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?

If all parents are just doing their best then why would we need laws and social services? Why are people who work wirh children trained to spot subtle signs of neglect and abuse? Surely that's a waste of time because we're all doing our best eh? And as for saying 'well it was the 70's' I could see other families then that weren't cruel and sadistic. Parents are on a spectrum of harmful to nurtuing like every human and some parents are way down on the harmful side and that's just a statement of reality. It's been said that fairy tales were a way for adults to warn children that just because someone is a parent doesn't mean they are a good person. The need to refuse to accept the reality that some parents have psychopathic traits is about people protecting themselves and their 'just world' view. Until we can dismantle this narrative we won't make the leaps necessary to protect children from trauma and lives of guilt and suffering. We're all responsible for not invalidating out of discomfort with the truth.

@Simonjt
That's awful - a completely different level to:
'You're so scruffy, fat, stupid or what helpful' comment parents come up with.
So sorry this happened to you

&@Cleotolstoy
@BananaBlue
When said parents were doing their best I thought the implication was that some parents Best simply wasn't good enough.
There are people out there that never should have children.
They are incapable of being good parents.
They just don't have the life skills, empathy or abilities to bring up happy healthy children.
Smacking was acceptable back then and encouraged- barbaric !!

Lol no.
To do that, you need to have realised what’s going in and that some reactions are dysfunctional.
Until you’ve realised that, no you don’t go back to bed and think ‘I’m reacting like this because I want please my mum’. You just have a deep feeling of uneasiness, shame, feeling stuck. At least that’s how it feels to me.

Yes, and I didn't realise until my late 30s/early 40s when I caught mum out bitching about DH to her friends and realised how toxic she is - constant cycle of bitching about people to others. It's beginning to unravel now she's older because she's forgetting who she said what to so lack of consistency and social media means I'm in touch with some of her friends whereas once I wouldn't have been.

I had a breakdown in my 20s, ostensibly because of a terrible work situation but the roots, I now realise, were in my upbringing - no acknowledgement of emotions, never being allowed to 'bother people', constantly having to portray smiley happy family life to outsiders. The counselling I had then unearthed quite a bit, a lot of which I didn't fully realise until I had DD.

I've put boundaries in place and no longer care what she thinks (this is liberating!) although the emotional blackmail at times has been horrendous. I've mostly done that to protect DD and DH from her but it's helped me too.

Yes, some of what she was like were common in 70s and 80s parenting but friends' parents managed to find a better way and didn't have the obsession with appearances etc that my family did.

Yes. I'm nc now. My parents came from traumatic backgrounds so I forgive them but I couldn't live with it anymore because they in turn traumatised me. I had to break the cycle. And it was hard!

flowers to all of those who have been struggling in various ways and various degrees.

Sorry, it was meant to be [flower]….

It is a completely different level, I agree.
However, that sort of comment is also extremely damaging to children and has long term consequences.

Interestingly, it’s something I’ve always been very careful about with my own dcs. That sort of comment can slice very deep.

I have struggled with this, I’m mid 40s and wondered if I should work through it with someone. I always felt I had a happy childhood, Primary years. My DM held everything together and Christmases and birthday were good but we never got exactly what we wanted always the cheaper, downgraded version. Holidays were cheap and cheerful but I later realise my DF was happier because he was mainly pissed!

‘Something’ happened in my teenage years, money issues I suspect and possibly an affair and we had to downsize. From then on both seemed to be wrapped up in their own addictions. They left me to it and I was quite wild. The cluttered house became messier and filthier as they won’t spend money on it. I also realised that one of their favourite past times is slagging people off and elements of shaudenfreude and this has increased so much that they have completely isolated themselves and fallen out with everyone.

Their own relationship is dysfunctional and I see through it and having children made me realise that we were poor thanks to their addictions coming first. I also don’t bitch about people to my DC and fill their heads with rubbish. I keep them at arms length and regular phone calls are just surface stuff now.

Thank you!

