Adults - forgiving your parents

[Unsureaboutforgiving]

Before I start, I just want to say I don't believe my parents were the sole (or even partial) cause of my ED.

I had a very severe ED - anorexia, becoming bulimia - for well over a decade, starting at around 15 and culminating in adult treatment at the Maudsley. It completely ruined my teens and my twenties, despite being a high achiever on the surface. (Think finishing uni and holding down a job whilst vomiting 12 times per day and thinking about nothing but food etc.). I was suicidal multiple times in my twenties and still have precarious mental health (well hidden). I never blamed my parents, in fact I stopped telling them anything after the incidents detailed below but now I have my own children, I cant get over their actions towards me.

• never took me to seek help from a doctor aged 15, despite becoming aware that I definitely had an ED and being approached multiple times by concerned third parties asking if I was OK.
• I tried to ask them for help when I was really struggling again at uni with bulimia. They made some sympathetic noises but did nothing.
• told then a GP had prescribed fluoextine (as a treatment for bulimia) whilst at uni. They said it was ridiculous and they didn't see someone who was depressed.
• knew I was going into treatment at the Maudsley but there was seemingly no recognition that I had continued to suffer deeply for over a decade.
• told them about the debt I got myself into buying food to binge on. No reaction (I was 18).

I'm really struggling to get over this apparent lack of care now I have my own children. My parents think I'm high achieving and they've done 'well'. I can barely bring myself to be around them right now. I feel so sad for how alone I was during that awful time. Does anyone have any similar experiences or can offer a different perspective- maybe I was expecting too much?

I think the reason that you’re struggling to forgive them is because you’re trying to skip a stage - the stage where you really explore the depths of your anger towards them over this. Trying to rationalise how they behaved and forgive them without really accepting and describing how angry you are is futile. They’ve never even acknowledged that they failed you. How can you just move on?

Unfortunately given everything you’ve said about them they sound unlikely to validate your well-deserved pain over this. That leaves therapy. Go to therapy and get really super angry about it. If you choose to talk to them afterwards, to forgive them, to cut them off, whatever you decide, you’ll still be more at peace with what happened.

There’s no shortcut or way around this where you just feel better and move on.

I tend to agree with you - plus, it's not like we're talking a million years ago. I assume that you grew up in the 90s/2000s based on your parents' age. Culturally, it wasn't so different that it's an excuse. I find it hard to understand too.

At 15 maybe you have a point but at 16+ you should be making your own appointments. This really is not on your parents

I guess I tried to give specific examples of things that really stick out to me as odd. I am genuinely interested in the perspective of others because some posters don't seem to regard those as actively harmful. I guess I struggle to see how it is possible they did their best, given the specific circumstances. How can telling your child they are not depressed and do not need medication possibly be your best? Maybe I'm clouded by anger.

You think a 16 year old suffering from a mental illness with the highest mortality rate and which, by its nature, makes you unable to make rational choices about your health should bear the full responsibility for getting help?

You'll see from my OP that I did. I just wanted some support whilst I was a uni student and dated to ask my parents for some. I never asked again, don't worry. Do you plan to stop caring about your children after the age of 16?

Clinical Information regard any illness is received and processed depending on individual and their
culture
class,
education,
deference to staff,
suspicion of services
belief it’s an actual problem
desire to seek a resolution
Belief in medication
Suspicion or non compliance with medication

all of this was evident during pandemic
We all had same basic information and yet some were disputing facts. Seeking their own solutions etc, information intself doesn’t equal good outcome

I should also say my parents have no idea how i feel. They have no inkling when I see them which I do so they see my DC.

Going forward, what do you want from them?
what if you don’t get the resolution from parents you want?

ask GP for IAPT OR CBT Referral

I think you and your parents are looking at this from completely different perspectives.

I suspect your parents don’t understand your resentment because they thought they provided you with a stable, supportive and affluent childhood. So they are completely puzzled why you might have MH issues.

You, on the other hand, recognise that your parents didn’t ’cause’ you ED. But are angry at the lack of support from them.

I bet your parents don’t appreciate that you’ve been left very let down by them.

I also had a lot of resentment for the shocking lack of support from my parents for teenage depression ( which was as a result of childhood trauma) like you, I never blamed them for what happened, but they massively fucked up…they just told me to ‘be happy’ and get over it.

I was very angry for a long time, but having actually had to deal with my own kids MH / emotions, I realise how difficult it is. Even though I’ve read up on the issues facing my kids, and I’m far more emotionally ‘literate’, it’s not easy.

I think it helps if they understood this though. Maybe talk to them in family therapy? You’ve made me think I should do the same with my DM…

I do see a therapist. I find it very difficult to even say out loud some of the things my parents have said to me/comments they've made. I often avoid the issue when she goes there but I know I should try....

I guess I would really like a break from contact but I'm not the kind of person to do 'drama' so not sure I could ever actually bring myself to do it. I'm just feeling surprised at how much this is affecting me after, relatively suddenly (my DC are v young).

Like a pp said Maybe it would be better for you to get therapy and then you will truly know how you feel about your parents and what you want to do about it . Because until you do it's certainly going to effect your parenting even if you don't think it will.

As a parent you’re experience fierce protectiveness to your own children,it’s provoked a strong reaction in you. You feel angry & let down at your own parents,their actions and are drawing a comparison what you’d do. What you think they should have,could have done

if you’re not able to fully disclose in therapy it suggests the therapy isn’t appropriate at the moment and perhaps take a break,resume therapy later. Or be bold and tell therapist you’re not fully disclosing (if it’s too painful or hard write it down,tell the therapist in writing)

I'm sorry you've suffered so much. Assuming you don't doubt that they care about and love you, and that this issue is the outlier in a generally good uprlbringing, some possibilities that come to mind are:

1. if their coping mechanisms to their own crises is to keep up appearances, minimize, and plough through then it makes sense that they would do similar for you. There may even be a sense of trying to demonstrate the stoicism they want you to mimic - don't make a fuss or she will think this is even more panic worthy and get worse.

