To feel envious of people who grew up in non abusive homes with loving parents and therefore have good self esteem?

[SpeckledLily]

I've namechanged as I know it is not good to be envious but I can't help it.

My parents were very emotionally and physically abusive when I was a child; both narcissists with anger issues with my sister as the golden child. I was hit, called names, told I was useless, and just generally lived in fear. I was not really allowed friends as a)I was told that they would one day find out what I was really like and would not want to know me and b)because my parents used to go mad if I was friendly with someone and say I was disloyal to the family etc and they wouldn't talk to me for days if I'd been to a friend's house. It was weird, they wanted to crush me but didn't want anyone else to 'have' me.

I was very badly bullied all through high school, after we moved areas and I left my childhood friends behind. I was probably bullied for being weird. I also was conscious of the things my parents told me so if someone did want to be my friend then I couldn't quite commit to being a total, proper friend, for fear of what my parents might say or do. So therefore I never had a chance to develop that proper strong network of friends, and have struggled all of my life to make and maintain friendships. I feel so envious of people who have a huge core of solid, good friends that they've known since childhood.

I also feel envious of those that had decent, loving parents who brought them up to have good self esteem. I am now non contact with my parents and sister, and have had counselling but being realistic, I am never going to have normal, healthy self esteem that someone who has grown up in a rock solid loving home and been allowed to be themselves has. I will just have to make do with the self esteem that I have managed to develop for myself and accept the fact that I will always struggle with friendships.

AIBU to feel like this? Has anyone had similar experiences?

I had a very similar time OP. I really don't think people saying 'Oh but lots of other people have nice upbringings and low self esteem' is helpful at all. Because that ignores the fact that somebody deliberately crushed and destroyed yours. It's like saying to someone whose house has been bombed that they shouldn't be angry with the person who did the bombing because some people's houses are blown up in accidental gas explosions.

Knowing that you feel like this because of something that was deliberately done to you as hard and causes bitterness that just isn't there if low self esteem bugs you for another reason. I think that attitude is unpleasant too, because it ignores the damage that has been done which just can't be fixed. Your personality forms as a child and if you're abused in that period the damage is often irreparable. You grow up into a broken adult and you can no more fix it than someone who's lost a leg can grow one back, it's just who you are.

It's not as easy as just forgetting it when it's damaged you so much as a person it's going to be with you for the rest of your life.

I also grew up in an abusive family. Now that I have my own daughter, I am more aware of how much my own childhood was lacking. I do feel wistful for what I could have been, and achieved, had I had good self esteem in my teens and 20s in particular. So much time and energy spent running away from my problems and in dysfunctional relationships. I often felt very, very lonely deep down, remembering that feeling really scares me.

My think my self esteem is good now though, and I don't feel lonely, haven't in a long time- both DH and I are very different people to several years ago. Psychotherapy really helped us both. I was in group psychotherapy for several years. Transforming from the one who always needed the support of the group, to one of the supportive members helping others, was really powerful. A good marriage has made the biggest difference. My DH also grew up in an abusive family (although when we met we just thought our families were 'difficult and eccentric') and we have really grown together in moving away from their dynamics. A career helping others helped me realise I am a capable adult, I am not the scared child anymore.

Becoming a mother has perhaps been the most significant step, I'm channelling my experience of my childhood to help my daughter grow up in a loving, supportive, safe environment, where she is accepted and valued for herself. I am really pleased that she is having a happier childhood than DH and I.

I do worry sometimes that when DH and I are old, our children living independently, whichever of us survives the other might be very lonely indeed. When the trappings of parenthood, marriage, career are taken away, will the underlying loneliness come back? Or has the psychotherapy, reflecting, experiences of adulthood really changed us deep down? I hope we have changed deep down, the alternative scares me. I probably sound really dramatic here, but I do worry about my previous unhappiness returning if I slip into dementia, and believe I'm back in my childhood. DH has suggested we take up adventurous Travel and dangerous sports in our old age so we go out with a bang instead and don't hang about to find out

It is shitty though. I look at my own daughter and wonder what the hell my parents were thinking. That encouraged me to stop contact with my father. He has apparently mellowed somewhat in old age, but it is healthier for me to draw a line under our relationship. Still wavering on my mother- my main emotion towards her is disappointment that she chose to not protect me. It's like a kick to the stomach to realise how much your own parents damaged you.

Yanbu to feel envious towards your friends. If you grew up in an emotionally healthy family it is really hard to understand how all pervasive the damage of childhood abuse can be. Of course people who grew up in happy families can also have serious difficulties, but I do think growing up with parents who chose to actively harm you really screws with your intrinsic subconscious feelings of self worth and safety.

I completely envied one lady who sympathised that she also had difficult in-laws, then relayed a tale about disagreeing with her MIL about styles of children's clothes, but in the end they agreed to disagree and all love each other. She was a kind lady trying to empathise but I felt so envious that this was a big problem in her family !

