"But we took you to Stately Homes" - survivors of dysfunctional and toxic families

[toomuchtooold]

It's May 2019, and the Stately Home is still open to visitors.

Forerunning threads:
December 2007
March 2008
August 2008
February 2009
May 2009
January 2010
April 2010
August 2010
March 2011
November 2011
January 2012
November 2012
January 2013
March 2013
August 2013
December 2013
February 2014
April 2014
July 2014
Oct 14 – Dec 14
Dec 14 – March 15
March 2015 - Nov 2015
Nov 2015 - Feb 2016
Feb 2016 - Oct 2016
Oct 2016 - Feb 2017
Feb 2017 - May 2017
May 2017 - August 2017
August 2017 - December 2017
December 2017 - November 2018
November 2018-May 2019
Welcome to the Stately Homes Thread.

This is a long running thread which was originally started up by 'pages' see original thread here (December 2007)

So this thread originates from that thread and has become a safe haven for Adult children of abusive families.

The title refers to an original poster's family who claimed they could not have been abusive as they had taken her to plenty of Stately Homes during her childhood!

One thing you will never hear on this thread is that your abuse or experience was not that bad. You will never have your feelings minimised the way they were when you were a child, or now that you are an adult. To coin the phrase of a much respected past poster Ally90;

'Nobody can judge how sad your childhood made you, even if you wrote a novel on it, only you know that. I can well imagine any of us saying some of the seemingly trivial things our parents/ siblings did to us to many of our real life acquaintances and them not understanding why we were upset/ angry/ hurt etc. And that is why this thread is here. It's a safe place to vent our true feelings, validate our childhood/ lifetime experiences of being hurt/ angry etc by our parents behaviour and to get support for dealing with family in the here and now.'

Most new posters generally start off their posts by saying; but it wasn't that bad for me or my experience wasn't as awful as x,y or z's.

Some on here have been emotionally abused and/ or physically abused. Some are not sure what category (there doesn't have to be any) they fall into.

NONE of that matters. What matters is how 'YOU' felt growing up, how 'YOU' feel now and a chance to talk about how and why those childhood experiences and/ or current parental contact, has left you feeling damaged, falling apart from the inside out and stumbling around trying to find your sense of self-worth.

You might also find the following links and information useful, if you have come this far and are still not sure whether you belong here or not.

'Toxic Parents' by Susan Forward.

I started with this book and found it really useful.

Here are some excerpts:

"Once you get going, most toxic parents will counterattack. After all, if they had the capacity to listen, to hear, to be reasonable, to respect your feelings, and to promote your independence, they wouldn't be toxic parents. They will probably perceive your words as treacherous personal assaults. They will tend to fall back on the same tactics and defences that they have always used, only more so.

Remember, the important thing is not their reaction but your response. If you can stand fast in the face of your parents' fury, accusations, threats and guilt-peddling, you will experience your finest hour.

Here are some typical parental reactions to confrontation:

"It never happened". Parents who have used denial to avoid their own feelings of inadequacy or anxiety, will undoubtedly use it during confrontation, to promote their version of reality. They'll insist that your allegations never happened, or that you're exaggerating. They won't remember, or they will accuse you of lying.

YOUR RESPONSE: Just because you don't remember, doesn't mean it didn't happen".

"It was your fault." Toxic parents are almost never willing to accept responsibility for their destructive behaviour. Instead, they will blame you. They will say that you were bad, or that you were difficult. They will claim that they did the best that they could but that you always created problems for them. They will say that you drove them crazy. They will offer as proof, the fact that everybody in the family knew what a problem you were. They will offer up a laundry list of your alleged offences against them.

YOUR RESPONSE: "You can keep trying to make this my fault, but I'm not going to accept the responsibility for what you did to me, when I was a child".

"I said I was sorry what more do you want?" Some parents may acknowledge a few of the things that you say but be unwilling to do anything about it.

YOUR RESPONSE: "I appreciate your apology, but that is just a beginning. If you're truly sorry, you'll work through this with me, to make a better relationship."

"We did the best we could." Some parents will remind you of how tough they had it while you were growing up and how hard they struggled. They will say such things as "You'll never understand what I was going through," or "I did the best I could". This particular style of response will often stir up a lot of sympathy and compassion for your parents. This is understandable, but it makes it difficult for you to remain focused on what you need to say in your confrontation. The temptation is for you once again to put their needs ahead of your own. It is important that you be able to acknowledge their difficulties, without invalidating your own.

