I fyou felt as a child that you had zero emotional support from your parent(s) etc

[SoleSource]

How has this affected how you deal with your emotions as an adult?

Do you find emotions hard to deal with?

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?

As I do sometimes...as I had zero emotional support as a child and was emotionally abused and verbally attacked constantly by my Father. I have been NC for nine years now.

I'm single and have had a course of therapy but feel I have been hurt far too much and am scared of letting others 'in'.

I just wanted thank you all from my heart for posting, and sole for starting this thread.

I recognise so much from the childhoods described here. No emotional support, physical contact or mention of love. Dismissal if anything like that raised. Quite a bit of physical stuff from my mother, and accused of 'making a fuss' if I became upset. I remember really yearning for some affection from a very young age.

More or less left to it from 16, got a job in a pub to pay for clothes etc. Mum wasn't really on top of the domestics and I remember taking dry bread in for packed lunch in the 6th form (never taught about food etc). All I could think of was getting away. Consequently I am extremely driven, have always worked very hard, got to university and have done well. My mother in particularly is quite sneery still about my achievements.

But as an adult....I don't know what my emotions are, I cannot recognise them until they boil over. Then feel massive guilt, particularly if it's affected DH or the kids. I can't really open up to anyone except DH, so most think I had a lovely childhood.

I am still in contact with my parents. Worked abroad for quite a few years and that, plus some counselling, gave me the distance I needed to help me cope. They are good grandparents to my kids, and all works fine on a surface, social level. But I could never talk to them about any feelings, or my life really. Which makes me sad, and determined to do better for my kids ( and also constantly full of guilt, because if we are not having a picture perfect time together I feel that I am failing).

Hugs to all here, and may this thread continue...it is amazing to find others who feel the same.

two words are popping up in so many posts - 'gap' 'lack'

There are many times I feel like I am incomplete, something is missing. I don't have the emotional resources to function with other humans in a 16hr day

Usually when exhausted, like today.

Walking - you have done really well in spite of what you describe.

Thankyou altogether. So have we all I think.
And recognise the lack of emotional resources...maybe because so many of us had to turn all our emotions inwards.

Flowers to you too.

Can I ask, are all of you on Stately Homes? I've never ventured on there because my childhood wasn't 'bad' at all, it was just lacking on the emotional front and I have felt a certain amount of guilt about posting on there.

Perhaps we could keep this thread going as a kind of 'Stately-Homes-lite' for those not suffering from abuse, but feeling the absence of what should have been there for us.

Just this morning I felt real sadness that I don't have what the other mums on the school run have - emotionally supportive parents and siblings and big friendly Christmases.

It's important to realise there's no misery contest, WhoGivesAMonkey. In Stately Homes, everyone gives a monkey! Each family dynamic is both familiar and different - it's the similarities that bring support. Despite each child's different upbringing (updragging, uptraining, upleaving, upspoiling, etc), we end up with similar legacies from our shabby parents. A child who doesn't get what she needs, growing up, becomes an adult with "gaps" - it's so much what they did as what they didn't do as parents.

Btw, everybody knows why it's called Stately Homes, don't they? The initial poster had The Conversation with her parents, who were horrified. "But ..." they said ... "You had a lovely childhood! We took you to stately homes!"

National Trust membership doesn't really make up for disengaged parenting.

it's not* so much what they did ...
And a bold fail.
Dammit!

I am another who has read this thread over the past 10 days, sometimes crying along the way as I read the parallels to my childhood. My parents were not physically abusive but my mum was so emotionally withdrawn that it has truly affected all of the kids in my family (but I fear my siblings don't even know it). I was given no words of wisdom or guidance or talks about the right direction to take in life. Her moods controlled the house and she would get annoyed at me/us and not talk to me for days. My (traumatic) break-ups were totally ignored or acknowledged with a joke from my Dad.

I think my parents would now say that I have a happy life but most of the time I am dealing with high anxiety and general unhappiness for reasons I cannot even pinpoint.

I love my parents and am thankful for a stable childhood but i would love to hear my Mum tell me that she loves me and that she is proud of me etc….the yearning just never goes away.

I now find myself on the other side of the world from them, in a relationship with someone who I think is just like them i.e. emotionally void with his own issues. We have been doing relationship counselling but I don't think the counsellor has been good for us and there is so much that I need to work on as I have an innate inability to have no idea what I want and how I should be treated etc.

It has been so useful to have others articulate exactly how I feel (and what I have felt for a long time) It has helped me see that I am not going slowly mad (as my partner would have me believe! I am going to use this to help me move forward and get some proper help. Thank you to each and every one of you x

I see what you mean, but I don't think this thread could be a lite version of stately

I don't think you can compare emotional/physical abuse, as it's all the same thing: the malicious intent of the parent to wilfully ignore/belittle/criticise/attack their child.

Does anyone often think that the emotional damage is harder to deal with as it was so invisible? It was only auditory mainly...what children hear from those who are supposed to love them/protect them

It makes us doubt ourselves & our reasoning more, as there were no physical scars?

But there was clearly damage /incorrect patterns of thought being established which are very hard to remove in adulthood

I find it hard to deal with because I feel that in a lot of respects I was lucky i.e. we had food, a home, I went to decent schools that my parents paid for, how could I possibly not be happy with my childhood? And I don't think it was intentional, I think my mum just didn't know how to look after us in this way.

