Not urgent but very upsetting. Parent thread.

[StevesBollockAnalogy]

Hello, am a regular but NC for this as this is a very sensitive subject and I really don't want to be outed.

I recently-ish posted about my relationship with my parents, but I then found myself without wifi and couldn't reply. That thread triggered this realisation that I feel that while my parents don't have a preference per se, their love for me is conditional and earned whereas it is unconditional for my brother (younger). It kind of hit me all in one go that this was the root of all my anger and resentment, and I found it very traumatic. What I didn't realise is that once the initial shock was gone that I'd still feel so hurt and let down and vulnerable and inconsolable and I have no idea how to feel better. It just seems fresher than ever, I can't stop crying, I'm struggling to sleep. Huge parts of my personality are made up of this need to please and to be liked, some of the things I like best about my character are traits like generosity and empathy and kindness. Now all I can think is that the best parts of me are just a reflection of a lack of that knowledge that I was unconditionally loved by my parents.

I have spoken to my DM about this, not my DF, I think he would be extremely angry and hurt to an extent that I don't know we'd be able to repair the relationship if I did. What she said was essentially that I need to deal with it, that she doesn't have a preference for my brother or love him any more than me. Although if she did she would never admit it, certainly not under these circumstances. She asked me "What do you want me to do? What do you want me to say?" and I just don't know, I don't know what the answer is. I don't know how to repair this hole, I feel like I've been ripped open and I just can't ignore it and get on with my life as normal. And now on top of everything I was already feeling, I feel so guilty and awful that I made her feel bad and upset about her parenting when she was just doing the best she could. And how could she have known when I didn't tell her? I feel like it's my fault that I feel this way, that I've ruined everything by being over dramatic and bringing it all up and thinking about it when everything was fine just a few weeks ago.

Oh help me, I don't know what to do or how to start. I love my DPs so much, they are good people and they didn't mean to make me feel this way, had I said anything at the time I think they would have changed their behaviour but I was a very young child and I didn't know how to articulate it. I am so overwhelmed with this crushing sadness and I don't know how to feel like myself again. I know you will all say therapy! But financially it's not an option for me for the foreseeable future, so if you have any suggestions as to what I can do by myself or with my family that would be the most useful.

Thank you for reading that, apologies if you found it depressing

Hopeful bump?

Are you a parent? I ask because, if you are, you will know just how easy it is to make a DC feel bad - usually through carelessness or thoughtlessness rather than out and out malice. It also happens in reverse i.e. DCs can hurt our feelings either intentionally or unintentionally.

What I'm saying I suppose is that you can't change the past, you can't change your parents and you can't change how they relate to your brother or anyone else.

All you can reasonably do is understand, rationalise, learn and then choose the path you follow next. One choice is to allow yourself to be defined by your childhood, be eaten up with resentment, guilt, sadness or whatever.... which would be fairly negative and wearing. Another choice might be to take stock of your strengths, acknowledge your weaknesses and start there .... being the person you want to be in spite of others rather than because of them. Change the paradigm for yourself.

"all I can think is that the best parts of me are just a reflection of a lack of that knowledge that I was unconditionally loved by my parents. "

Why "just"? It's a wonderful thing if a bad experience results in something positive. Those are great characteristics wherever they come from. The loveliest roses can grow from the smelliest compost. Doesn't make their scent any less valued.

How about if you say to your mum how you feel about telling her - "I feel really bad now as it must hurt you to hear things like that about your parenting". I.e. not taking anything back or apologising, just showing that you don't want to hurt her.

I'm guessing that guilt is your constant companion, not just now? Just being aware that you tend to take on too much guilt might help you realise that maybe you are not such a horrible person, but just see yourself that way. Remind yourself of that the next time a wave of guilt hits you.

Maybe your parents really couldn't do any better, and maybe they can't react as well as you'd like now, as they are simply not that great parents. Maybe they are pretty shit parents. Maybe they are quite shitty people. Are you willing to accept their faults and put up with them? And appreciate the nice things about them? Or would you rather just have nothing to do with them?

The best parts of you aren't just a response to your parents treatment, they are a reflection of your innate personality. Yes, you were shaped by your parents treatment but a person who was less naturally empathetic would have responded differently eg by becoming manipulative, jealous or aggressive. I'm not sure how you deal with the rest of it but you can give yourself credit that you are a nice person despite your early upbringing.

