If you had a bad upbringing and life is good now…

[Opal93]

Do you live with a fear that it will somehow be taken away? I had an abusive upbringing, parents relationship was a mess and there was a lot of trauma. Since leaving home I have been very very fortunate. I own my home outright, I am financially secure, have a great relationship with my husband and two brilliant kids. But I keep worrying that something is going to come and pull the rug from under my feet because that’s whT happened a lot when I was young. I’m just waiting on something like one of us getting I’ll or the house burning down! I also am dealing with a spending addiction, which greatly stems from this. My mother was very controlling and would not buy me anything I needed, so I had no bras that fitted, holes in my clothes and no deodorant/sanitary products. It wasn’t that she couldn’t afford these things she was very well off but just refused, while spending a fortune on my brothers every whim and want. So now everything I want I buy myself and can’t seem to do without! It’s a bit mad isn’t it! So for those of you who had a less than ideal childhood and are in a good place now, do you ever feel like this or do you enjoy it without fear?

My dad was emotionally abusive and when my mum died when I was 12 I was obviously left with him. We were poor but he always found money for fags and booze. My childhood, especially after 12, was shit.

I never wanted to be married or have children as I saw that as being the route to misery - being tied to a man just like my dad. Well I do have a daughter and I am in a committed relationship with her father but I won’t get married. He isn’t like my father but the fear exists.

Career wise, I have been fairly successful and I could have progressed even further but the higher up the ladder I went, the greater the imposter syndrome grew. I feel anxious a lot of the time and my worry and fear comes out as snappiness, over-planning, gathering resources and having a contingency for any possible outcome of any situation. I had counselling and then realised that this wasn’t normal.

I worry about everything and, this is the crazy bit, I just want to get to the end of my life so I can be an old lady and look back and see that I got ‘there’ and didn’t make any major mistakes in my life.

No one ever believes I am such a worrier as from the outside I am confident, assured and have everything sorted. However, growing up always showing the world I was fine, being too ashamed for outsiders to see there were problems has meant I have built an amazing range of masks to hide behind.

I can also relate to the lifelong hyper-vigilance and anxiety that growing up in chaos brings.

I am extremely self sufficient as I have been let down and lied to by my parents - my underlying belief is that everyone lets you down in the end.

I am quite obsessional with finances and budgeting. Not frugal per se, I can be a bit of a spender, but I need to know that all my spending is accounted for and recorded. My budgeting app literally soothes me. I get the same feeling from opening the app as I do from a glass of wine after a hard day 😂

I also have a strong belief that I will die young (years of stress, visible all over me in the presence of stress related psoriasis). So I am quite fixated with making sure the kids have a great start in life as I just have a funny feeling I won’t see them grow up.

You wouldn’t know I had these feelings if you spoke to me! I also have many masks to hide behind.

My childhood was not the worst, but it was pretty shit in some ways and I can fully relate to the stockpiling and the sense of doom, waiting for things to go wrong , all the time.

I'm constantly waiting for the next disaster in my life. Even if something positive happens there's a major nagging voice saying X will happen or Y will go wrong.

I’m weird. I was so fortunate in my upbringing, loving home and financial security. But, As an adult I suffer with terrible anxiety and worry constantly about something awful happening, Healy, money etc. I get quite ill about it actually and can’t put it down to anything in particular

Yep! I think my tendency to stockpile and contingency plan is a result of my childhood

Exactly this. I keep a stockpile of everything but mostly food, toiletries and cleaning products. The one time we did need to start dipping into the food stores (beginning of COVID) I panicked, cried until I couldn’t breathe and ended up having a full blown panic attack. I was also newly pregnant at the time and suffering with severe depression and it was the last straw. It was as though seeing the emergency food going down somehow signalled that all my fears were being realised in front of my eyes, literally, and I was powerless to do anything. I didn’t recover for a while.

I don’t think my OH had any real idea how serious my issues were or how badly affected I’ve been by my childhood until that incident and we’ve been together 12 years.

I’m doing much better now thankfully 😳

@QforCucumber

You sound very much like me, I too turn to spending and buying 'things' I have 2 lovely kids and a husband who is amazing but have an underlying wonder every single day that it all will disappear.

I don't think it'll ever go away and definitely keeps me on my toes.

I could have written this exactly.

People pleasing too seems to be a theme.

I'm the same. Childhood lurched from one chaotic, shitty situation to another, with a fair bit of trauma thrown in for good measure. I'm now in a happy relationship, have two beautiful healthy kids, a decent enough job. We're not rolling in it but can pay all the bills. And I just feel like something bad is going to happen, that it's too good to be true. And given we're not chaotic and bringing drama and misery in, it'll be something outside - basically something terrible happening to my kids or my husband, or me. Terminal illness is my fear for me, that I'll get all this then not be able to enjoy it.
My husband had a very stable upbringing, very normal, zero trauma, and oddly I feel this doesn't help, that's he's somehow due something bad and I'm always due something bad. I have to actively tell myself it's a dead end and turn off the thoughts when they run off, which I've got quite good at now.

