"But we took you to Stately Homes!" - Dysfunctional parents?

[ItsGraceAgain]

It's October 2010, and the Stately Home is still open to visitors.

Forerunning threads:
December 2007
March 2008
August 2008
February 2009
May 2009
January 2010
April 2010
August 2010

Please check later posts in this thread for links & quotes. The main thing is: "they did do it to you" - and you can recover.

[ItsGraceAgain]

Pshaw! I don't even know what month it is!

[therealsmithfield]

lol grace - so are we moving?

[LittleMissHissingFirecracker]

Well at least you spelt the thread right!!

Good luck to all of you! I can't imagine going through these things.

[ItsGraceAgain]

heh, Hissy!

I thought it might be a bad time to get the thread broken ... we nearing 900. Hope it's OK.

[therealsmithfield]

looking good! How are you doing grace?

[droves]

Hi , new thread .

mostly lurk on these , but post now and again.

Have the need again.

PUZZLED .

Saw my aunt , who is also without contact to my parents. She is dads sister, but was mums best friend at high school, my parents met through her.

We were talking about how they were with me before i went NC
She said my mother had abused me, and that my father had allowed it by doing a disapearing act.
Apparently she has shizophrenia(spelling , sorry)... was diagnosed when i was 7 , she tried to kill herself and was taken to hospital for around 2 weeks.
I was also told she tried to kill my father by attempting to drown him by holding his head under the bathwater...Although i have no proof of this i do believe it , because when teenagers 2 of my brothers pulled my mother of my father once ,when she held a knife to his neck.

She also mentioned , that mum poured boiling water over me ....i have no memory of this.
Acually i have big big chunks of memory missing...years when i remember nothing.

My aunt cried and cuddled me , and i pushed her away , not because i didnt want a cuddle , but because it felt wrong.

she wants me to get counceling

[therealsmithfield]

droves That's awful for you to hear and difficult to take in. How do you feel about your aunt? Do you trust her?
I just wondered wha her motivation was for bringing this up. Interesting how she was crying when it had in fact happened to you,iyswim?

[therealsmithfield]

*what her motivation was

[BookcaseFullofBooks]

Thank you for the new thread. I'll get comfortable as I think I'm going to be posting on here quite a bit.

[MarniesMummy]

Hi all, have been lurking for so long (in fact I may have even posted and forgotten) but want to mark my place.

Briefly, I have an awful relationship with my mum, who has never liked me and my relationship with my dad hasn't been tha good at times either.

I'm a year into counselling and am beginning to feel an awful lot stronger. I'm not at the end of my journey yet but I feel like an entirely different person (in terms of my feelings) since starting counselling.

I'm looking forward to getting to know you all better.

[droves]

I do trust her .
She was crying and kept saying she had failed us (siblings and i) , that she should have done something , but she honestly thought that mums family would have helped us.
She lived 400 miles away, and my uncle is a very poorly man..so its not her fault.

I know if she had been near things wouldnt have been so bad.
It was days before grans birthday , we just lost her a few months before and the subject of families came up.

The fact is that my gran died heartbroken because she did not see my siblings , she tried but mum kept moving us...my other gran lied to her when she phoned begging to see us.
i got in contact when i went nc from mother . i suppose i was looking for answers of some kind.
I was upset , my aunt gave me a picture i drew for my grandparents when i was 6. It had a door key and a hair bobble (my most prized possesion, so they know whos it was) selotaped to the back of it....so they could sneek into my house and rescue us .
.
(i didnt remember until i saw it , then i cried like a baby )

I think it was the last time i saw my grandparents until i was 12 (when id truent from school to visit unknown by mum).

The motivation i think was to prove that we were loved by the family .
Why else would they keep a childs picture for 27 years ?.

[droves]

i should mention that my dad , was what i called a boomerange father ....Hed dissapear , then come back , then go off again.Then disapear again.

Started doing this when i was weeks old.

Pattern continued , even after parents got divorced . Think it made mum worse.
Never could understand why he just stood there and let her do what she did.

i suspect theres something wrong with him somewhere too. You dont leave 4 children to deal with a mentally ill woman who has history of abuse and self harm.

Would like an appology from him..for his part (for allowing this to happen).Hell will be frozen over first though.
Is currently thought to be in ardfern with his japaneese wife , after disapearing to new zealand for 10 years ,in 1999.

