To blame my parents for my lifelong mental health issues?

[MentalMommy]

Which have massively ruined my life and caused me great suffering.

My father abandoned me leaving me with a mother who recently emailed me the following:

I was so terrified of you that I used to hide the knives and put cotton across the landing so I could hear you getting up in the night in case you tried to kill us. I was terrified you would try to hurt your brothers and sisters. You hated everybody. You are nothing but a disgusting, jealous nutcase.

She used to tell me similar from age 7/8 onwards. That is just a small example of her emotional abuse. My father knew what kind of a person she was, that's why he divorced her!

Is it any wonder I have suffered from OCD most of my life. I know OCD is said to be caused by numerous factors which come together but what a coincidence that I suffered 'Harm' OCD which had me considering suicide. It has ruined my career, my relationships and affected every facet of my life.

AIBU to wish there was an option to sue them for causing me intolerable pain and suffering?

You are absolutely right to portion blame to your parents for your suffering. You are entitled to your feelings and your feelings are not wrong. I do not think it is in your best interests to pursue anything because of those feelings though. Suing your parents won't change anything. It will just prolong your suffering in the long run.

I was emotionally abused by my mother growing up, and the email you included in your OP sounds very much like the sort of sh*t I was told, but I was fortunate that I was strong enough to cut contact with her completely by the time I was 21. I have spent my 20s dealing with the fall out from my childhood, suffering from generalised anxiety, social anxiety, low self-esteem and depression. I have not had the 20s that a lot of people get, full of fun, and friends and travel and the confidence to live fully and all those sorts of things.
But I've done a lot of work on myself in that time too, a lot of CBT books (would recommend the 'Overcoming.....' series which you can get quite cheaply on Amazon), and just generally learning to (cheese alert) love myself and look after myself and be everything that I need for myself. I don't see my mum, and although I do see my Dad, he is basically not interested in me at all, and these visits leave me feeling hurt and angry. The pain wont go away, but you can learn to accept that you can't change these things. You can only control your reaction to things.

I can't get my 20s back. I've missed out on so much. But I can control my future. I'm turning 30 next year, and I'm so excited, because I feel like it is a fresh start for me. I'm in a really good place, and I can really make the most of my life.

You have to get yourself into a place where you can accept that this is what has happened, and make the most of the life you have in front of you.

xx

What are your siblings saying except that you were "a bitch"?
I can understand children being brainwashed by parents but as adults you would hope that at least some of them are capable of 1) discussing it and 2) revising their position.

for you anyway

I disagree with people teling you not ro feel blame. Op i'm so sorry this happened to you. I have ocd and its horrendous to live with especially s yours has come out of such a negative place. Please seek councellinh and dont feel you are too old to cut them off and start a fantastic new life. Look after yourself x

To people talking about 'moving on' and 'letting go' of 'negative emotions', you can't just decide to move on and not be hurt any more. You can't just decide to switch off very painful feelings. The letting go and moving on has to be something that happens naturally and slowly over time, having actually felt and processed the pain.

'Negative' emotions are just as valid and real as more pleasant emotions and they have to be felt. The OP's past is real, it happened, and the effects it had on her continue to this day. That is perfectly normal and understandable. The pressure to 'move on' before someone is ready to do so just adds guilt and self-loathing to an already heavy burden

OP, I'm so sorry about your horrible experiences growing up and even more sorry that they were caused by the people who were supposed to nurture and protect you. I don't think it's surprising at all to hear you've developed MH problems as a result of them.

For your own sake though, I think you should try to get some sort of closure/fresh start, by going no contact with your family and maybe doing some sort of symbolic act to signify to yourself that that phase of your life is over (I'm not sure what exactly - maybe a trip to somewhere meaningful where you have a cry and then say out loud that you are moving on; or maybe throwing some object from your childhood on a fire, sorry if these sound weird! Just trying to think of what would work for me!)

Then accept that you are who you are now, and try to really focus on making the next potentially 50 years(!) of your life as good as possible. Please don't say you're too old now - I know a number of people who have had complete life changes later on in life and it's dramatically improved their situation.

