Poverty doesn't explain my feelings?

[Calender24]

I really hope someone here can help me and give some perspective. I always seem to struggle around xmas.

So I grew up on a family of four, mum was a sahm and dad worked full time. His income was just enough to feed us, there was no poverty but they had to count every penny. We had two cars, a garden, I took piano lessons, and food was often delicious, home made. We travelled occasionally but not abroad. The money was always tight; once, when we were returning home from a holiday, my dad had to siphon fuel out of the tank because the price of what he had already filled up our car with was too high and he had miscalculated. I remember being terrified we would never get back home.

At some point I seem to have concluded that the economic burden was too much to my parents and I remember being very stressed about them being stressed! I began to live a very minimalist life at the age of about 12: I no longer spent time with my friends (no need to buy them b-day presents), I didn't ask for new clothes, new make up. I chose the cheapest eye glasses no matter what they looked like. I refused to celebrate my graduation. I felt like I needed to escape.

My parents and me have discussed this years later. They agree the money was tight, but they don't share the sense of total scare and anxiety that I felt back then. I was and still am convinced my dad was very stressed and on the edge and that every wish I made would have caused a downward spiral into total poverty and scare. They don't think so at all. Dad agrees he was often stressed but thinks that was nothing unordinary, just life. They say everything was in control they just had to plan very well. I remember the "siphoning fuel" incident as a very scary episode whereas my dad thinks he was just finding a practical solution to get the money back and fuel in the car elsewhere.

So the money was tight but the scare and worry I felt is something they don't see as justified at all. They think we did well as a family, after all.

Can anyone help me understand why I feel so devastated and anxious about my childhood's financial conditions, despite my parents not sharing the same fears? I was just so worried My dad would not make it and the pressure would be too much. I feel like I absorbed all that worry and fear and magnified it.

Teen and pre-teen brains work significantly differently to adult brains, so it isn't surprising that you understood the situation differently from your parents.

Which is why we generally try to shelter kids from adult worries, which they aren't able to cope with.

I'm sorry your went through this.

I think people’s emotional response to financial stress varies hugely.

We didn’t grow up in poverty but my Dad’s income fluctuated hugely and he was quite feckless and bad with money. Nothing awful happened to us but we had to move a couple of times because he couldn’t afford the mortgage.

My sister was incredibly traumatised by this and to this day had been financially conservative and cautious to the point of neurosis. I wasn’t and I am much more sanguine about money.

For whatever reason she experienced it as traumatic and I didn’t. I have no idea why really but everyone has a different temperament.

Thank you. My sister doesn't share my experience either.

You just have no way of rationalising things as a child. Your parents had the big picture, and knew that money might be tight, but they had a budget, and presumably some kind of plan in place for unexpected costs. That’s not to say it wouldn’t have been stressful for them, but as a child you didn’t have this overview, and your brain was developing still- you had the anxious feeling about money without being to put words around it to try and make sense of it. Or any agency or control over it.

I think it’s very normal for parents and children to have very different perceptions of events or situations. I don’t think either of you are wrong- your experience is absolutely valid, and they are presumably speaking the truth of how they felt too (though I guess in the intervening years they may have forgotten just how stressful it was). You were impressionable and forming your views of the world, it’s understandable it had such an effect on you.

Some people are just more negative than others and convince themselves that the "mights" are going to happen. MiL is one of these. Ring doorbells everywhere, frets about being burgled if the drive is empty, won't go out with the washing machine left on, tracks everyone who gets on a plane online and still asks for a "We've landed" text. Jumping to never getting home during the petrol incident suggests quite a catastrophe-fearing personality which may well have developed quite early on due to not having control over your financial situation.

What are you like with finances now OP?

I'm older than my sister by a few years. While we were not in poverty there was a lot of stress in general and specifically about money / feeling like a burden. I have internalised a lot of this. I have a lot of anxiety and low self esteem. Probably from feeling like my parents were very stressed and I (or having a family) was a contributing factor.

I think how you feel is normal and probably like me had to make sense of adult things without an adult brain and all of the info. Sorry op. Therapy will help.

I think the big difference is that as a child you felt very powerless. That is very different to your parents who could balance out what they thought was the right decision.

It's actually very common for children in your circumstances to become financially over responsible, but less usual to take it to the level you have. Counselling could help you realise that you were not responsible for your family's financial wellbeing.