YOUR RESPONSE: "I understand that you had a hard time, and I'm sure that you didn't hurt me on purpose, but I need you to understand that the way you dealt with your problems really did hurt me"

"Look what we did for you." Many parents will attempt to counter your assertions by recalling the wonderful times you had as a child and the loving moments you and they shared. By focusing on the good things, they can avoid looking at the darker side of their behaviour. Parents will typically remind you of gifts they gave you, places they took you, sacrifices they made for you, and thoughtful things they did. They will say things like, "this is the thanks we get" or "nothing was ever enough for you."

YOUR RESPONSE: "I appreciate those things very much, but they didn't make up for ...."

"How can you do this to me?" Some parents act like martyrs. They'll collapse into tears, wring their hands, and express shock and disbelief at your "cruelty". They will act as if your confrontation has victimized them. They will accuse you of hurting them, or disappointing them. They will complain that they don't need this, they have enough problems. They will tell you that they are not strong enough or healthy enough to take this, that the heartache will kill them. Some of their sadness will, of course, be genuine. It is sad for parents to face their own shortcomings, to realise that they have caused their children significant pain. But their sadness can also be manipulative and controlling. It is their way of using guilt to try to make you back down from the confrontation.

YOUR RESPONSE: "I'm sorry you're upset. I'm sorry you're hurt. But I'm not willing to give up on this. I've been hurting for a long time, too."

Helpful Websites

Alice Miller
Personality Disorders definition
Daughters of narcissistic mothers
Out of the FOG
You carry the cure in your own heart
Help for adult children of child abuse
Pete Walker
The Echo Society
There are also one or two less public offshoots of Stately Homes, PM AttilaTheMeerkat or toomuchtooold for details.

Some books:

Toxic Parents by Susan Forward
Homecoming by John Bradshaw
Will I ever be good enough? by Karyl McBride
If you had controlling parents by Dan Neuharth
When you and your mother can't be friends by Victoria Segunda
Children of the self-absorbed by Nina Brown - check reviews on this, I didn't find it useful myself.
Recovery of your inner child by Lucia Capacchione
Childhood Disrupted by Donna Jackson Nazakawa

This final quote is from smithfield posting as therealsmithfield:

"I'm sure the other posters will be along shortly to add anything they feel I have left out. I personally don't claim to be sorted but I will say my head has become a helluva lot straighter since I started posting here. You will receive a lot of wisdom but above all else the insights and advice given will 'always' be delivered with warmth and support."

Has anyone written a letter / had a face to face meeting with their toxic relatives as a scapegoat and got a successful outcome?

Think you might be waiting a long, long, time for that!!

I hope you don’t mind me joining. I estranged from my family a while back due to childhood sexual abuse and constant invalidation from the family driving me batshit crazy while my parents prioritised their relationship with the abuser. All a huge headfuck.

My main question is trying to find a book that deals with making my peace with the estrangement. I think I’m nearly there but I just want somebody or something to relate too. Someone who gets the headfuck this has been and has a pathway for recovery. Preferably I am hoping for a book written by a therapist rather than a survivor because that seems to trigger the fuck out of me. I have done therapy. I could go back but I am not really up for it unless I have to. I’ve read Susan Forward but I did not find many tools for helping me with the ruminating more about figuring out how fucked up things actually were. Thanks everyone.

Which Susan Forward book did you read? I think "Childhood Disrupted" by Donna Jackson Nazakawa could help you. Possibly I'd check out a workbook like "Recovery of your Inner Child" by Lucia Capacchione" too.

I'm sure others will be along too.

Sorry I read Toxic Parents. It was helpful as a starting point but didn’t really help with the recovery but.

Can I join too?

I’ve always said that my parents are great, and that I was very lucky in many ways. This is true.

However, I’m afraid I’ve pushed down the truth that we were abandoned by my father, who had several affairs, then left and only appeared when he felt like it, and had a mother who couldn’t cope and who depended massively on me.

Moved in with step Dad aged 12. He was also a fantastic man. However at the time I hated him, and it was because we moved into his territory, his family, who were very dominating and step Dad wanted instant closeness with me, as I was ‘like my mother’ and if I hadn’t had disliked him would have been fairly too close and inappropriate with me. (Not sexually, I still think he was a very good man and came to love him and be very fond of him as an adult). However as a child I remember clearly he would sometimes put his hand up my jumper on my bare back to rub it, and bought me sexy pyjamas, when I was 12.

I became very depressed, and very isolated. I had to look after my young brother when I was 9, every day from school. And when we moved in with my step dad, mum went from talking to me about her problems (which I kind of loved as it meant I felt close), to demanding I played the perfect daughter for step family and hardly spoke with me as she was engrossed. I withdrew and became very self sufficient, and left home aged 16.

Phew! Sorry I think I’m over doing it!

@Lazydaisies I’m so sorry, sounds awful. Hope you find peace.

