Have any of you woken up to how bad your parents were?

[WakingUpDistress]

Having counselling atm for very unrelated things.

Im just realising how dysfunctional my family was. I mean I was well looked after, parents were supportive, only child. There is nothing that I would have said was unusual. My dad has been depressed like forever and my mum has always been anxious. But then who isn’t?

Im in my mid 50s and I’m slowly realising that actually things weren’t good.
My mum has always been emotionally unavailable. I was expected to be perfect as a child (even dreaming to have a sibling just so that it would be obvious I didn’t need to be that perfect iyswim). I was expected to be independent, to act more like an adult than a child. And I was. The number if times I have been praised for being so mature!
But when things got tricky there was no one. No one to tell me about periods and how to deal with them (was just handed a packet of pads). No one to tell me to brush my teeth. Or to have a shower everyday. No one to tell me about my grand father dying. But I was expected to somehow not cry or ask anything when he did. Instead I was told that I really needed to be mindful at how hard it was for my mum. I was 15yo.
My dad has always gone into rages. (Even more so nowadays). All brushed under the carpet because he had such a hard childhood and ‘you need to let it go’.
And the shame. The general feeling of shame and not being good enough. Always me not being good enough when things go wrong.

It surprises me at how much there is. How much I’ve ignored/not realised, probably because it was my normal. But I didn’t really realise how dysfunctional everything was even when I had my own dcs.

How could I not? Why did it take so long for me to realise?

Anyone else in a similar boat?

I feel like, in my early 50s, I'm having to consciously think about how I put myself first and treat myself with the consideration that a good parent would have

YY to that.
But it’s the shame of doing so…. and feeling like it’s making me a bad person.

I feel similar.sorry to hear of your experienced. I think it’s a process of gradually understanding more about your childhood as you get older. I found having my own children quite a spike time for recognising the difficulties in my own childhood.

It took me until well into adulthood to understand that my mum likely has a cognitive impairment and always has (recent found an underlying cause). This caused an odd dynamic in their relationship where my dad has done everything and taken care of everything. However he has his own social needs and was depressed all my childhood. Ours was a very negative household with two parents so engrossed by their own needs their couldn’t meet mine. Often my mum was very unkind too- verbally (“you look fat today” type comments).

I find myself feeling incredible angry about it but ultimately I want to get to a place of acceptance. I’m getting closer. I’m just fed up of feeling the anger and it’s so pointless now. I just want to accept they are how they are and they aren’t going to change.

And if the bad stuff keeps happening to you through no fault of your own, other than you realise you'd have had a completely different set of cards with a completely different childhood? Then what?

@WakingUpDistress my mom did what my mom did because her mom did what her mom did. i'm a product of history our family history. my grandmother did what my grandmother did because of history. some stuff was great some stuff weird and some stuff led to some seriously dangerous situations.

I got cancer. It was a pretty stark signal. If you listen to Gabor Mate as recommended by a PP or read his book, When The Body Says No I was exactly in the situation he describes as being linked with an increased incidence of cancer, putting everyone else first, unable to say no, and feeling trapped and helpless. Don't be like me!

Actually I was much more critical of them when I was younger, and especially before I had DS and came to realise that I myself am not a perfect parent.

From listening to friends I worry that counsellors are encouraging people to hold their parents to standards that neither applied 25 years ago, not will apply in 25 years time. This does not seem to be helping my friends with their own lives or their own parenting so far.

look i took all the bad that happened to me and mothered differently and guess what, my kids probably think they had a shitty mom as well, yes i've been called emotionally unavailable i don't even know what that means.
i'm just saying i don't think therapy is the answer because it won't change a thing. you need to notice things within you and change habits yourself.

I’m afraid I’m already there @SierraSapphire .😢😢

I don’t think what happened made me ill but it certainly has made things much worse.
Ive read books from Gabor Mate and yes I’m pretty certain there is a link there.

People are human and have their own quirks, even if you don't make the same 'mistakes' parenting as your parents did (any extreme abuse aside), you will make what your children will deem to be just as terrible mistakes and will hold that against you in the future, so I say, let go of the judgement, recognise their shortcomings and don't be disappointed by them.

Oh blimey, please will the pair of you look after yourselves? This has really brought things home tonight xxxxx

Yes of course I do things differently. I have the most amazing relationship with my children and my therpaist quite often asks where I get my strength and desire to parent well from given my own background.

And fgs don't ever give up the day job and do anything that requires a shred of empathy 🙄

Yes i agree.

There is a lot of that going on. Trauma, ways to parent, ways to relate to each other is transmitted form one generation to the next unless or until one person decides/manage to do it another way.

But that’s not what sparked this thread.
Its the fact I never saw it as issue before and why in death didn’t I?
And what can I do about it now? Again if it was as easy as ‘noticing stuff and changing the habit’ I would have done it long ago.
I am personally finding counselling helpful
1- because it helps me see patterns of behaviours
2- because I have someone telling me it’s ok for me to do <insert behaviour such as putting myself first>. And I seem to need that atm.

