"But we took you to Stately Homes!" - Dysfunctional parents?

[ItsGraceAgain]

It's October 2010, and the Stately Home is still open to visitors.

Forerunning threads:
December 2007
March 2008
August 2008
February 2009
May 2009
January 2010
April 2010
August 2010

Please check later posts in this thread for links & quotes. The main thing is: "they did do it to you" - and you can recover.

happy My mother is very aggressive too but in a far more covert way than yours.
Dont be surprised if you get am emotional hangover now she has left.
Have you ever taken much time to process this stuff? Counselling, reading?
It is very painful I know, so you need to be extra kind to yourself now she has gone. Wrap yourself in cotton wool, or fluffy towels .

Her visit did knock me for six, definately. No...no counselling or reading. I read a lot of stuff about abusive men when I was with my exH and that's what gave me the strength to fight him, but never regarding parents. And counselling was always regarded with venom in our house, airing our dity linen in public etc. I had to have it when my Dad died to deal with the guilt over being with him when he died when my mother wouldn't forgive me for that, even though she had deliberately taken a sleeping tablet as he was dying.

happy Just reading through your thread-not got very far but read your mum is coming up for xmas. Could or/would you re-think this?
You dont have to let this woman dominate your christmas if you dont want to. I understand even the thought of telling her not to come will prolly fill you with panic and fear, but you must think about keeping you and dc's safe. Especially when you have all been through so much. Toxic Parents by susan forward is a great book to start to get your head around your own childhood.

I've already decided to put her off coming at xmas, whether it is by being firm or by giving her an excuse, not sure if I'm brave enough to tell her I just don't want her here so may have to make something up. I can tackle her in the new year when she doesn't have xmas to spoil.

mh, is Hansel & Gretel your life script, do you think? The story has a theme of famine - are food and hunger powerful symbols in your life? The Grimms borrowed the tale from an old one that originated in times of great poverty, when parents really did abandon their children in hopes that they would find food, or be taken in by a stranger. So there's also a theme of hard choices & being abandoned to fate.

It's interesting that both the women in the story are selfish and cruel; they put their own needs first and last, the witch also using food as entrapment. When looking at fairy stories, Berne says "Look to the grandmother." Do your grandmothers fit either of the women's roles in this story?

I suspect the riches are a red herring. The contents of the witch's coffers allow H & G to keep themselves and their father in luxury, but it's clear this means plenty of food. Also, the father's ambiguous role is never resolved. The children don't blame him for chucking them out - twice - even though he tried to stop Hansel laying his trail back 'home'. If you rewrote this story, what outcome would you want for the father?

trs and rose, thank you for your good wishes :) I'll catch up later. x

happy Good for you! Tell her in whatever way causes you the least stress. My dad was supposed to be coming up on the 11th and I postponed. It's taken years to get to this point. A point where I am even remotely aware of the stress and change in me that visits cause.
I broke contact with my mum around this time 3 years ago. I hadn't comtemplated going NC at the time just felt I needed space from her for a period of time especially as I was pg with no dc2 at the time.
My life is emotionally a much safer place for me and dc's without her in it.
You can keep posting here for support, I did and found it really helpful.

Grace, I idenfity with it more so regarding my children, their father and stepmother, and I was under the impression the witch was also the stepmother as they die at the same time, my maternal grandmother died prior to my birth and paternal when I was a toddler! Yes food an issue, i was anorexic as a small child, I would not eat, then very picky and in my late teens comfort eating has become a big problem...

When looking through grimm tales I came across what was my fav story and one that I was sad I could not find easily when my dd were younger, I could not remember the name of it, as I had it as a stand alone book. Rose Red and Snow White, I loved that story and I wonder if that story is the one I look for the two daughters describe mine so much, the tidy house is not the case though, and i am alone like the mother in that story although she is widdowed!

I suppose I wonder if I am the witch with the too much food! My mother definatly was stingey and mean in some ways and a feeder in others, she still is, she is irish and if you ever watched father ted, they show the housekeeper as a feeder, oh go on you will, forcing food on the priests my mother was like that force feeding you almost with cakes, pies and biscuits etc and then shouting at you how fat you were later just like the alcoholic game but with food, she did it with father also, not golden boy brother!

just like the alcoholic game

I think you're onto something there, mh. The very first inkling I had about my mother - whom I'd accepted as the try-hard, well-meaning, put-upon victim she plays - was in rehab. There was a compulsory session with the eating disorders specialist (almost all addicts have an eating issue). I was telling her how great my diet is, having been so well trained by my mother in nutrition. She asked a couple more questions, then said "So your mother was very controlling over food?" Oh, boy. Was she!

