I am so utterly unhappy

[PleaseKeepMeAnon]

I’m at a real loss. I feel very low and very alone.

I don’t really know where to start.

I have two children. They are 8 and 4. They keep me going, keep me getting out of bed in the morning. I have a husband, he’s a decent sort but we aren’t in a great place right now. I have a very big and stressful job which I love (but I have a tendency to obsess over it too).

in the last year or so I have struggled a lot with my own family. I moved across the country with my husband before we had our children so they aren’t nearby but we are “close”. In touch a lot. I think I struggle with things that happened in my childhood that I didn’t really think much of at the time, but having my kids seems to have brought a lot of stuff screaming to the surface. The shouting, the occasional, low level violence, the shame and put downs. I have no self confidence. My self esteem is down through the floor. I am incredibly hard on myself to the point I tear myself into pieces over everything. The way I parent. The way I work. I find I have massive anxiety around the whole issue. I hate going to stay there and I’m on edge the whole time.

but there was love and kindness too. they made huge sacrifices for my sister and I. They were supportive and kind. And so when I have these thoughts I have crippling guilt too.

it’s like they just blew things out of all proportion. They treated me like I was a dreadful teenager away off the rails. My mum still talks as if I was a nightmare teenager and I look back now and I can see that it wasn’t that bad. I’m not going to say that I was an angel, that I didn’t have my moments, but really it wasn’t that bad. No sex. No drinking or drugs. No crime. No police. I just wasn’t particularly interested in school and my mum couldn’t bear it (still got 5As and a law degree though).

They love my children but they don’t ever come to visit. The onus is all on me because “well you moved away”. Then when a few weeks passes I get the guilt trip. On the very rare occasions that they do babysit it’s always a big deal and the kids are still running the floor when we get back but we wouldn’t say anything because they’re doing us such a favour.

And I get so angry and then my mum disarms me with “I got you a new top, I just thought you’d like it” and she can be so kind. But she can be a total monster too. But she’ll just deny all the bad stuff happened.

I can’t talk to my husband. His family are so perfect and functional. I hate that he would judge my family. I’ve told him bits and pieces but not how much it’s tearing me up inside.

i could just go on and on and on. I’m sorry. I feel so hugely
disloyal but I feel like just disappearing. And I would if I didn’t have my children.

It is normal to separate emotionally and mentally from your parents as you age. To see things in a different light as you become a parent yourself. You could find a decent therapist if you feel like talking it through would help.

I could have written the bit about your family life growing up and the dynamic with your Mum. I worry that growing up like that shapes me as a parent. On the other hand I feel sorry for her because she clearly wasn't coping, and even now can't help herself.

its like, we were smacked as kids. Which isn’t the issue. That was of its time and it’s not that that bothers me (although I don’t smack my children - it has never really occurred to me to do so).

i do however remember my mum smacking me in the mouth when I was 14 because I answered her back. She would deny this happened until she was blue in the face. But it did.

or the time when I was 10 or 11 she repeatedly screamed bitch at me because I wouldn’t lend my sister my new top or something. Even my dad, who never really got involved, told her to stop. And then she screamed at him too. She just had a really awful, awful temper.

i just can’t ever see me doing that to mine.

I would talk to your dh as it increases intimacy and can actually bring you closer. Maybe start by going to a counsellor and as you open up begin to open up to your dh too.
It's very common for people to hit an emotional crisis when their own children reach the stage they have bad memories of. A counsellor will be well used to that and its nothing to be ashamed about. Talking about it will really help.

This resonates with me a lot, OP. My mum had a truly dreadful temper and took out so much on us as children. She does actually admit now that she bullied my brother. Good god, when she lost it the household was a war zone for days on end. Looking back, the weirdest thing is that she was able to switch it off and act normally if a neighbour popped by or something. Then back to vitriol the moment that they’d left. That is not normal or right.
I keep my distance as an adult. She is materially very very kind as your DM is, but that kind of toxicity can’t be ignored or forgotten. It took me years to calm the hell down as an adult and grasp the fact that normal people don’t throw screaming tantrums every Sunday and chuck dinner plates around. Or engage in verbally abusing children, as you mention yourself.

I feel similar OP. Having kids myself has made me look at my own childhood and family in a different light. My parents were borderline neglectful and my mum was verbally and emotionally abusive. I her defense she does have mental health problems and I know she did her best. But it wasn't good enough.

I did bring a lot up with my mum when my eldest was a year old. It made no difference but I felt better that at least I tried. Things that happened in lockdown also made me reevaluate my relationship with my dad as well and I'm actually more angry with him because he doesn't have the issues my mum does, but he just let all of it happen still anyway.