Sorry, reading that back I see that I've come across as very whiny, and that's not a good representation of how I feel, or what the situation is. Thank you for responding

Thanks Cog, you always give good advice! Yes I am a parent, I should have thought to try seeing it from the perspective of a parent, but I've been knocked back into feeling like I'm about 7 years old again. I guess the issue I'm struggling with is that I feel that they damaged me, I thought I was on the whole pretty balanced and healthy, and this has just knocked me sideways because actually I'm not.

They aren't shitty parents, they have their flaws but we all do and in general they did a pretty good job (I think). They were under pressure and took some parenting shortcuts, and I didn't say anything to them to express that I wasn't happy. I think they would have changed had if they'd known? This is my other thread, I don't want to drip feed and that summarises what happened, although I'm remembering more and more all the time.

I don't think any human is capable of totally unconditional love and many parents have favourites, so what you describe is fairly normal. I don't mean it's not hurtful, but growing up is about accepting your parents as flawed human beings and getting over whatever hangovers or hang ups you have from childhood.

I'm not sure I've ever met a balanced, healthy person :-) Aren't we all just a big bundle of flaws? The top athletes with pushy parents, the politicians with a height complex, the talented comedians with depression? The flaws are so easy to forgive in others, huh?

I wouldn't feel guilt about discussing it with your Mum-it is good that you can.
She may need a bit of time to think about it.
What would you like her to do or say?
Did you describe to her why you felt your brother was loved unconditionally and you were not?
Were both parents the same?
Generosity and empathy are just part of who you are-not necessarily connected with people pleasing because you were not unconditionally loved.
If you broach it with her again have a think about what response you would like from her.
Her initial answer may have been a bit defensive but she was probably put on the spot.

I know I loved both my children equally- I know it-but I am not sure they see it that way.
Things we say as parents in the heat of the moment can have a huge impact.
Tell her exactly what you are talking about and give her the chance to respond

You can still be pretty balanced and healthy whilst at the same time having clarity about the failings of others, missed opportunities and so forth. I would go further and say it takes a balanced healthy person who is reasonably secure in themselves to look at their family objectively, see the flaws, see the mistakes and love them anyway.

I felt exactly the same about my sister - all she had to do was "be" to gain approval/love whereas it seemed to me that I had to "achieve" for my parents to approve.

Nearly 50 years on and we have discussed our up bringing at length and the flip side is that she felt she could never measure up to my achievements so never tried and she saw the attention as "consolation" as she wasn't good enough. Maybe discuss with your brother how he feels.

We both know that our parents tried their best and played to both of our strengths - (me bookish and academic, her pretty and sweet) but the reality is they did damage us both to a certain degree.

The wonder of growing up though is that we no longer have to be defined by our parents definition of us, my sister is very clever and regulary beats me at words with friends. Out of my teenage years, I gained confidence and we are both much much closer from having talked about it all.

Parents can only do the best they can with the tools they have available and some just don't have the capacity to acknowledge their behaviour could be damaging.

I don't think you were whiney at all. You were expressing your feelings , that isnt whining.

What you have to say reminds me so strongly

Sorry!

...strongly reminds me of my sister, the eldest, and, to a lesser extent, my daughter, also the eldest. Both have a heightened sense of responsibility, of being 'good'; resentment when their 'goodness' is/was not appreciated, or even required.

Certainly in my daughter's case, I have not required her to be good, definitely not to the extent she seems to require it of herself. I am frequently baffled at her reasoning. I consciously, knowledgeably treated my kids the same across the board - by the time my parenting came around the parenting knowledge was available for this ie not to put pressure on the eldest.

My sister boils with resentment towards us (younger siblings especially me ) and has a very heightened sense of 'fairness' that seems to stem from our childhood. She is in her 60s. Again, a lot if this baffles me and I feel it is impossible to address it - I have tried - because she seems to be fighting an invisible, though very real, foe. I get the distinct feeling it has nothing to do with me/us but is within her. I mean it when I say I don't really know where it comes from.

I'm sorry if that sounds dismissive. I am the youngest - well, one of the youngest: twins - and possibly our parents had relaxed a bit by the time we came around? I have heard eldest children, especially girls/women, talk in similar ways as my sister (and daughter, and you). What i'm taking an age to say is this could be some kind of 'eldest child syndrome', real or imagined. ( though I hesitate to say this.) I have to tell you, it's not nice to be on the end of. I often tense with dread if I'm making friends with someone who turns out to be the eldest; and similarly freeze at behavioural aspects of established friends who are the eldest (sibling). I am hyper aware of it largely because of my miserable experience, which has sadly done real harm.