@acornfed I wrote to my father. We see each other every year. However never any acknowledgement that he basically abandoned us. I focused on our relationship now, only very briefly mentioned the past. Suggested more positive ways we could interact. He took it badly, and I left it at that. However I do feel better for doing it. It’s incredibly hard to get right. I spent about 3 months on the letter and got others to look at it. It’s very ‘serious and heavy’ isn’t it. When productive discussions are more fluid, to and fro, listening, taking small steps. A letter is a big step. Too much probably really.

Still, for me I just couldn’t keep up the superficial and going along with my dads view of everything until he died.

I'm really sorry to be blunt Lazy, but have you come to terms with your childhood and the abuse you suffered? You don't have to answer this but I read your abuser was a sibling and golden child and it was you scapegoated and made to suffer. Regardless, I'm so sorry for what you have gone through, the two books I mentioned may help. Have you truly grieved what you have lost?

Hi @MarshmallowHeat ,good name!

I’ve always said that my parents are great, and that I was very lucky in many ways. This is true.
*
However, I’m afraid I’ve pushed down the truth that we were abandoned by my father, who had several affairs, then left and only appeared when he felt like it, and had a mother who couldn’t cope and who depended massively on me.*

I read this a lot, sadly. I like to use the story of the American woman, now in her 40s, Ivy League diplomas all over the walls, went to private school, massive house, everything physical they could wish for during their childhood. She was using this to distance herself from what was a distant, neglectful, abusive, childhood, as a reason, an excuse.

But the truth is, abuse gives no fucks if you are homeless, or if you are like the example. Abusive, neglectful, parents are this regardless of means.

Sorry, I have to run, medical emergency here, I'll be back!

Back @MarshmallowHeat

Moved in with step Dad aged 12. He was also a fantastic man. However at the time I hated him, and it was because we moved into his territory, his family, who were very dominating and step Dad wanted instant closeness with me, as I was ‘like my mother’ and if I hadn’t had disliked him would have been fairly too close and inappropriate with me. (Not sexually, I still think he was a very good man and came to love him and be very fond of him as an adult). However as a child I remember clearly he would sometimes put his hand up my jumper on my bare back to rub it, and bought me sexy pyjamas, when I was 12.

Sounds like your mother's boundaries were eroded by virtue of being in an abusive relationship, but she made a very poor choice in your stepfather. This part of your post makes my skin crawl. It sounds very much like he was attempting to sexually groom you.

I became very depressed, and very isolated. I had to look after my young brother when I was 9, every day from school. And when we moved in with my step dad, mum went from talking to me about her problems (which I kind of loved as it meant I felt close), to demanding I played the perfect daughter for step family and hardly spoke with me as she was engrossed. I withdrew and became very self sufficient, and left home aged 16.

So your mother was looking to you not as her child but almost as her mother, being neglected emotionally, expected to raise your brother (what was mother doing?)

Phew! Sorry I think I’m over doing it!

Sounds like you are under doing it.

Your mother was emotionally absent, had poor boundaries, whilst you were abandoned by your father (and no doubt aware of the familial tension by 12), then expected to raise a child whilst you had a neglectful mother and borderline sexually-abuse grooming stepdad.

I'm actually glad you moved out at 16, your father will never acknowledge any responsibility for your childhood. Why would he, he was living the "happy life" with multiple affairs, then just plain out the door, with scant regard for you.

By any standard, you had a pretty terrible childhood, as I said earlier, abuse and neglect give zero fucks who they target.

Have you received any therapy for the childhood you effectively didn't have, and given the tools to grieve for it? How is life now?

I'm so sorry for your suffering

I'm really sorry to be blunt Lazy, but have you come to terms with your childhood and the abuse you suffered? You don't have to answer this but I read your abuser was a sibling and golden child and it was you scapegoated and made to suffer.

Absolutely true Steve and yes you have the backstory correct but I think I have done most of that. I’ve had 4 years of therapy and I have done a lot of work and reading on it which has made me much clearer on the family dysfunction. It has been torture but I’m making it through. I don’t think my parents are narcissistics though, they are deeply unempathetic, pathologically so, I suspect from problematic upbringings of their own, mainly neglect, possibly abuse and I don’t think my Dads hands are clean. His responses to finding out about the abuse were shockingly anti socially bizarre. Not that it matters to our relationship now except as I’ve tried to come to terms with the emotions. I have also struggled to deal with sister who was abused because she has been unable to take on what has happened and has gone against me as I tried to figure things out.