I keep my distance but keep in touch now. My parents have largely decided to become a pair of recluses after lockdown and there has been some other family stuff happening that's meant I've kind of distanced myself from my siblings as well. Any contact is very superficial. My mum never did do emotional support anyway.

Interesting also that you were considered such a hell raiser despite being perfectly fine. I was the world’s worst daughter for refusing to apply for Oxbridge. The reason? I didn’t want to go. Went to a Russell group uni and did very well (financially supported by parents). That was TERRIBLE parenting to try to force an unwanted application - and it’s not until you’re a parent yourself that you can see the extent of the error clearly.

Can’t afford counselling. Can’t justify the money especially not just now.

but it is reassuring to hear that it’s not just me?

it really wasn’t all bad. But I don’t want to parent like them
and it’s like I feel like I don’t know how to not? I rarely shout but as a result feel ineffectual. They don’t listen to a word I say. They are good, kind and polite children (who have their moments like all children) but I feel like that’s more through luck or happy accident than anything to do with me.

Yeah. The worst thing I did, at the age of seventeen, was lie to my parents about where I was one night. I said I was at my friends house and instead I stayed over at my long term boyfriends house after a night out. You’d have honestly thought I was some mental sexual deviant for that one. “Sex obsessed” I was called. I mean I could have been married by then.

The past is another country. They do things differently there.

Your post also resonate a lot with me, my parents were similar to your..and I also became a shouty mum, a mum with mental health problem, I have never given up sorting myself out but I know it’s not good enough. I expect that one day my children will tell about all the hurt I caused them and I’m going to acknowledge everything I said or done but again I know that won’t be enough.

To separate myself from my upbringing, (very subservient), I read a book called Parent effectiveness training, I think the current edition is called How to talk so kids will listen. I found it really changed the dynamic in the house when there was three of them and just me on my own with them. It wasn’t all plain sailing but I stopped second guessing myself and we all learned to be calmer and talk more. I was terrified that the dreadful things my father said would come out of my mouth in the heat of the moment. Luckily they never did.
Classes can be better, but when you can’t squeeze another thing in, there’s always space for a book.

Flowers thank you, I’ll download that

I feel for you, as I feel much the same towards my parents, particularly my mother. I have posted on here many times about my childhood, trying to cut a long story short, my mother are both narcissists and should never have had children. They were terrible parents because their hearts just weren't in it. By terrible, I don't mean we were beaten or starved, but they both lacked the emotional intelligence to bring up children - they got married because they had to (late 60s and my Catholic mother got pregnant less than 6 months after they met) ... I honestly feel now that if that hadn't happened their relationship wouldn't have lasted a year. My father was 5 years younger than my mother (which she didn't find out until they got married, he'd lied about his age) and was only 19 when they wed. He didn't want children either, but ended up with 3 before he finally had a vasectomy.

The blowing things out of proportion - so very very common in our household. Both myself and my two brothers never gave them a real moment's trouble, even as teenagers...I look back and laugh at how 'good' we both were...but my mother always acted like we were so much trouble. She just didn't like being a parent, to be honest. She also called me a bitch on my 11th birthday for no good reason. That's something I will never forget or forgive. We weren't allowed to show any emotion that wasn't positive and their was no emotional support either (I'm now 54 and there still isn't). My father escaped into working abroad when I was 9, left my mother for another woman when I was 21. I hardly knew him, and I've had no contact with him since then.

Neither myself or my two brothers have had any children of our own. I knew from a very young age that I wouldn't. My mother can't understand why...she has no emotional insight whatsoever. I'm being treated for C-PTSD ... I would speak to your GP and tell them what you've posted on here. You may have a wait for counselling, but I personally feel you would benefit from it greatly. Until you can access it, there are plenty of books and other media that can help, as other posters have said. Dr Ramani on YouTube can be helpful, this is a video of hers that I personally have found a great help.

Well, I'm sorry but I'm afraid I have to disagree with that, because it has the effect of 'normalising' abuse. Which is what it was.

Most parents didn't treat their kids like that in the 60's and 70's when I was growing up, and the OP is considerably younger than me, so no. Things weren't like that in the past. The OP was the victim of abuse.

We can feel the sadness pouring from your message. Its heartbreaking. 💔

Im so sorry for what you have been through, you were a child and should have been loved and protected, not abused. Sending lots of love and healing your way.

