statley homes thread - dysfunctional families

[Mummiehunnie]

I had a look back and could not find the old thread, for adult children who grew up in unhealthy dysfunctional families, and were abused as a result!

It's only since having the inner child therapy that I have managed to address this on a very deep level. My mother is now irelevant.

My inner child is called bluebell at the moment, which is nice because dd's alter ego is called rose petal. I look after bluebell as I would rose petal, I love and nurture them both and am fiercely protective of both. I don't know quite who I am yet, but as I parent myself, it will come. I know that I am not a disgusting, demonic patholgical liar though now. :) I am lots of fun and lots of people appear to like me!!!! Blimey, who'd have thought!

weegiemum, I'm so pleased for you that you've been able to get proper therapy, and have a sound marriage - both of those are achievements in themselves; there must a good streak of healthy sanity inside you! Now "all" you have to do (haha) is let that part of you drown out the insecurities generated by your mum - and fill in the gaps where a mother ought to be.

Easy to write but not such a pushover to do! Your mother sounds confused & unhappy. Does she have a diagnosed condition, as far as you know, or come from a turbulent background herself? Knowing why can't undo the damage, sadly, but it can help get rid of the unreasonable belief that we deserved it somehow.

goingincircles (good name!!) - have you tried any inner-child work yet? It's so hard to accept that we were harmed by our parents and then, once that hurdle's overcome, there's the echoing question of what to do about it? Since there's no option to go back & try again, I find "re-parenting" myself very helpful.

x-posted, thisis :)
"I don't know quite who I am yet, but as I parent myself, it will come" YES! I needed the reminder, lovely, thank you. x

Agree with you about making a change for change's sake, btw. Am now happily fantasising about where I'll go with my windfall (if it falls)

So here is a stark reality check:

Friday on the motorway being told I was digusting, mad, terrible mother, liar and bully etc etc ad nauseum for around six hours.

Just now dropping dd off at a party, (that will become a grown ups do too later).....being greeted by friend, hugged, told how gorgeous I look, asked whether I am ok etc etc.

It's a no brainer isn't it?

It is! Keep remembering that, Bluebell :)

Not too sure about the "healthy sanity" :) My amazing relationship is sustained by my rather awesome dh, who never gives up even when I exibit some terrible behaviour.

My mum does not have any diagnosis (as far as I know), but it is only because she has never looked for help. I am convinced she has OCD (hence some of my childhood problems - and my very messy house!!!) and she is married to someone I am sure is NPD, and she is a narcissistic enabler. She didn't have an impossible upbringing, but there is a bit of a history of dysfunctional women in my family and I am determined that it stops with me - my 2 girls will not be suffering in the same way as I have!!!

After months of therapy, reading etc I have come to the conclusion that my relationship with my mother is unsalvageable (the killer for me was when she refused to help out my dh with our 2 kids when I was horrendously ill in hospital during pregnancy with dd2). Not sure about my sister - my mother can do no wrong in her eyes, which is not my recollection of how things were as a child or teenager. But the conclusion that I no longer have a birth-mother has actually been very liberating.

I know this is bothering me as I saw my sister for the first time in over a year yesterday (at a family even) and met my (almost one year old) niece for the first time, my (usually lovely) Dad is urging me to "make up" but he doesn't know the half of what went on (I parent my parents - especially I try to protect Dad, though I know this isn't healthy either!) and I feel like my mother is trying to influence me through my sister.

I just want them to leave me alone!! I get on very well with my brothers/stepbrothers and their families, its just the mother and sister that are the problem.

They refuse to accept that I have serious psychiatric problems, that I still need therapy at the grand old age of 40, that my mother bears any blame for anything in my childhood or adolescence. There's no way through, none at all.

I want to move on - I feel like people won't let me!!

Its been going for years and now I have killed it!!
Typical!!!!

Nonsense, weegiemum, that is my role.

Realizing that a relationship is unsalvageable is an epiphany moment isn't it? I am nearly there with my narcissistic middle sister.

Both my parents are deceased. I was never close to my mother, bonded with dad but there were restrictions (he was deaf). I finally realized that I never bonded with mother, nor she with me, even as an infant. She followed "Dr. Spock"-let them cry it out-so if I ever cried, I cried alone. I was treated as an invisible child.

I think I cried 5 min. the day she died (I was 18) and that was because Dad was crying. That was it; I just didn't/couldn't feel anything. I was completely numb and that went on for decades.

Sorry to ramble on, but I can see that if mother had lived that the extra time with her wouldn't have been for anything good for me. And I can sense that I would have had to come to the conclusion to set major boundaries as so many brave and intelligent women here have done and are considering doing.

