To think those with at least ordinarily lives can’t understand despite being sympathetic?

[OJred]

My Mam was an alcoholic from I remember so 12 years old?!! The died when I was 21 from smoking.

Dad was an abusive psycho, abused my Mam a siblings emotionally, physically and was vile though I was lucky I escaped the physically abuse generally. Needless to say I have no relationship with him. I’m mid 40’s and have two kids who I’ve tried to shelter from that and give them the best life possible. Their dad is amazing, I’ve never drank in front of them (ones nearly 18 ones 14) as I hated it so never wanted to do that in front of my kids.

I took out loans and went to University to try to give my kids the best chance financially (and me as I had no parents
to rely on). I feel lucky I have a half decent income, though it’s been hard as there has been no help from parents financially, emotionally, zero help.

One of my DC is disabled too so that’s really difficult as I worry so much about them. Good job I don’t take a leaf out my mother’s book or I’d neck a bottle of vodka every night….! 🙄

So I find things hard because of my situation. My DH has none of the above to contend with and my DC aren’t his biologically and he thinks I’m pessimistic at times so tonight I’ve had it out with him. Very difficult childhood then chronic worry about own of my children who is unlikely to be independent. I get fed up of hearing about those who make their own “difficult situations” and I can’t be arsed with it.

I said to to my DH (who is close to his parents and sees the weekly
and that’s lovely) if you hadn’t see your mam for nearly 25 years and even before that she was always drunk and your dad was a selfish man who never bothered, you wouldn’t view life the same way as you do.

It made me think of judgmental people who haven’t experienced really shit childhoods and have had, what I consider ‘charmed lives’.

So I’m not interested in hearing from those with charmed lives. It’s those who have had it difficult through not fault or choice of their own, such as abusive parents etc.. or worse, those who have really poorly children as my heart breaks for their people as it’s out of their hands

The problem with severe childhood trauma is you can't change it and you also can't just get over it. Your responsibility kicks in when you are an adult. Now while your difficult childhood isn't your fault only you can heal from it. The ones who hurt you can't and won't and wouldn't and would lack the capacity to do so anyway.

Therapy frames it all for you. Let's you work through the painful memories and the hold they have on your current emotions and behaviours.

I could share some truly truly awful experiences from my childhood, some so bad they'd traumatised others to even hear. Flashbacks, complex PTSD, anxiety, all fallout from my childhood. All co.pounded by the additional trauma of a difficult parenting life.

But I'm so much better now in my 40s and it's taken SO much work to get here. You need to do that work. It's hard and painful and worse before it gets better. However your hard childhood isn't something to take out on your partner or to resent others who didn't endure such pain for.

You are not behaving well in your relationship from the sounds of it, yes that's because of your trauma but it's your responsibility to address thatbtraima

Parenting a child with a disability is incredibly hard, the hours spent in hospital. The worry, the physical toll, the emotional impact, career impact etc etc. but again it's a common trauma and people who have both complex childhood trauma and children with disabilities are not uncommon

OP, where is this attitude getting you? What benefit are you deriving from it?

There’s a lot of well meaning people on here, but some of the advice to @OJred is massively patronising.

saying that people who’ve experienced both childhood trauma and dealing with disabled children ‘aren’t uncommon’ doesn’t make anything better for OP.

I get it OP. The world is really unfair and this thread proves that many people just don’t get it. You can be angry and resentful that some people seem to get an easy ride without being a narcissist.

i do think most people don’t understand the difficulties others face and even if they do realise their own fortune, there’s a very human tendency to believe out good luck is down to our own wise choices.

OP - I think some of the replies on this post have proved your point. It also demonstrates that it’s important to talk this through with a therapist who understands what you’re going through

I do yes that absolutely it and I’m pissed off!! Awful childhood and chronic stress of worrying about a disabled child ok adulthood…. Stress form 8-80, just what everyone wants.

I realise one of your replies was lovely and I replied with gratitude, however I seen your subsequent posts and felt we weren’t aligned a I’d thought but I can’t delete my reply

I'm not going to say why exactly, but I get where you are coming from. People with a 'normal' childhood just don't 'get' it, do they?

Wishing you a peaceful Christmas.

On paper, lots of people have had charmed childhoods and living charmed lives. But you will never know what is going on behind closed doors.

Life isn't a race to the bottom for the 1st pitty party prize.

Enjoy the little things and stop comparing yourself with others.