Like yours, mine uses food - more accurately, in her case, nutrition - as a substitute for love and as a weapon of control. She put me on my first diet at 18 months, screeched at me for being "fat" at 12, and kept me on a permanent diet from then on. The school noticed my anorexia at 17: Mum, meanwhile, was praising me for losing weight. (Of course I wanted to disappear, that would make my parents happy!) Whilst I was living with her recently, she told me not eat any of the nice stuff and fed me leftovers swimming in oil. She sees me as much larger than her: I mean, literally, that's what she sees. Weird.

In the story, mh, the wicked wife is the mother, the Grimms didn't try to make it more palatable by turning her into a stepmother. I don't know who the witch is - could she be your mother's mother?

The children's step mother does not want them to be with their father neither does he and they both have food issues also, weight going up and down, overeating etc... My mother has had anorexia, never an overeater!

Grace, where do you get the info from, which berne book?

What Do You Say After You Say Hello. There's another good book, called Scripts People Live. I read the Grimm stories at east of the web. I was interested in mythologies as a child, so have gathered quite a bit of background information along the way :)

Happy, your mother sounds completely crazy, I'm glad you are going to put her off coming to yours for xmas, am sure she would have completely ruined it for you and your family. Even the thought of putting her off can be scary. I remember before I actually went nc with my parents, I wanted to put them off phoning me as even just their phone calls were enough to have me crying for hours. I wrote them a letter in the end, I find it so much easier to put things in writing than talking face to face or on the phone.

I have had a lightbulb moment but feel ridiculous as it's so obvious, why on earth has it taken so long for the penny to drop. I have realised that even though my dad was the far more obvious abuser in our family and of course he must have been very damaged himself in order to behave the way he did with me, my mum must have been even more damaged than him. She must have been. That is the only reason a mother would do nothing to help and/or protect her child if the child was being hurt and terrified by somebody. It's so obvious now, but it has not been for ages. Because my dad was always the one who ranted and raved and raged and in hindsight it is obvious he at some point had a mental breakdown and went through a pyschotic period from which he never fully recovered. But my mother was a much much quieter person, although now I think that quietness was actually fear. But her reactions to me were so abnormal, they were simply not the normal reactions you would expect a mother to have if her child was hurt, upset, scared etc. It's obvious to me now that she had lost all connection with her feelings. Which is why she could not empathise with me at all when I was hurt/scared etc and this is why she either got angry with me or ignored me. I have been much the same with DD over these past years.

But then I remember she was not like this with my sisters, with them it seemed she could empathise and was in touch with her feelings. And I have always been so confused by this, as in my mind I always thought either somebody was damaged or they weren't and if they were, surely they should behave similarly with all their DC's? But I know that's not true and things aren't as simple as that from my own personal experience with DD and DS. I felt very disconnected with DD, but seemed to bond instantly with DS from the moment he was born and even whilst I was pregnant. And there is no question that I am/was very damaged and that was why I had problems after having DD, but somehow, my damaged self was still able to bond and feel love for DS. And to me this explains my own childhood. Why my mother felt detached from me but not from my sisters.

Looking back now, I think my mother is devoid of all feeling when it comes to me. I think she couldn't feel anything even when i was hurt and scared. And so when I went to her for comfort and reassurance, because she couldn't give me what I was looking for in terms of empathy, she either got annoyed with me or ignored me. If she had had the capacity to realise she had huge issues that needed to be resolved, I'm sure things would have been different. And there is no getting away from the fact that she was weak and a coward. Those traits I think can be present regardless of damage. Not everyone is strong and courageous. We all have different qualities and strengths and weaknesses.

I am worried it is me, that the hunger is for love not food!

mothers mother was the one where thing went wrong, her mother died when she was 9 and she took over the family and wanted to stop mother having a childhood and and wanted mother to do too much in house, mother wanted me to do too much in house for others, I make a point of not asking lo's to do things for the general house, I just want them to clear up after themselves and not to continue to expect me to do everything for everyone anymore, this is the cause of family issues in this house, dd2 says I nag, I said to her I was never accused of that before, it is good I am reminding people where as before I let things go...

Gosh Grace, I am sorry regarding the food issues!

