bad messages from parents

[buttheydo]

I hope you don't mind if I write a bit about my parents. (I've changed my name!)

I struggle a lot with anxiety and negative thoughts about myself (waking up at night preoccupied with what a scumbag I am). Most of the missteps I've taken in life are down to lack of confidence. Empirically I'm skilled, responsible, am generally a good and thoughtful person. This year, at 39, I just got fed up with it and tried to snap out of it.

I feel a sea change. But part of it is really looking at how things were when I was growing up.

In essence: in a family of nine when things go wrong they go spectacularly wrong. My father could be loving but when I hit puberty he soured on me. He was like that with all the kids. I mean, the bad names were hard but even worse was just this constant attitude like, "Ugh, who is this disgusting person in my house?" There was a lot of fighting between my parents and on a few occasions he hit my mother. I had an elder brother who, when I was 12 and he 17, decided he was "sexually obsessed" with me, which disgusted my parents even more. Brother was an inpatient for a while at a psych ward which gave me a little break.

My mother moved out when I was 14. I think the situation was supposed to be joint custody, but she moved into a place that didn't have room for us. My father moved in with his new girlfriend and her kids. There was a basement couch for me to sleep on there, the laundry room had beds for my little brothers. I think both of my parents were just in this attitude of wanting a new life and putting all the old crap behind them.

I don't spend much time with either of them. I'm not close with any of my siblings either. When you're just sort of stuck in a house with people, competing over scarce resources, you don't develop friendly feelings.

I've tried therapy but honestly I've never really been impressed with it. It felt awkward, mostly. The last therapist said I seemed to be doing fine so we could wrap things up in fewer sessions than usual! Like she wanted me to congratulate her.

I would really like to just go through life feeling like I deserve to be here.

[IWillIfHeWill]

Get some more therapy. Counsellors/therapists are people, they have failings. I'm waiting for my ninth round, I think, so I have some experience. You have to chip away at big things, over years.

My therapist 8 told me i' seemed to be ok' about my mother not loving me. She's a nice woman but I had to break it to her, as gently as possible, that you never, ever get over your mother not loving you.

You are living, you belong in this life, you deserve to be happy because you exist. That's the bottom line.

You deserve better. Keep looking for it.

[buttheydo]

What would I think if a colleague acted emotional? I know this sounds awful but I would think less of them. I would act understanding and sympathetic and say all the right things but I would think, "Thank God it's him freaking out and not me."

I don't want to get emotional in front of people because I feel very very needy, and I don't know where it would stop. Are you worried your kids would stop respecting you or feeling safe around you if you cried?

Your therapist sounds insightful, I hope she's helping you.

The Survivor Trust sounds like a great resource, thank you.

[AttilaTheMeerkat]

Counsellors and therapists are like shoes; you need to find someone that fits in with your own approach. There are far more rubbish therapists out there than decent ones and joint therapy was never advisable in your circumstances.

There are no references to either ice cream or lactose intolerant child in any of the recent posts on the Stately Homes thread. You've misappropriated that information to that particular thread.

[AttilaTheMeerkat]

"I don't want to get emotional in front of people because I feel very very needy, and I don't know where it would stop. Are you worried your kids would stop respecting you or feeling safe around you if you cried?"

No in answer to your question but there again I have not had the completely messed up and dysfunctional childhood that you have had and still suffer from. This impacts on all aspects of your life including your professional life.

[buttheydo]

My therapist 8 told me i' seemed to be ok' about my mother not loving me. She's a nice woman but I had to break it to her, as gently as possible, that you never, ever get over your mother not loving you.

Damn! You are a better man than I am. I wouldn't have had the patience to point out something so blazingly obvious but then again I suppose it's like going to a GP for a non-MH complaint: you have to advocate for yourself a bit.

[ravenmum]

Yes, same here, afraid of being needy. I think I've had it drilled into me that being emotional is being needy, and being needy is a bad fault. My mother would see a child crying and say "look at all that self-pity", and though I don't agree with that it's coloured off somehow. When I cry I feel bad because I think I am feeling self-pity, and shouldn't.

Is being needy a bad thing, and if so, how?

I read a book (not sure which) that said that when you ask people to do you a favour, they hold you in higher esteem. This is because when they agree to do something for you, they have to explain to themselves in their head (subconsciously) why they would go to such trouble for another person. And their subconscious explanation is that you must be a really nice person, otherwise they wouldn't be helping you out. I wonder if showing a little neediness also makes other people think better of you? (I'm not sure.)

[ravenmum]

You generally see emotion as a weakness, but is that the right way to see it? Why might you see emotion as a weakness?

[ravenmum]

What happened when you showed emotion as you were growing up?

