To still feel so fucked off with my parents?

[lastminuterush]

In many ways my parents were good; very loving and generous and supportive.

But there are various things that really stand out from my childhood and adolescence and I sometimes feel angry.

Like:

• clothes; we didn't lack money but I never had clothes. A few hand me downs from my brother. Some horrible stuff from the market. Occasionally I'd beg something as a birthday or Christmas present but often it was wrong - like one year I asked for jeans and I got them but they were more demim trousers with an elasticised waist and embroidery, so for much younger girls. It contributed in part to such bad bullying as I always had awful stuff.

• my dad and the camera. He used to 'stage' elaborate photographs - getting the whole family to stand somewhere stupid while he took a picture or getting you into stupid poses and then putting the photos up somewhere. He once barged in on me when I was trying to eat something and took a photo. Just made you feel self conscious and stupid. And I hate the fact that I hate most of our family photos as I remember feeling awkward and ridiculous.

• Sunday school. My brother and I were made to attend Sunday school twice a day every Sunday. This lasted until year 5 for me I think and year 7 for my brother. Then it was once a day. I think we finally rebelled completely in secondary. The people running it were completely barking mad but my dad used to chuckle in an indulgent way and seemed to find them charming

• food. Just couldn't ever have a snack without some huge row as my mum worried endlessly about me getting fat yet used to buy copious amounts of cakes and biscuits.

• my mum slagging me off to people, sometimes inventing stuff. Sometimes if I challenged her on it she'd do this silly high pitched laugh and claim it happened. Stuff like 'titter titter my DD once rang me in the middle of the night because she fell out with her friends at a sleepover'. This didn't happen! Other times she would agree it was fictitious but she was trying to make the other parent feel better because I was well behaved

• mother having a memory like an elephant. I got into a minor bit of trouble at school in year 1 - talking or something - and the teacher must have mentioned it to my grandmother at pickup and she told my mum. My mum was still talking about it when I was in secondary school.

• my mums rages. Not often but sometimes I remember her just losing it and screaming. It was frightening when I was little.

• the emphasis on academic achievement. They used to force me to do work after school and if I got things wrong they'd yell and scream; my dad would punch things in frustration. It made me feel awful.

• comparisons to other children; my mum would tell me how much better another little girl was at me for something.

I don't know. Sometimes I feel mad with them, then guilty.

(I don't want counselling; please don't suggest.)

I had quite a few resentments similar to yours, now I've got teenage kids myself and know I've done stuff wrong too but just not the same stuff my parents did.

You need to accept that they weren't being malicious, we're all just doing our best and will invariably fuck up at times regardless of how hard we try.

Tainbri- the toes cut off the shoes! Not me, but my cousins had this done (would have been back in the 70s) so maybe another thing that was not unusual in a time when clothing was relatively far more expensive. I remember being a bit shocked though and feeling sorry for my cousins... but who knows, perhaps they were secretly sniggering at my jumble sale trousers and hand knitted jumpers.

Having children is difficult as I've struggled to make meaningful relationships and it's a source of great sadness tonne.

It seems as if much of what bothered you was to do with being humiliated and not respected. I honestly think that children were once not considered as worthy of respect and their humiliation was found funny rather than troubling. This doesn't help you but it does contextualise it a bit.

I think it's interesting that some people on here have spoken to their parents as adult and their parents have acknowledged and apologised for some of the things that bother them from their childhood.

Whenever I've tried to talk to mine, they've told me I'm making a fuss about nothing, that they tried my best and they did lots for me (e.g. paid for private school which I actually hated- not that they cared about that).

Re the clothes thing - others have nailed it - it's the lack of understanding that ill fitting/wrong clothes lead to lack of self confidence, isolate you from others, mean you get bullied (no pastoral care in the 80s) and that you actively refrain from going out because you know you'll stick out like a sore thumb. And so very soon you don't have any friends. It's the total lack of parental empathy that as an older child/teenager fitting in is so important so why would you deliberately make your child "different".

I'll add another example to my list. I've had hayfever pretty much my whole life. My parents always dismissed it as "just a cold" despite me many times saying I thought it was hay fever (the fact I always got a cold in June/July was perhaps a give away) and refused to let me have any medicine. Is this abuse? Neglect? Ignorance? Hard to know.

