"But we took you to Statley Homes" Dysfunctional Families Thread

[Snowdropfairy]

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

Hips- I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for your mother to help you. Bs king off and getting on with your life is the only way if she's really toxic.
I've got to a place where I know how to have a rship with my mum based mostly on her rship with my kids (she's good with them), we also have q a good text rship! We just don't do well in the same room together! I've not bothered going over old stuff with her as I don't think it'll help. I suspect your mother would either deny or blame so really how would that serve you? Protect yourself. Good luck.

Hips- I think I've read that thread and I'll go double check now. Thank you.

CatTiger - I have had counselling but haven't ever raised the brother stuff. Have talked about my mum & feeling like I'm stunted by her and that did help get me to a place where I realised I don't have to feel guilty ALL THE TIME about her. I will look into going again though as I think I'm in a weird place which is really effecting my marriage. DH is a wonderful guy and yet I'm feeling bitchy all the time.

Have I missed anyone out? I don't want to hijack this thread. I hope you're all ok today x

Garlic we posted at the same time. I'm flabbergasted at what happened to you. Are memories popping up randomly for you? Do you have space to deal with this stuff? I'm so sorry that happened. X

Thanks :) Have done a lot of therapy but much of my past is a blank, so the dots don't often join up! Was listening to something on the radio about head injuries, and suddenly realised what he was doing. He's dead now, fortunately.

I'll try and catch up with your posts once I've stomped around for a bit, resloving my feelings

Please don't worry about my shit right now, I'm here to listen to you if u need an ear. I'm fine. I didn't have that in my childhood. Shit, that makes me fucking cry that he could do that to you. Do you think his military experiences caused his abusive behaviour or was he born a nutcase? I'm sorry you didn't have a proper father x

Nice of you, kaos, but fgs don't come over all "mine wasn't that bad!" The shit leaves the damage, whatever it smells of ...

His own childhood was peppered with horrors & deceit. He told me some of it when we were both much older; that is, if what he told me was true - he didn't tell anybody else those stories. My sister was very close to our paternal GM, and we've managed to add up enough of their tales to guess he was telling the truth. He was a psychopath - my amateur diagnosis but, the more Mum tells me about him, the firmer it becomes. She's bananas, too.

Some people join the uniformed services for the opportunity to inflict suffering.

Right! Am going to hammer some stuff into walls!

Oh Garlic, that's horrific.

If there can be an upside, it's that you are in a place now where your subconcious KNOWS that you can deal with this now.

Hammer away!

And if I may:-
STOP! Hammertime.
;)

There are no "worse than's" here Kaos, because everyone is at a different stage. EVERYONE, thinks that their stuff isn't as bad when they first post here, absolutely everyone. It's part of the damage.

It is that bad/ was that bad, for all of us. We didn't deserve any of it.

There's a lot of stuff that starts to emerge when the mind is ready. It's so hard.

Will do a proper catch up.

How lovely to hear from you, thisis :) Hope you will do a catchup!

Just as I hit post, a massive thunderstorm broke out right overhead. It went dark & pelted hail. I felt like a character in a psychological thriller! (And found out my conservatory leaks.)

Be interested to know how you stop yourselves becoming toxic towards your own kids. I think I'm a pretty good mum but find myself raging at times (my mum did that) and think Jesus get a grip. I'm trying hard to be consistent but often go to bed feeling guilty.
Love the image of the thunderstorm.
Note that I'm ignoring the advice to not trivialise my stuff.....!

Hips, I am NC with all my family. In my case I don't believe that there would be any point whatsoever in explaining. The facts, as they see them, are that they are perfect and I am evil and I have conned therapists, doctors and social workers, because I am evil and fool people like that.

It would be like trying to explain to Colonel Gaddafi that he might, just might, be handling things in not perhaps the best way possible. They are loonies, but dangerous ones, and I am now more important, as is my own personal road to recovering my personality and self worth. I don't want to be the underfed loveless little urchin, hiding from the world anymore.

I think that that journey is the key to the parenting thing too Kaos. As I discovered and reparented my own lost child, I developed much greater empathy and patience for my dc's.

I am dealing with HUUUUUUUUUUGE abandonement issues, but doing it well, I am keeping track of every single trigger and working it out logically, and loving myself through each one. I am allowed to be very angry, and I am allowed to cry. I am allowed to feel. 'Cos I'm in charge of me now.

DH's therapist is ace, he is getting more assertive, more supportive, more loving, and patient too. Because we both understand, and have strategies inplace in real time. It's been dead hard, but it's working.

Garlic.....you ARE a charachter in a psychological thriller, trouble is, we can't turn it off and go away can we?

xx

Kaos, there's a bit near the beginning of Bradshaw's "Homecoming" where he asks you to observe small children - how full of trust, wonder and naivete they are. Following his advice, I went around looking at kids from this point of view - how lovely, innocent and fragile they are. I smiled at them, laughed when they did funny things, shared their wonder and made sure I was worth their trust (I also comforted a few grizzling sprogs, whose parents were being unsympathetic - luckily, nobody smacked me one!)