It can be done. It is not something frivilous or light, and can be very emotionally painful. BUT...the relief and the hope for personal healing, the actual personal healing and the emancipation of your soul are the glorious rewards for having the courage to stand up for yourself, to mean it, and to not backdown.

Weegiemum, the people that won't let you move on have you enmeshed in a family role. It is like an anchor sinking you in the past forever. I don't think they will change, or suddenly acknowledge that you are an evolved human being-adult, intelligent, respectable, lovable. Cut those anchors loose. You will thrive. It is your life-and 40 is not old at all. (I'm 48-that's old. )

Excuse MEEE! If this is an Ageing Inner Child contest, I think I win 55, and I started my process at 45. It doesn't take everybody this long, btw; I had complications. In John Bradshaw's "Homecoming", he tells of a 70-year-old woman who attended his course. That convinced me I wasn't too old!

stuffed, what struck me about your post is that you weren't heard as a child. With your mum studiously ignoring your cries and your dad unable to hear, you must have been forlorn.

I agree with what Stuffed said to you, weegiemum. Your mum & sister won't "let you" take your own mental health seriously, or feel free to be yourself, but it's not up to them. The only thing is that they won't like it - and, as you'll have noticed, will probably battle fiercely to keep you locked into their idea of who you "should" be (according to them.) What my mother did to fix me in place was shocking. As it turns out, I'm glad she did it: I was still refusing to see what a mad & manipulative old woman she is, but have no doubt of it now.

It's difficult. I've been separating my self-perception from my family's myths & legends for years, step by step. I'm not quite there yet - but, now I'm so close, I feel bereaved. I can't be healthy unless I "leave" them: I know I have to go through much sadness about it, and I'm scared! Which is weird, since I don't actually like them very much.

I have got there wrt my mother and sisters. I have had to leave them . It will be one year in October.

I grieved so hard and cried until I felt like I was turning inside out. The pain has been indescribable.

I still can't quite let H go, but it's getting closer with each encounter. It took a long time to grieve when I "kicked him out" in February. After Cyprus it took about a week, and since coming home from Paris, on Friday, I was fine yesterday.

I am gaining more and more friends in RL. My ds commented at the number of people who wanted to stop and chat with me in our village, he's NEVER known that before. SEE I AM A GOOD ROLE MODEL!!!!!!! I DID THAT...ME, ME, ME :)

My kids and I had a fine old time at the party yesterday. I am completely open and honest about my situation, and people understand way more than one might think. I have a three RL friends who have gone through/are going through similar, (although I would say slighlty worse) than me. One in particular who was there yesterday is being put through sheer hell, I can give hugs and ears, and truly understand.

There IS light at the end of this darkest of tunnels. This place is the most amazing guide towards it too.

Just wanted to add.......

one of the ways in which I changed is in my ability to hug people. I couldn't physically do so well before, only my kids. But now I seem to find it a very natural thing to do...to put my arms around someone.

I was so scared and prickly before...I kind of believed that no one would want a hug from me because I was so horrible and angular and hard. Now I am soft and gentle and find it easy to give my love and warmth to people with the confidence that all it will do is make someone feel a bit better about themselves.

Hello ladies, quick update from me. I wish it was all positive but to wish that it was, I guess is just falling into the think tank of perfectionism. The false belief thatone day all will be hunky dory in the world of smithfield.
No, I have great days, good days, not so good days, not doing so well days and a fair few blinkin bad days.
I relate to what some of you have mentioned on here as feeling completely disengaged at times form the rest of the world. At times I lay awake worrying that i will never be or feel normal. I feel dispairing at whether these kinds of feelings will ever shift.
One break through for me is that I got offered some cbt therapy on the NHS but when I went for the assesment for once I was completely honest about my struggles. As a result they decided I neede more help than just cbt. So I have finally been referred to a clinical psychologist. A year ago I was declined the Clin psych because I downplayed everything.So some validation there, from myself and from outsiders.
still on a waiting list for these sessions but Im sure this will be positive when it comes.

grace That is huge. Really. Im glad you are back on here to get some support with it all. I can see it isnt helping your sleep patterns though .
keep talking.
thisis you deserve the progress you are making emotionally because you are clearly facing your emotions head on. Something I still struggle with.
facing up to the pain is the only way, but takes so much strength. You should be very proud indeed.

Thought I'd post this quote as It seems so relevant;

"The only pain that can be avoided is the pain that comes from trying to avoid unavoidable pain".