I wonder that with my car sickness red It is better, although doesn't completely alleviate, when I'm in the front, but it was very rare this was allowed.

I can't understand the posters who think this wasn't that bad! Did they only read half the OP and none of the subsequent posts?

How is your relationship with your brother now? Has he also had trouble forming relationships as a result of the emotional and physical abuse your parents put you both through? (Not being allowed to wash often enough, being scared of violence from your dad hitting the table, even being dressed and hair curled in ways you hated - that's all physical ways of abusing even if they didn't hit you. And your mum continued to curl your hair every week for months despite you hating it!) How does your brother feel about them now?

They don't sound that bad TBH so YABU.

I pick up grief - for the childhood you didn't have and the one you experienced - as well as anger. I really hope you can find a framework to process that. It's totally valid. you didn't get what you needed from your parents for whatever reason, and with them having died you're also left with a lot of feelings and nowhere to put it.

I don't want to push counselling on you but I want to push something! I hope this thread is helpful? Perhaps the stately homes thread might be too? There will be something that works for you, some kind of framework that you can use to help you process. I think it's work trying things for fit. (Although not all councillors are created equal)

To those of you saying this was not that bad, would you feel you had been a good enough parent if both of your children tried to kill themselves between 11 and 13 years of age? If that happened to me I would know that I had majorly fucked up somewhere.

Lastminuterush

If you do not want counselling, I was wondering have you tried or be willing to try self help books ?

I feel the 'right' counsellor or could help you but understand that some are just not right for what a person can be looking for. You seem to have a good grasp on what your parents did and a good understanding of the way abuse in childhood can affect a person as an adult. The 'right' type of help either through counselling or self help books can be a huge help though.

Your parents were abusive, you did nothing wrong and you could not have changed it. You were powerless. Being powerless as a child in the way you were can cause massive issues for anyone. How you view yourself, confidence, self worth, anger, anxiety, relationships etc.

But, with the right help you can realise you now have all that power back. You can realise that you are a stronger person for it, it has made you kind and that you can have good relationships with people. You have to get to a stage of accepting what happened, getting past the whys and the blame as blame causes anger and stops you getting better.

I think sometimes our problems are just too big for us to sort out ourselves and we need help. Talking about it on here is a good start but you also need the skills to be able to start thinking differently so that you are able to live a happier life. xx

last I had a TON of therapy and it all focused on my DM. My DF got away pretty much scot free.
It didn't help me forgive my parents but it did help me stop blaming myself for their behaviour.
It wasn't until I had trauma therapy for something unrelated that things really moved along. The therapist wouldn't let me jump into dealing with the recent trauma before we explored the past a bit. Of course it was related! How I reacted to what happened was deeply rooted in how my childhood had affected me.

I don't know if trauma therapy might be helpful? Its much shorter than CBT and other talking therapies.
It could be worth looking at the suicide attempt and going from there?

Whatever you decide I hope you can find peace with it all. This didn't happen and wasn't done to you because you aren't worthy of better.
The child you were deserved much more.

What does help is working with children.

When I first started I wasn't very good as I was modelling the behaviour I'd learned - humiliation and embarrassment.

I soon learned that just taught children you didn't respect them and even if they were polite they still didn't respect you.

Now I am so thankful I have the opportunity to shape lives (vom; I know, sorry!) and just be kind and I always try to understand.

OP I don't think it matter where poster on here think it was bad or ok, it's about how you feel towards it. If you feel it's left you with some negative feelings that are upsetting you why not talk it through with someone, if not counselling then perhaps find a support group of people who have similar feelings?

Have you ever tried CBT? I haven't had it myself but I know it's supposed to be about changing your response to things for a more positive outcome, either thoughts or actions. Have you identified what makes it hard for you to form relationships - do you push people away as you can't trust them, or do you get too needy etc? It may be useful to understand why you behave in certain ways (counselling), but more practical to look at what you can do to change that (CBT). How do you feel in other areas of your life, are you confident at work, do you now dress appropriately or do you have trouble spending money on yourself? Are you physically well? I don't want to sound patronising, I was just concerned that self-esteem issues can affect your whole life and maybe rather than talking about why that happened, it might be useful to see it as something you can act to change?

