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'.

Oh yes! So judgy and worried about what people would think.

I had an endoscopy at 15 as I had serious pains and they couldn't work out what it was. She was so worried people would think I was having an abortion! I didn't even have a boyfriend til I was 18

Turned out to be stress related. Took matters into my own hands and whilst she was in hospital answered an ad in the the lady for a mothers help and left. Df drove me. She went ballistic. At him worse I expect but me- shit:(

Yes same here.

I think it's made me quite a cold, hard person. I'm not very tactile, find it hard to show emotion and refuse to ask for help. I dont know how to be any different.

This is interesting and timely reading. I am having therapy at the moment to try and deal with the fallout and damage from having a childhood where my feelings were totally ignored. In fact it was my life and my development, relationships etc that would be ignored.

Someone said earlier about there being no talk about relationships, feelings, friendships. Nothing. I would be met with a change of subject or a feeling that I was embarrassing her or a blank look and at best an 'I don't know darling '.

Her moods however ruled the house and I too learned how to keep quiet and how to placate to try and bring some calm back to the house.

What I am struggling with now is how I parent. I find the DC's emotions difficult to deal with. I either fall back on what she did (just try and 'stop' their feelings ) or I try very hard to get it right and I go over and over it in my mind and am terrified I will get it wrong and fuck them up.

As an adult I have good, healthy relationships. Listen well, give good advice. But when it comes to my kids I am floundering with how to raise them in an emotionally healthy way

I actually feel like shit this evening. I've been out all weekend. I got home at about 4pm today, I've had a fantastic weekend and I've cried pretty much the whole time I've been home.

Why?

I shall tell you.

For the past 3 months I have been 'sort of seeing' a man. I am only child free alternate weekends so that's the only time I see him but even then, we haven't spent a huge amount of time together. I really like him - he is kind, thoughtful, polite, attentive and considerate. He arranged to finish work early and travel some distance on the train after work to see me perform in a charity concert before Christmas just so that he could see me doing something I loved; he's slept on my living room floor (no bedroom to speak of currently) and thought it was romantic; he doesn't play games; he gave me a jumper of his so that I could wear it and think of him during the 2 weeks he was visiting his family overseas...

Despite all this, there had been no talk about what 'this' was, or how we felt or anything. We had a lovely time when we were together and it was perfect, but when we weren't together, I didn't really miss him, we didn't really talk much...

This weekend, we've spent the whole weekend together. It was lovely. He referred to me indirectly as his girlfriend (we haven't discussed what we are so this was the first time it had been said), he said he really likes me, he wanted to talk so that he could find out more about me... I think I might actually really quite like him...

And I've got home and now all I can do is think about how I need to end it because I'm scared of falling in love with him and can't risk getting hurt; I can't process/accept that he might really like me. And I know that now I will start to look for evidence that he doesn't like me. It was easier when I didn't know what it was or what he thought of me because I didn't have any expectations and didn't feel an emotional attachment and couldn't have been hurt. But now I'm just waiting for him to realise that actually I'm not all that afterall... I feel like I was keeping him at arms length and now he's got too close

I've got a thread at the moment about how I don't feel lovable and can't even think of myself in terms of being loved because of issues with my parents.

for you FolkGirl

Yep.

For me I feel like emotional neglect is all I know and I fear what I don't know (being really really loving, warm towards someone). People will describe me as cold if you ask them.

Also the belief that I simply don't deserve

I spend my life sabotaging myself and being unhappy when things are going ok. I feel guilty because I don't deserve anything good.

Gosh I need counselling asap.

Man pleasing mother who chose her "love" for him over the emotional safety of her children

Very emotionally unavailable mother, everyone else's opinions are and were more important, especially the neighbours and people she didn't know that might be looking and judging.

I think it's made me quite a cold, hard person. I'm not very tactile, find it hard to show emotion and refuse to ask for help. I dont know how to be any different.

Yes, yes, yes and then some.

"what will the neighbours think, FG?"

Her worry about what the neighbours would think meant that when I was 24 and single because my LTR had cheated on me when I was pregnant, she arranged for me to go into a 'mother and baby home' when I was in hospital having my son so that the neighbours wouldn't know her daughter was an unmarried mother. This was only 15 years ago. The opinions of strangers and neighbours meant more to her than her own daughter and grandson.