E.g. One lady had been trapped in a miserable marriage and her husband eventually left her in her early 50s. She felt she had nothing as she hadn't worked for around 20 years so had no husband, no house and no career, just like that. She ended up starting a really cool new business in an area she hadn't worked in before, which in turn led to increased confidence and new friends, which in turn led to her new lovely partner. 8 years later, she's in a much much happier place than ever before.

I also know another woman who took up marathon running in her 50s! She decided to aim to run 26 marathons and now in her early 60s has done 20 so far! It's become a really fulfilling hobby and dramatically improved her quality of life!

There's always hope for change and it's never too late!

If you are now 37, you have been an adult for 19 years. Part of growing up is taking responsibility for yourself. Still blaming all your problems on your parents is keeping you childlike, and absolving you from that responsibility. You need to move on

YANBU at all in blaming your parents for your lifelong mental issues. To think otherwise is ridiculous. we’re it not for them your life most probably would have taken a very different route. They failed you miserably and they don’t deserve any of your attention now you are an adult. I resonated a lot with your post and I completely get it. What I would say from my own experience is that it is very important to grieve for your lost childhood and in doing so accept what happened. That doesn’t mean forgiving, understanding or being ok with it. It means accepting that you were treated like shit and turning the attention towards you. Your family don’t deserve any of your time, thought or attention. You however do so rather than focus on your awful past and how it has affected your present, focus on you and finding things/people that make you happy. I found that overtime that made me feel a lot better about myself and I now rarely think about my past or my nightmare family situation. I’ve accepted it happened but won’t let myself be defined by it.

OP you mother sounds very like mine and it is incredibly damaging to live in such an environment. I do believe some of my mental health problems can be directly attributed to my parents and their behaviour.

I've raised this with them and my mother in particular makes stuff up (again like you I can see from my medical records that these are lies) or tells me "to move on" and "everyone has issues". My father was physically and emotionally abusive to everyone in our family and she refuses to believe that a childhood centred around that behaviour can impact you as an adult.

I'm no contact with both of my parents and the majority of my siblings.

I feel for you OP.

You sound just like my mother madcatwoman.

I am a very grown up responsible mother of 4 thanks. I think my mental health is a major factor in my 'problems'.

Too many posters to thank individually but for replying.

I haven't been in contact with my siblings for 7 years. Mother told them not to contact me as I had had a 'nervous breakdown' when I finally broached how I felt about my childhood with her, triggered by her being nasty to one of my DC. Siblings relationships were always distant and competitive (well they were to me) prior to that as adults. Siblings all refused to have anything to do with me after that due to 'loyalty' to my mother and the 'pain' I had caused her by making her question her parenting, grim !

Mother then disowned me 4 years ago as I wouldn't back down but my now adult DD wanted to get in touch with her/aunts and was upset at Christmas/birthdays etc that my family had nothing to do with her. She contacted them herself but they blanked her so I contacted her myself professing to be sorry and ashamed of upsetting her. She said she'd never forgive me! but agreed to meet DD. This then dragged it up again culminating in her email.

I find it so hard to detach. 1. because my children have been affected and will be for the rest of their lives knowing that they have family who they remember and don't have any relationship with and 2. because I still really care and the pain of being ostracised when I was the actual 'victim' still really bloody hurts. Lottapianos you nailed it in both your posts - thank you.

I am having last ditch therapy for OCD now. Been through so many therapists in desperation not to have to drag this around with me. Current therapy I researched, requested and waited 2 years for and is specialised in OCD. I have not been able to work in this time and life is very difficult, especially as I have a teenage DC with SN with behavioural problems and my parenting has been called into question due to this (very triggering), as I apparently am not hard enough on him, although his behaviours are directly related to his SN .

Also Christmas is coming. It'll be just DH, kids and me. No family as DH's family are shit too, although not comparable to mine by a long shot. My mother has invited my DD to see her over the period and it makes me fucking angry .