2. Mental health can be a deer in the headlight issue for some people. They don't face their own demons and have utterly no idea how to respond to anyone else's mental health problems (or any realization about the impact they can have on someone's struggles if they respond dismissively) so they look away as its all they know.

3. Given how little they actually knew about the depth of your feelings and struggles, when you showed them the tip of the iceberg they may have just not understood everything that lay beneath that you needed help with. Especially if they had a poor knowledge of eating disorders and the significance of you mentioning xyz to them.

4. Acknowledging the potential harm you could come to if they recognized your mental conditions was actually very scary and not something they felt able to do. Minimizing what was happening may have protected them from facing their worst fears about what might happen to their daughter. Their minimizing tactic then gets validated when they see you continuing to be 'fine' - clearly she wasn't terribly depressed, what a relief, so glad we didn't pander to that phase etc.

That said, some parents just don't want to make the effort to meet the emotional needs of their kids for whatever reason. It sucks to be the child in that situation but there's not really any way of properly understanding it without talking to them (and they probably aren't the kind to open up or they'd be more in tune with your childhood needs in the first place!).

What @DorotheaHomeAlone said. You’re angry, furious with your parents, and that’s okay. You’ve got to let yourself feel all of that, internally and/or with your therapist. Forgiveness is really an internal process of letting go of your resentment, but you’ve got to let feelings in and feel them before you can let go of them.

It might be you’ve blocked the anger out or, for whatever reason, you’ve not had the kind of relationship with your parents where it’s been okay to express anger and still know that you’re loved. It might take a lot of time to build enough trust with your therapist to be able to acknowledge it and express it.

What you do on the surface with your parents doesn’t have to match the journey you’re on internally, unless it’s getting in the way of you getting to know yourself and how you feel. It’s usual for people to need a rebellious or distant stage with parents for you to find yourself, make sense of things and establish who you want to be. So maybe you need time away from them to work through it all. You don’t need to make any forever decisions about that though.

As you have said OP your parents have no idea how you feel as you haven't told them,
But they are not mind readers, only you can bring this to their attention. This happened in my own situation, nothing was said just assumption that we should have guessed because we're parents. It's really not that simple .

@Pirrin that's a really great post, thank you. I think my parents would say they 'put themselves out' for us because they fed us well, housed us, gave us lifts, funded us until the end of uni (not the fees). But they never put themselves out beyond the basics. Even now I wouldn't ask them to do something at one of their meal times (seriously, ha!) or ask them to interrupt the usual pattern of their week. They certainly wouldn't have considered taking action because a child was struggling emotionally. I also see some level of neglect in terms of buying clothes/bras/toiletries around when puberty hit which makes me cringe a little in the context of my own children.

@Wiccan I do get your points and, as I said, I always subscribed to your view until recently. But I gave examples of specifically asking for support and being either ignored or dismissed. I'm not sure in what context I should view that as doing 'their best' or me expecting them to be mind readers (at that time, before I gave up on them)?

What you’ve listed isn’t just basics it was 2 adult parents trying to help in a way they felt comfortable and capable doing
Mental health is powerful it provokes denial,shame,stoicism and a need to appear to be coping
If you’ve never discussed and of this how do you really know the impact upon them? They may have chosen the keep calm and carry on as a strategy to protect you. They may have thought it was best to keep things appearing normal

posters saying they should have done more with the information are spectacularly missing the point. health Information is not processed neutrally, it’s value laden, we know this from the pandemic

@Zone2NorthLondon no, I disagree with that. For highly educated, highly solvent parents at that time feeding, housing and funding the basics for your kids until adulthood is the basics. It's not neglecting them and that's it. Every therapist I have ever seen (I've seen a lot!) has tried to suggest some degree of emotional neglect and I have always brushed off the suggestion but now I see it could be true.

I really struggle to get my head around no response to a direct request for help now I am a parent. It's that apparent lack of care which is too difficult for me to justify with cultural context/age/response to information.

Accommodation,food,financial security aren't basics. In their absence people really suffer
ok.they were solvent and perhaps the financial mechanics of it weren’t a stretch but nonetheless they provided for you in a way they could
Just because they were solvent and supported you financially doesn’t make it basic

Anyway,what do you want from them? Clearly there are unresolved issue impacting upon your adult hood.
what do you want to happen?

Ok I am using basics to mean bare essentials. Food and accommodation are the bare essentials for everyone. Financial security is a luxury my parents had and therefore I also benefited from. My parents would have been viewed as negligent if they didn't provide me with those things.

As I said earlier, I would like to take a break from contact but I realistically won't make such a fuss. I was actually looking for people to discuss 'forgiving' (may not be entirely the correct word) their parents or to speak to people who have had a similar experiences with EDs. It's interesting that some people don't think there is necessarily anything to forgive, which had been my stance for years, because I am really struggling to see that at this point in my life. Its been useful to get some perspectives on what is a very lonely problem.

Don't need to be a psychiatrist to know that a child with an eating disorder needs therapy.

Or to know that a person prescribed medication for MH probably needs support not judgement.

Or to know that if your daughter is going in-patient that she needs lovebombing.

OP I think - the only way to forgive is to know that their issues come from how THEY were raised. And those issues come from their parents (the war generation surrounded by PTSD and major Mh conditions).

It's a cycle and you can break it. They likely didn't have the psychiatric help we do now to break it themselves.

We aren't all dealing with the same issues though are we ? Just because I had an eating disorder doesn't mean I have the skills to deal with all MH issues in my children or any other family member.