I also wonder if you are currently experiencing anxiety eg it is not so terrible to question our parents about their parenting, it is within the normal run of things. If your parents, or mother, strongly reacts then that is their/her stuff, not yours: you do not need to be racked with guilt. Perhaps there is a longstanding, historical, impulse to 'earn' your parents' love and approval; encouraged by them or not. What you describe sounds primal to me. I also wonder if your devastation is linked to anxiety rather than reality. Again, I hesitate to say this and I don't mean to offend or undermine you personally.

Perhaps my daughter felt that life so was so chaotic she had to take control (because no-one else was, she felt). During her childhood I was battling her horror of a father, whom I had left, at which he wasn't best pleased. Understatement. I had to tread that impossible line: not influencing the kids against him, encouraging a relationship between them and him; weathering his endless attacks, in which he often used them as a human shield. I was half dead a lot of the time, despite inhuman efforts to cover for it. But the parenting part if me was alive and awake, skillful, on high alert. She didn't know that, though. The child in her knew that things weren't at all right..

Part of taking control was to be absolutely good - I assume it often goes the other way; children with disordered parents can be very bad in an attempt to address what is raging around them, which has no name (because it's bad form to influence children against a parent? Because parents don't really accept what is going on in their dysfunctional relationship?)

This would fit in with my eldest sister's 'goodness', too. To this day that terrible relationship, my parents' relationship, rumbles on, even though they are now ancient. We 'children' have reacted in our individual ways to subconsciously address what is a faulty model, charged through with denial across the board. We cover the 'good', the 'peacemaker' the 'check out entirely' the 'bad'. I realise while writing this that I took the 'bad' role . we were/are all trying to get order out if chaos.

BTW I have swung between 'good' and 'bad' throughout my life. I can quite see why my 'good' elder sister would resent my/our childhood 'badness' when she was desperately trying, with her goodness, to affect some order out the chaos, which I came along and 'unthinkingly' trashed all over, she felt.

Roll up, roll up: free therapy! I have had a lot of therapy to address what initially was my terrible marriage (what was wrong with me that I went for, married ffs, such a terrible man??) and, in the process, uncovered all this shit. You have to keep on top of it, though; it's easy to forget.

Well, birth order alone is said to affect personality, with the older child being super-organised and responsible to the point of being controlling. Try this article, for example:
www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-gail-gross/how-birth-order-affects-personality_b_4494385.html

Not sure about it generally making people feel resentment, though. I can't say that I feel resentful towards my three younger half-siblings; I don't feel that they were preferred to me as we were growing up, even though I was potentially the cuckoo in the nest, as the only child from my parents' marriage.

My mother is the youngest child and she is resentful that her two older sisters spent all their childhood in a nuclear family, and she was the only one left at home when her parents started to fight and split up. She has a kind of "younger child syndrome", I guess. Hates her oldest sister, who she sees as nasty and controlling.

Springydaffs, do you have a younger child syndrome too? Your reaction towards older siblings seems really quite extreme to me. You sound very resentful.

The stately homes thread will help you massively.

Perhaps raven. I didn't use the 'older child syndrome' as a jibe. It was something I recognised and have also heard about.

I do have a lot of resentment towards my elder sister, yes. I try to control it, explore it; I certainly tried to be fair in my first post here. I'm not surprised we children of a terrible marriage, still upheld to the hilt on every front, have reacted in extreme ways; I try to understand why my sister behaves the way she does (for my sake as well as hers). The fact remains that she is poisonous towards me and refuses to explore why that may be. Perhaps it's too convenient for her to scapegoat me. Unlike op who seems to have genuinely posted to explore why things are the way they are.

It's amazing, isn't it, how these things accompany us throughout our lives? My mum will no doubt die cursing her sister, and it will cause her all sorts of grief in future just as it has done over the years - she's 70 next year. That Philip Larkin poem "They fuck youo up, your mum and dad" missed out the bit about brothers and sisters :-)

There a sibling abuse community somewhere out there on t'web.

Thank you everyone, I thought the the thread had died which was I wasn't back sooner! I will have to look at the stately homes thread, I looked at it a long time ago and didn't think that was for me, but obviously things have changed since then. I'll have a look.

I'm feeling a bit better now, I still feel sad and hurt about it but it's not as raw as it was which is good. DM and I have not spoken about it since but we are pretty close, and we are trying to make up for what happened and what was said through small gestures. I am anyway. I feel utterly dreadful about making her feel bad though, we are both emotional people and hate hurting other people so I feel terrible for upsetting her and she feels horrible for making me feel like this so strongly that I can remember things like being shouted and humiliated for snacking on unapproved food while my brother smirked and then used to delight in bringing it up in the middle of any confrontation knowing it would floor me completely, twenty five years
later. He probably still would if we fought anymore to be honest.