I'm v much with the OP. Not terrible parents - no overt abuse or trauma, just not enough (any) attention, every success I had was seen as a reflection of them ("of course she'd get an A, she's my daughter"), praised for being mature and "wise", which was actually self management because of emotional absence and neglect, centering themselves in every aspect of my life. At 20, they sold the family home (they'd split 5 years earlie) and I had nowhere to live, sofa in their houses. I told my DM I had just an abortion (at uni) her immediate response was "oh I'm sorry. I've had a terrible time too with my (lover of the time)".

I'm still seeing these things in them and I rage about it. My DD is what she is because of my DM according to her, my DF publishes his books with the bio that he has wife x and child y - omitting totally children A and B. Argh

There seem to be so many of us that have gone through this. I think there is an element of, depending on how old your parents were or are, suffering from abuse or neglect from their parents because they had been through the war but I don't understand why our parents didn't go the other way, like we are trying to do, to change things?

My mum, who to be fair was broken by childhood abuse, used to say to me I never had what you have, gifts wise and from a great distance she sort of cared yet there was severe emotional neglect which has left a big mark which I feel I am only healing from now in my late 40s. It's a sad situation but I have come to accept my parents will never be how I would have liked them and being angry in perpetuity isn't going to change that It will only make me miserable which I can't be because of my kids.

I believe my mum tried to change things a lot.
eg when she was a child, children were to be seen and not heard. Think 4 hours long Sunday lunch when she wasn’t allowed to talk, get up etc…
And she changed that.

What she hasn’t addressed is the emotional impact it had on her which then has affected the way she has responded to me as a child. Plus the fact I’m pretty sure she had PND too which at that time wouldn’t have been addressed.

WakingUp there seemed to be a limit to the change they could make perhaps? Still would have preferred a real friendship with my parents. Wasn't to be.

You seem to be suggesting that all parents deliberately set out to abuse their children, which you must surely know is not the case?

I said that "the vast majority" do their best for their children, not all. Yes, very sadly there are some parents who simply don't care about anyone but themselves, but they are, thankfully, a very small minority.

You ask, and how the fuck do you heal without looking at the past and feeling the anger and rage you couldn't feel as a child? I would say that you look at the situation from your adult perspective and you understand, you may resolve to do better as a parent and not to make the same mistakes they made, then you move on. You may not repeat their mistakes, but you very likely (almost certainly) will make some of your own.

We are all only human and most of us are muddling through, doing the best that we can. But I guess you don't agree. Fair enough.

@80sMum i agrée with most of what you are saying re muddling through etc…

What you are not addressing is the hurt. The deep hurt from that level of disconnection. From the shame games. From the inappropriate expectations.
And whilst I agree you should try and solve the issue on an adult level, it doesn’t change the fact that the hurt is still present and is still hurting.
That hurt can come out in many ways. Some people are angry. Some people are emotional. Some are numb. But how can you address the hurt and establish what it is Wo getting in touch with that hurt? Wo feeling the anger, the fear, the shame, the sadness?
One thing I’m struggling with in counselling is actually going past the numbness. The one that means I can explain you in a very nice way, in a pragmatic way, in an adult way, what has happened and why but where I’m still trying to hide those feelings and stuff them down.
Except as some posters have pointed out, that’s those feelings, that are hurtful, even in a physical level. Stuffing them down to ‘deal with them in an adult way’ (aka no anger, no crying but all rational and unemotional) isn’t helpful Imo.
Just Understanding isn’t helpful.
I think it’s ok to say ‘it’s fine to be angry. It’s ok to feel hurt’. Saying that these feelings are not allowed because you should be an adult is just putting people right back to where they were as a child where their feelings were not acceptable. That’s exactly the type of attitude that created a lot of the problems in the first place.

What you said was

"I think an awful lot of people feel "damaged" in some way by their parents. I'm confident that in the vast majority of cases, the parents were doing what they thought was best at the time."

Your suggestion is that as long as the parents were doing their 'best' then that is ok and their children should understand, forgive them and move on with their lives.

