So do almost ALL abusive parents deny it then?

[NemoTheRedNosedFish]

Just curious!
My mother and stepdad deny everything and for years I kind of took their side against myself.

I blamed myself and thought that I had been raised they way I was because I was a 'bad' child. (I wasn't).

When confronted with anything to do with anything they did wrong, they come out with pathetic excuses for very basic neglect (I never brushed my teeth or got bought a toothbrush until I was 6 years old and my teeth were all rotten - my mum says she thought the water was flurodated so I didn't need to brush my teeth - she has dentures) or just brush everything aside. I was abused by older boys and my mother literally shrugged her shoulders - same when I was 13 and anorexic. I don't get it - I would be filled with shame and remorse if I had ever done anything like this. How can she forget / deny it?

They call me mentally abnormal and mad and allude to my past drug problems meaning that I don't remember things properly - sadly that is not the case, I have an excellent long term memory and I remember things that I would rather forget!

So I am just coming round to the idea that abusive parents talk shit deny it like this, and it isn't me being 'mean' to poor mummy...

Me too.

Lonely but find it hard to hold a conversation (with anyone who isn't dh) and can't look people in the eye, never mind build actual friendships with actual people.

I feel like I haven't got a mother or a father. I feel like no-ones daughter.

I feel that I have wasted so many years by being messed up, on drugs, addicted to food, depressed, helpless and hopeless. While other people were busy enjoying life and going to university and having careers

However if I am so envious and pissed off I need to figure out what I do want and how I want life to change.

What would you guys change?

You will get there nemo, you know what the truth is now, and you have the support of DH and hundreds of us, so whatever YOU want to do is OK by us.

You are now free to choose what you want to do. Do you enjoy cooking? Do a Catering course! Do you enjoy making things, look into knitting, jewellery making, art, writing, whatever.

Whatever makes YOU happy, give it a go!

your parents weren't good enough, they lost the right to be your mum and dad because they neglected and abused you. Now you are free. You may have had a tough time getting here, but you made it! Congratulations! Its testament to YOUR strength and courage.

Give yourself some time, some love and some space to find what brings you joy.

Nemo, I identify with so much of your post.

Before this year, which has been so profound for me, I didn't think I had any friends, because I had a fundamental belief that no one liked me. I deleted the facebook account I had set up when it first took off, as I believed that my life was crap, I was crap, no one would want to know me or anything about me.

If someone tried to befriend me, I was instantly suspicious of their motivations, and had such an enormous protective wall around me, that no one could have got close if they'd wanted too.

If someone tried to hug me, I would tense up.

As a complete surprising by product of the therapy I have had, one of the things I have discovered, is that people really like me, and always have! There has been nobody more amazed and blown away by this than me. I simply can't believe how much people appear to love me!!!

People tell me that I am funny and warm and gorgeous,kind and generous, that I have an awesome memory....(you have to have when living in gaslight land!) and I'm starting to believe them.

One of the exercises I did was to write down all the words that I reject because they don't belong to me. That list was full of the bullshit I'd been peddled by my "family".

It was extremely empowering. The title was "words that don't belong to me".

I replaced it with words that do belong to me. I have more friends than I have ever had, ever in my life. To the point where my ds commented on it!

Turns out I was lovely all along.

And so are all of you.

LittleMiss, it's very hard when you've been brought up to feel you don't deserve to be happy or to do anything just because you want to. Instead you go on punishing yourself.
I remember once years ago someone asked me, what do you do for fun? and I had no idea how to answer. I didn't know you could even ask a question like that.
Also if like Nemo says, you "can't look people in the eye, never mind build actual friendships with actual people" that limits your options severely! I can force myself to interact with people when I mustgo to the bank, deal with my DCs' friends' parents, up to a pointbut making friends is close to impossible. I can't see why anyone would want to be friends with me. I can't call anyone because I expect they'll be doing more interesting things than talking to me. Can't invite them anywhere.