What your family has done and said to you is horrific, and I think you should go NC. It is a toxic situation that does not seem redeemable. You have every right to be angry and bitter, but that is only going to hurt you. Holding on to bitterness is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.

I have a dear friend who had a traumatic childhood that included being kidnapped by her non-custodial father and taken from Britain to Pakistan for years where she suffered from severe physical abuse. She always said: Your childhood may have been wonderful, or your childhood may have been awful. But your childhood is over. You are an adult now and in charge of your own destiny and how you live your life.

To me this is NOT ok. To blame your parents. Or it is, but what a waste it is.
but that's easy for me to say, because I come from a totally loving family.

But, I have had something very bad happen to me, a few years ago, and I am still struggling to get over it.
But I am aware of that. And I am working on it.

And it seems so wasteful to at least not TRY and get over it. Its like an excuse, oh my parents were abusive. Yes ok. We can sympathise, empathise. But is that really helping. Don't you think for your own benefit you need to actively do something about it.

I disagree with Piano:
"The letting go and moving on has to be something that happens naturally". well yes. But you need to take responsibility for it. Don't let them affect you anymore. Don't give them the satisfaction. Or at least try and deal with it, by counselling etc.
Blaiming it on someone, doesn't really change anything does it.

I had a friend at uni. who blamed her parents for everything. (admittedly it wasn't anywhere near as bad abuse as Op's). 3 of my other friends eventually said to her, how much longer are you going to blame them. Take responsibility yourself, use your MA and go get that job you want, for example.

and get rid of my hatred and crying over two people who treated me very badly........

You mother sounds very unwell

I'm very sorry, but I agree with madcatwoman. Entirely.
It's absolving totally, to keep on blaming them, when you have in fact been an adult for 1/2 your life now. How you think and how you feel, how you behave to your DD, how you view Xmas, is within YOUR power now.

She is taking responsibility Oblomov17. OP said she has been in therapy for years. She is 'actively doing something about it'. Therapy is work - hard, gruelling, emotional graft. Its not just sitting around and whingeing. This kind of experience takes YEARS to unpick, to process, to come to terms with. Its not as simple as 'getting over it', the way you can get over more trivial disappointments.

As you can see OP, some people get it and some people don't. Dealing with such pain can be a very lonely place. Christmas is particularly lonely if you're struggling with pain related to family. I hope that sharing here has been mostly helpful for you. Please keep posting if its useful x

I don't think some people understand how hard it is to shake off your formative years. An abusive home from birth/childhood. can legitimately cause many mental health conditions.

Of course you can scrape things together as an adult - which OP is seemingly attempting with therapy but it's very hard when the fabric of who you are is formed in abuse.

I just want to add something about you feeling ostracised. I know that feeling and it’s taken me years to realise that I am actually the strong one for standing my ground against my parents whilst my siblings all pussyfoot around them pretending everything is ok/we’re the Waltons. One by one though each of my siblings is starting to have serious mental health issues so it may all back fire on my parents. Who knows. It use to make me so bloody angry that everyone ignored the elephant in the room and was one of the reasons I decided to go NC with them all. Their mind games are exactly that and they’re no good for my mental health. I have 2 DC’s who I keep well away from my family. I know one day my children will ask why and I am prepared to share with them some of the details of my childhood and why I had to protect their young minds from it too. Can you do this with your daughter so that she understands why you don’t want her spending time with your ‘mother’?

Ok I had a terrible childhood and we are all no contact now. My brother never really got over it, I basically did.

I don’t know if it helps, but you have to accept it and detach. Accept they are terrible people, that it wasn’t your fault and then look to move forward because you are now an adult and they don’t have any power any more. I’ve never once felt sorry because my daughter doesn’t have an extended family on my side. Why? Because it’s better she doesn’t. It’s that simple. My choice. Because now I’m in control.

I think this is what others are saying, yes you can blame them, but that’s not the end of the road. That’s just the first step. You then need to accept it, and accept you’re now an adult and you have tools at your disposal to help you. Speak to your gp, it may be wise to get some councilling to help you come to terms with it and look at steps to help you heal.

