OMG talk about a light bulb moment

[phipps]

Crap upbringing, in and out of children's homes and foster placements. Fell big time for first boyfriend. Couldn't settle anywhere, nowhere felt like home. Never felt good enough. I do things that really annoy me and hurt me but could never work out why. Just came to me that it is because I have never felt good enough, was used to being hurt and figured that is all I deserved. I have another thread going about forgiving my mother and I think I feel I need to do that as I so desperately want a mum. Now that I have worked out I am hurting myself because it is what I know how do I stop doing it?

Figure out what need in you it satisfies and satisfy it with a different behaviour.

What are the things that you are doing, can you tell us?

Be wary of forgiving your mum too much (iykwim) - is she likely to let you down again?
I find being ruthlessly in control where my mum's concerned works best for my own mental health!

I just read that bit back about my mother and I am not typing what is in my head. I will not be forgiving my mother and will not be seeing her again. I was just trying to explain why I feel I need too but it won't give me a mum even if I did call her and say I forgive her. I know this is all mixed up.

nemo - I can't really. I feel I am fighting against myself, a bit like a head/heart dilemma. Now I have realised what I am doing and why I think I will find it a bit easier not to do it anymore. Trying to get some control for myself.

It makes perfect sense phipps that you are repeating behaviours that are familiar to you, even though they are destructive and painful.

So that's the first thing to take comfort from, that you now know exactly why you did what you did.

How to change that behaviour? Well, it takes work. I have a very difficult relationship with my mother. I was brought up with love, more so from my father, but my mother always told me she didn't know who I was, that I was so unlike the others and she couldn't relate to me.

I bent myself out of shape trying to be who she wanted to be, and all i did was make us both miserable. Even as an adult living in another country, visits home for a weekend would set me back years, and depression hit me like a truck.

In the end, I asked the gp to refer me to a counsellor. Initially i was seeing her for post traumatic stress disorder, as a result of a near death experience. When she started to ask about my relationship with my mother, i held back and insisted it was fine, and not relevant. Counsellor knew better though, and dug deeper. It was like an avalanche, the floodgates opened and i sobbed, great big heaving, painful sobs, from somewhere so deep i didn't know where. Took weeks of work to establish what damage my mother had done to my sense of self worth, and my basic sense of self. Because I was so different from my family, she simply couldn't figure me out, she had no frame of reference for me. She was actually, in a way, jealous. Mothers can be.

I worked hard to make the separation and to feel, genuinely feel, that she was fallible, she was not really to blame for her limitations. She has a terrible upbringing by a very cold, distant, depressive mother. Its a miracle I am not more damaged really.

This is where you need to get to, to see that she is human, made terrible choices and deeply affected your life. But the time for her to harm you is now over. You have succesfully survived the dreadful childhood, against all odds, and no thanks to her. You have a beautiful family, and you didn't repeat the patterns in your choice of men, you chose dh, a good guy, a good husband and a great dad.

Please ask the gp for a referral phipps, it changed my life, and helped take all my pain and allowed me to label it, understand it, and put it in a box marked 'the past'.

Remember that you can if you want to forgive your mother without ever telling her or speaking to her again. it may help you to move on and be free from bitterness regardless of whether she 'deserves' to be forgiven.

It takes time to change behaviour even now you know what triggered it. I have in the past two years got back all my memories of horrible abuse and it explains everything I've struggled with and I've come so far in therapy but I can still fall in silly traps like turning into an upset 7 year old if I do something that dh doesn't like.

it wears of gradually.

Try to give yourself the respect you deserve for surviving your childhood as well as you have and give yourself the credit and the time to heal and move forward.

Absolutely agree with perfumedlife(and so sorry to hear of your childhood experiences but so pleased you have found the path to recovery) and this what you must do too Phipps. It is SO important that you have just come to this realisation about the "then and there" and the "here and now" if you see what I mean. We are all hugely influenced by our childhood experiences and there is no dout at all that you have suffered emotional harm,, which makes life so difficult for you now.

I honestly don't think this is something you can just do alone. You need to unravel the past - you do have a right to see your social services files if you think that might help to fill in some of the blanks in your upbringing or clarify some matters. If you want to do this you will need to be insistent because soc works don't have time for anything that isn't statutory these days.

Also you do really need to find a good counsellor/therapist who can help you to make what you are feeling more manageable and put you on the path to recovery from past abuse. There are no quick fixes but you can make changes in the way you function to ensure that you have a better adult life than the childhood one that you had. Don't know if you can afford a counsellor (most of them are about £50 an hour) the NHS isn't really any good as they usually only give you 6 sessions of CBT (cognitive behaviiour therapy) which is good for the "here and now" stuff but does not look at the origins of your problems.

You have made an important first step by making the link between your past and the present. May help you to write things down that you remember from your past and how it made you feel and how that relates to the present. I find writing stuff very therapeutic but not everyone is the same.

Hope that you will find your way to a better life.

I do think my mother is jealous of me but I don't know she is. I have the love of a good man and he loved me enough to marry me. Whereas the man she loved the most, my dad, didn't stick around when she was pregnant and i feel has never got over him. She has been with someone for over 30 years and I think they got married in the last couple of years but I am not sure and can't understand the births, deaths, marriages thing to find out.

funny that my first boyfriend was the love of my life and I haven't got over him either

I have brought this thread back as I feel I need to reread it and try and get some strength from the brilliant posts. I know what I do, I just don't know why I do it when it is me hurting. I don't know if I am being unfair by blaming my mother.

Therapy - you sound a likely candidate for long-term therapy and given your brief description I'd hazard a guess you've BPD - don't worry - all the best people have (had) it!

Stop punishing your own body (smoking/drinking/drugs/cutting/ED), self-sabotage (tardiness, over-spending, risky behaviour) because others are hurting you. Learn to say NO, or Fuck Off if you prefer. Slowly but surely discover your boundaries and you yourself.

1. Do you like your coffee black or white?
2. What's your favourite chocolate?
3. What's your favourite colour?

Until I was fixed, all my answers echoed those of my mother - I imitated her, so desperate was I for her love and approval. But guess what beeyatch - I like pralines and wearing red!

My GP thinks I have uni polar as I don't have the highs. A year on from him saying that I occasionally have the highs but feel scared when I feel happy and find it very hard to just enjoy the feeling. I am so used to having it taken away from me that I daren't be happy in case it happens again.

I don't do the punishing my body but I do stuff that I know will probably hurt me but I do it anyway.

1. don't like coffee.
2. I like lots of chocolate.
3. favourite colour is navy.

No idea what my mother would say for her answers but do remember wearing a navy and white striped top and my father's mother saying it was the sort of thing my father would have worn so might have taken that in.