Can anyone give me some insight into my own behavior?

[Enigmama]

I used to be in a stormy relationship. I would often find myself pushing him to be violent to me - verbally goading, ranting and abusing him, standing in front of the door so he couldn't walk out on the row, until he hit me, or pushed me out the way.

In hindsight, I can see that this is because I wanted him to hit me. I felt like the argument was not resolved until he had hit me and apologised. My dad was an argumentative controlling loud and occasionally violent parent - some of the time - but when he had gone too far, my mum would step in and stop him.

My mum started to call me manipulative, and said I was winding him up on purpose to upset her, because we always got on fine when she wasn't there - but the truth is, I never ever challenged him on anything when she wasn't there .... and didn't need to, because he very rarely picked a row with me. I knew I wasn't safe from his temper when she wasn't there, and that he might overreact to something, and then be full of remorse, and I would have caused it.

When she was there, it was different. I would voice my opinions, loudly and at length, until he snapped and started roaring and breaking things. But when he had hurt me, he would feel bad, and would be made to leave me alone, and my mum would 'deal with me'.

but she wouldn't step in until he had actually hurt me, he would rant, and call me stupid, and tell me if I didn't do what he wanted he would make my life not worth living etc, and she wouldn't stop him. It was only while he was dragging me upstairs bny my hair, or trying to throw a table that she would step in.

I think she resents me for it. She does see me as a bringer of trouble.

But how can I make myself feel when and argument is resolved? I never feel like it's resolved, I can't let things drop when I am upset - even if the other person does not wish to stand on have a go made of them.

There is rarely only one way of looking at a situation, Enigmama. I would think that your version of events is more likely to be true than theirs because it is so much easier to block things out and 'forget' them than to remember them. I would think it unlikely that you are making things up, not on the scale you seems to be suggesting. Your parents don't want to be reminded of things because they probably feel a degree of guilt which is uncomfortable for them. They may not think that you could possibly have been affected by what went on but that doesn't mean to say that you weren't or that you aren't justified in feeling angry.

If you don't feel comfortable in writing it all down then don't do it but I don't think you would be writing down things that aren't true. They are your version of events and they can't argue with how you feel. Writing it down is for you and nobody else. If you do it, write down what you believe to be the truth and forget whatever they have tried to make you believe about it.

As everybody say though, it would really help you to get some counselling to get this straight in your head and to get out of this cycle. If you do go down that route you need to be prepared to tell the therapist everything you are thinking and not filter out the bits according to whether or not anybody else agrees with you.

My father is a lot like yours and I think my mother blamed me a little for winding him up but since my brother and I have left home she has come to realise that it is my father that is in the wrong because he hasn't changed a bit and now he is doing the same thing with her. He still denies that he is in the wrong and says that if it weren't for the rest of the world he would be a really nice person.

There is no reasoning with somebody who has their head in the sand like that so I just get on with living my own life and don't let it affect me and that is where you need to get to as well. Please find yourself a good therapist, work through the past and forget about. Try not to let it influence your life any further.

I think the way you've ended up is a reasonable response to the nightmare you were living in as a child. Nobody would come out of what you experienced unscarred - you were the scapegoat for your parents' inadequacies and blamed for their wrongdoings and mistreatment of you.

Of course they don't remember what they did - they're in denial about how bad they were. Your feelings, bevhaviour and memories are all clues to your experience and what it was like to be the child you were being abused by them. Before you can let it go, you need to understand it and understand what it was really like for you and heal the parts that were hurt by them.

Winding angry violent people up is often what victims do to maintain some semblance of control in an out of control situation. Probably when your Dad first started attacking you, you would have done nothing to wind him up - but it feels better to think that somehow you were responsible for his violence. Also maybe it was a test to get him to show that he cared, that he wouldn't attack you even if you did upset him, except it was a test he failed every time. I mean for goodness sake you say you expressed an opinion, since when was expressing an opinion deserving of being attacked?

Some books that might help you are Susan Forward's "Toxic Parents" and also all of Alice Miller's, who demonstrates very clearly how the way our parents treated us affects us as adults. Her website is here:

www.alice-miller.com/index_en.php

Enigmama

Your parents were physically and emotionally abusive. You need councelling you need support. Try this thread for support for abusive parents.

You are okay, just your behaviour is just a bit off with men due to your family. They are still to blame for the original things that happened to you as a child, yes even now! However now you are an adult you are responsible for your behaviour. And you sound like you are ready to do that, go to the thread above, talk more of your childhood. Find time for a councellor, even over the phone, on the nhs, there will be a way to see one.