So now I’m trying to find a way to deal with the emotions/practicalities/difficulties of estrangement. I have had to walk away from quite a lot.

his responses to finding out about the abuse was shockingly antisocially bizarre
This sounds very familiar to me, at the time I felt so humiliated with everything else that was going on I didn't think too deeply about the strange response but now I wonder what they were hiding I wonder what they were defending.
I think we all draw conclusions over the years when we start to join the dots and see the patterns in people's behaviours

Thank you @SimplySteveRedux I’m really grateful to you for reading my post. Interesting that you picked up that my mother had very poor boundaries, that is totally true. She loved us all dearly, she really is an unselfish and lovely person. However I think she expected me to be unselfish with her, and subservient to others needs. I had to look after little brother as she had to work full time for a couple of years, so I took care of him after school. Father was off not caring, like you say. At least my mother does say she couldn’t cope, and that she remarried as she couldn’t do it alone.

My dad has another family and treats us like we are equals, but smothers his second family adult kids with attention. I think me and my brothers lost out on parenting. One became an alcoholic, but okay now. The other a fantastic dad, but I’m worried he’s trying to be everything to them. I’m worried he had a one off abuse from another step relation. My other brother told me something happened. I don’t know whether to say anything.

I did love my step dad as an adult. I do think it’s creepy what he was doing, but I don’t think it would have turned into abuse. Or I can’t think that because he was so kind when we were older and showed no signs of inappropriateness with his grandchildren. However he obviously had bad boundaries and intruded massively on a young pre pubescent girls space, me. The confusion and shame I felt, that I didn’t like him, and everyone asking me why, and my mother being cross with me, lasted until I left. I put up a huge barrier.

I’ve had no therapy. Wonderful friends though. And a fantastic relationship as an adult with my mother. I know she treated me unfairly as an adult when I was merely a child. She knows she wasn’t coping, but doesn’t really know why and would be utterly heartbroken if I told her. She is a wonderful granny, and will give me her time, understanding and last penny now, and I’m at peace with it with her.

I do blame my father though. He still denies he wasn’t around and seems to want me to treat him like a wise revered respected figure, visiting me once every two years and no calls in between. I’m sick of it b

Thanks for those suggestions Steve they look exactly what I am looking for. I was looking at an audiobook too. Does anyone have any knowledge of Complex PTSD from surviving to thriving

I did love my step dad as an adult. I do think it’s creepy what he was doing, but I don’t think it would have turned into abuse. Or I can’t think that because he was so kind when we were older and showed no signs of inappropriateness with his grandchildren. However he obviously had bad boundaries and intruded massively on a young pre pubescent girls space, me. The confusion and shame I felt, that I didn’t like him, and everyone asking me why, and my mother being cross with me, lasted until I left. I put up a huge barrier.

Just on that. There is a book the gift of fear that talks about trusting your instincts. Your instincts were probably good here.

I will read that thanks. I was probably quite lucky to have that instinct. I wonder what would have happened if I didn’t.

@Lazydaisies I don’t I’m afraid. Know about complex ptsd. However, I’ve felt much better sometimes when I reframed things in a practical way. It feels powerful. Surviving feels like coping. Thriving feels like grasping that awful trauma and shifting our brain to make our current lives, decisions and reactions work for us. If that makes sense.

I’m trying to think. What now, in my life, is not working for me / my family? What triggers me? Where are the stressors?

I’m going to list them. One is my current family. I desperately want to parent better than I was. I want to break the suffering I went through. I want them to thrive, so I have to be healthy in my boundaries, able to love, able to protect them.

Sorry my disabilities are kicking my arse today, and some bad news earlier hasn't helped, thanks for your kind words. Will post over the night hours/tomorrow.

But, Does anyone have any knowledge of Complex PTSD from surviving to thriving

Did you read my resumé, lol. I've both "normal" PTSD, and CPTSD.

No Steve i missed that. My therapist just refers to PTSD but from reading about complex PTSD it is clear that is what I have.

Marshmallow that is a great list. It is a really good idea.

@SimplySteveRedux I’m sorry about your bad news. I hope you get to look after yourself.

@Lazydaisies thanks. I do think I probably need therapy to talk about my past. I’ve never done so. However I’m impatient, my kids can’t afford to wait until I’m wiser, I want to be the best I can now.

Sorry Steve I missed you saying you had bad news

If you mean the Pete Walker book CPTSD from surviving to thriving I recently downloaded it on kindle. It's free with the unlimited thing which I have. Its quite a hefty book and probably better to buy so you can see it in sections better. I struggle that on kindle. Highly recommended by kris godinez on YouTube.

Sorry Steve for bad days.

Yes Lasttimeround that is the book. I have downloaded the audiobook. It is triggering the hell out of me. I am finding it very tough going too. I will try kris goodniz thanks.