So basically I've started therapy because I am in the application process to adopt a children/children.
I am doing it on my own so there's a lot of pressure - all of the training so far is about how to parent a very traumatised child.
I thought I'd better have some therapy to help support me while I'm going through the process and maybe flush out any demons that might be hiding.
My own family background is that both my parents were pretty rubbish, and so were their parents, I grow up in a pretty unhappy home when I was a child, but there was also happy moments, normal family life, and we got by.
My sister and brother see things a little differently (I'm the middle child) and feel our parents were abusive. I agree they did abusive things to us and definitely their strict ideas of parenting (we were hit as punishment, made to eat everything on our plates at dinner time etc) were completely not appropriate, and seem so out of touch compared to parenting now, it feels like another world.
They are both very angry with our parents, but I feel I have accepted our parents faults and moved on, both parents are very elderly and sweet these days compared to how they used to be, and although I'll never be emotionally close to them, I enjoy seeing them and helping them out on occasion (we don't live close to each other) and there's no animosity.
My older sister has no children and has a lot of crap relationships with a lot of crap men, nothing abusive, but nothing that would make anyone happy. Luckily she's finished with the last guy, although he sounds like he is creeping back in. My sister has also had depression for years and is medicated. When I talked about my sister to my therapist and the relationship that I have with her which isn't great, the therapist suggested she was traumatised.
My brother is married and with twins, he struggles with parenting too (his DTs have ASD) and isn't the parent he'd like to be (we are closer and he told me this) but as his wife is very together and they are fairly well off they muddle along ok. He has had depression for years, but is medicated.
I have had moments of unhappiness, my marriage was very unhappy and I had several early miscarriages which was extremely difficult. Since my marriage ended a few years ago I have been single and very happy. Covid was difficult in some ways, but I was able to WFH and get a dog both things I dearly wanted before covid hit.
My question is (sorry for the long one!) is it possible that 2 of my siblings have been traumatised by their upbringing and will possibly take AD the rest of their lives, and me be ok? I do purposely live a healthy life, but so do my siblings, so it's not really because our lifestyles are very different.
Any ideas? I feel I'm wasting my time any money on therapy and maybe I should just accept that maybe I'm ok?