The youtube recommendation by @noirchatsdeux is really good. If you have the chance you can also check the Crappy Childhood Fairy youtube page. She offers a lot of information on childhood PTSD.

Lots of love 💖

This whole dynamic with your parents really resonates with me.
my brothers and I would want for nothing materially growing up but I’ve come to the conclusion that my mother was a narcissist and Incapable of seeing me as a person separate from herself. There was never any empathy or support and I was made to feel ungrateful, selfish and nasty if I ever stepped out of the narrow margins that my mother had decided I belonged in.

subsequently I grew up with no really sense of myself or recognition of my own needs. Im a horrendous people pleaser who still at 42 finds it so difficult to express my own needs or do anything which may displease others.

My relationship with my parents has been tense and anxiety inducing since I moved out over 20 yrs ago and had got especially worse since my daughters drew to an age where I remembered the way I was treated and the realisation of all the awful behaviours that I’d normalised. I too was such a good kid!

it came to a head in 2020- im a health care professional working in area which was high risk for Covid and my own mum and dad couldn’t muster a scrap of worry or concern for my welfare because then the focus would have been on me. The scales fell from my eyes. I went LC and then NC over the course of the year and had a year of therapy.

I’ve never looked back. I look at my daughters now and despite the issues I still grapple with, strive to be the mother that I wanted growing up.

I've realised that the way you are parented is always going to be normal to you… it’s only later when you become a parent yourself that you realise how disordered it was and what a detrimental effect it has had on your future sense of self and self worth. Seriously think about getting some therapy- purely to unpick issues from your past that are troubling you. One of hardest things for me to get my head round was
the fact that you don’t need to have been overtly abused or neglected for there to be scars left by the way you were treated growing up.

subsequently I grew up with no really sense of myself or recognition of my own needs. Im a horrendous people pleaser who still at 42 finds it so difficult to express my own needs or do anything which may displease others

oh my god. This is me. This is absolutely me. With a big helping of total self loathing as well.

@Moveonward I could have written every word of your post... no sense of self, people pleaser...ditto also to no empathy or support and especially this 'I was made to feel ungrateful, selfish and nasty if I ever stepped out of the narrow margins that my mother had decided I belonged in' I still get that to this day...

Without sounding patronising, you should be so proud that you've got the emotional insight and understanding on how to be a good parent. I also sympathise at how awful it is to realise that your parents don't actually give much of a fuck about you, because they are too busy thinking about themselves. God forbid the focus be on anyone else!

the self loathing was awful - I think it comes
from years of being gaslit that you are somehow ‘bad or wrong’. the therapy helped me see I am none of those things and that my needs matter. I still grapple with awful perfectionism but I know my triggers now and I can exercise some self compassion- something I had been unable to do before.

I'm so sorry you feel like this and I’m always so suprised how many of us are out there, but I get it and understand the cognitive dissonance of living a charmed childhood to outsiders but to be deeply damaged by the way you are treated growing up.

please think about therapy

And maybe try going low contact with your parents for a while to see if that makes a difference

I think sometimes that the unstable nature of a parenting relationship can actually be incredibly damaging. If you never know if you’re getting ‘nice’ or ‘nasty’ it creates a deep sense of uncertainty and anxiety - which can lead to massive people pleasing tendencies. I’m an ex people pleaser myself with a similar family background to you. I took a lot of time to find ways to make myself feel emotionally safe as a grown woman, re-parenting myself really and dealing with the anger and sadness of being treated badly.

I think you can feel better when you start to choose your own emotional safety above all other family interactions. If that means distancing yourself for a while then that can help.

All I can tell you is what worked for me and that was to put myself first for once and consistently. No more allowing my family to tell me who I am or should be or how awful I am for x or y. Spending time around people who do value me. Lots and lots of being nice to myself and accepting the younger me. It really helped me and im so much happier and myself than I ever was before I made the decision to be my own best support.

I hope you can find a way to heal and to take really good care of yourself emotionally.

Why can't you justify the money on counselling?

Are you really on the bones of your arses as a person with a law degree and a challenging (and quite possibly well paid) job - or is this part of your guilt that you don't think you deserve to prioritise your mental wellbeing?

This has been the hardest thing to deal with really- they both really don’t give a shiny shit about me or my brothers.

I think you need to gow very low contact with your parents. Don't let them guilt you!

I'd also urge you to try and find the funds for one or two sessions of counseling per month. I know you say you don't have money, but it would be really worth cutting back on other things to be able to do this. Just a dozen sessions might give you the insight and tools needed to deal with this heavy burden which is currently weighing you down.