Ihadonetoo, and others who refered tot he other thread, I am intrigued as to your views on difficult children.
Some children are just difficult. If you are NT and you ahve NT children, it is prpbably very difficult to imagine what having a SN child is like.
I wrote about how my love for ds1 had almost distingerated, after years of trying to work out where I was going wrong, going to parenting classes only to be told I was doing all the right things ( which I had always known that). Anyway, I wrote this thread in relationships. And got slaughtered with abuse. Then someone asked MN to move it to SN, and I got nothing but understanding and support.

I am not excusing any sort of abuse. It sounds to me that none of you were particualrly difficult. that was just the excuse used by the abuser.

But my mum, my 6 sil's, my 2 best friends and a few other people, think my son is very difficult, and think I have done extremely well to cope over the years.

Only is you actually had a SN child could you appreciate this. Ds2 is now 2. Tantrums and normal cheeky behavioural that i expect form a 2 year old. He drives me mad in a differeent way. But I consider him to be normal. Thus I find him a walk int he park. To me this verify's that its not actually me that has the issue.
The only reason that things have improved for us, is that we now know thta what is wrong has a name, (Possible Aspergers) whereas before, for 5 years I kept telling people something was wrong and everyone kept insisting there wasn't.

To have the people that should give you everything to harm you is something however I can't understand. I can't imagine how it feels, and I am so sorry for anyone that has been through it.

I've been seriously depressed however and am battling post traumatic agoraphobia. I know a bit about not being looking people in the eye. Doubting myself and wondering if people really want to spend time with me.

I suppose the best way to start is by little tiny steps, one day at a time.

Nemo and everyone else who has had this dreadful start to life, it was a start, but you control the ending. Take time to find something good in life and develop it, little by little, you will get there.

have faith in yourselves, you are stronger than you think!

FWIW, I don't think many abusers admit to what they have done. They can't. It'd make them monsters. I'm having these discussions with H at the moment.

quiddity Sometimes being a wife is very lonely, perhaps lonelier than being alone

Nemo It gets easier over time, it really does. IT's been about 6 years since I've seen my mother.
My mother has never seen my children> I offered to meet her when DD was 3 months old (4 years ago now) and suggested a coffee shop (where she couldn't become violent) . She refused and said it had to be her place or not at all. The last time I was at her place she kicked me out at midnight. She lives in a very dodgy area that I don't know at all. I was literally stranded, but luckily I had no babies with me . She mentally unhinged to think I'd risk going back into her lair with a baby in tow.
SO I said, "no, the coffee shop is fine"
SO she refused to come and see me Most grandparents would jump through hoops to see their grandchildren.

YOu do move on, and your life beomes filled with all this other stuff, all this other you . YOu expand IYSWIM, and you fill all the empty spaces around you, which before were filled with abusive people and sadness

My mother does this still, denying how mentally and physically abusive she was. My dad and I talked about his abusive, not that I'm defending him beating me, but at least with dad you knew when you were going to get smacked, but mom was mental. I haven't spoken to her for years cause the bull shit just never changed and I had enough. I've spoken to other friends and they say the same of their parents. Its insane. I get upset with myself for yelling at DD and would never in a million years beat her like my parents did. I couldn't imagine doing that to a child.

nemofish only just seen your thread and sorry things are so tough for you at the moment.

I've skim read it and my first thought was you are asking a question that will never be answered, or at least in a way that will give you resolution. My second thought was that it's about that difficult stuff of being an adult, not a child. In the sense of reassessing things as an adult and not as a powerless, bewildered child.

I'm with thisishowIfeel on balance. As you know, I too have gone through therapy and I really do feel like I am finally (at the age of 41!) out the other side. I was diagnosed with complex PTSD which is increasingly diagnosed in people who have experienced abuse. For me, EMDR helped me get through the difficult stuff of my Dad's violence and sexual abuse and the role my Mum and Gran playd.