I had a lovely childhood, I was very lucky, but I have learned that you need to be happy within yourself, because you anxious people are right, everything can be taken away, your children can die, your loved ones can bcome ill, and you think that you will never be happy again, however life goes on, and you need to value, and enjoy what is here now, but not cling to it, and worry about losing it, as that destroys happiness.

@LaBellina and @IWantAllTheDogsInTheWorld oh my god you have described me. My childhood was horrendous, constantly moving, mother was vile, she had a pure hatred for me. I only see her every couple of months. My boyfriend can not understand how i have a pair of shoes i love but in every colour. I have rails apon rails of clothes and about 500 pairs of shoes. I always look presentable and hair is perfect . I have ran up debt and am now nearly clear of it thank god, But it really affects my relationship sometimes. Have had counselling too to help. During 1st lockdown i did a tidy up, found 16 bottles of fake tan, 5 bottles of bubble bath unopened plus about 25 bottles of foundation. As you have said i have learned to recognize things and distance my self from my mother, i have a very good job, own my own house, wonderful relationship. I will never have children though and it kills me to see my sis leaving her kid alone with my mother now knowing what she is like. My sister has blocked her memories of our childhood

I was sat in my car earlier today remembering my childhood and how little of what I needed I had, so now I too buy anything I need as soon as I think of it. Makes me a nightmare to buy for as I don’t need anything.

I also live in fear of it all going wrong and ending up with nothing again. I’m currently obsessing that my fully insured, totally stable house might fall down and we’d be left homeless.

Ah the childhood trauma club.

On the flip side, I was slow worrying that my children have had it too easy. They’ve grown up in a stable home and have never worried about money, but they now lack that drive and independence that you only seem to get from neglect and trauma! They think things will always be ok, because they always have been, so they don’t need to try.

Wow - I have often felt like this and thought it was me.

We grew up pretty poor and my mum had terrible relationships, I was made to feel not good enough and second best all the time.

I now have a wonderful husband and we are financially secure but I feel all the time that it could disappear at any second and that I don't deserve it. I left a job due to impostor syndrome as I rose higher but felt a total fraud and that I'd be discovered.

Sometimes I think the older I get the more worried about it I become.

It's a relief to realise other people have similar feelings...

My childhood was pretty rubbish, no emotional support, my step dad was (and still is) violent towards my mother. She put him and his family before me and I was left to my own devises at a very young age. Pair that with living in an area riddled with poverty, crime and drugs. My teens and early twenties were extremely volatile and full of self destructive behaviour, alcohol, poor choices in friends and men.

My life now is the polar opposite, I’ve worked so hard to create this lovely life I have - my family, home, friends, hobbies and job. When my husband and I moved into our house I honestly thought someone was going to knock on my door and say “you don’t belong here/ you don’t deserve this” I felt like a fraud, the imposter syndrome was overwhelming, so I started counselling and CBT, the best money I’ve ever spent and would highly recommend it. It’s helped me come to terms with my childhood, helped with my anxiety, overthinking and setting clear boundaries. One thing I learned from my mother is how NOT to parent.

@Youthgonemild I have similar worries about my DS (and soon to be second DS). But DS isn't even two yet so fortunately I have time on my side.

My thoughts were...
*Ensure he has everything he needs, but not everything he wants. With the hopes that it drives him to want a part time job once he's in his teens.

• Take him volunteering/put a real emphasis on caring for others and helping those in need as we are in a position of privilege
• Also working out some way of having him manage money from a relatively young age.

I'm planning to read some parenting books over the next couple of years in the hopes of getting some ideas. It's all just theory though right now, and we all just do our best at the time 🤷☺️

Ha, I was thinking this only yesterday!life is pretty calm and OK at the moment and I worry but then I think things were so awful for nigh on 20 + years, don't I deserve some peace!

My friend's husband is like this. He grew up in foster care and now runs his own very successful and stable business. He works every hour he can even though he can afford to have people take on a lot of his responsibilities. He's freely admitted that he's worried a day off will make him lose it all. We all understand why he does it and he knows it's irrational but he can't help it after his upbringing. He was basically turfed out of foster care when he became an "adult" and has been left to fend for himself. COVID hasn't helped his feeling of security either. His business is worth a few million at this point but when we tell him to relax he points out that it's current success would make the fall that much harder.

@Curiosity101 your suggestions sound very sensible.

I already have a rule that any money they are given is split as 1/3 to spend and 2/3 to be saved, to try to teach them money responsibility.

But I have been too generous with buying them things they want (but don’t need).

It’s so hard to get the balance right.

My childhood wasn't anywhere as bad as lots of you but my DM was emotionally abusive, refused to work and spent money like water. My DF was great but I still had to be so sensible all the time because she was in effect the child.

I was aware that we didnt have the money for me to do extra curricular stuff (which would have been good for my confidence), school trips abroad, a big 18th in a local club. These things were commonplace with my friends.

Consequently, my DS had all this and more. I have to save and I worry about money.