The disease of alcoholism is self-inflicted. There is no doubt about that. Your point is very valid and it’s not fair to you that you had to take care of yourself at such a young age.

I got sober at 22 years old and raised two kids in a safe and sane environment. I foolishly assumed I was breaking that family cycle for good. But alcoholism is cunning and baffling and now I have two children who don’t appreciate the lifestyle I gave them as they are well into their own disease. They have no respect for my 12 step program and refuse to talk to me till I do things their way. Which is go to counseling over their bad behavior. 🙄
I kept my program and let them go. It was hard but I am at peace with it now. To you I recommend any 12 step program you can get your hands on- Al-Anon CODA, Adult Children of Alcoholics. They are free, online or in person and the people in those groups know exactly what you’ve been through.

Melody Beattie has written a couple of daily meditation books on Codependency. If you did nothing but get ahold of one of those to ponder on quiet mornings you will be doing yourself a huge favor.

My trauma is my trauma and if I decide what I can deal with and what worthy of my time. I don’t care if someone thinks all things and all lives are equal, that’s bat shit crazy and I couldn’t disagree more.

Some people deal with far more than others and that burden significantly affects their life in a way most people are clueless!

I’ve got a severely disabled child… do you want to swap notes so you can compare the severity of disability and judge how sad I’m allowed to feel. Can yours feed themselves? Toilet on their own? Communicate?

Of course some things are worse than others, losing a child is worse than losing a parent etc… I suspect there are people far worse off than you but you won’t want to hear from them.

It’s not top trumps, you sound incredibly self pitying.

You can recover from this OP. I was also raised from birth by an alcoholic mother, and a brutal evil father. I was taken into care where I was separated from my siblings and we were passed round foster parents. I left care at 16, pregnant and alone. I suffered physical, sexual and emotional abuse as a child and been in DV relationships and been raped as an adult. I also have a disabled (now adult) child who still needs care in his 30s. I have an ACE score of 10 and big parts of my adulthood haven’t been a lot easier.

But I am happy now. I have wonderful children, friends and a safe home. I have had great therapy that has helped me to finally find peace. I learned to leave my trauma in the past. I found compassion for my parents - they were damaged too, and lacked the tools to be parents. Yes, it was shit but it’s ancient history and right now is all that matters.

Please don’t compare your suffering to others. There are lots of people who have had it worse than you, or me. Everyone’s suffering deserves compassion.

I’m glad you’re seeing a therapist too. It took me around 3 years of weekly sessions before I felt able to move forward but I got there in the end and I know that you can too. Good luck! x

We're not aligned because I feel for you. I really really do. I've been where you are. We have an awful lot in common. Abusive childhood, loss of a parent when young, remaining parent abusive and estranged, disabled child, clawed our ways out of poverty.

Yet what I'm telling you is you can come back from this. Not that it isn't horrific, of course it is. Recovery is so hard. You can feel better though I promise.

I remember starting counselling thinking it couldn't change anything and then a year down the line realising that whole nothing had changed everything had changed. I really hope it's the same for you

Some people deal with far more than others and that burden significantly affects their life in a way most people are clueless!

It's not what they deal with, but how they deal with it.

If you can’t handle the fact (or it’s too close to home whisk it usually is) that I don’t view it to be the same as children from abusive relationships then feel free to start a new thread!!!

I’ll be kind and will leave it there…..

I do understand what you're saying, and I know you have experience with these challenges as well and are genuinely trying to be helpful with your posts - but the point I'm trying to make (perhaps badly in fairness) is that you can't hold it against someone for not being as self aware or as accepting and adjusted as you are. Op has had one session of therapy so far, I've had multiple over the years plus related supervisions every month for over 10 years, plus specific training etc all through work but that's also really useful for me personally. I wouldn't expect us to be in the same place with this stuff or for op to be empathetic to everyone else when shes describing feeling pretty misunderstood and alone with what she's coping with. Experiencing empathy is usually what builds empathy and maybe op hasn't had enough of that in her life.