My dd's are similar to rose red and snow white and I have a red rose bush and white rose bush outside the front of my house I put in when we moved here, yikes, this is the house where ex left us, I did not put them in another house... deep!

Well, I can see why Snow White & Rose Red appeals to you, mh - there you have two little girls who do all the housework, but are loved and rewarded for it. Shame you, your mum and your gran didn't get the same appreciation.

It's very sweet that you've planted roses for your daughters! And, yes, food is often a metaphor for love, as is money ...

SL, it is a shock when you realise your "good" parent was actually a self-interested coward, isn't it? When I was having The Talks with my mum, she did finally admit that keeping her man was more important to her than protecting her children. Stupid old bag.

Grace, yes, it is a horrible realisation that your mother was a coward and her cowardice explains a lot of her behaviour. But somehow it is also a big shock to me that she is very damaged as I had never thought of her like that, I always saw my dad as the damaged one and my mother as the ok one which is why it was so incomprehensible to me as to why she was so cold and uncaring and detached from me.

I am going through a very bad patch right now. And I have lots of social things I agreed to some time ago when I was feeling quite good and now I don't want to go but don't want to let people down but don't know how to get out of things without looking like a scatty, useless, unreliable nutter. But I know I need to look after myself and not put myself into situation that will stress me out which I know the upcoming social things will do.

Grace, have you made arrangements for Christmas? I am very stressed out about our planned holiday if I carry on feeling like I do now. I just don't think I can cope with all the travelling with the DC's and being in a foreign country etc etc. I really feel like cancelling the whole thing but it's all paid for and we would lose loads of money and we think this will be our last holiday for a while as next year we will have to tighten our belts quite a bit. Why oh why did I book this holiday? It was booked when I thought I liked travelling. It's only now I've realised all the travelling in my youth was just to get away from my family, I could happily never leave my house these days. If we survive this trip I am NEVER booking another holiday again.

Rose, I'm glad you posted about being triggered all the time and by all sorts of random things. I do too but don't always realise I've been triggered, it can take a few days for me to realise. I feel like I have to be on high alert all the time, super vigilant, if I want to 'catch' and process triggers as and when they happen. But that is so tiring and draining. I think I deliberately switch off sometimes to give myself a break but then the emotions triggered seem to build up and hit me really hard.

I wish I knew how to not automatically switch to anger mode every time I feel hurt. Anger seems to be my default mode, whether it's raging anger or mildly simmering anger. I think when I get hurt, I immediately bury the hurt and switch to angry mode as a form of self defence. It's like attack is the best form of defence and so I get angry and give off angry vibes which put people off attacking me and hurting me again. But the anger mode is horrible and I don't need to be like that anymore. I can show I have been hurt (couldn't when I was a child as nobody cared) but I have absolutely no idea how to. Does anyone have any tips?

Rose, I can well understand your grandmother's visit leaving you drained and exhausted. Please take good care of yourself, do nice things for yourself, remember it's her and not you. I hope you can post more when you're ready.

This might be a slightly bonkers idea, SL, but here it is anyway. Have you thought of hypnotherapy to help you feel relaxed about your holiday? It's insufficient as a treatment for deep-seated issues, but does a brilliant job of getting you over a specific mental block. I used it when I had to go into meetings with my mad boss.

Now you've got a fairly clear picture of how your past is affecting your ability to enjoy the holiday, a good hypnotherapist can give you some tools to help you seperate "Lovely family time off in the sun" from the anxieties about runing away, risks and repercussions - the torments that feel all too relevant, but in fact have no connection with a package holiday at Xmas, iyswim. One or two sessions should be enough; ask them to teach you refreshers to take with you :)

Incidentally, if you've never done hypnotherapy (it makes you feel great!), look around at the other passengers waiting for the plane - can you see anyone pressing a thumb into the palm of their hand, fiddling with their ear lobe or doing deep breathing? Hypnotherapy

Wrt to your other social events, can you try nurturing yourself through the process of getting ready and going to the first one? If plenty of time, planning, soothing breaths and positive self-talk can't get you happily through it, then you'll know whether to cancel the others. Please remember you can leave early if you feels stressed :)

Much to my delight, my DLA appeal was accepted so I should get a few hundred quid in backdates. I'm wondering whether to use it for the train fare to my brother's at Xmas, or to offer lunch at the pub with sister & family. Having said that, I'm in the middle of revising my relationships with all of them (in my own head) so this might not really be appropriate for me now. I appreciate your concern - thank you! Basically, though, I think this Christmas is going to be (yet another) compromise in the interest of my recovery. If I end up with Mum or sibs, I'll just behave politely - normal family Christmas in that case, huh?! And, if I'm on my own, at least I'll now have the cash to go to a pub for a bit of seasonal company.