I’ve had therapy after anxiety and depression. I would never have applied the term abuse to my childhood. DM used to wind up my SD to the point where he would scream and swear. My siblings and I would talk about his favourite things to ensure he stopped. His temper would usually mean lashing out. I recall him slapping me in front of my mother who did nothing. DM lied frequently about family causing damage to mine and my DF’s relationship, she used emotional blackmail to keep us in check. Her and SD had enough money for cigarettes and alcohol but not enough for their kids to have a decent lunch with a drink of water. My childhood was in hindsight quite volatile and I would never have used the word abusive. Now I do the opposite of anything DM and SD did.

Yes. My parents were not good, or happy with each other. But I am now in my 70s, and find I am a lot more forgiving. They weren't cruel or deliberately unkind. I realise that they did love me in their way.

hi OP, I went through what you are now going through in my early 40s. It was a revelation to me.

I don't agree with the previous poster. Therapy is the answer. Of course you can't change the past, and it's not about blame or bitterness (although I'm nc with my mother now), it's about learning how that upbringing affected me and my relationships (with my children, with men, with everyone really). It's just revelatory.

I was shocked at how much I had considered normal about my upbringing is just downright abusive. And of course it had (and continues to have) a huge affect on my relationships and my whole way of dealing with things (conflict, boundaries, anger, stress) now. Therapy has been a life saver for me really.

@WakingUpDistress it really came to light for me when my dad died not sure if it was after his death or the month before (he died from alcohol abuse).
upon his death i realized he used alcohol because he had skin cancer all over his body (previously unseen). he did not believe in doctors and never had seen one and all the family respected his wishes in that regard.
this somehow made me angry at my mom and had me painfully reliving all the times neither one of them were there for me.

Yes of course I do things differently. I have the most amazing relationship with my children and my therpaist quite often asks where I get my strength and desire to parent well from given my own background.

I've also had an amazing relationship with my DD. I think my experience of being badly parented has made me a much better / more sensitive parent than I might have been if I'd been well-parented. But I have had to cope with the fall out of DD witnessing her father being abusive to me in her first two years, plus I think some anxiety that she has through the impact of inter-generational trauma. At least though my learning DD understands what's going on in her brain and body when feeling anxious and what to do about it. She's also passed that knowledge on to her friends who are struggling but who's parents haven't obsessively read books about trauma and it's neurological impact and are less understanding!

And thanks @TheSnootiestFox for the good wishes.

Mine wouldn’t have looked out of place in the Milkovich house in shameless.

The only ‘good’ thing is that I knew how awful they were when I was about ten, I also saw them treat other people in a similar way, so it almost made it less personal. They were awful people, I think I almost got off lucky when I consider the situation my siblings are in as the way the harm shows in me is a bit more socially acceptable. Emotions however are a scary thing for me, I know that people (apart from maybe 3 people) think I’m very very cold.

There are still the odd occasions where I will tell a joke etc about a childhood experience and the general reaction is “wtf”. It can sometimes not be hard to express the behaviours you were exposed to, I can have a really bad temper if I’m not careful, so I have to make sure I can always leave a situation. Violence used to be an issue, I was regularly getting into fairly bad physical fights until my late twenties, it wasn’t a case of losing control, being drunk etc, I just liked doing it. This is where rugby works as I can get a bit of aggression out without harming anyone.

Yes, I understand you.

Have you seen the book "Complex PTSD - from surviving to thriving" by Pete Walker? I wonder if you might find it helpful. And hope your therapy is providing the space to process.

I have never understood why some people respond to threads like this by gaslighting. It's really weird.

It's quite hard to come to a realisation that your parents were damaging, or even abusive. There is massive cultural pressure on children (including adult children) to be grateful, to accept they were probably the naughty ones who got it wrong, and the adults probably got it right.

I am sure there's the odd person who (for whatever reason) had perfectly decent parents but thrives on feeling hard-done-by and believes they had it hard. But in general, those people will be like that in all areas of their lives - they'll also be the ones who have constant drama with friendships, who always seem to be starting wars with work colleagues, etc. etc. You'll be able to recognise them.

Personally, I think it's hugely helpful to take stock of how you were parented. If it was harmful or abusive, it's helpful to own that and acknowledge it. It loses some of the power if you can get to a point where you can just say 'yes, unfortunately, my parents were pretty bad' rather than repressing it.

I often wonder why I don’t remember much about my childhood. Nothing bad happened but parents were very strict and I’m sure I was scared a lot of the time of them both. They’d play one of against the other, ‘wait till I tell your xx’.
i didn’t see much of them during my twenties but have done so in the later years and put a lot of it down to their parents behaviour toward them.
I made sure my DD and I have a completely different relationship. I think my mum is a bit envious but there’s nothing I can do about it because the damage is done and I will never ever chat stuff over with my own mum. Shame but there it is.

Absolutely. Sometimes "doing their best" was actually "doing as they please". There's a difference.

Thanks @TheSnootiestFox .
This thing about going to see a counsellor s very much about that 😀😀

👏🏼 👏🏼 👏🏼 💯 this ^

Sorry, that was at @SarahAndQuack excellent post