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 take the view that while I might not be able to help who I am and the way I was brought up, I can help what I am going to be

That's true to some degree but not entirely. Childhood trauma affects your whole body, it's programmed into your neural pathways. It's like asking you to think your way out of a headache.

I think for me that the absence of any huge dramatic episodes or stand out poor behaviour led me to believe my parents were excellent, and with my mum being a teacher, well why wouldn't they be?

It's only been in these last 10 years, when Ive been an ( older) parent myself , do I realise that they were bang average, borderline poor, and I have no intention of repeating their apathy.

Examples would be :

• Not being encouraged or suggested to do any out of school clubs or activities ( sports, brownies, drama, choirs etc). I did nothing.

• Me be bullied passed them by completely. My requests for help were met with inaction and indifference, as if they were powerless to stop it.

• Being allowed to fail all my exams due to not revising or trying ( probably due to bullying).

I know this all seems pretty low level, but it made a huge difference to how happy my childhood was.

Parents are divorced now, they split before I was an adult, and now in my 80's my father hints at regrets at getting married in the first place, but you made your bed and lay in it in those days. It does explain a lot of stuff though, lack of engagement and togetherness for instance.

It isn't about making them pay. It's about doing whatever you need to do in order to heal from what they did. That can mean going no contact, it can mean writing a letter (and sending or not sending it), it can be whatever is necessary. It is likely that the parents in question won't change - but if acting helps their victim to move on, recover and be a better, stronger, kinder person then it is worthwhile. I'm a little surprised that you do not understand this.

What about forgiveness? Ever heard of that? Maybe them forgiving you?

I might have misunderstood you, so apologies, but are you suggesting that my parents need to forgive me for allowing me to be bullied, not informing the school that my father was dying during my a level summer therefore I failed them spectacularly and messed up my chosen career before it even started, for not getting me help when I told mum I had an eating disorder because 'i have enough on with your father', for allowing the next door neighbour to sexually abuse me while i was at school and then slut shame me for it, for denying me access to clothes, underwear, nightwear, hot water, deodorant, sanitary protection, a clean home and for hitting me every time I dared revolt, for leaving me in a foreign country for a year after a near fatal road accident to navigate a different health care and legal system age 21, just because she wanted a holiday so wouldn't let me come home. She has to forgive me?? You're nuts.

@Kellie45 I had excellent parents. My Dsis and I were excellent children. But you seem stuck on the idea that the parents must always have been right - why else would you talk about the parents forgiving things? The examples listed above are fully faults on the part of the parents.

I'm sorry all those things happened to you @TheSnootiestFox - (and everyone else who's described terrible childhood experiences) I think people who haven't been badly damaged by trauma find it very difficult to understand just how pervasive and persistent it can be whatever you do especially if you've repressed it for decades

@Kellie45 the words you are using are surprising to me.
Making them pay, the parents forgiving the children (what for? Being hard work?), not taking responsibility, blaming everyone…

It feels like you are living in a different world than me tbh.

fwiw I don’t think you can work on yourself Wo understanding why you react in a certain way. And very often how your parents were is part if the picture.

I am stuck with the idea that parents are far from perfect like I was and I am. We are all human beings and that we all make mistakes. My parents did with me and I did with my kids. But hopefully we got more things right than wrong

Yes I think you’re right there but I don’t know whether it helps to bring your parents into the picture at your age.

@Kellie45 I think you have been fortunate in your life. Is it really so hard to imagine that there might be people who have grown up with parents who, whilst not overtly abusive, have nevertheless been pretty much a failure as parents? The list that @TheSnootiestFox posted lists some things that I would classify as downright abusive, but also lists others which are simply failures. Serious ones. These are parents who did more things wrong than right and have no awareness of that. These are parents who damaged their kids because of the way they behaved and the choices they made. I have a foster son who has one of these. She still has no clue at all that she ever did anything wrong and thinks she's a great mum. I support my foster son with the fallout.