That is truly terrible, FG

I wish I'd gone NC with her at the time AF. It took another 13 years and some stuff I can't talk about for 'legal reasons' to actually make the final cut!

I am so sorry

I had zero support in any way; quite the opposite in fact. My parents are now dead and I am glad. The damage they did, whether deliberately or not, has never gone away.

FG I was told I was not to ever come home pregnant so when it happened (despite using contracepton) I got married to my ex-h and stayed hundreds of miles away. I had actually wanted to go a mother and baby home but he felt guilty for the way he had treated me so in the end I agreed

When I had to start working when my baby was 9 weeks old my parents were so pleased... My dc welfare doesn't matter only my "career", unsurprisingly I haven't had one.

My over riding memory is being afraid of my father, no idea why, only that there was no emotional support going on between anyone in our family.

Random I just don't understand what these parents thought they were going to achieve.

I don't want to be a 'victim' but it's just impossible to get past somethings.

I have a first class degree and a PG qualification. I'm an educated professional, yet I'm now in the process of looking for less demanding work because I don't trust myself, my judgement, or my initiative.

I sometimes think I couldn't work in McDonalds because I couldn't cope with an angry customer!

Balls. Name change didn't stick. I give up.

Gosh it's scary how many of us had similar childhoods and the similar consequences for us. I feel quite panicky now about my ability to bring up my children alone as a single parent.

Looking back at my ex-H I knew that I consciously chose him because he was ostensibly so different from my emotionally withdrawn, dictatorial parents. To my naive young eyes he was warm, popular and very sociable with a wide circle of friends. In fact, the man I chose was a complete narc who was incapable of looking at the world any way other than through a me first filter, who put all his effort into his public persona and never gave me any emotional support, or even basic kindness all the years we were together. I find it very alarming that, even whilst trying to move away from my background, I married a man who reconfirmed it for me over and over again. I really feel I can't trust my judgement about people so I daren't let anyone close to me.

Not surprisingly I also have issues with self esteem and with food abuse.

My nan used to tell random people eg the bus driver, oh Porto's going to the Grammar School, Porto's going to work at the Foreign Office as she is good at languages. She never once told me she was proud of me or listened to me about what I was interested in. All o the above was a means to meet highly paid men. I am 45 now - and she asks about dh's job, has he been promoted recently etc? My career is not that shabby, thanks, but she asks only how I manage to get my washing done. And if I visit she only mentions that I have put on weight. So I don't visit.

Bikeandbird -nooooooooooooooo

You've obviously got something right! I think a lot of it is involved "just" listening???

I found reading the books "How to listen so kids with talk and talk so kids will listen" and "Siblings without rivalry" helpful.

I too feel clueless in how to parent my dcs. I spend most of my time failing to look after myself

I find it very alarming that, even whilst trying to move away from my background, I married a man who reconfirmed it for me over and over again. I really feel I can't trust my judgement about people so I daren't let anyone close to me.

I know what you mean, 3mum I even think that must be part of what it is with this man I've been seeing now that he claims to 'like' me.

My parents provided the mechanical support of parenthood. We were fed. Clothed. Schooled. But crickey we were emotionally neglected. Unless someone has been in a similar situation I'm not sure they would understand what that can do to a person.

Absolutely.

I was told I was not to ever come home pregnant

I was told something similar to:

Not to ever get pregnant because children are a wasting of time and money and they are liability. Children spoils adult's life* My mum said she would be very unhappy if she was ever to become a grandmother. She never wanted to be a mother in the first place, nevermind a grandmother..

So when I got pregnant by surprise at 30 year of age, I felt like a vulnerable teenager, I felt wrong and ashamed. I thought everyone was judging me and that I finally managed to fuck up and ruin my life.
Luckily Dh who was a Dp at the time was very supportive and positive and looking forward for the baby, but I have to make a very big effort to have a normal relationship with dd. It is not very natural but it is getting easier.

I was also told not to get married or have relationship with men as they are all the same and they are all bad and awful.

Guess how much I was attracted to bad boys who didn't respect me one little bit?

I managed to shoo away all the good guys.

But Dh is ok. I am sure he is a lot better than I can see.