Your childhood sounds horrendous, please start looking at it for the way you treat men now, it is the root cause. Don't know why I'm telling you tho, you are wise enough to have started to put two and two together yourself!

Hugs to you xxxxx

Very good point made that you surely didn't provoke your dad so that violence was justified. As pps have said - it's just not justified - it should not have been that provocative. I'd forgotten the long stage I went through myself where I just assumed I had provided reasonable provocation.

No surprise if they deny what happened - people hate to see themselves in a bad light.

I have/had a 'toxic' mother (dad died when I was in infancy) and it followed me ito adulthood; I fantasised of similar things you have mentioned, having her apologise, blah, blah - When I turned 30 I realised it was never going to happen, and I had a couple of friend who had had similar childhoods and were becoming debilitated by panic attacks and just a general malaise of the soul, finding it impossible to become their own people - always the abandoned, unloved child.

A?ds helped me in the early days, academia and study, opening my mind, invoking Spinoza's dictum whenever possible ? trying to understand rather than condemn, and it has been good for the soul, in many ways and I remain focused on not becoming as bitter and spiteful as she was and still is. I look on my mother as the child; she probably had undiagnosed PND which just became a personality trait after so many years. Many women of her generation and before would have had her children taken away, or put into asylums and given ECT if they had even hinted that they were having psychological problems. She had a hard life (being widowed at 30 with three kids in the 70s must have been incredibly hard) but she compounded her own, and our, bad luck by the very foolish choices she made after that putting her kids at great risk; unforgivable levels of risk. She is too old and still too self-absorbed to ever understand what she did, and thankfully I am over the urge to tell her. The price she pays is in loneliness, as none of her daughters have very much to do with her, or therefore their children.

Anyway, it is possible to escape. I won?t say it will be easy ? but it is do-able. But you have to let the past go and move on.

Do you have kids?

I did though - I answered back continually despite being asked to be quiet, told to shut up, threatened with grounding. I used to SCREAM if he came towards me in an argument, when I was frustrated, or when I felt unheard (like a 2 year old I suppose - except I was about 12) (my screaming once drove my mother to tears because it hurt her ears), I just seemed to be so much hard work for her all the time, and she couldn't even let my dad discipline me because I wound him up so much he used to lose it. I demanded constant attention, and she was never any good at giving it once she had her second baby - she was ill and didn't have time.

I had this fantasy that I could tie their hands so they couldn't hit me, gag them so they couldn't shout over me, tether them so they couldn't walk off and ignore me, and make them LISTEN to how they were making me feel. I was so unhappy at 12 I wanted to die sometimes - same at 17, same at 19, i just seemed to be stuck as a child, completely unable to shake myself out of it, and not able to do anything proactive until I went to the doctor and got some antidepressants. I had to hide them from my parents, too. I could never articulate how alone I felt, and never really got time to explain any of why I did bad stuff.

They seemed to expect so much ... university, fab job, sparkling social life ... but gave me no input about how to GET these things - as soon as I was 16 I dropped out of school and did NOTHING ... and only did menial work after that ... my life looks like a concerted effort to absolve myself of any responsibility for the way it goes ... right down to my choice of job in the end (very interesting to me, but low paid). I failed everything they wanted me to do, and some demented little pixie inside me is capering around shouting "Good! Ha! Serves them right!"

hmm, self absorption HQ!

you may find this rings some bells:-

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acting_out

sounds like you have post-dramatic stress disorder. If so you can get very specific treatment. You need another assessment.

With regard to your first post - I don't think you "were winding him up on purpose to upset her" - rather you craved the freedom to be yourself rather than suppressing yourself to please him, and wanted your mum to protect you from him - sort of a small version of wanting your mother to mother you in general and sort your dad out to stop him being so angry etc with you?

that link lead me here Complex PTSD

Whatever, I think you need a new referral from your GP - maybe to a clinical psych rather than a counsellor. You think?

Yes Monkeytrousers, I have, but only boys, no daughters, THANK GOD because I think that would have broken me, the fear of repeating that.

You are right, she did have PND, but it was diagnosed and treated when I was about 6 (she had another baby) - I just don't think she knew how to cope with the unpredictable brat that I was. She openly preferred my siblings, they were more easygoing children, far more pleasant to be a mother to. She called me her guineapig once then told me off for being oversensitive when I cried.

You are right, I must let it go, I must stop thinking of myself as that miserable 12 year old when in fact I am a fairly happy woman approaching 30, because it will dr5ag me down again and again until I learn to let it go.

My relationshi pattern looks like I am trying to relive confrontation to find out what to do ... but because I don't know what to do, I try to make it go the only way I know how it should go - violently, with shouting.