Because we weren't given this softness when we were little, we expect children to be tougher & more grown-up than they are. Practising the new eyes & open heart with children, now we are adults, helps to put it back in us :)

The next bit (the long, hard part) is learning to treat your own childhood self that way. It's worth it: the rage ends. When I 'rage' these days, it's deliberate - I'm in control, because there's nothing more to fear from myself. That looks a bit weirdy, sorry! Somebody else can probably explain it better .

Garlic, you put that beautifully. :)

The John Bradshaw book has opened my eyes to "The Wonderchild". Children are ace, they just do what moves them, they sing, or make strange noises, they laugh at everything, they are curious about everything, they are a bit like the Paul Whitehouse character that says...."i'nt life brilliant" .

That's what got abused, battered, humiliated and neglected out of us, 'till we didn't know who we were anymore, and didn't know we were allowed to be amazed by the world. Because we were too busy hiding and protecting ourselves from the fear and hurt.

Since DH has been in therapy, he has started to notice the world, being entranced by a barn owl we saw, amazed by the way a fox was moving through a field, he's even growing stuff from seed!!!!!!!!! Sometimes there are flashes of this wonderchild in the adults around us too.

I use the phrase, "soft and gentle" a lot with my dc's vecause that how we should be with each other. People matter, they are valuable and precious, and should be treated as such.

As I have done with my family, we, as adults, have the freedom to walk away from those who do not treat us well, and play with those who are fun and make us feel nice.

thisis, I remember you being all excited about purple ... so I thought I'd tell you I've just bought loads of turquoise paint and turquoise clothes! It reminds me of sea and sky.

It won't suit me, I'm too shapeless for such a 'hard' colour. But what the hell, it makes me feel happy.

sorry, I meant to tell you how MASSIVELY impressed & inspired I am by you and DH making this 'voyage' together. I didn't think you could do it ... am very happy to be wrong :) x

My front room is really quite purple now, so I can spill my shiraz and no one will know :) My bedroom is varying shades of purple too.

I think you will look completely beautiful, I always think of sea and sky colours as being fluid and soft. And anyway, happiness can wear any colour. :) :)

I am amazed by what we have achieved. I never thought of myself as a lucky person, but I think that the therapists we have had individually have been amazing, and that is our luck!. I think that discovering boundaries, and forcing him to face his truth, (or lose this family) have been stunningly difficult. It still is, we are so very hurt, but we love each other very, very much indeed, so the motivation is there.

I read on here about people not being able to change. Brenda asked me if I thought that I had changed, and I had, so I said yes. But I had the balls to draw the line and mean it. I was totally prepared to go it alone. He knew that.

He sent me an email which finally told the truth, and it wasn't pretty, and it all made perfect sense. It answered all the stuff I couldn't understand.

I think he was very vulnerable and needy, and subsequently caught a HUUUUUGE dose of fleas from my "mother". She is so manipulative, he must have wondered which way was up. He just wanted to belong to a family. I think we all identify with that desperate longing, so do I! But not that one, not now I am princess Bluebell. :)

I am totally aware that we are an exception to the rule, and that it may all go horribly wrong, but there is a warmth and genuine love that I have never experienced ever in my life, and that means from me too, if that makes sense. We have so much more in common than we ever knew.....funny how people can recognise this on such a subliminal level, it's astonishing!

Yeah, I think our common damage was what brought me together with my exes - the "mystery connection", you know? I also think those relationships were abusive because of refusal to acknowledge what was going on underneath the attraction. I'm not blameless, but they were in complete denial about the truth of their families. I used to joke about it - and so did our friends: it is amazing what people pick up unconsciously!

I still maintain that the most valuable gift of therapy is learning to HEAR what people are saying (and what we ourselves say).

Never thought about the red wine spills! Brilliant move

I am feeling very. very bad and scared.

I am feeling very abandoned. H working away and not answering texts or calls this evening. I am sooo very frightened. It may be that he is asleep, or that he is out partying and getting off with better women than me, and laughing at me with his nasty friends/colleagues whatever they are.

He has pretended to be having a shit time....but I know he's having a ball....it's the lying. I've left a message telling him not to bother coming home.

Please will someone hold me up?

Sorry to hear that thisis

Take a deep breath and tell yourself 'It's okay'

But it's not ok...I feel horrid I'm falling and I don't know if or when I'm going to land.

I'm triggered left right and fucking centre.

Thankyou Manic

It is okay. You feel bad as you are being triggered, not because there is a real risk or threat to you (in the flight or fight sense)

It will be okay
If he is an arse, you will be glad to see the back of him in time
If not then he will have a decent explanation and will comfort you

It may be helpful for you to put both of your feet on the ground, imagine all the solid rock beneath your feet, miles and miles and miles of it, cool and safe, right down into the centre of the earth, solid and dependable and always there, and you can feel your connection with it anytime just by putting your feet on the ground wherever you are. This really helps me when I am bricking it but I am a bit of a lentil weaver in some ways.

Deep breaths and put the kettle on

thank you manic.

He's made out he's having a crap time to make me feel better, but it doesn't work, because I know it's not true.

What little sleep I did get was full of naghtmares of my family destroying my life and laughing at me

Is there ever going to be an end to this?

Thisishowifeel ((((hugs))))

Did he txt you back yet?

I'm here if you want to talk