Don’t just say “well I’m this way because of them” and that’s it. Do t dwell on it either, reliving it over and over again, trying to understand it, it does no good, you will never understand it. Start to take some positive action and responsibility and break free of it.

Also think of the good in your life. You’re in a happy marriage? You have four kids? You treat them better ? Your relationship with them is good? You sought help for your ocd? Then you’re immediately a million times better than your parents.

And stop contacting your mother, it’s never going to get better. So just end the relationship now, make your peace with it and then focus on the good people in your life.

I have a severely emotionally abusive mother and am a single parent to 3 kids.
I've not spoken to her for 20 years. I am only in contact with one out of three siblings and he pretends that he's not heard from me. My children know that my mum is very emotionally abusive and that's why I'm not in contact. They can contact her when they are adults but I've made the decision that in order to kill the cycle of abuse affecting my kids' generation, I need to keep my kids away from that.
Their dad's parents are also fucked up but it's not nearly to the same extent and they have mellowed with age and have said that they regret the past. My mum has become even worse and my sibling who is in contact with me is laying the groundwork for NC now.
My poor mental health is definitely linked to my mum. There is no redress that can put things right. If you performed a lie detector test on her, it would reveal that she truly believed that I deserve the shitty things that she'd done and that she was not abusive. I am in no doubt that she suffers mental health issues too but she's married to an enabler who makes her feel like she's fine.

Spot on MakeMisogny

There are some bloody stupid posters on here who think you can just shake off a shit childhood like that. It’s a very scary and painful process to undertake thereapy when you’ve been treated so badly as a child. It’s like your very foundations are built on moving sand, you don’t know yourself plus you have these awful critical voices bringing you down whatever you do. It’s not a case of just focusing on the here and now when the lense that you look through life has been so schewed from an abusive childhood. That’s like saying to a depressive “just think happy thoughts”. For those posters who suggest OP ‘moves on’, please do the same to another thread that you actually have some experience of.

I'm surprised that you're in contact with her and are sharing intimate details like your OCD diagnosis. Any scrap of information is just ammunition to abuse you with at an unexpected time in the future.

YABU for blaming them for how they treated you but YABU for not taking responsibility for yourself now

The person who said move on has no fucking clue. 🤬

My advice is detach as much as possible and come up with some positive mantras like "My kids aren't scared of me." "All of my family members know that I love them." when you feel wobbly. My kids tell me positive things (even though they can be grumpy teens) and it's bloody unfair that I can't truly believe and enjoy the compliments without feeling like I'm a piece of shit really.

I feel like I've protected my kids from abuse when they can freely do things like tease me by taking the piss out of my age. But childhood emotional abuse really makes you doubt the good life that you have some days which is shit really.

Of course they are responsible ffs you can not suffer abuse that you describe and be unscathed.
I do however believe we have to take care and responsibility for nurturing ourselves as adults.
I do not speak to either my mother or father and haven’t for decades. This helps me because I am in control. I know they can’t be decent, so I protect myself.
Best luck to you

merrygoround51 how have you deduced that I am not taking responsibility for myself now?

You see this is the kind of crap my family have come out - blaming mum for your 'choices', blaming my Dad for not being able to stand up to my mum, etc. Not that I've made any bad choices and I have thoroughly examined that of course.

It wasn't my choice to have OCD or to be socially isolated because of that or to not to be able to work due to panic attacks.

I suppose I should just pull my big girl pants on and stop being such a little child .

No. That's not true I'm not some stupid poster who is belittling it.

I'm not saying it's particularly easy to do this, and it's a long slow process but you really do have to take responsibility for what you are able to do now.

and take comfort in all the good things you have. as other posters have said. other posters have said exactly what I'm saying: appreciate that you are actually a good person;you've achieved a lot ;which is got nothing to do with them; and you do have a lovely children; lovely husband - and they can't take that away from you. so you've achieved a great deal.

I'm not some stupid poster, that is completely ignorant, but I'm saying that her basic stance of to continue to blame them isn't actually benefiting her.