NHS therapy can be fantastic, but provision can be more by luck than judgement (I should know, I'm an NHS manager!). If there is any way you can afford it, I would consider paying privately. I also think your depression and anxiety could be symptoms of the PTSD, rather than the issue in themselves.

Take care my lovely.

Oblomov, I'm not sure how to help you. You're obviously anxious about your own parenting of a SN child, and my heart goes out to you when you're beating yourself up about it.

Please, re-read this thread (and indeed the other one). No one here is developing theories about "difficult" children. We're all talking about adults who, with whatever sort of children, refuse ever to take responsibility for their own actions but shuffle it off - frequently denying their own actions.

And, from the little I've seen on this thread, I really don't think this is you.

Look, here you are at Mon 27-Dec-10 23:34:55: "I don't like to be shouted at, so why should he."
See, you put yourself in you DS's situation, you imagine the consequences of your actions for him. Even in the depths of your misery when the shouting is a direct response to him. This is so far from toxic I can't begin to say.

Compare this with the other OP. Not once on that thread or on the namechanged one did I see her entertain thoughts of what her DS's experience must have been. She takes the intellectual position that her 24-yr-old DS should be fully responsible for his behaviour when he was 2, is indignant that he refuses to do so, expects MNers to agree with her, and describes her DS as "in denial" for not playing along.

Can you imagine yourself telling your grown-up DS that he needs to take responsibility for his childhood? I'm sure there are times when you resent him for how hard things are, but would you intellectualise that resentment and expect him to shoulder it, or would you see dealing with it as part of your burden as the adult in the situation? You may struggle to deal with the resentment, and frequently fail, but surely you'd still see it as your job. Not the child's.

If you saw it as the child's job, I think that would probably be "toxic".

Refusing to acknowledge their abusive behaviour is almost more abusive than the behaviour itself, it certainly lasts longer, and their strength of reality is like a vortex sucking you in and stopping you from being able to move on from it (at least it is for me anyway).

My mother and father both collude in rewriting history and refusing to acknowledge why I might behave as I do now, and still manage to twist everything into its my fault, and only my mother has a right to feel anything. On these threads, its sickening yet heartening that so much rings true for so many people.

Its a horrible powerful journey we are on (and i am just beginning), looking back through gaslit memories and unquestioning norms to seek out what really happened to us, finding a personal reality. But this thread really made me think, if its raw & soul destroying to look at it from my perspective, why on earth would i expect my mother to ever see clearly what she did? there is no motivation for her to, & a lot of reasons not to... there is no chance for me to ever crack that strong facade of perfect mother and self sacrificing victim, thats stronger than anything about me, stronger than memories, stronger than reality...

My sister died 2 years ago, and since then my world has got very confusing, as she would validate my reality in a way, at least privately, somewhat. Now there is no one who sees into my reality, and therefore into me. I have got back in touch with 2 friends from child hood, but they have a completely different idea of what it was like for me growing up, as the acting job my family did/ still does is just too convincing.

Am I really that evil horrible cruel bitch? reading that description of that angry young man was like hearing a description of me - leaking rage & horror every second I am with her, which doesn't dilute with the years, is this really who i am? Add to that someone who is 'childish', 'too sensitive', 'selfish', 'makes things up', and a new one from this christmas 'hard, uncaring and cruel' :-(

I catch myself having really vivid memories which come from nowhere, and I will get a light bulb moment of 'oh well of course I feel angry at my mother, that was so unfair and awful'... but then i forget it again immediately, and it never gets added to my self narrative. It also means I can't ever describe why I had a horrible upbringing, as it was all so insidious, mixed with break takingly horrible but normalised, that I just sound like a spoilt kid whining.

Sorry I've whittered on again. in summary, yes i agree to what everyone wrote, how do you start to get over it? especially if there is never going to ever ever be a chance of talking about it/ righting wrongs/ repairing relationships?

Oh and hugs all round at this stark christmas time.