Full articlehere. Very good! Really worth a read if you get time.

Smithy being truly honest about our situation is excrutiating.It's the hardest step of all. When one finds out that EVERYTHING we thought was normal, because it's all we ever knew, is anything but, it leaves you with nowhere to be. It reminded me of "Space Oddity" by David Bowie....."here am I floating on my tin can, far from the world, planet earth is blue and there's nothing I can do"

That summed up how it felt to me at least. That there is nothing but me and space and the earth. Literally, starting again. How scary is that?

That article is brill. I see both me and h in there....sleep is my best escape, with red wine coming up a close second, and for h, hyperactivity, food, booze, and that strange "beside himself" state that he seems to enter. I will read that many times I think.

thisis I dissacociate through T.V and computer (which is why Ive kept off here a bit). This thread is so very helpful but I'd begun using it to 'avoid' feelings.
What you said about ad's being shutup pills made me think too.
I think I may have slowed down this whole process by going on Ad's. It was necessary in some ways as I couldnt afford to fall apart at the time.
now I am off I want to slink back to gp, and ask for more pills to numb me.
Im finally realising how much I really do avoid these feelings.

I considered myself to be very fortunate indeed that I had the time, space and money to be able to grieve with the intensity that I did. I have said it before, but it still stuns me that one day I actually vomitted the grief, I cried so much and was so snotty and gruesome, that it made me physically sick.

I am aware that my "shut up pills" label is melodramatic, but I don't want to be in a relationship where the only way to live is drugged into submission, like my late MIL did. and actually in the 60's and 70's SO many women did.

I have said that to h. I said that it would be brutal, but it has to be doesn't it? If he wants to be in my life, he must face up to this stuff, there is no choice.

Thank you very much for your posts, people. I'm quite stunned. I've been in dissociative 'freeze' mode for years. Thisis, that Bowie line gets me, too!

I don't think I can come off ADs. When I run out - which I do, without fail, as I don't request my repeat in time - I become physically ill (very) within a few days. I don't know how to get round that. However, I'm now putting "getting off the pills" back on my agenda; can't hurt any.

After I've re-read Simithfield's link, I shall be devoting myself to doing stuff, as opposed to being on the computer / thinking / sleeping / standing vacantly in the kitchen!
Promise :)

That's why, if you get your dosh, you should fly away!!!!!!!

grace Its important you do what is right for 'you' at any given moment in time.
I relate to what you are saying about coming off Ad's. It was 'hell' coming off for me, physically. My body clearly had become addicted and the witdrwal is horrid.
I chose a time I thought was right for me to do it though, everyones timing is going to be different.

And turns out my timing wasnt great after all as I am currently it appears entering menapause .
At the ripe old age of 41...another loving gift from my mother

I hope my posts don't come accross as prescriptive at all? WRT staying off the computer etc.
The thread is a huge resource for all of us. Like many have said it is an amazing feeling to find other people 'out there' who can relate to, identify with and validate experiences that many people in RL simply wouldnt be able to fathom.
It's a very lonely existence otherwise, one that reflects the sense of sadness and lonliness we felt as kids.

So keep posting

Mh Hope you are OK.

Gosh, thanks. Pete Walker is describing me. My physical symptoms (they are literally debilitating) are reactions to fear & abandonment. I think I kind of knew this, but nobody else has said it so baldly. The pills are going to be necessary for a while, as I can't function through the symptoms, but I'm glad to know exactly what I'm dealing with.

Yep, thisis, the last time I was symptom-free was on holiday! Wow, that was years ago ... it's not a cure but it's a help. It'll be months before I find out about the money, but it's nice to have a little something to look forward to :)

Smithfield, I definitely recommend HRT! I gather the plant options work well, though I opted for the chemical version. It stopped the hot flushes immediately, and I have no intention of ever coming off it! It doesn't keep your skin young or anything like that, though (sadly) - apparently the old varieties did, due to high oestrogen levels.

My hot flushes started one cold January. I remember having to go outside the doctor's waiting room, take my jacket & jumper off & rub myself with snow

Oooh I can't wait! I'm still on ads and have been for nearly 20 years on and off, mostly on.I wonder if I will ever come off them. I have to take other pills for another disease, so it's not a problem to remember them. I'll have a look at your link therealsmithfield.

It is so nice to look up and feel the air to breathe instead of staring at the ground and wanting to be part of it.

Do you know silentcatastrphe, even though the things you write are so sad, you have a beautiful way of expressing your thoughts.....do you write?

I have been clicking on the links on the left of that article.....brilliant stuff. Really illumintaing.