I feel for you OP, I had a similar though not as bad , parents who just didn't/couldn't care. I have some superficial relationship with them, and thought the hurt anger and disappointment long buried. A simple conversation with my father though on the weekend ended with me very distressed and crying (very unusual) in front of my daughters who were both verybshocked and upset to see me so distressed. Sadly I think that damaged hurt child never goes away no matter how much we try. And to perfectly demonstrate not even a text from my father or stepmother to see if I was ok after.

I have never and will never have a romantic, sexual relationship due to my upbringing.

Accepting that has brought me some peace.

I wish you well

And bill - thank you for that clear explanation.

I am being at odds with Bill's post there - sorry Bill. 'Personality' isn't necessarily formed in childhood - every psychologist will tell you that has a large bearing but nothing definitive - it's open to so many other influences as we grow up. You don't have to grow up 'a broken adult' - that means nothing - the damage is very often not irrepairable, and it is not as terminal as having a leg removed for eg.
I am typing as someone's who's own childhood was fractured and 'difficult', and where my syblings, now fellow adults, want to whitewash the worst of it all.

OP, what you've written sounds very familiar to me and its hard to deal with. No advice to add as I feel pretty similar myself just wanted to say don't let anyone make you feel insignificant as you aren't.
I understand your feelings entirely.

billsykes I couldn't agree more with your post, its the fact that its deliberate isn't it. I keep having this conversation with my DH and people who haven't been through it don't get it. It hurts because it was intentional.
Very well said.

I certainly think you can 'train' yourself to respond differently on the face of things and other events also step in as it were, but very often, a damaged child grows to be a damaged adult. The fact most of us manage to hide it most of the time doesn't make it any less true.

I also feel envious of those that had decent, loving parents who brought them up to have good self esteem Reading posts such as yours and the Stately Homes thread on the Relationships board makes me acutely aware that I had, and have, the best dps any child could wish for and it could be said I've led a charmed life but, nevertheless, I've struggled with depression on occasion.

I am now non contact with my parents and sister Having closed the door on your unhappy early experiences, see these three characters as being strangers rather than relatives as, in truth, the 'you' that exists now is completely unrelated to them and you are free to reinvent the past and put in place the loving and approving parents you always wanted by parenting yourself whenever you feel the need and being the sister to others you wished you had.

I am never going to have normal, healthy self esteem that someone who has grown up in a rock solid loving home and been allowed to be themselves has You have something more than 'normal' and 'healthy' as your indomitable courage has caused your hard won self-esteem to be tempered time and again like finest steel until is as flexible as it is resilient - it may bend but it will never break.

I will just have to make do with the self esteem that I have managed to develop for myself and accept the fact that I will always struggle with friendships You're 'making do' with far more than many can hope to aspire to and, once you've put aside any thoughts of being 'less than' others, you'll find that many are drawn to your natural empathy like moths to a flame and you won't be short of friends.

Don't allow the past to cast a long shadow over your present. If it threatens to do so, force it back into the box marked 'do not open' where it belongs and revisit it on a bright sunny day when it can do no harm.

To answer Hopelessly's question When the trappings of parenthood, marriage, career are taken away, will the underlying loneliness come back? When all is taken away by the natural course of things you will discover the inner confidence that comes from a life well lived, and you will find that "the psychotherapy, reflecting, experiences of adulthood" hasn't "really changed" you "deep down" so much as it gave you the tools to become all that you were meant to be which, in itself, is an achievement worth striving for.

Pandora, it often is irreparable. As I'm sure many people suffering from untreatable personality disorders as a result of childhood abuse will tell you. Not to mention drug and alcohol addictions.

That's not to say that is the case for all people who are abused, if you go on to recover that's great. But for an awful lot of people who've been permanently damaged (and it's pretty indisputable some are) then saying 'You can just get over it, I did' is neither true nor helpful.

A lot of good sense and suggestion there goddess, imo

Well yes - but if I say now 'I won't allow my parents to prevent me having sexual relations.'

How?

Therapy has its place but there comes a point where it can be counter productive as well.

Bill - nope, it usually is repairable - just extremely difficult and we are not advised/empowered/cultured to see that and access assistance - we just 'get on with it' as good Brits often do - Keep Calm and Carry On stuff - stoically.
Untreatable personality disorders, maybe, but even there, there are advances is identifying them and working with people with that and intervening with them to begin with by idfentifying their behaviours and helping them see why (rather than self-labling as 'mad').
No-one, least of all me, has said 'you can just get over it'.

And I don't know who this Pandora person is... Pan would do?

YANBU. For one thing, envy is an emotion, and you can't help feeling it, all you can change is your response to it. But it sounds like you are already quite good at that really, that you have the coping tools in place.

