundamentally care about me and it's just a mistake or a misunderstanding that they keep treating me like crap. Guess what, every time I tried to bring something up with her, she got really angry and turned it all against me, and the unvoiced subtext was that I'd better be careful or she would abandon me. She always talked as if the way she thought about things was the ONLY valid way of seeing things at all, and I was committing a serious infraction of the rules by daring to want to have a viewpoint of my own. She decided what friendship meant to her, and therefore that was what friendship meant universally, no discussion allowed.

Obviously the only way you'd put up with that is if you felt very, very powerless, and I did, so I buried it all for a long time - she was one of the very few friends I had, and certainly almost the only one who'd been my "friend" for that long, and she was so "normal" and successful compared to me that I was probably grateful that someone like that wanted to have me in her life, I probably always hoped that proximity to her might rub off some of her success on me! Of course it was completely the opposite, it just highlighted the appalling, glaring differences in our lives, and she never, ever really took seriously the struggle I was going through to try and emerge from the pit I'd been thrown into.

It came to a head for me when I had my miscarriage after the first IVF - I realised that I didn't want to share any of this information with her at all, that I didn't trust her to be genuinely caring or sensitive, that I didn't trust her full stop. I knew without a doubt that she wouldn't say or do anything that would make me feel any better or feel understood, and that she would almost certainly say things that would make me feel worse, while appearing to be sympathetic and "good" (a knack she had). She had witnessed my struggles and my pain for long enough without ever acknowledging either the severity of the issues I was facing or the courage I had in trying to tackle them; she was another one of those people who offered me conditional friendship - I was allowed to be her friend as long as I showed only the sides of me that she liked, and abided by her rules, but she was never, ever, ever remotely interested in knowing the "real me".

StartAfresh, we've both talked about this before I know, this thing where people only "love" the you they want you to be, not the you you are. Anyway, to cut a long story short(!), I had also been thinking for some time that there was not much point in being friends with someone for 20+ years if after all that time there was still no real trust or intimacy, so my miscarriage was just the catalyst it took to finally act on my feelings and cut her out of my life. And I'm still very glad I did, very glad indeed. I couldn't actually tell her why - I didn't have the strength at the time, and more importantly, I knew she wouldn't actually listen to me anyway, so I just stopped answering her calls/texts/emails, and while for a time I regretted never having the chance to vent my anger at her for the way she'd treated me for all those years, now I just don't care and I'm just glad she's not in my life. It felt like the worm turning in a way - all those years she'd never thought I would be the one to abandon her, seeing she always had the upper hand in the power imbalance, and it gives me some satisfaction that in fact I did. My therapist always referred to her as "punishing" when I told her about the way she behaved to me, and that's very accurate - she was very judgemental, quite hard and rigid and controlling, and those are the kinds of people I sincerely want to avoid in my life now.

Anyway, so partly what I'm saying is to you, OSAHM - is this person really someone you want in your life? Does she make you feel valued? Does she like you, the real you? And what the hell is so wrong with defending your son from being bullied anyway? And why wasn't she intervening? Do you like her, the real her? If she has been upsetting you for so long, is she maybe not the nicest person to be around? You asked if your anger was apporpriate, well IMO of course it links back to your childhood situation, everything does, but that doesn't mean you don't have the right to get angry about things that are genuinely happening in the present! In fact it could be very healing for you to have actually got angry with someone who was allowing your son (and by proxy, you) to be bullied:it's like standing up for him and for your childhood self at the same time. I don't think you have anything to apologise for. Maybe in some ways you finally had a healthy reacion to her and her behaviour - you couldn't contain it any more, and you let rip, and so yes, all the other stuff came out too - well, good for you! About time someone stood up for you and if no one else is going to do it then who better than you yourself!

OK, I don't know if things are really that cut and dried, but all I want to say is - is her "friendship" really such a loss?

OK, really got to go now - don't know when I'll make it back on, but love to all.