How do you start to get over it? It sounds trite but threads on MN have helped me a lot.
Then you have to do the obvious and cut them out, there is really little chance of healing otherwise. This rings so true DoubleLIfe "their strength of reality is like a vortex sucking you in and stopping you from being able to move on from it "

Then you have to purge your life of all the toxic people you've picked up along the way because they've represented the only kind of relationship you've ever known existed

Then you have space for the best revenge: "Live well"

I identify with so much of what you say Doublelife, I have fleeting memories of things that seem so wrong yet if I mention them I get told that it didn't happen. I was a vile angry child and teen and it makes sense to me now that that could be because of things that happened but in my mother's reality I was treated that way because of the way I behaved. Either could be true in theory but if I believe them that means I am the problem in an otherwise perfect family and if I believe myself it means they are toxic, putting all the blame onto a child. I seem to switch between the two versions a lot and never really move past it, I just tuck the memories away and stop myself thinking about it until the next lightbulb moment has me questioning everything again.

Sorry to go off topic a little but do people recommend speaking to a counceller about issues with tehir toxic parents?

I ask because I had a really bad experience of it as a child. School brought to my parents attention that there was clearly a problem and tried to get me to open up to a teacher and I did break down and say some things as was caught off guard by someone who appeared to care.
I was then packed off to councelling with my parents. However it was sprung on me (during the journey there I was told it was going to see a teacher and I was having extra classes - though when I questioned this, what subject etc, they were unable to say...)
And when we got there my parents basically told the counceller what they 'believed' was the situiation and the cause of my unhappiness/falling grades at school and I then couldn't/wouldn't deny it or say any differently to what they had then said.

My mother also yelled at me a few days afterwards saying the counceller had told her the (very few) things I did say to her when left alone and had agreed with them that I was a selfish self centred child. Well faced with that kind of proof what was I to do but accept that I was even more of a worthless and unlovable person than they already made me feel.

I then had some more sessions alone with a different counceller and I just clammed up or acted up to avoid talking about anything. Counceller eventually said there wasn't any point in having more sessions but did recommend boarding school, which I jumped at.

This councelling experience has led me to clam up even more, trust no-one, and shy away from looking at any form of councelling as an adult in a positive light.

I also wouldn't be able to afford it privately so would have to go to my doctor who is a friend of my parents (as are all the staff at the surgery) and so I would have real issues ever saying why I am requesting it. Not because I think he would say anything to my parents, more that I doubt he would believe me with the 'perfect' life my parents project to everyone else and I wouldn't want anyone thinking less of my parents (yeah wtill protecting them even now).
So would I have to say why I wanted to see a counceller if I did go to my doctor?

I have also been offered the chance of some free sessions with a lady who is training to be a counceller. However my worry here is that as a trainee she would be inexperienced and I wouldn't want to dump all this stuff on someone just starting out. It would take a lot for me to trust someone enough to talk at all let alone in any detail. Plus I don't see it as being a long term thing given she is training and is offering it for free (via a group I belong too) in order to help her qualify so I could well see myself holding back I think.
I believe she has to do a certain number of 'hands on' hours as part of her training so once she's done I'd either then have to pay (which i can't afford) or leave it - not a good option IF i do manage to start opening up.

I do really feel like I need to talk to someone now, and there is a lot inside me that needs dealing with I know with no idea where to start really. But I know need to break the toxic cycle and stay away from toxic people in my life/relationships. The last relationship being the worst and hardest to deal with. I want to get on with life not just get by from day to day wondering what the next emotional blow frm my parents will be or putting up with abusive relationships because deep down I still feel on some level that I don't deserve any better or am capable if having anyone love me.

I think things are coming to a head right now as my parents have now decided to move back to the UK from abroad which means they will be closer physically to me a lot more of the time. It always feels like a weight being lifted when they head off abroad and give me breathing space.

Anyhow, sorry for hi-jack on what should really have been a very quick question. Can anyone recommend theraphy? Or will it screw me up even more? Or do you need to be 100% ready for it and ready to open up when you go to it? Because I don't think I am yet :(

Hello Gillybean2, I am a relatively new poster and have a very complex life situation, and I wanted to anser your post and offer you a hug.