How resilient you maybe are as a person and how many skills for managing you have doesn't mean you get to judge or dismiss someone who isn't at that place in themselves yet let alone call them a narcissist. There are better ways to phrase that given that narcissist has so many negative connotations which would be really triggering for some people who have experienced similar abuse, such as just acknowledgement that it's a trauma response in itself because it's part of protecting and defending yourself when you can't easily trust others. And trauma responses are not readily dropped. It still speaks to the fact that some pains will have a lifetime impact, and others just don't have that impact. Doesn't mean it's not valid pain- it's just different, perhaps easier to deal with or at least get support with or compassion from others around it. I'd say that the amount of social support around childhood abuse is fairly limited- it's not something that tends to come up so it isn't something my friends would be fully aware of (they know little bits but nowhere near the full extent), you don't have family to lean on, if you do talk about it the assumption is - well that's over now so it's OK right? Or the lovely "you can't be nc you only get one mum that's awful to say" nonsense. So if you don't have a partner who is very understanding or a sibling you have s good relationship with then that's a lonely place to sit. A lot of other pains listed on this thread are more 'common place' or at least more talked about because they're things that tend to happen to us as adults. Everyone knows someone who's been in a horrific relationship, everyone knows someone who's experienced the loss of a pregnancy or a bereavement of a parent or been affected by illness or suicide it's why we've lots of great support services set up to rightly support people facing those difficulties in life. But there's comparatively quite little out there for people who were abused or neglected as children unless you can pay privately for therapy which is unaffordable for many people, particularly compounded by those lifetime issues I mentioned in the last post.

Just because you're willing and able for something doesn't mean someone else is. And I think it's quite important we allow grace for that?

Therapy.

It's not your DH's fault what happened to you. You cannot take it out on him, that's not fair. Being a spouse does not make one an emotional punch bag.

It's ok to be angry. But you also have to acknowledge that in some ways you were luckier than others, life is shit, move on.

I do understand that most doesn’t endure such trauma and simply can’t understand. Not your fault or anyone else fault but makes me laugh when the try to ‘compare’.

Some situations aren’t comparable at all regardless of what some might think. Chalk and cheese

Why have you decided to "have it out" with your DH tonight and start a pretty sensitive thread when you have other things to be getting on with? Try to put this aside for another day.

You'd no doubt think I was one of the "charmed" people unless you knew me well, but my mother was in and out of mental hospitals throughout my childhood which was also traumatic.

I recommend EMDR therapy for PTSD as it worked wonders for me.

Tell me you’ve had a charmed life without telling me…

Op has essentially explained this stating that boxing day is a particularly hard anniversary and Christmas is usually quite triggering in and of itself, not only on the abusive childhood front, but also on the caring for a child who has a disability front as services close and routines change. All reasons why op may be feeling a bit more fragile and overwhelmed than normal and has come here to vent frustration and seek empathy and support and has challenged her dh because he's there but she doesn't feel really heard or understood by him presumably? I'd say there are also a fair few wives irked with their other halves as it is tonight as they cover the lions share for tomorrow and we don't know what her context is.

Again, abusive childhood, abject poverty, disabled child, multiple miscarriages, dead mother at relatively young age, chronic health conditions and awaiting surgery. I have endured more than you know.

again tell me you’ve not had an abusive childhood without telling me…

I get it OP.

My child is disabled too. Happened suddenly when he was 8, 2 years ago in March. Cancer. He experienced almost every single complication you can have and he ended up staying in hospital for 10 months despite him 'only' needing 3 months of chemotherapy.

Everything changed. I'm still traumatised and still sometimes have nightmares. I'm angry that it happened and angry that he had to have so many complications.

But I also feel lucky, lucky that's here because some of the friends he met on the oncology ward are no longer with us. Guilty because he survived and far too many children with cancer don't survive. Scared because there's always the chance it will come back or that he'll develop a secondary cancer or any other long term complication due to chemotherapy.

I had an extremely abusive upbringing and I came out of the other side but I have a lot of mental health issues as a side effect of what happened to me. I clawed my way through my teens and early twenties and didn’t think I would come out of the other side alive. You wouldn’t know what happened to me unless I shared it with you though. I am a very normal person.

I have to say you sound very woe is me and you clearly have a victim complex because your reply to the person sharing about her abusive relationship was not very nice. I have had some god awful things happen to me from being tiny but I would never say that to someone. You victim shamed her and it’s not up to you to compare trauma. It is up to you how you choose to handle that trauma.

If I had one good parent I don’t think I’d feel this way and if I didn’t have a disabled chidl then I definitely don’t think I would.

Having one shit parent is rubbish, having two is beyond , then having chronic stress as an adult, is more than enough for own person take, literally through no fault of their own.