Thank you WTSAfresh. I recognise that you are right about people treating me a certain way because they think it is ok, or they think they can get away with it, because I don't complain. And then when I do complain, because they had thought I didn't mind, they are shocked and upset. I recognise it because it has happened to me before. You probably won't remember but I have written about it on here ages back, when I had an outburst at a work colleague who hadn't realised until then that his behaviour was affecting me so much.

People have done things to me, all through my life, because they can, because I've been too weak to stand up for myself.

My friend is not really bad like some of the people from my past life though. I don't think she even thought she was doing anything bad. I get the impression that she thought that if someone valued her enough, they would let her get away with any faults and fully accept her by doing this. Pointing out what I see as her faults, seems to be to her, like saying - you are not important enough to me for me to forgive you for being imperfect.

I can understand her reasoning. But, if her faults started to make her treat me in ways that made me unhappy, surely I am allowed to say something?

She has said to me before, when we were talking about how people often take their negative feelings out on those closest to them, who they trust the most, that she has often treated her mother badly by talking to her nastily because she knows that her mother will not reject her for it. In other words she has done it because she can. This is what makes me think that she sees people letting her get away with her treating them imperfectly as proof that they value her.

She has also talked about her father being quite bad tempered and talking to her mother quite nastily and her mother putting up with it for years and years, sometimes thinking about leaving, but never going through with it.

I know that I need to learn how to be assertive with boundaries from the outset in relationships. It worries me that if I've got to this age without being able to do it, will I ever be able to do it? I feel I will get scared next time a situation arises and I will chicken out of standing up for myself. It is making me think about avoiding close friendships in the future, which I know is probably not the healthiest way to think.

I think I better read a book on it. Does anyone have any recommendations?

OSAHM, it sounds difficult. If your 'friend' has been 'snappy' with you a number of times, and you have not said anything, it sounds to me as if you have been unable/unwilling to set some boundaries in the relationship from early on. So perhaps your friend sensed that she could behave quite badly with you and you wouldn't say anything. So then she was very surprised and shocked when you did eventually 'explode' at her and all your past grievances came out, grievances that she might have thought she had already 'got away' with.

Without knowing your friend myself, I get the impression from what you have said that it may be hard to salvage the relationship. But I wouldn't give up all hope, leave it for a while and give yourselves both time to calm down and take a step back and perhaps in time, you might be able to re-open the lines of communication. That is if you really wnat to.

I realised i didn't want to even try and re-establish the friendship i had had with the mum friend at my DD's school where her son got overly attached to my DD and we ended up having a major falling out over it all. Looking back now, i realise perhaps i should never have got so close to her so quickly in the first place and also not allowed our respective DC's to get so close too. In effect, I should have set some boundaries in place from the start and taken the relationship far more slowly, but at that time I had no idea how to do that and just went headlong into the relationship witrhout any idea of the possible pitfalls as I was so pleased to have made a 'friend' at last.

I have really come to look at all relationships, including those with female friends, just like those with men. All the same rules and bits of advice apply. ie take it slowly, don't appear too keen or desperate, get to know each othersd first, set boundaries as to what is and is not acceptable behaviour early on, lots of open and honest communication etc etc.

I find that I do more 'observing' now before I get close to anybody and by doing that I have often spotted behaviour that I don't like and if at first i might have thought that person might be a potential friend, i then hold back a bit until i know her a bit better before investing any more in the friendship. It's very early days yet, but I think for me, the cautious approach is crucial to avoid being hurt and disappointed over and over again and also for me to have realistic expecations about what i can hope to gain from the relationship. I wonder whether i am perhaps too cautious and hold back too much and therefore stop people getting close to me who might turn out to be good friends. But I am also far more patient than i was before and feel i am willing to wait and take the relationship very slowly and if it is meant to be then it will work out. It sounds so much like one would describe a 'romantic' relationship with a man, but it is to me, kind of the same, trying to find and make close female friends who will be longterm friends hopefully.

I'm sure none of that is really of any help to you but i just wanted you to know that i have had similar experiences and i suppose i have learnt something from them, perhaps I am learning things now i would have learnt a long time ago had i had 'normal' parents.