I had a (mainly) unintentionally toxic upbringing, due simply to my own parents issues that went unresolved - back in their day emotional intelligence was regarded as so much less important than conforming to a perceived ideal of how life should be, that they didn't realise that the reason life was always so hard was because they too were damaged.

Anyway, my adult life has been plagued by one crisis after another, one of which in particular pushed me to the brink of both self-destruction and sometimes close to that of my DH and DS. It has taken me 16 years to finally get to a point where I accept I need help to heal myself.

I am in my second attempt at therapy at present, with the same therapist, who is lovely. I am very lucky.

My first attempt started about three years ago, and was precipitated by my DH demanding I do something about my "bad" behaviour.

(One thing I have learned is that damaged people can attract / almost seek out people as damaged as they are. My DH is disabled, 3 times married, a rescuer and with controlling tendencies. But he is willing to try and change, and after 14 years of marriage I feel it is worth persevering. I don't believe in quick fixes. I do believe in journeys.)

Because of the way I was brought up, I believed it was my duty to "change" and "improve" myself for the benefit of other people. I was not important. So for a year I learned why I reacted in certain ways to certain triggers, glossed over my Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (which was all my own fault for not being able to cope adequately with very hard to deal with crap being thrown at me just after childbirth)and when our circumstances changed I decided I had done "enough", and would just focus on being "good" and earning my family's love although I was still full of self loathing.

Fast forward two years or so, and all my old behaviours are bubbling up - impulsive actions, alcohol abuse, fear, culminating in a shameful incident which shocked me to the point of realising that if I didn't accept that I needed help, it isn't shameful to ask for it, and it is not ALL my own fault I might just have a chance at the life I want to live, as opposed to the one I feel stuck with and feel unworthy of trying to achieve.

So I'm back with my therapist, and this time I am doing it for me, first and foremost. Hopefully my loved ones will benefit, and hopefully my journey is already helping them to understand how they may benefit from help.

Now, in relation to your questions, I would say, that based on my own experience, feeling ready for therapy is a very personal thing, and the mere fact that you are asking the question means you are at least half way there. It means you recognise that you have issues and that you want to change.

The bad experience you had while under the control of your parents has of course made you distrustful, and even when you find a therapist of your own choosing it may take a while to build up real trust. I wasn't there the first time around - this time I have let go and put that burden onto my therapist - that is what she is there for and what she is paid for, it is not my place to worry about my issues being too much for her, if she feels unable to cope she takes the steps she feels are necessary to remedy that.

Properly trained therapists are regularly debriefed themselves, ie have their own therapy so their own emotional fuses don't blow!

Also, as an Adult therapy at its best is supposed to be a team effort between therapist and patient, not them telling you what to do (my issues are very much about being controlled and so my therapist tailors everything very carefully to avoid me feeling trapped, controlled or powerless, and gives me carte blanche to express myself freely.) She OFFERS me advice, and asks me to try things.

I am now 41, and have realised that I don't want to live the next portion of my life in fear and self-loathing, which has been imposed on me by many things. I now have the choice and fortunately the resources to actively change my life, and I am ALLOWED to do that.

Give yourself permission to follow your instincts.

Finally, ( and I apologise for this long and rambling post :) ) google therapists in your area and learn a bit about what they do, how they are qualified etc. Treat it like any other service you might access, or as if you are employing someone. I know you say that you can't afford to pat privately, but you may find some people are willing to do a special rate. I pay £35 for an hour once a week which is all I can manage both time wise and money wise. I will forgo spending on anything except my DCs, food and household necessities to achieve that because until I get myself sorted out, everything else is fairly meaningless anyway, as I'm still not sure who I really am or what I really want out of life. (Though I have a few ideas!)

So, I wish you well with your quest to heal and nurture yourself, which is absolutely no less that anybody deserves, and which should have been taught to you by your parents in your earliest years. I am so sad that so many people suffer, and so impressed that so many decide to break the cycle in the hope of better futures. Everyone here has my support and respect.