Or enough for a cheap getaway grace?

Grace, no I hadn't thought of hypnotherapy and it could be an option but I don't think I have the energy to find somebody. But thank you for the suggestion.

You know what, if there was a way to arrange it I would be happy for you to come on our hols with us! We could chat away to our heart's content and leave DH with the DC's! What do you think?

Am glad you got your DLA appeal and am sure you will think carefully how to spend it. Do you have some nice friends you could spend xmas with instead of family? Perhaps see family afterwards so the big day is stress free?

I am seriously thinking of trying to apply for some sort of DLA. I think I am bad enough to get something, I literally get through day to day by the skin of my teeth. Am going to look into it. Although seems a bit pointless now with all the cutbacks.

That was my thought, too, smithfield! Not enough, sadly - unless I spend the whole lot, which I'd regret when I couldn't afford heating in January

Am going through lots of stress with H. I basically cut and pasted Nemofish's quote from a while back about what her DH said to her mental health worker and told H I thought Nemofish was one lucky woman and I want him to be like Nemofish's DH. I feel my H just stands on the sidelines whilst I sort myself out alone, under pressure because he is getting impatient, and I have had enough. I have told him he needs to be a whole lot more supportive or he might as well leave. I honestly think he is hindering my recovery. When he walked out on us a while ago I just felt relieved. I felt upset for the DC's as they missed him and couldn't understand why he had disappeared, but for myself it was just a HUGE sense of relief.

I have been very blunt with him. He needs to shape up or leave. Have no idea which he'll chose but my recovery is an absolute priority second only to the DC's.

Grace, I am pleased for you that you got some dla to help with life, can I ask what you got it for?

So Lonely I hope that you can find some way of helping yourself, I understand that you don't have the energy for finding a hypnotherpay practioner right now, what kind of help do you have the energy to find for yourself? Do you actually want someone to help you to help yourself? Have you thought of a Transactional Analysis practioner, Grace and myself have had dealing with this (Grace from what I can gather has implemented and researched a great deal more than I have) and I wonder if that would be the route for you to go down! I am sorry to hear that your relationship you have with your dh is causing you stress, have you communicated that he has to shape up or leave, have you told him how he has to shape up or given him a time scale to do that or leave? If you need help in communicating you could give some examples of how a conversation goes between you, so that you can avoid pitfalls in the way you both communicate? Do you feel that for you and your dc that you need to work out what you want?

Grace, yes rose red and snow white appeals to me in that they all love and repect one another, the children don't mess the house as mine do... and that the children are respected by the wildlife and are safe when they are in the wilderness and they and the mother feel that. I like the bits where the family are helpfull, though I feel they are too helpfull and nieve in some ways which is not where i want to go back to, I don't like the way they allow the elf to treat them or the way they beat the bear for fun!

As for changing the script for H&G's father, well I would hope that when things went wrong with their mother than he had chosen a different step mother for them, that he had some loyalty fir his children, that he had chosen a different job when he realised the job he did, did not work for his family, that he had not wanted to abandon his children, sadly this happened in my childen's lives... so if I could change the ending it would be that the witch/stepmother would not be killed but put back together as a whole and for him to see the whole of the stepmother, for him to tell her to leave and for him to realise his errors and find his children and see them as the treasure rather than want them after his second wife had died and use them to get over his guilt and lonleyness and to use them for the treasure they had! ps that is something I can't see happening...

Can I have some advice please?

My husband sent an email to my folks asking about what christmas prezzies are they buying for the kids and do they know what to do when they come up to look after the kids for a day in December. (Daughter a member of a west end musical)

All he got back was an email forwarding an email from one of the kid's christmas list. Nothing else. No 'hello'. Nada.

After many years of blaming myself, I have realised that my parents are shit. I feel so let down. Do you know what pisses me off more than anything? I see the emails that they send to my daughter 'love from your loving grandmother' OK. But you are a shit mother. You are everything I don't want to be.

The sad thing is, I asked the husband to send the email because I knew what the response would be, nothing or this crap. The sad thing is, I always want to give them the benefit of the doubt but they always do the same thing. Of course it is my fault, I am the stroppy one etc Bloody hell, no wonder why I never want to talk to them.