[DIYapprentice]

I feel for you, you had the misfortunate of being born to not just one, but two major fuckwits who absolutely did not deserve the right to have children. They were crap as parents, and I think it's amazing that you have anything at all to do with anyone in your family.

Perhaps rather than 'strong', you would prefer 'survivor'?

But survival isn't 'living', it's just that, surviving.

To survive you can't show weakness, which is probably why you're afraid to show much emotion.

I have a job helping traumatised people

I've seen this again and again, and I think it's heartbreaking. Why did you choose this line of work?

A friend from uni who went into a major depression at the stress of university exams wanted to work in a field dealing with a lot of emotional trauma - I was pretty blunt with her and said I didn't think she was emotionally strong enough to deal with it, day in and out. Yes, her background would have made her a great person for the job, but over time it would have destroyed her soul, simply because every 'loss' would have been taken too personally. As though she had failed again, and taking her right back to her own bad times. Yes the wins are great, but you can't win them all. And I suspect the wins would never make up for the losses.

Do you think it might be doing that to you?

Also, dealing with someone else's trauma is a great way of trying to ignore your own, but it never quite works, not in the end.

I feel for you, you had the misfortunate of being born to not just one, but two major fuckwits who absolutely did not deserve the right to have children. They were crap as parents, and I think it's amazing that you have anything at all to do with anyone in your family.

[ButterflySwan]

I was the one who advised the Stately Homes thread, from your comments you're not reading the right one.

[ravenmum]

I can't imagine having to help people every day when what you really want (and can't ask for) is for others to help you. It sounds sad.

[Banoffeepiefan]

Change your therapist.

It sounds like you have somebody attempting to do supportive counselling, whereas you would reap major benefits from intensive psychotherapy. I would recommend a relational modality.

My childhood was a very peculiar and confusing mixture of intense treasured good but appalling bad that warped who I was growing up. I am not going to go into details here, but I survived some extremely damaging emotional and psychological abuse at the hands of somebody supposed to be a caregiver, as well as another mixed bag of various family relationships that were inadequate and inappropriate.

I started therapy a year ago with an ingrained and unshakable belief that I was subhuman, disgusting and just somehow wrong. Despite knowing cognitively that I also have a lot going for me, in terms of being a kind, intelligent and talented individual. At the end of my tether from trying to conceal this all the time and pretend to be 'normal'. Never thought I'd get there, and at times it has almost broken me - but I can honestly say now that my sense of self worth has changed. I don't believe I'm a monster anymore - that was the first change. Then I began to realise I'm not irreparably broken anymore, either. My suicidal thoughts have stopped. I just can't think of erasing myself anymore.

It is fucking wonderful and I cannot recommend therapy enough. It has literally changed my life.

[IWillIfHeWill]

hear, hear! I'm just beginning to heal, after years and years of suffering and making everyone else suffer with me. Therapy is the way to go.

[Appletini]

OP I'm sorry you feel this way but you are being extremely rude about Stately Homes. It's not a competition.

If you were this rude at group therapy I'm not surprised you got the reaction you did.

Neglect and emotional abuse are not "better" than sexual abuse, just different.

And I say that having experienced all of the above.

I am hiding this thread now.

[doziedoozie]

The OP sounds angry to me, not really rude. If this is so then that is what I felt after realizing that I was only half living my life because my emotions were so repressed after a difficult childhood.

I was seething with suppressed anger with the rotten deal I'd been dealt and that no adult had helped and that it had taken until well into adulthood to realize how much was wrong. All those wasted years.

I saw one therapist who was v good then I moved away, but mostly read self-help books. It has been a long haul but probably at the best place I have ever been in life.

[tiawalters]

OP, I think your post is about a lot more than bad messages from parents. It's about serious neglect from your parents, and sexual abuse from your brother.

These are very traumatic experiences and I doubt that anyone in an open forum like this one is fully qualified to give the kind specialist help that you need.

It's understandable that you might find some posts unhelpful and irrelevant to your particular situation but I think that's more to do with the nature of this online space than with people trying on purpose to be unhelpful, or obtuse.

I think most posters try their best to give constructive advise, but your issues deserve more indepth and sustained attention, and that's why they should address them with a fully qualified professional.

Posters are right to point out that books, meditation and counselling might all help deal with past abuse and neglect, and the subsequent anger that all that brings about later in life. But ultimately we all know that there aren't magical solutions and that the healing is an ongoing process that might take a whole life. And there's nothing wrong with that.

[DistanceCall]

I don't know where you are, but you can get a referral here. They have a sliding scale, and I can recommend them.

www.cfar.org.uk/clinic.htm