However, I have two children now and (as another person had said above) I cannot imagine not wanting to share all aspects of their life, give advice, wrap my arms around them and tell them how much I love them every day….

My parents are weak, selfish and obsessed by their own thoughts. Neither is capable of normal healthy interactions. Neither is capable of making important decisions for their children as their own weakness, self obsession, warped reality and desire for control means reality, love and responsibility don't get a look in.

They let my sister die due to their selfish cowardice (not abuse, just sins of omission, blame and gas lighting). I don't even know where to start forgiving them or making my peace with that. Partly because they have rewritten history and facts to ensure they get sympathy and special consideration off acquaintences (no friends, they isolate themselves). When I had my ds I was hit again by how despicable they are. I love them but it would be easier if I didn't. I hate them too.

Sorry I had to get that out there. Am having one of those sleepless nights where emotions take over for a while.

I can relate.

I was the complete oddbody in my family- to the extent that I think my personality was adopted from someone else. I was treated like shit a lot of the time.

I sometimes feel bad about cutting my family out of my children's lives...and then I remember why. Sure it might be a bit shit that my parents have never met my children- but I told them they would live to regret the choices they made.

With you there Miscellaneous, despite not seeing them for nearly 15 years and the "damage" they have caused to my life- I do still love them.

altogether - not being able to function with other people for 16 hrs a day- I so know what you mean! But I think this is down to me being a bit introverted too- I love people and their company but in order to recharge I need to be alone and without the emotional "noise" of others. It was only when I realised that I was actually am introvert and not the extroverted rambunctious persona I'd adopted in childhood to protect me that I started actually feeling rested and "me". at age 36 that was so no wonder I was bloody exhausted :)

I found doing the myers Brigg personality type test hugely helpful for identifying that and a whole load of other me-isms.

Well this morning I must have felt i missed having a Mother as I sat here and talked to her. I told her of all the times I cried in secret at the feeling of her just not liking me as a person and at the sadness of her not wanting to get to know me or be close to me.

So many times throughout my childhood I cried in secret that Dad must have hated me because of his treatment of me and then as an adult it more about my Mother who seemed to have 'written me of'.

I asked her to leave and never come back as she was so distant from me emotionally and the rollercoaster of me thinking we made progress then to realise it was not real was too much to bear.

Tortured feelings today but by writing it here and getting t out by talking to myself these feelings are finally slipping away gradually. They shall come back at times as they have today but I feel more free than ever.

FUCK YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU your fault NOT mine

Good for you SoleSource

Hi Random x

Sounds like progress sole :)

Hi everyone
I just wanted to add myself to this thread, I have read most of it and think I can understand you all so well. I am just, at 50, working out why I am how I am, and have been all my life.

I have known there was something not right about my relationship with my Mum, but have always been afraid to investigate. I remember odd unpleasant or uncomfortable incidents but they tend to be treated as a bit of a joke, I have not until these past few months been able to see that I was not getting what I needed emotionally, so that the things that happened to me were not in themselves that bad, but I had no way to talk about them or be heard. And I have ended up depressed and anxious, and didn't even realise that until a crisis point just after Christmas when I suddenly thought, it's not just this awful specific event that is upsetting me, my whole being is hurt and I don't know how to be, what to do, I completely lost it...

I had been going to therapy for a few months as I am separating from dh and finding that and work and everything really hard, but still not realising that I was depressed, and that my childhood had a huge influence on that. My GP has been good, I am on anti depressants now and continuing with the therapy which I really can't afford but I need that outlet each week, and am starting to feel I am making a bit of progress at last.

I have been reading about depression, started to read a bit about narcissistic parents and am beginning to build a bit of a picture I think. I don't think I need to blame my Mum: she had a horrible childhood herself and I don't think she knew how to parent. My Dad is sweet and kind but didn't really get involved I think, when we were little. They are both good grandparents although they live far away. I just need to understand so I can help myself.

Sorry, this is long, but in answer to your questions solesource,
yes I am very bad at asking for help , and expressing my needs and negative feelings. I am terrified of showing anger so everything seethes inside.

Thanks all of you, it has been incredibly helpful to me to read all your posts.

Welcome metoo, although it's that you joined us!

I had a conversation with my mother yesterday that just served to highlight how messed up my (on the surface perfect) family/upbringing were and still are.

I essentially didn't have anywhere I called home from being put in boarding school at 12, I lived alone from starting uni until I married my DH. How different for the twins, still living at home and being waited on at 20!

Yesterday my mother called me (unusual, we have limited contact) to tell me that her and my father have to go to the USA for a few days, it's a business trip for my father with a social aspect my mother would be expected to attend. All fine and my father would normally have told me about the trip but there's a twist, my mother wants the twins to stay with me and my family. She is worried about going on the trip because they (the twins) cannot go and they have never spent a night away from both their parents (never gone on residential's or sleepovers etc), they're adults and NT!

I must add, my father thinks she's being utterly OTT and the twins need to develop some independence and self reliance.

How did you respond?

Hope you said no!

Think I'd have made some comment about I'm sure they can't wait to have you out the way to invite their partners over