I wish you and everyone else here a happy and healthy 2011 aas far as it is possible.xxx

Gillybean and ToxicKitten, sorry to hear you have both had such a horrible time. Kitten, congrats on being so determined and clear-sighted and for recognising that you deserve to be happy and healthy.
Gillybean I think you may underestimate how badly you have been treated and the damage you have undergone. Those of us who have been abused and/or neglected (whether physically or emotionally) don't know what's normal. And we're trained to believe what happened to us wasn't that bad, that there's something wrong with us that caused it and means we don't deserve better, that we shouldn't talk about it, etc.
At least nowadays until you're ready for therapy you can read about it online and in books. Please take a look at the Stately Homes thread here in Relationships. (The title refers to the fact that abusive parents aren?t horrible all the time and will use that to deny that they were horrible at all: ?But we took you to stately homes!?)
Gillybean, other people often recommend the book Toxic Parents by Susan Forward. There will probably be some revelations in there for you.
Then there?s Pete Walker, whom I talked about higher up this thread. There are other helpful links on the Stately Homes thread.
It?s important to realise this isn?t just going to go away by itself and you?re not going to grow out of it. And no one is going to apologise for hurting you or even admit they did it.

Thank you Quiddity :)

And I absolutely second Pete Walker as a great resource.

I'm very loving sakura's posts to this thread, and you know how much I respect & like you, Nemo :)

I think sakura's post, Sun 26-Dec-10 23:25:09, summed up the "Why?" pretty well. As to the "How?" of denial - well, I guess every abuser has their personal self-delusion mechanism.

My mother has agreed with me that her choices & behaviours were damaging, and said she's sorry but wouldn't have done things any differently. She now has no recollection of those conversations, which happened 2 years ago, and has sunk straight back into her "lovely world". It's as though there are two of her. It must be stressful, holding two opposing realities in your head like that.

My father, on the other hand, said "Yes, I know, and I'm sorry for what it did to you." A more elegant apology, then, but he didn't change his behaviours so what's it worth?

Like so many others, I've bumped up against sibling denial over Christmas. I didn't handle it as well as I could have; I got triggered all over the place and am still tyring to work through that. Since my experience so far is that, over time, my sibs do come to shift their perceptions, I'm not giving up on them just yet. I completely understand the appeal of cutting contact, though!

I have read all these posts and I am really appalled. I have been physically abused by "mother" and sexually and physically abused by "father". I have just confronted my soon to be ex-mother about her abuse towards me. First she denied it and told me that I wouldn't have become such a successful person if it hadn't been for her. (I have a PhD and I am a scientist). However her and my "so called father" never did anything for my education; I worked hard to get scholarships so I could get as far away from them as possible.

After I insisted that I remembered everything and gave her specific examples, she started to put the blame on me: "you were trouble, you were always picking up fights with everyone, you did not want to eat meat and I wanted you to grow tall, it was for your own good" ...This hurt me deeply because I have been a quiet, introvert child I found out today, my mother is a common liarThen she said that every time she hit me she said to me: "this hurts ME more than it hurts YOU". This is not true. I have a photographic memory. She even hit me if I told her I had a tummy ache, if we sobbed after she hit us, if we cried, if we moved, if we talked back, if we broke a glass or a plate, if we looked at her in the wrong way. I supposed the readers of this blog don't find this unusual. But I was shocked by her denial. I was naive. I have felt pity for her all my adult life. I always made excuses for her: she married young to a man who did not love her. She was uneducated. Pregnant every year. Poor. But today, she even told me with tears in her eyes, that I was hurting her and that I was evil, that she had done so much for me, that she had loved me and that she wished she had aborted me and the rest of my siblings.

