negative mum

[romi]

i am a regular poster but have changed my name as i think my mum lurks around this site.

I am a mum of 2 a DS who is ASD and a DD who has global development delay i am also AS.

My parents have never encouraged myself,sisters or my brothers, have always put us down,told us what we cant do and what we shouldnt be doing, never encouraged us and made us generally feel second best.
To this day myself and one of my sisters is in therapy for long time depressions caused by the therapists say the negative upbringing we have had,my brother is 27 very handsome,girls throw themselves at him and is living in a house with other single men doing nothing,not working,having a lot of one night stands - with girls, and he has no confidence at all.
My other sister is very angry and has a lot of bitterness.
I myself have been completely controlled by my mum all my life, i took the job she TOLD me i was having,did exactly what SHE thought i should do with my life but it has made me feel very depressed and worthless, when my first marriage broke up due to my husbands infadelity she took HIS side and said i must have done something to cause it and wouldnt speak to me for weeks.

I have remarried and my DH is a wonderful man who is veryloving and considerate and makes me feel special.

To give an example of what my mum is like, she comes round every day to "check" what we are up to and to put her two pence worth in,last week my dd was in hospital and on saturday my sister and boyfriend asked me to go for tea to a restaurant with them, DH said go-you deserve a break, when we got back, mum was here and told me off for going out without DH, he should be the one going out and not me-as HE works hard all week-a row followed.

I am fed up of feeling so down and if it wasnt for the AD,s im on i probably would be a wreck,sorry for the long message just wondered if any one has been in the same situation

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I think you would find that many other people who are now adults have suffered similarly at the hands of such toxic people.

Your siblings and yourself are living through the damaging legacy of toxic parents. Their totally controlling nature and generally treating others like second best is exactly to type of such toxic people.

Have you had any sort of counselling for yourself to deal with the impact their negativity had on yourself?. It may be something you want to consider now.

Am glad to read that you are now happy and have a DH who loves you.

Would also suggest you read a publication called "Toxic Parents" written by Susan Forward.

Thats awful romi. I too had little encouragement & affection from my parents and it's deeply affected my self-confidence..... in fact I don't have ANY!!!!
I know it's hard but could you refuse to let her in your house? Or tell her You do not want her to speak to you like that anymore?

essbee- i thought the same as you that i was ugly and fat, i was always told oh sisters no 2 and 3 are gorgeous and when i used to say well what about me? i,d get told well you have the personality, like you when i look back on photos i was good looking with a good figure, my sister2 is always telling me to stop putting myself down and to tell my mum to F off,thats the thing she doesnt and has never done this to my other sisters but then she blames me for a lot of things, i ruined her white wedding(she was pregnant with me) she had PND and told me she wanted to put me in the dustbin, i didnt follow the career,life she envisagned for me and i broke up with DH1 who in her words "was like a son to me".
Its like she blames me for all things going wrong in her life because she,s not had an easy marriage-my dad has AS and has been a nightmare to live with at times but i dont feel any hurt towards my dad because he,s never tried to humiliate me or make me feel inadequate,there are loads of other things she,s said to me over the years which you wouldnt believe if i told you.

I cant exactly get away either as we all live on the same street!

meerkats-i am due to start counselling in a couple of weeks, i have had 2 sessions before and they have been really good and now im going to see someone on a weekly basis.

Mash- i,d feel mean not letting her in because it would upset the kids but i told her this morning that her views are not welcome and now she,s sulking!!

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our lives seem to be at a parallel essbee!

I too have only started to get close to my siblings as there was a lot of negativity towards each other, as for moving - its not an option at the moment,i am a SAHM and DH,s wage wont cover the way house prices have jumped up around here.

No- i need to be more assertive and not let her get away with her comments, i just dont understand how you cannot have loyalty to your own children, i would always stick up for my kids.

I NEVER want my daughter to go through what i have been through and if she does get depressed when she,s older then ill give her all the help she needs rather than telling her that she,s bored or putting it on.

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yes essbee you are making sense, thats how i feel about my mum, i do love her but sometimes i dont like her and its ok to feel that, in the past ive felt guilty for these feelings but i dont now.

just thought id give u an update, i have had a couple of counselling sessions and they are going really good, my counsellor has helped me to see that because my mum and dads marriage wasnt good and because my mum had PND with me which she didnt get any help for that this is where the negativity between my mum and me lies.

Its my mum that has these feelings, not me, its not my fault that i wasnt encouraged and always told off for what i should and couldnt do.

My mum has never treated me as her child but as an adult, she has confided things in me that arent really appropriate for a daughter to know-nothing bad i hasten to add but things that you would talk about with your female freinds and not your daughter.

I have cut contact down to 2/3 times a week instead of every day and im starting to feel better, at my group counselling the other day 2 members told me that they thought i was a really nice person and they were glad i attended the session.

i was gobsmacked, im not used to compliments and didnt know what to say!
But i felt good for the rest of the day

However tonight i took dd round to see mum and dad as they hadnt seen her all week, my mum had some old photos out, some were of me and my ex husband which i asked her to get rid of and she said NO.

One was a really nice picture of me when i was about 18, really slim and when she saw that she said-"look at that what happened?".
I felt really upset and when dh came to pick me up she made a point of showing him and saying the same thing.