When we are children our parents are the most important people in our world. They represent our safety and protection. When they visibly struggle (in your case financially) as children we feel panicked because it threatens our perception of safety. We lock into fight or flight mode and become aware that the safety bubble of our lives can pop at any moment. This realisation is new and scares us.
You tried to combat this feeling by buffering them financially so that they didn't get into this position and therefore your safely and protection was not threatened again.

As an adult, it was simple problem solving and no big threat was felt. But for you as a child it was a moment when you first realised that your safety was not a guarantee

I think what you experience is deep rooted anxiety. A fear of not being safe. Your family might have seen it as temporary stress, but for you it triggered anxiety. Totally different things I think.

I think this is totally understandable. Just because this wasn't how your parents experienced it, doesn't mean that how you experienced it is wrong in some way.

I have very clear memories of my dad being laid off the day before Christmas eve when I was nine. I was petrified. I'm now 43 and the fear of being sacked or out of work has remained with me my whole life even though I have never experienced it. My dad was back in work by the second week of Jan so it was just a blip to my parents.

I had a similar situation here int just I vividly remember my parents having massive financial stress around the time the decided to split. They both worked for the same company and it was put into liquidation so both lost their jobs at the same time.

In my head I always associated the two things; financial pressures putting unnecessary pressure on their relationship.

As an adult this made me work really hard in my careers to be financially comfortable, not have children until we felt we were settled in our forever home etc.

Finally discussed it with my DPs last year and they said I had totally got it wrong and the two things weren't associated.

Funny how we dream things up 🤦‍♀️

I remember being terrified of my mum. She was unpredictably emotional, crying or shouting tirades and outbursts. I lived in absolute fear of her. Learned to agree with whatever I thought she wanted of me, pretend to be whoever she wanted me to be. Life long mental and physical health problems as a result.

She would vehemently disagree with that description of reality and so would my brother, who lived there the whole time.

Does that mean my reality didn't happen, no of course not. The trauma was and is real for me. Does it have to rule my life, do I need to punish myself, no of course not.

You are allowed to age and see things differently. You are allowed to change your mind. You are also allowed to tell people to fuck off when they try to gaslight you or deny your lived experience. You only get one life, you don't have to live it the way others expect.

Actually OP this has opened up something very interesting for me which had never really occurred to me: while I haven’t really been paranoid about money I am completely paranoid about being in financial dependence on another person.

My biggest fear has always been being married to someone who controls me financially and I have always sought out relationships where I am the breadwinner.

I could never be a SAHM, even in very comfortable circumstances because of this. I would rather have a lower household income and work much harder than my husband or partner just to avoid having to be a supplicant for money. I know in a good marriage it needn’t be like that but it scares the bejesus out of me.

I think watching my mum give up a good career to be almost completely financially dependent on my dad inoculated me against ever wanting to depend on a man for money. My dad wasn’t financially abusive and their marriage for the most part was ok but I was extremely conscious of her powerlessness financially. When he got into financial difficulties she must have felt so trapped.

If I am going to live through financial difficulties they are going to be of my own making, not ones I have no control over.

interesting thread.

@Thepeopleversuswork
Beautifully articulated.
I have the exact same feelings with regard to money and could simply never share finances with another person.

There are incidents from childhood that made a mark on me and my parents would never remember anything about it. The first time you witnessed something different about them to how they were every day. That would have been all it takes. And we remember random shit from childhood because there's nothing else - there was no lifetime of memories or experiences to fit it into

I was very similar as a child op....we were actually very comfortable, we had a big house and went to private school...but i remember my parents arguing a lot about money and my father living in fear of redundancy. I never asked for anything because of this. It made me very anxious. I'm quite an empathetic person...maybe you are too?

It’s that loss of innocence isn’t it. You moved from a state where you unquestioningly trusted your parents to be able to care for you to an awareness that they were fallible. That was traumatic at the time but it happens to every child eventually.

I actually cope really well nowadays, and to be honest my dad hasn't struggled financially after he turned 60. I know they have savings and can buy things without strict planning.
If my mum gives me something, it doesn't bring any sad memories or feelings, but still when I get something from dad (Even a minor thing like a chocolate bar) it has a "sad spice", I cannot enjoy it and my body has an instant stress response, an achy stomach etc.

My oldest DD is 14 and honestly I think in the future she might be able to write a similar post. Since a young age she has been very sensitive to anything related to money and this seems to most often be related to the availability of food.