And that fallout has to be dealt with, which sometimes means confronting the failing parent with their actions if that is in the interest of their child's ultimate recovery. Maybe you should spend some time thinking about the ways in which others have been less fortunate in their lives than you have been, and therefore have very different needs.

It's not about making them pay. It's not vindictive.

It's about stopping my one surviving parent having that level of influence in my life again and stopping her doing the same to my DD. The consequences of her toxicity mean that, instead of having family support I've had to build a strong friendship network. Those are the people I help and support now, not my now ageing mother.

Then we are back to this old chestnut if listening to the people who are struggling rather than assuming you know better than them…

From what you say, it seems that whatever your upbringing was, you feel comfortable enough o deal what life brings you Wo having to reflect on your childhood. Great fir you.
Dint assume that because that’s your experience, it’s everyone else experience. If posters are telling you it helps them, they need to go back, why telling them they are wrong? Do you think they lying, deluding themselves rather ban undoing through the best they can to deal with their own issues?

im always staggered at how people who have no experience of an issue can come over and tell someone with the experience of that issue they know better than them. I’ve seen that happening with illnesses, disabilities, sexism etc…. It usually shows the person to be a prick tbh.

It’s an interesting thread.
I have found myself brooding about my childhood this year as I seem to be getting menopausal. Are people programmed to think about it just as it’s getting too late to confront our parents, who are too frail and going gaga.

So how do you think making your parents pay for the way they brought you up will do any good?

Parents that love you and made mistakes out of mindlessness would want their adult children to come to them if they found themselves feeling hurt about behaviours.

Parents that don't care will do anything to avoid an uncomfortable discussion. They would rather destroy the farce of any relationship you might have to prevent this. There is no way to make these ones care. You either continue with the sham of their narrative or set off a nuclear bomb by asking for accountability and sit back and watch the show.

I think it might be peri menopausal hormones, plus if we've got kids they might take up less of our time, plus perhaps increasing demands and frailty from elderly parents bringing relationship issues to the fore. My therapist says that she finds women in middle-age can often find it much more difficult to deal with things because we've had so many years of experience of pushing it down and getting on with stuff, it's buried very deep, she finds it much easier to have an impact with people in their 20s who are in chaotic stage, as I was.

@SierraSapphire from my own experience, I’d agree with your counsellor.

I often have looked back and wished I had counselling when I was a teen (that wouldn’t have happened as my mum was so against any counselling etc… Too navel grazing apparently)

WTAF!

Really good way to look at it

To answer your question as to why it's taken you so long to realise it's because every one of us from dysfunctional families are conditioned to to see this treatment as normal. You have nothing to compare it to so unless it's completely outrageous and brings outside attention you accept it. Abuse is normal to the abused because they don't realise that normal parents don't behave that way. Our tolerance for the unacceptable is very high which then affects other relationships when we leave home. We become magnets for people that are avoided by those brought up in normal families.

My own theraputic journey is over ten years now and I'm still processing it. I still get jolts of realisation that this person is a bully or that situation was unacceptable. It takes a lot of processing so don't expect to 'just get over it' as some people would like you to.

However, the beauty and gift of therapy is that it opens your eyes and let's you avoid certain behaviours and dysfunctional paths to put a stop to the intergenerational passing of the baton from parent to child. My childhood was pretty messed up, I can't have any relationship with my family, any of them but I can ensure that my daughter has had the security of one solid parent who has and will always have her back. You have to grieve that you didn't have it but you can do it for yourself by hanging in there with the therapy. 💐

@Kellie45 the problem is the parents don't change. So I had a relationship with my parents, adult to adult supposedly but they set all of the terms. They projected a lot on to me. Paranoia, Sensitivity, anger... when I asked them to stop they became so defensive, attacked me, recast me as the villain, themselves as the victims, and gave me the silent treatment and slagged me off to the relatives. All of that for just asking them to respect a boundary. ie, don't label me. I don't get that choice though. I must accept their right to label me. I have no choice. They have written me out of the family. they also feel that any forgiveness would be theirs not mine. I just want to protect myself from this shit dysfunction. I have given up.

This jumped out at me Dacquoise

We become magnets for people that are avoided by those brought up in normal families.