A newly developed emotion though is resentment. I resent her and her enablers for not trying to help my DF. I resent not having because she was pissing it up the wall. I resent that many opportunities were denied me because she refused to work. I resent that she couldnt give a shit.

I'm a bit of the opposite. I had an bad childhood and we were poor. I didn't have much, including clothes. I seem to have carried that with me. I don't buy much for myself. I suppose I should really.

At the first hint of something that reminds me of my childhood, I absolutely freak out.

If a room looks a bit untidy (there's something on a surface) or an item of furniture interferes with the 'flow' of the area because DP has moved it, it's going to turn into the filthy hoarder's house and I'll be walled in with multiple bits of furniture stacked three deep on every wall and have to squeeze along little goat paths up the stairs.

If DP inadvertently buys the same washing powder, fabric softener, soap, toothpaste or cleaning materials, the smell makes me feel that she's coming to get me and I have to remove every trace, replacing the products and rewashing/cleaning everything again.

If he is quiet (which he is as a rule, quite naturally) but it's after we've disagreed about something, if he doesn't respond to me straight away and give me a hug, I think he's going to ignore me for days before exploding. He changed his learned response of 'stay out of the way and try not to draw attention to yourself and it'll go away/calm down' because I got so freaked out by it.

Worst of all was when he raised his voice for the one and only time. Instead of arguing back, walking away, answering normally to defuse it or telling him to fuck off because I was right, I completely lost my shit. As soon as his voice went over his usual low volume, everything came crumbling down - he was going to smash up the house, throw things everywhere, hit me, tell me what a disgusting embarrassment I was and how I should never have been born - and I was terrified and near hysterical, begging him to stop, apologising, cowering away from him when he realised how scared I was and wanted to hug me and apologise.

I get it to some extent at work - if there is (and there always is in an office in my experience) a small woman who is confrontational in private, but nice as pie to men anybody who has a position of authority and tends to stride along before barking at me to explain what I'm doing/question why I've done something/why I had to ask a particular question, etc, I want to hide under my desk the moment I hear her approaching and if I hear a female voice raised in the distance, I'm upset, furious and near to tears for whoever is on the receiving end of it.

I had somebody call me and shout down the phone at me whilst self isolating over something - whilst I did handle it well in my opinion, as I said it wasn't appropriate and notified my line manager (it's not ever happened again), what they didn't see was that I was shaking and tearful at the thought of it for three days afterwards. Because it sent me straight back there and it meant I wasn't safe at work, as an adult.

That level of dysfunction really pisses me off - all because of 4 foot 11 and a half of venom for 18 years, I can't even handle a mildly annoyed DP or a bit of a dick of a colleague without thinking I'm about to get battered around the head.

@NeverDropYourMoonCup

At the first hint of something that reminds me of my childhood, I absolutely freak out.

If a room looks a bit untidy (there's something on a surface) or an item of furniture interferes with the 'flow' of the area because DP has moved it, it's going to turn into the filthy hoarder's house and I'll be walled in with multiple bits of furniture stacked three deep on every wall and have to squeeze along little goat paths up the stairs.

If DP inadvertently buys the same washing powder, fabric softener, soap, toothpaste or cleaning materials, the smell makes me feel that she's coming to get me and I have to remove every trace, replacing the products and rewashing/cleaning everything again.

If he is quiet (which he is as a rule, quite naturally) but it's after we've disagreed about something, if he doesn't respond to me straight away and give me a hug, I think he's going to ignore me for days before exploding. He changed his learned response of 'stay out of the way and try not to draw attention to yourself and it'll go away/calm down' because I got so freaked out by it.

Worst of all was when he raised his voice for the one and only time. Instead of arguing back, walking away, answering normally to defuse it or telling him to fuck off because I was right, I completely lost my shit. As soon as his voice went over his usual low volume, everything came crumbling down - he was going to smash up the house, throw things everywhere, hit me, tell me what a disgusting embarrassment I was and how I should never have been born - and I was terrified and near hysterical, begging him to stop, apologising, cowering away from him when he realised how scared I was and wanted to hug me and apologise.

I get it to some extent at work - if there is (and there always is in an office in my experience) a small woman who is confrontational in private, but nice as pie to men anybody who has a position of authority and tends to stride along before barking at me to explain what I'm doing/question why I've done something/why I had to ask a particular question, etc, I want to hide under my desk the moment I hear her approaching and if I hear a female voice raised in the distance, I'm upset, furious and near to tears for whoever is on the receiving end of it.

I had somebody call me and shout down the phone at me whilst self isolating over something - whilst I did handle it well in my opinion, as I said it wasn't appropriate and notified my line manager (it's not ever happened again), what they didn't see was that I was shaking and tearful at the thought of it for three days afterwards. Because it sent me straight back there and it meant I wasn't safe at work, as an adult.

That level of dysfunction really pisses me off - all because of 4 foot 11 and a half of venom for 18 years, I can't even handle a mildly annoyed DP or a bit of a dick of a colleague without thinking I'm about to get battered around the head.

I’m so sorry. You are incredible to be able to talk with such awareness and honesty. Thankyou.