Just that.
People who didn't have their souls shattered as children and were shown that they were of value, were loved and that they mattered, even if not all the time.
Its difficult, if not impossible, to try to retrain your goddamn brain from scratch as an adult and a parent, especially when your life is already stressful due to lack of support, financially due to low attainment, and emotionally due to all the trauma you've suffered.
I'd never wish my life experiences on anybody but why me?!!
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AIBU?
To be green with envy at people who had 'good enough' parents and didn't suffer abuse as children?
84 replies
WannaRant · 05/10/2018 13:04
OP posts:
Stripybeachbag ·
09/10/2018 10:15
WannaRant lots of 
. I can glimpse what you have gone through. My father was laid back and benign neglect is what I say about him. My mother had an idolised idea of how children should act and constantly criticised me when I didn't fulfil that. Very little love. No praise, no positive attention. I learnt that the only attention I got was negative and I played up to get that. I look back on my childhood and shudder at how I was ignored and the things that were said to me. I grew up believing no-one liked me (my family still talk about how useless and awful I was). I was shy and awkward as a child and am certainly have an avoidant personality as an adult. I suffer from intrusive OCD, anger issues and anxiety. I have married a man who is equally fucked up from his parents. Together we are a mess.
I feel my abuse was minor compared to others and would could have been. I know how it has affected and coloured my whole life. If things were up a notch as yours was, I can understand how your mental world would be very very difficult.
I had dd late and am so glad. I used to sabotage relationship because I was emotionally needy, was verbally abusive to boyfriends and lost my temper when treated with disrespect (after only going for men that treated me badly). I had no idea how to people in a healthy relationship spoke or treated each other. And as I say ended up with the male version of my mother.
I trained as a teacher and learnt the basics of positive psychology and that positive attention is the best way to deal with behaviour problems. It was like a revelation. Be nice to someone to get the best out of them. Who knew! I believe if I had of had dd before my teacher training I would have inadvertently repeated some of my mother's mistakes.
I am a great believer in neuroplasticity. But at the same time, I recognise that it is bloody hard work. I hope that the OP and other posters get some respite.
WannaRant ·
08/10/2018 23:31
I did some inner child work with a very good therapist I saw for 18 months and she got me to imagine that my 7/8 year old self was sitting in the chair next to me, to talk to her, try to make her feel safe and work up to giving her a hug so to speak. I couldn't do it! I imagined her as a Chucky type figure with red eyes. I was furious with her and couldn't find any empathy at all
.
We also did some looking in a mirror stuff for positive affirmations but I couldn't do that either. I saw myself as a sort of grotesque creature. I didn't realise that that was the way I felt about myself subconsciously. No wonder I felt socially inferior. It was eye opening. I have come on a little bit since then thankfully 
.
OP posts:
WannaRant ·
08/10/2018 23:13
Oh Oprah and all of you . I am so sorry you're all walking this same path but heartened that I'm not on it on my own.
I was never suicidal until my mother and my siblings disowned me, not that I missed her as such, but because she insisted I was so evil and disgusting and deserved everything I got, that I truly believed I was a risk to my DC and might cause them harm. I had seriously decided that they'd be better off with me dead and DH remarrying a 'normal' woman. It makes me shudder that I used to think like that now. The only thing that stopped me was that I couldn't think of a 'clean and non traumatic to who'd ever find me' method!
I have sort of accepted that this is my lot now. A half life, head down, never able to show my true self in case I scare people away, isolation, anxiety constantly draining the energy to actually 'do' anything constructive with my life, OCD intrusive thoughts, shame, guilt, always worrying I'm doing something wrong. I have to keep going now because my DC don't deserve to be affected by my childhood.
Sometimes I think what I could have done with my life, how I would feel without all that shit going on inside.
I have a vivid memory of being a child of about 7 skipping into school (having got myself ready and out the door while my mother was still in bed), full of joy and relief to be there and loads of kids calling my name and running over to me. I was actually popular once but that was before the SA started. I was top of the class always finishing my work long before everyone else not that anyone outside of school cared. I had an amazing imagination and truly believed in magic. I found a poem that I'd written and decorated that my mother had kept from the same age, full of fairies, butterflies, hearts and flowers. What could I have become? What could we all have become
.
I hope one day, I get just a tiny bit of that little girl back.
OP posts:
pumpkinnicelatte ·
08/10/2018 15:20
Thank you so much for starting this thread OP and to everyone who has contributed. I can relate to so much of what has been said. It feels very isolating to have had a troubled abusive background, particularly when it was 'covered up' and not exposed to anyone in the outside world who might have helped.
What a feat it is to raise our own children and break the cycle. I've had therapy for years but that residual sense of inadequacy and constant hypervigilance and anxiety is something I'm realising may just always be background noise.
Like others I am nc with a few remaining family members and I chose an abusive spouse so am divorced, so it all adds to the isolation and shame feelings. Often I find it hard to interact with and trust people.
I have recently however learned to like myself more and to start to recognise that just surviving it all is an achievement, just breaking that cycle and keeping going. I've been constantly seeking achievements and goals but I can see now that whatever I do achieve, the 'proving myself' isn't necessary, it's self acceptance and self care that's needed really.
Warm wishes to all of you. We aren't alone really are we
OrigamiZoo ·
08/10/2018 01:19
Thank you for starting the thread OP, we all realise we are not alone.
SecretPanel ·
08/10/2018 01:10
Thank you for starting this thread OP, I'm so sorry you've suffered and are still suffering but my goodness the relief to know I'm not the only one who feels like this.
My parents are alive and I see them now and then (we are not close at all and have little emotional connection), but still I feel I am grieving the loss of the parents I should of have, that I deserved. That any child deserves.
I hate myself for how bitter I can feel at times at the head start other people got in getting proper unconditional love from the people who are supposed to give it.
While I have many things going for me and have had lots of therapy, the self-hatred, doubt, anxiety and patterns of destructiveness that are the result of my abusive childhood are still there lurking.
At the moment I too am constantly struggling to do anything constructive with my day, even though I have lots to do. Everything is an effort. I'm not even particularly depressed. But when you have to motivate yourself (I am self-employed and work from home), it ca ben really hard to do this when your core thoughts are that you aren't worth bothering about or motivating.
So sad to read others' stories here. Not having had emotionally supportive parents is such a loss, it's no wonder we feel it so deeply.
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