[therealsmithfield]

marniesmummy I'm glad you decided to post. You say your mother 'never liked' you and this hits resonates with me. That it is exactly how it felt for me growing up which is a huge thing to deal with.

droves that is so , heart wrenchingly . Im hoping there is some solace and healing that comes from your discovery though. Finding out that someone loved you so very much is validating. I felt my nan loved me and perhaps without that love I may not have survived.

bookcase how are you doing?

[BookcaseFullofBooks]

Hi MarniesMummy and Droves.
I'm afraid I'm struggling at the moment so not sure I have anything to say. Just wanted you to know I had read your posts. Droves, I really feel for the 6 year old you. I think I can relate to her.

[therealsmithfield]

sorry droves xposted

[BookcaseFullofBooks]

Feeling pretty scared but less alone now that I have been posting on here. I replied to your post about seeing my parents, at the end of the last thread.

[MarniesMummy]

Sorry Droves, I picked a bad moment to post.

What you've been through sounds awful.

[droves]

Well , my aunt and i had a chat about therapy and councelling.
She thinks i would benefit from regression therapy , where you get hypnotised , and get taken back.
To help me remember and deal with things ive blanked out.

Im not sure , i think ive blanked and forgotton things for a reason . And if they were that bad that i did this , then its to protect myself in some way.

Am concidering councelling though...so i suppose there is good that has came from this.

My aunt tells me im too good to have horrible stuff ruining the rest of my life... and that she wishes she had been my mum.
She really is lovely.
We do nice normal things like going shopping for tea bags in tescos with my cousins...Just wish she didnt live so far away and could do it more often.

[BookcaseFullofBooks]

Your aunt sounds lovely Droves.
I was advised by a hypnotherapist that as I had blocked it out so well, it's unlikely I would be willing to open up even under hypnosis. It could also be very traumatic in itself to release everything at once.
Good luck with the counselling.

[therealsmithfield]

bookcase glad you are feeling less alone, thats a good thing at least. These feelings can be so overwhelmingly isolating. If you can even begin to release some of those feelings bit by bit, little by little into the ether...

droves re your father- a huge amount of abandonment to deal with at such a young age.

[droves]

Marniesmummy , its not a bad moment ..

Its the point of the thread , to post when we have the need , to get it out and help us all cope a bit better..

I totally understand what you said about never thinking your mum even liked you .
I felt just the same.

I do like you , your posts tell me your kindhearted and sensitive, your intellegent and i would love to have a friend like you in real life. The people who have you in thier life are very blessed.

Im so glad your councelling is working , and its giving me some good feelings about starting that journey myself.

I really want to be free of the hurt..its over , has been for a long time (nc 6 years ! ) but its almost like im haunted
on the inside.

[BookcaseFullofBooks]

My real father and stepfather are dead now but I still see my mum. I spent alot of time being angry with her for being such an ineffectual mother and staying with a man who hurt her children (well, just me really).

She always gave me what I wanted, materially, in order to make up for her shortcomings and I used to parent her and set my own boundaries.

I see her for her sake, not mine. I get nothing from the relationship except I don't feel any guilt for pushing her away anymore. I pity her because I see the life she came from and want to help her to enjoy the rest of it.
I don't recoil when she hugs me now but it doesn'tean anything to me.

I've confronted her about the violence and emotional abuse and she seems to be sorry for the choices she made but when I try to approach the other stuff, she
becomes defensive.

Sorry, I didn't intend to write an essay but I guess when it comes out, I need to run with it.

[therealsmithfield]

I relate to that too droves. I have only been nc for 3 years but Ive never had any real counselling. I think therapy will help me finally put some internal spooks to rest. Here's hoping.

bookcase Read back your response on the other thread. It must be hard seeing her and I wondered if her visits do spark a strong repsonse from you.

[droves]

bookcase & smithfield , thank you for your kind posts .

Think i had a wobble today and thats why i posted... Thing is you are all coping and its helping me to remember baby steps are still steps to healing.

Your all so kind... i often wonder if the lives we have lived have somehow given us extra empathy toward others ?

Sorry , for feeling sorry for myself.

[droves]

Bookcase ,
you are such a strong person to still deal with your mother for her sake.

I couldnt do that ,and stay sane myself.