At the age of 3-6 she dropped me off at a farm owned by my grandparents. I never saw her during these years and my grandparents truly loved me. She really abandoned me. I didn't care because I was happy there. Then when I was 6 she showed up to take me with her (I am the 4th of 6 children) so she had to bring me back with her so she could drop off the littlest ones. I was of school age, meaning she could only deal with me half time.

When I first asked her how long I lived in the farm she told me 3 months. But my memories are too many to have had happened in 3 months. I confronted her again and she told me 1.5 years. Still too few. There were lots of winters and lots of summers. I even lost all my baby teeth in the farm. She excused herself by saying that children lose their teeth in a few months. Again she's a liar.

When I mentioned today about how " father touched my private parts" and hit me if I refused, how he pulled me by my pigtails and dragged me all over the house, how he pulled my ears and lifted me a few inches from the floor, how he knocked with force on my cranium, she got all flustered. "you are too old to be talking about those things." "You are living in the past. I thought you were smart". "Now you are accusing ME that I molested when I bathed you?" "You need physchotherapy". There was no expression of shock or compassion. Nothing. She only thought about defending herself.

I work in Paris and I brought her over for one week so she could see Paris and so that we could bond and talk. I felt it was time. She told me I taking revenge on her for something that she had not committed. She asked me to show her the scars. "show me the scars that I made on you and I will admit that I hit you". " Where are they? You remember nothing". "you are already too old, too old, you are not a child to be saying I or anyone abused you. I never touched you." She cried all day. She told me I was evil, that I like making up stories. She's for all practical purposes an ignoramusshe can barely read/write. I called the airline to get a ticket back tonight but all were booked. I asked if she wanted me to take her to a hotel and she said she would not take money from me (I paid for the trip and everything.) She sat on a chair, sobbing and repeating how inhuman I am. I went to the museum for a couple of hours and I came back and told that I was sorry. I figure it is best to deal with this situation in a mature way. I told her she was right to appease her. I know now that I will never get the truth out of her and that she will always find excuses to find blame on anyone else but herself. I took her to the L'ouvre and when we were there, she asked me to buy souvenirs for all her friendsa few hours after she had told me that she wished she had aborted me and denied what I know to be nothing but the truth. I wanted to buy her a poster by Elizabeth-Louise LeBrun "self-portrait with daughter". I told her it was one my favorite paintings. She tossed it away and grabbed a mug and a few trinkets for her friends back home. She's going back on Sunday and I really want nothing to do with her. Two of my eldest siblings hate her. Now I know why.

"Mother" used a Scutia which she kept always by her side--a whip made up of multiple leather strips. This type of whip was used by the Roman to whip their slaves into complete submission. It is designed to inflict maximum pain without leaving scars.

Fear and love cannot live together ... Blows are used to correct brute beasts.

• Seneca (Roman philosopher, author, politician, 4 B.C.E. to C.E. 65)

This thread is heartbreakiingly :(
Bearing in mind it's an old thread Im wondering (if any of the original posters see it) if any of you are coping better now?
I hope so
xx

I agree. Poor you dib, that's just awful.

I cut contact with my family four years ago but still have 'violent' verbal intermittent interaction. I get very aggressive and sweary and call them names. They call me psycho mental head-case and insult me back. It's hideous and takes me a few days to recover.

If I am so mentally ill and such a 'nasty little bitch' and they are all so normal and nice, I wonder why they aren't a tad more concerned about my ability take care of my little son/their grandson.

Oh hang on, I know why it is.. They don't give a shit about us.

I confronted my Father at age 46, for his violence in our family home when I was young. He denied any wrong doing. So I started to mention incidents, mainly beating my mother uncontrollably in front of my brother and sisters and I. He denied it ever happened. First he said that my mother put these things in my head, and when I said I'm talking about my own memories, he said that my memories serve me wrong. So I mentioned the more violent incidents with punches, blood, strangulation, and us kids filled with terror. Again he denied it all. I showed him the track marks on my arm, and said 'this is what you have done to me'. I told him never to call me again, he said yes, and I left.

He is not my father, he is the man who bought me into this world and used me.