My ex didn't shout .. didn't respond when I was ranting ... he would blank me .. sensible him, but I took it that if he wasn't shouting at and berating me, he didn't love me.

Now through councilling I can see that's not the case, but I don't know what to replace the bad behavior with - like a smacking mum not knowing how else to discipline, I suppose.

You weren't a brat, you were an unhappy little girl who was being abused by your parents. They were out of order not you.

BUt if I had only behaved myself, the ranting and hitting wouldn't have happened. my siblings behaved themselves, and didn't get hit, or ranted at. It really was caused by me!

I can't go to see the GP about this, I'm not having anyone nosying into my relationship into my children - if I tell him any of this, all they will think is "Abuse is cyclical" and start nosing into my parenting, which I would find utterly distressing.

Wow, reading that link about C-PTSD certainly rang a few bells with me; especially the bit about 'saftey'. But this might be udeful for you; about CBT:

"Treatment for those experiencing C-PTSD should address each dimension. Children who have experienced complex trauma caused by chronic maltreatment can be treated effectively with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy interventions, education, EMDR and other approaches."

Enigmama, I was a brat - some say I still am - but much of that attention seekingw as a direct reponse to the neglect and contempt (and violence) that was being thrown at me. I fought against it - as you did too! Being a brat is good in those situatiions; it shows you have spirit and will not be broken (though I know you probably felt that way often; I did), but the fact that you still refuse to accept the script written for you in your childhood is evidence that you are still fighting. You can't rewrite it, but you can write the next part yourself.

It's the oldest psychological trick in the world - 'just do it'.

Lots of children misbehave, they don't get dragged upstairs by their hair or have tables thrown at them. And if you weren't able to behave surely it was up to your parents to help and teach you to behave better, not attack you, enigmama.

It's quite common for abusive families to have a scapegoat, the child who all the parents' problems get projected on to. It's another form of abuse.

My parents were abusive. I've got to say the way I look at it now, it was them misbehaving and out of control not me. My dad once pulled me out of bed and tried to drag me to school in my nightclothes when I was fourteen because I was refusing to go (might have been something to do with the stress I was under because of his abusive alcoholism), luckily I was able to fight him off but no child should have to fight off her father. Just because they had power they were able to say that what they did was right and what I did was wrong. That's what it sounds like happened with you, that they used their power to declare themselves good and decent people whilst you were the bad one.

I really urge you to take a look at that Alice Miller site. There's lots of information on their that puts a different point of view and takes the hurt child's side.

So get myself some CBT? But I'm not traumatised, I didn't have a bloody awful childhood, we had some great times .. I just feel disproportionately angry about it.

They won't do that! This isn't the 70s.

Really, you have to do this yourself; if you want to give yourself and your kids a better life.

No one is coming to save you. You have to do it yourself.

I am going to write the next part myself.

I am.

I don't have to be a victim, and I don't have to shut up.

You sound pretty traumatised to me Enigmama.

Don't do anything dramatic. Just go for CBT!

Elizabethh I fainted at school once, and kept fainting - I begged them not to call my dad, but they did ... he dragged me out of that school, and nobody did a thing. How on earth did they ignore it? It was obvious it was a "wait til I get you home" drag, not a "oh my poor child let me help you" drag. I fainted cos I wasn't eating, and I wasn't eating cos my boyfriend dumped me. Nothing sinister, just very 15.

I will help myself, MT, this time I swear, and I feel the strongest I have for years, but the memories are always lurking around the corner waiting to either make me angry, or angry and depressed. And I don't want to be angry and depressed any more. I have a good relationship with all my family NOW, I want to stay living in the NOW.

I have already had one mad professional take too much of an interest in my parenting (which is normal, I promise) and in light of a lot of 'mad ss' stories, I won't be drawing attention to myself. I will find something online, or get some self help books, but not actualy people.

Actually I have been doing moodgym, which is good.

Enigmama, a lot of what you describe, both yours and your parents behaviour sounds a lot like a (learned) pattern of behaving that can be understood further by reading about "Borderline Personality Disorder". There is a really good book that will give you a lot of insight and hopefully help you. It is called "I Hate You, Don't Leave Me: Understanding the Borderline Personality" can't remember the author but you can google it or search on Amazon and you will find it. Your mother also sounds like she has traits of NPD (Narcisstic Personality Disorder).

I think people can have mild symptoms of it and it is certainly a spectrum and definitely (with insight) curable. I know that to be true because I used to have a lot of characteristics of it myself, and having grown up in a violent household I would similarly have volatile relationships as an adult until I started to question why.

Good on you for having the insight into yourself to ask the question.

Sorry, should point out that I haven't read the whole thread.