I think in a sense I am cured! It's just it came too late if that makes sense: if I'd been 'cured' 10 years ago all would be cool.

The point is not: how bad was it, but how much did it affect you, OP?
That is all that matters really.

Some Counsellors are skilled (and not in need of it themselves) but certainly none can 'fix your life for you'. What a good one will do is walk the journey with you until you find that you are able to understand this, and the effects of it, better, so it upends you less.

Oops, cross-posted with others! Perfectly said the same thing much more elegantly! And you obviously successfully changed your response to children at work and are good at your job.

Hurray for you not letting your parents dictate your whole life! Imagine how you'd feel in 20 years if you hadn't 'cured' yourself now, would you think then that these happier years were a waste? How old are you? What do you think is too late for you to do? Is this to do with having kids?

What I noticed was that it was in trying to investigate why I was involved with a couple of suboptimal relationships, that I discovered some of the answers lie way back. And as I mentioned, I objectively did not have a traumatic or abusive childhood. Once I unpicked what was going on in terms of familial roles (and forgave myself for sticking in a bad relationship too long) I became open to having a happy & loving relationship. So yes you have successfully built a life without the start in life you were entitled to. And big recognition of that. But, in my experience, it's on the relationships that you see some of the legacy effects. It's not too late to address that. You don't need curing, but maybe some of this is holding you back? At least that's what I pick up from your post. If so, you are deserving and entitled to seek a way to move past those limitations that you didn't choose.

Pretty much Mary

And it's a shame I had such a troubled time as a young person. That does affect me. I was chatting to a friends DD last week who is 26 and her whole life is ahead and she seemed so calm and happy and I was thinking about me at 26 and there was a difference.

I mean you can't dwell but still. Hard times.

Totally relate to the making stuff up to complain about to other people. I grew up in the age of Harry Enfield and mum constantly went on about what a stroppy teenager I was and how they felt like they lived with Kevin and Perry. I remember hearing so many stories about what I'd supposedly done and think 'that never even happened'. Very confusing to grow up with and really shit to do to your kids when they're vulnerable and still working out how life works. Don't trust my parents at all now, but they can't work out why we're not close

It dawned on me as an adult that people only get one chance to be parents. Even if they have several children it's just one chance to be a parent. They have to learn as they do it and we learn by making mistakes. They just do what seems best at the time to them. They often model how their own parents brought them up more often than they realise.
No one can go back to having their first newborn and starting again, with the wisdom gained from their initial nervous and awkward efforts. When I realised that I was able to forgive a lot and accept that they'd done the best they could, like most parents do.
My own DC are remarkably forgiving of my awful mistakes. One said to their DC, 'Put it this way, Beeziekn33ze is a much better GM than she was a mother!'
I'm grateful for that!

Reetgood- your posts are really helpful. I think a lot of the confusion is around whether we are allowed to feel grief/ sadness/anger. If on the surface of it, someone has had an overtly satisfactory upbringing - you've always been clothed and fed, given books, had your education valued etc, it can feel as if we don't have permission to feel negative emotions about some aspects of our childhood.

I'm pretty sure my parents did what they felt, at the time, was the best thing in raising my siblings and me. Just as I feel dh and I have made the right decisions. Im sure there are things our children would ciriticise though.

One thing I do feel we've got right is that our adult children do still talk to us quite openly about their feelings, and share their worries with us. I never ever felt able to do that with my parents.

Then again I think the culture of child rearing was so different 40/50 years ago... children were not really expected to have opinions or feelings; you just got on with life.

I think being a parent in any era is incredibly tough, but this thread has been helpful in exploring some of the feelings we all have, and proving that even when you carry a lot of emotional baggage from childhood, it doesn't have to define the rest of your life

PasDevant I know what you mean. Its really confusing isn't it?
My DM used to make up all kinds of stuff about me to amuse others. I was a the constant butt of her jokes and stories.
She had no filter at all, she just had to be part of a conversation.
So if two women were talking about periods she would say 'Oh yes MrsD has terrible trouble with hers DON'T YOU?' and I would be forced to agree even though I didn't have any periods yet.

It was horrible