How has this affected how you deal with your emotions as an adult?
I feel very little, I find it hard to even feel emotion, let alone express it!
Do you find emotions hard to deal with?
Yes, I don’t feel my emotions are valid. I find other peoples’ emotions hard to deal with, I want them to pretend to feel nothing, or actually feel nothing.
Are you afraid of asking for help or just being yourself or not know how to word your feelings from being afraid of being vulnerable and attacked?
I find it very difficult to ask for help or confide in anybody. I don’t feel safe expressing how I feel. If I do open up to someone I feel terrible about it afterwards, very vulnerable and exposed. I feel much better if I say nothing, even if at the time of sharing it feels good. I am afraid of being myself, I’m not sure I even know who I am.
Thank you SoleSource for starting this thread, I have read nearly every post and it has helped me, to read so much I can identify with. It has really helped validate my experiences and my feelings.
It is very hard to express what my childhood was like. My father was physically and emotionally distant. He kind of expressed love but not in any concrete way, he didn’t give time or emotional support. I have 2 memories of doing anything with him. He gave me my only parental conversation of help or advice, when I was 16 or so – “Don’t get pregnant.” He had an eating disorder my whole childhood which led him to starve/binge and exercise obsessively, he was extremely emotionally abusive towards my mother over her weight. No surprises but I have spent my entire adult life struggling with an eating disorder. I cannot do anything but tie up my weight and appearance with being loveable.
I do think he loves me in his way, but his way is very shallow. It doesn’t mean he can or will give any time or emotional support and will always put himself first.
My mother…… Is veeeery hard to explain. She’s like a shell of a person, there really is no humanity there, she doesn’t see other people as real people separate to her. It is like the world is her stage and everyone on it is a character of her creation. She has no friends, but sort of latches onto acquaintances and then kind of makes up a person for them who she talks about. She does this for me, so talks about me as a child, but it is not anyone I would recognise, just her own creation. A bizarre manifestation of this is that, in real life, she takes no interest in my children, she really does not care about them at all. But my parents have photographs of the dc in their house and when I see her she will talk about the photographs, as if they are the people and my actual dc are the photos... It is so weird....
Her world revolves around her. As a child I had to be good, well-behaved and do exactly what she wanted me to do. She had no time or patience for me being anything other than exactly as she wanted. She simply would not acknowledge or deal with anything negative or stressful. I was allowed no feelings or emotions of my own. At anything difficult she would just cry or ignore. Like many people who have already posted, there was no conversation about periods or puberty, I just had to work it all out for myself. I have never once in my entire life had any support from her for anything. I have gone through many things as an adult and she has simply not cared. I know in my heart or hearts she does not love me as she has shown me this in so many different ways.
Probably the most obvious example is from a couple of years ago when I really badly sprained a muscle in my calf, I literally could not walk for weeks and was in such agony I did not sleep for 2 weeks (no exaggeration). My parents dropped in on their way back from somewhere and I was crawling round the kitchen. I asked my mum to make herself a cup of tea, she looked at me on the floor, with a really pained expression and said she was tired from the journey. She went and sat in the living room and waited for my dh to make her one. It literally did not touch her that her daughter was on the floor in agony. They offered no help or support and didn’t ring me to see how I was in the weeks that followed. I had 3 young children to look after. I feel like crying just thinking about it.
One of my friends observed a time at my ds1’s birthday party in the park. My dd was a baby and was crawling around my mum’s feet. My friend said my mum literally did not look at my dd or acknowledge her presence at all. She was really shocked at how unnatural her reactions were, from anyone, let alone the child’s grandmother.
As a child I was cared for physically, but also in a quite neglectful way. I was not given guidance over teeth cleaning, or personal hygiene. I had my first tooth abcess at 6. My father used to steal food from the back of supermarkets – this was a source of immense shame for me as I was so worried about people finding out, also it meant most of our food was old and out of date. I often had mouldy bread for my lunches and a rancid water bottle that wasn’t properly cleaned out. They were very tight with money (despite having plenty) so I only had clothes from charity shops, which I was mortified by.
Now as an adult I avoid anything that reminds me of the past, to the point that I will only listen to Radio 1 because I don’t want to hear old music.
I still have contact with my parents but I really wish I didn’t. I truly cannot bear being in the same room as my mother. My father is ok but I just hate the way I am continually let down by them. Seeing them really drags me down.
I have 3 children and they have never cared about any of them. I could fill up this whole thread with examples of my mum’s breath-taking selfishness and lack of interest in them. That is a constant source of pain for me, not that I know I should expect any different from them, but that it is just so far from what I and my dc should be able to expect from their grandparents.
Sorry, I know this is long and of course I feel terrible and guilty and horribly uncomfortable about sharing….