I have no idea why she is like this. Yes there were times where I had to be careful with money, but she has never gone without and with food especially there has never been a lack of food. I find myself having to point this out a lot, reassure her that I might not be a millionaire, but I have enough money for the important things, and remind her how nice her life actually is.

For my DD I think in general she can catastrophise things, and tends to focus on the negatives, comparing herself to people who are really wealthy rather than having a more balanced perspective.

I think this is just a temperament thing and it's a shame that you have had that type of response to your childhood. Your Dad may have been stressing in any given moment but with the underlying knowledge that it would all work out, but all you saw was the stressing. You didn't have the info on their bank accounts and salaries. You couldn't assess the situation properly and reacted to what was in front of you.

You can't change the past, but you can identify if/how this is still affecting you, and try to tackle those issues.

I don’t know if it will help OP, but here goes.

I would say we might have lived through a similar set of conditions. One big difference was my mum was a single parent, in the ‘80s. She kept our family home by the skin of her teeth (double digit interest rates), sporadic child support, worked full time, etc.

We knew things were tight money wise. She would be upfront when we couldn’t afford things. She would declare ‘poor week’, we ate pancakes for dinner, she drove a beater car, there were some tense times that I remember when things broke like the furnace on a -28C/-20F night. But we also lived in the suburbs, went to private school (I suspect the tuition was written off more than once because my dad was responsible for it), and generally had all the basics met with a few luxuries thrown in.

All of that gave me a healthy respect for finances. We knew that we wouldn’t end up in the street (she did come close a few times of defaulting on the mortgage) we knew we’d have food to eat (tuna casserole and canned salmon loaf) but we also knew that things were tight and she would prioritize accordingly.

So it sounds like you internalized things a lot different under similar circumstances… not sure if that helps, but maybe it does give you a place to start to work through it.

I felt the same. I'm the youngest. I stopped eating at 9 because I felt too guilty. My older sibling however was always badgering for the latest trainers etc. He is still like this and I still get heart palpitations when I go food shopping.

It doesn't matter what adults see, when you are a child it hits differently. Adults can rationalise in a way children can't. My parents don't wish to acknowledge how hard it was because they feel guilty.

This. 100% this. Anxiety is disordered thinking and your brain took a small stress and made it bigger and scarier than it really was. Your coping mechanisms of not having friends because then you wouldn't have a financial responsibility for buying them gifts is classic anxiety.

If you have anxious tendencies as an adult, please seek help. It's not normal. You wouldn't know any different because when anxiety happens to kids that's all we know and we think everyone feels the same. Meanwhile everyone else is viewing life through a different lens.

Anxiety and insecurity are the things that jump out. It sounds hard wired now (thinking specifically about your example of the chocolate bar)

@Thepeopleversuswork's post STRONGLY resonates for me. It's def got a power/control basis for me too.

I watched some women (aunt's and my mother) in my life be totally trapped to a claustrophobic level by their lack of financial independence and forced into situations where they had no/few choices and were basically powerless and beholden to men.

Equally I had some aunts (who were all nurses?) who kept their careers and were quite liberated by financial autonomy and could say "that's nice dear.. I'm buying it /doing it / going there anyway" or "no dear, that's not happening because i don't agree and wont pay for it".
For example, one just refused to move house despite her dh "deciding", one went on exotic holidays every year with nurse friends even though her DH "didn't really approve", they could get what they wanted ( the green dress not the red one, garden plants.... stupid low level stuff). They had power control and choices...

This was not ages ago (like 25/30 years ago...)

We didn't go without due to my mum but my father was feckless earned inconsistently, drank, leant money and she had to keep the show on the road while he virtually forced her out of well paid employment by making her job untenable. (He was abusive AND bipolar)

I swore from a very young age I would always make my own money and I would never depend on anyone.

I outearn my DH by 2x, was 3x when we met.... but thinking back now I realise everyone I have ever dated earned less or was "less good" (eg even my GCSE boyfriend had lower/worse grades, so did my "a level boyfriend") that just cant be coincidental...it must be a power/ control thing

Such an interesting thread....

Mt family was much poorer than yours and yet in my early childhood I never realised. They never discussed money worries in front of us even though as an adult my mum said there were times she struggled to put food on the table.
It was not until I was a teenager that I started to realise how poor we were.
I find if I have enough to cover the basics - heating, food and mortgage plus a bit of fun money I am financially content. I know I will never have the financial security of well off people, but I have never worried about having enough food for the children.