Difficult relationship with parents

[BluebellSurprise]

I've been having therapy for about a year, mostly focused on unpicking my relationship with my parents/siblings and realising my family is actually really dysfunctional.

I've distanced myself from my parents since these realisations but continue to have a superficially ok relationship.

Since lockdown I've been feeling increasingly stressed and overwhelmed (as many of us are) with the pressures of try to home educate DC with special needs, working from home, jobs under threat etc etc.

My parents keep saying they wish there was something they could do to help ease our situation. I've told them a couple of times that I would love some emotional support. Even when I've poured my heart out about how much I'm struggling and asked again for emotional support, they've just
responded that they feel frustrated they can't do anything to help me.

I've realised that unless they can do something practical/material they literally don't know what else to do.

It's left me feeling really sad and alone. All it would take would be then asking how I'm doing (they don't).

Do I spell it out more for them? Or just accept that I'm looking for something they are unable to give.

Thanks. (Please be kind. I'm feeling really fragile at the moment).

You could be describing me and my parents here. Exactly the same situation and after a very difficult year personally with my divorce etc my parents are complaining to me that I haven't asked them for help and that if I had asked them for help I would be in a better position now!

I've been seeing a counsellor and she has advised me to put better boundaries up with my parents. I do believe that this is the way they are and won't change, and what I need to change is how I react to what they say and how I let them make me feel.

I can't tell you how comforting it is for people to respond who understand this situation. Thank you so much.

I've tried to talk to some friends in real life about this but it's difficult to get across just how much/why this has hurt me.

I think a bit of both. Spell it out, but (as hard as it is) expect that they won’t be able to offer it. I sympathise. Is there anywhere else you can get emotional support?

@BarBarBarBar, I don't think my siblings are offered emotional support. They freely offer financial/material things. Which makes me feel like I'm being ungrateful when that's not what I want from them.

Sorry don’t know how to link, but there’s a video by Russell Brand on Resenting my Family which is worth watching on living with being disappointed with your expectations of your parents.

Thanks, I'll have a look at that.

My parents offered neither emotional or material support. Quite the opposite. In fact I got a cocktail of toxic abuse and narcissistic behaviour from my mother, until I went NC about 10 years ago.

It sounds to me that this is just the way your parents are. Some people like to try and help fix issues, practically. Others are more tuned in to emotional support. Please try and see that this is just who they are and that their offer to help in a practical way, is their way to support you.

After all, you can't choose or tell how someone decides to offer their help, you can however choose whether to accept it.

They've told you they feel frustrated they can't help - I would take it literally: they probably are frustrated by their own inability to give you what you want emotionally as well as practically. I would think it is an inability rather than deliberate withholding.