Someone said what I was feeling sounded primal (I can't find who now that I'm looking for it!) and that is exactly how I feel. It's like driftwood from a shipwreck or something, it just pops up out of nowhere and I'll feel overwhelmingly vicious or defensive or guilty and remember something I've not thought about since I was a child. It's happening quite a lot at the moment which is quite unpleasant really. Primal is the best word to describe it, it's not even a feeling, it's an instinct.

Honestly I don't know what I want her to say. A lot of it is probably from my dad too- just writing that I remembered when I was thirteen or so I was suspended from school for a week. My one step out of line. My dad set me about 10 hours of work to do each day while he was at work, and I had to show him everything I'd done to prove I hadn't messed around all day. I worked really hard each day, but couldn't finish it, there was loads and I wanted to do a good job. He was obviously still angry about what I had done, but checked my work and didn't say anything bad. At some point later in the week I came across his diary (I know, I am very ashamed that I read it, I regret it hugely and have never ever done it to anyone since) and found pages and pages of how disappointed he was that I hadn't done more and that he thought my work was slapdash and lazy. I don't think I've trusted his praise or anything like it since because I can't trust it to be true, what he really thinks about me. Working my hardest to make it up to him he still thought I was lazy.

There were a lot of horrible things that happened because of that incident (getting suspended). He was so livid he didn't talk to me for hours and hours, I cried and cried, already so sorry and punished enough just at school to never put a toe out of line again. He took my brother and I out for dinner at a restaurant and ignored me while I bawled my eyes out, all while praising him and telling him how proud he was of whatever it was he was succeeding at the time. I don't know if it was on purpose but I suspect it was.

The thing is I just can't talk to him about it, he would get defensive and turn it into an argument, and while he is intimidating he's not terrifying to me like he was when I was younger so he keeps being more and more extreme. At the moment he is picking fights with me anyway, perhaps because mum told him how I feel or he's just stressed. I don't know. He gets angry when I am upset, or even just angry but I'm crying because I can't help it.

Have you got anyone else to talk to IRL apart from your family? It does sound like you could do with some counselling or something. Is there really no way you can get any free talking therapy in the UK (presuming that's where you are)? What do people have to do, phone the Samaritans?

Yes I am in the UK.
Not really, I do have friends I could talk to but they'd say something along the lines of "Yeah but they love you, they're good people. You know they didn't mean to do that, and parenting is really hard. You need to get over it, it's nothing really bad". I think they'd think I'm being over dramatic, and to be honest I'm not sure I'm not either.
I would love therapy if I can get it for free! It would really help me I think, but financially it's not an option and I've no idea where to look. If there is someone more knowledgeable then please enlighten me! I've just written it off as expensive or difficult to get.

For whatever reason, these friends are not hugely supportive or helpful. Are they quite young?

"Over-dramatic" suggests exaggeration, but if this is how you feel, and you're not exaggerating, then you're not being over-dramatic. If you've read the start of the Stately Homes thread and links, you'll know that people are often greatly affected by what might look like fairly small things from the outside And maybe you are reacting more violently than usual at the moment because you are feeling especially vulnerable for some reason?

Have you spoken to your GP? Looks like something might be possible...
Can I get free therapy or counselling?

They are younger than me, no kids. For years I've considered them by best friends, people I would do anything for, but there have been a number of problems recently that have made me realise this is not reciprocated! They would be excellent if, I don't know, DH left me or if DD was ill or something, because it's a tangible issue. I think this is too abstract for them, if that makes sense.

I'm not exaggerating- I wish I was! But this is what happened and it is how I feel, as best I can put into words. I was floundering a few days ago, but now I'm starting to find my feet again and get on with food shopping and dog walking, life in general. I just don't know how to resolve it, how to not feel so shaken and uncertain. I keep getting hit by a series of realisations- just now I thought "Ahhh, THAT'S why you always work so much harder than anyone asks or expects you to, it's because you don't believe DM and DF when they say good things because you think they are saying what they really think, something horrible undoubtedly, behind your back!" I have heard them do this, but only once or twice.
Do you see what I mean? They aren't GOOD realisations. And the more I connect things in my head, I realise they are less and less like the people that a) I thought they were and b) they said they were.

How do I get past this? Do I have the conversation with DF, and see what happens, do I talk to DM about what I've realised about him? Do I sit down, have a massive cry and then try to never think about it again? Do I explain to my brother what happened? I worry that telling people how I feel will make them angry with me, even though that IS how they made me feel? What would you do?