TBH it sounds like you might be in a phase of mourning for what you never had. I would say, go with it. It is sad. You've every right to feel sad and wish it had been different.
I also share your frustration with therapy - I have a similar past to yours and I've been in therapy and it seems a lot of the time that all therapy can offer me is the sort of intellectual insight and deliberate, fragile self-conscious construction of my own self esteem. It's hard work and never feels natural.

You'd be very welcome over at the Stately Homes thread on Relationships btw - not that we have any answers, but we are all struggling with similar issues.

I must just be a twat then pan :)

Sorry Pandoes, not Pandora. But I think you're extremely deluded to think it's just a matter of accessing assistance. Do you have any idea how rubbish mental health services are in this country? And those suffering from conditions which are most commonly caused by abuse are usually at the bottom of a very big pile as far as mental health services are concerned.

BPD for example is often seen as just being pointless treating and sufferers are just scooped up when they reach crisis again and again with their stomachs pumped or their self harm stitched up. They're often mostly just seen as pains in the arse whose contact with the NHS is discouraged rather than assistance being offered.

Even the very small minority who are able to access decent therapy - even for them it's not a magic bullet.

I count myself lucky that I have (mainly) overcome my poor childhood. But I've seen plenty of people who've just never even come close to it. I've been to some of their funerals at fairly young ages and death was the only time they could escape it. For a lot of people it's not something they can recover from and even if they could the help just isn't available.

And the sort of 'woo' platitudes Goddess came out with could only ever come from someone who hasn't been through this sort of thing. I wish it was that simple.

I'm not aware of any 'personality disorders as a result of childhood abuse' that are untreatable, Bill, but many of those who have suffered abuse in their childhoods can find it extremely difficult to completely recover from their experiences.

It is possible to recover from drug and alcohol addictions, but it can take considerable self-will and self-determination to quit these habits.

Hmm..I didn't say it's just a matter of accessing assistance, Bill. And neither am I 'deluded'.

I can see this becoming pointlessly antagonistic so I'll bow out.

I'm not aware of any 'personality disorders as a result of childhood abuse' that are untreatable, Bill

I suggest you ask a few NHS professionals their honest opinion on the treatment of BPD then. You might enlighten yourself.

I had an awful childhood too. I feel very separate from people who come from loving and kind families, some of the 'advice' on this thread (however well meant) shows me why I feel like this.

It's only 'woo' if you believe it is, Bill, because ultimately we are the sum total of our beliefs at any given time which may go some way to explaining why we have the ability to change like the wind.

As I have no wish to negate what you believe in, I suggest we agree to differ in that you can continue to hold open the door marked 'give up hope all ye who enter here' while I continue to endeavour to hold up a quivering glimmer of hope to those who don't believe they have any hope of recovering from childhood abuse or other negative experiences in their early lives.

Fwiw, as I'm sure you're aware, a diagnosis of BPD is not dependent on the patient having experienced a difficult childhood.

I know how you feel. My mum had an abusive childhood - and it did return to torment her during her dementia before she died. She wasn't always a great mum, but her life was very difficult especially as my dad committed suicide during my childhood. She was a compulsive hoarder and recently I read my diaries from the early 70s. I was surprised to read how often I wrote that she was physically ill and worried about her. I'd forgotten about that. I remember her as a strong woman. I identify with the idea of mourning for a childhood that I didn't have. I became my mother's'confidente' as a child, in the sense that she confided in me over lots of stuff, as a quasi adult. I enjoyed it as it made me feel special, but a lot of it wasn't really suitable stuff for a child - very sad and low and constantly worried and introspective. Years later, when my own DDs reached the age of his death, I became depressed, and it was a sort of mourning, because they were moving into territory - a balanced, happy, supported and age appropriate childhood - that I didn't know. I have done an ok job as a mum, I think (although time will tell) and I have been blessed by a good relationship. You are not being unreasonable.

I never said that all BPD patients had experienced abuse. But the majority have. Estimates of up to 75% of sufferers having been sexually abused. And that doesn't even include others who were 'just' physically, emotionally or neglected. And abuse is seen as one of the primary causes of the condition.

Plus there are other disorders which are often the result of abuse which emphatically preclude some of the advice you give. An abused child who ends up a sociopath isn't going to be 'naturally emphatic'. Someone who finds it impossible to build relationships and trust other people isn't just going to slot into someone else's life as the ideal 'sister'.

I just hate this idea that an hour a week having a chat in a psychiatric clinic is going to magically erase 16 years of being told you're a worthless piece of shit and having your head kicked in every Friday night.

If it does work brilliant. But if it doesn't I don't agree with this sense of shame some people think abuse survivors should have because they just haven't tried hard enough or engaged properly or accessed the right help. If it's just as simple as having a bit of psychotherapy and 'getting over it' then why are they so hugely over represented amongst the prison population, mental health service users, the homeless? I doubt that's how they would have liked their lives to turn out. I guess it's just because they didn't bother tapping into their 'inner confidence' eh?