Their is a huge flaw in that logic.

The parents may not have wanted to cause their children trauma, but they did.
During that trauma the child's
anger and rage was internalised instead of being directed at the parents.

They couldn't direct it at the parents because the child's life depended on them, so instead they blamed themselves and have been doing so ever since, having a shit life because that's what they believe they deserve.

The only way to break free from that trauma is to work through the repressed anger, rage, fear and shame by directing the emotions at the root cause, ie the parents.

@WakingUpDistress
re "going past the numbness", I know exactly what you mean.

The problem is that the numbness or trauma that lives in the pit of your stomach may well be there since your first moments after birth.

I found the approach in this book very helpful to get into the pain and emotion.
www.amazon.co.uk/Conquer-Your-Critical-Inner-Voice/dp/1572242876

If your parent was merely doing their best they wouldn't become abusive when you broached painful childhood memories with them. They will feel uncomfortable and possibly defensive but not aggresive and nasty. This seems to be the way you sort the wheat from the chaff. A largely mindless parent won't become cruel and aggressive if their adult child tries to have a discussion about it. A previous poster spoke of the unreachability of many of these parents. That sums it up.

Mine didn't live through the war, she was born after it, and, in many ways, had a pretty deprived childhood in poor quality housing (but nothing out of the ordinary for the time and amongst her friends). I feel sorry for her because of that, but that doesn't mean I find it easy to live with what she was like when I was growing up or now.

The obsession with not drawing any attention to yourself has, bizarrely, made her very attention-seeking, but only certain things are acceptable. Anything MH is a big no, as is anything viewed as ostentatious or showing off but physical illness (her own) becomes a big thing. This week's phone call centred around 'I've been in hospital again'. No, she'd spent 15 mins in the hospital phlebotomy clinic for a routine blood test!

She's always refused to get involved with childcare (have never expected any, we've always paid for any we needed) but still wants grandchild photos to show to friends to prove she's a hands-on grandma. When a close friend of mine died (who my Mum didn't know) she suddenly announced she was going to come and stay to care for DD so I could go to the funeral! We'd already sorted it with DH taking annual leave, so she came down, got in the way with lots of melodrama about how dreadful the death was. Mum then went home and regaled her friends for ages about how dreadful it was dying so young and how affected she'd been by it. She never once asked how I was feeling!

@NightNite thank for the book recommendation.
I seem to be getting a longer and longer reading list thank you this thread 😁😁

Unreachable is a good word to describe things.
Thanks @Cleotolstoy

These people best isn't a standard best.
Pity them, or not, as their best is/was rubbish.
They will never admit it.
They will become angry and cruel if confronted, because they can never admit their inadequacies.

Yes you need ti move from sadnesses/ depression to anger at the parents.
There is very little point doing this to them - they will just deny, deflect, cry etc.
you will never get their validation.
Or approval , or love.
You do deserve better.
Remember, you were a child.
You did NOTHING wrong.
You can give yourself the love, validation and approval you seek.

One lady wanted to ask her mum why she had done all the things she had to her - but in the end knew he would be pointless.
She's no contact now for several years and loving life now.

This is something I've really been struggling with in my thirties and especially since I've had my child.

I feel we all have strengths and weaknesses, and being a parent is a job role that many don't have the skills for. The same as not everyone could be a heart surgeon, or a CEO, or work with young children.

For those of us who had parents who were most definitely not equipped for the role, but actually raised us in ways that were extremely damaging, it can be very hard to come to terms with.

However my personal experience is that once you become self aware and understand the impact their parenting has had, you can then try to make the changes. It's been a huge thing for me to understand that my parents are just people who ultimately conceived and had a baby. That doesn't mean they knew how to parent. And I've been working on setting boundaries, showing myself self love and compassion, speaking to myself far more kindly, engaging in lots of self care, and raising my child in the way I wish I had been. This has done wonders for me and I'm coming out the other end. It's taken years though, and I actually now have compassion for my parents too knowing they too were raised by somewhat abusive parents.