I am overweight and i do need to lose it,but i have always been told my my mum that i am like her and destined to be overweight all my life, but i know that i can lose weight, its the depression and negativity that has made me get overweight-i see that now from the pictures.

Anyway i didnt realise how much ive gone on-i must be boring you all!

I am going to get that book though -Toxic Parents that someone recommended.

Thanks for reading this

Goodness me, she sounds AWFUL! In fact, she sounds so dreadful that she is almost laughable. If she wasn't your mother you'd never see her, would you? Her views really are nothing to do with you, they are all about her and her feelings. You could be anyone in many ways, she just needs to be spiteful and feel superior, and even if you were a cross between Cindy Crawford and Condeleeza Rice she would find something to criticise. You simply cannot treat her opinions as if they are worth anything because they aren't. So what if you are fatter than you were at 18. Who isn't? It has nothing to do with your value as a person. She sounds so very, very jealous of you. You are clearly a lovely person, perhaps too lovely. She takes advantage of it. I'm sure she has had her crosses to bear, but they are her crosses, not yours. YOu are not responsible for your mother's feelings and thoughts.

Thanks Aloha your message was really supportive,i have been talking with DH about this all night, my negative feelings about myself which do stem from my mum, also i havent realised before but everytime i have attempted to lose weight she says "why bother you never keep if off anyway or words to that affect.

This summer i joined Slimming World secretly, but she found out and had to join didnt she, one time coming home from a weigh in where i had maintained and was talking to DH saying it was the week where women struggle to lose weight-AF, she said "thats this weeks excuse isnt it what about next week" and she used to tell the leader all about what i had eaten and if i had ate anything wrong so in the end i stopped going.

Last year when dd was born i lost 2 stone throught Breastfeeding, i got loads of compliments but she didnt comment ONCE, she commented on my sister having lost a couple of pounds and how good she looked and i asked her had she noticed my weight loss and she said NO!

Im going to try to lose weight again and go on the Big/slim/whatever site for inspriration because i think that without her input/unfluence that i can and WILL do it!

Forget about the weight, I think the only thing you should reduce are the number of visits that you pay weekly to your mother. If you don't want to get hit, don't step into her hitting range, at least not until you are strong enough not to pay attention to her nastyness.

I believe your mother has been awful towards you, but, and this is a big BUT, she would only be able to hurt you as long as you feel that her comments are true.

I had a difficult relationship with my mother until I was around 20. One day she went beyond the mark and that was the end of it, I realised that no matter how hard I tried it, I would never be enough for her and decided she was not worth the effort. The moment I stopped expecting her to act like "a mother" things got better. I minimised the contact so she didn't have many opportunites to put me down, and positive things she did I took them as an unexpected bonus.

The most interesting thing is that now, after many many years, I have a very good relationship with her. By not expecting her to act like a mother, she became my friend, and after some time she has became nearer to the mother figure we are constantly sold by other people who just mention the positive things (and omit the rest) about their mums.

Thanks Chandra thats a good way of looking at it,In the past i have always thought that her comments ARE true and that she has my best interests at heart but how can she have to put me down so much?

And why doesnt she do it to my other sisters?

She babysits for them all the time,approves when they go out but not for me, i "shouldnt" be going out with a toddler, i "shouldnt" let DH do his fair share of housework/childminding because the only reason her marriage has stayed together all this time is to put my dad on a pedestal and turn herself into a dogsbody which is obviously what she wants me to do.
My sister told me the other day that my mum said to her that when she dies my siblings will be fine but that me- i will go to pieces and not be able to cope without her...WHAT?

How does she think ive coped with DS being diagnosed with Autism and DD Global Development Delay and Myself Asperger Syndrome?

I have had NO help from her whatsoever, no babysitting, she even tried to dissuade me from going to counselling saying that it was bad for me and they would ask me very personal questions!!

Im glad i didnt take her advice

Crikey and I thought my mother was bad!!!
I spent my teenage years feeling exactly the same over the body issues and I'm only just getting over some of the damage she did.
My favourite trick of the moment is to do as Joey did on "Friends"..when my mother starts on at me, I start singing tunes in my head!!! So relaxing it's funny!!
Have to agree on limiting contact, I can go for weeks without talking to my mum, it's heaven.

thanks spursmum, it helps to know that other people have been in this situation and that im not just imagining it, i have felt guilty over the way i am thinking about my mum but she doesnt feel guilty over what she is doing to me does she?

Of course she doesn't feel guilty. In her mind she hasn't done anything wrong!!
I'll give you a giggle though. My mum has a stinking cold and was moaning to her friends about how rough she felt and they told her that she shouldn't go out half dressed. Of course this got back to me and I got to give her such a bollocking over her saying the same thing to me when I went out in my teenage years!!!! I've never seen her so ashamed of herself!
And my mum blames me for giving ds the MMR as she thinks it caused his ASD. He had problems before he had the jab.

spursmum-thats funny how you got to tell your mum off and very how she blames you for your sons ASD.

My mum refuses to accept that i have AS and has on more than one occasion told me that i shouldnt give DS any special treatment or send him to a special school because he wont "learn" how to interact properly and will get bullied, this despite the fact that he has been bullied every year since starting primary school.