I have been in two abusive relationships despite being involved in feminism for years and years and people see me as a "strong independent career woman". It reminded me of this presentation that I watched put on by the Anna Freud Centre that basically showed how it was normal for those of us have been traumatised as kids to go on to have repeat experiences of trauma particularly in our 20s of trying to self medicate through alcohol and drugs, self-harm or sex or other unhealthy methods because we've never gained the skills to emotionally regulate properly because they are what we learn from our caregivers, and if a caregivers can't do it they can't show us, and all those things just compound our original trauma. I have been actively trying all my life to overcome childhood trauma, but it is only in the last few years I've understood that it is largely a condition of my nervous system rather than faulty thinking.

All these insights have helped me to realise that it really isn't my fault that I haven't been able to completely get over it, it's perfectly normal, and as much about changing your body as changing your brain. In fact I think there's a bit towards the end of the interview where the chair says something about abnormal brain patterns, and the researcher comes back and says they're not abnormal they're absolutely normal for children have experienced trauma, and that felt very powerful to me, as I think those of us who have emotional difficulties as a result of abuse probably have a long history of being blamed for our reactions.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uj-8D7L-coE

To answer your question as to why it's taken you so long to realise it's because every one of us from dysfunctional families are conditioned to to see this treatment as normal. You have nothing to compare it to so unless it's completely outrageous and brings outside attention you accept it. Abuse is normal to the abused because they don't realise that normal parents don't behave that way.

This reminded me of one day when I was explaining to my counsellor how I struggled with my dad pushing my buttons on a specific subject and how he did it to get a reaction out of me. And I struggled with my family banter/jokes.
And she stoped me and said ‘No that’s not joking or pushing your buttons. That’s shame. He was shaming you’.
I had never seen it that way. I had never even considered my dad shaming me because it was always portrayed as a joke (or me not being able to take a joke). But yay. It has been there all the time.

I can relate to so many of these comments. It's only recently after my father died that I've thought more about my upbringing and how it's affected me. I think that I must of realised things weren't right - but I didn't really understand why I felt that way until now when I'm much older and can look back at it. I didn't bring friends home because there was always an 'atmosphere'. I worked incredibly hard at school and got to Uni without any help from them - no real encouragement, no support, organised it all myself. When I had my kids I vowed to show them how much I loved them every single day - and I have. Kept my relationships hidden from them - husband visited but we didn't stay always went out so as not to spend the evening at home with them. I've tried really hard to do things differently with my kids and although I see my mother regularly and she's great with my kids we are not close and I keep her at arms length - a bit like she did with her own now I think about it! I just can't seem to break that wall between us down because although now I think back and realise my Dad was an arsehole - I know she was also responsible for the way things were and she would never acknowledge that. My brother wouldn't feel this way though - he is very much like her side of the family while I am like my fathers side. He is the golden child and I am the daughter who's expected to take on the traditional female roles.

Op, And that's how the baton gets passed on. Abusers project their shame on you. You carry it round feeling defective about something that isn't really yours. It's very liberating once you realise that. None of it belongs to you because you're actually innocent of the things your parents project onto you. You can only take responsibility for the things you do and can alter your behaviours if necessary. That phrase 'out if the fog', that's what therapy does for you. Clears the fog. I am so excited for you although it probably feels sad and awful at times.

My mother was very promiscuous when I was a child, a totally self-absorbed neglectful parent. My therapist suspects she has a personality disorder but to listen to her you would think I am the devil incarnate. The things I was shamed and humiliated for, normal reactions to her abuse and neglect, unbelievable. I became the family scapegoat which is why I can't be around them, although I am actually the most healthy one mentally. It will never change. I accept that, and have grieved for my non existent childhood.

I hope you get to that point. Keep shedding the labels pinned on you, appreciate you are good enough. You can't change your parents, you can't make them drop their denial but you can change you.

@SierraSapphire, have you tried meditation? Those pesky feelings that keep popping up out of nowhere because your nervous system remembers abusive situations can be helped with meditation.