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?

@Kellie45 "Them forgiving you"...well thanks for making me fucking laugh! I'm laughing because I do get that distinct vibe sometimes from my mother, that I should be eternally grateful to her that I exist at all, because as she so often reminds me "I was offered an abortion when I found out I was pregnant with you"

Like I had any fucking say over her decision...

I've had 3 psychiatrists and 2 psychologists tell me over a period of 30 years that my parents were shit and selfish...both are narcissists. I went into therapy because I was diagnosed as bipolar when I was 23, not because of my parents, because up until that time, like @Dacquoise has posted, I'd buried within myself how difficult my childhood actually was...I always knew it wasn't normal, though. I first tried killing myself when I was 17, I had a nervous breakdown and was diagnosed with severe depression...at 17! The only thing my mother has actually admitted since that time is that myself and my two brothers were actually very well behaved children. So apart from existing, what does she have to 'forgive' me for? Fuck all, that's what.

@Goldengun Yep, I had all 3 on your list too. We were actively discouraged from having hobbies, extra curricular activities - apparently 'only boring people have hobbies'. We never did anything together as a family, weekends were spent sat around the house. I can still remember looking blankly at people (teachers, other kids) when they asked 'what did you do at the weekend?'

Their apathy was so bad my younger brother ended up barely going to school for the last year (this was back in the late 80s, schools were far more lax about attendance back then...no fines, etc). He left with zero qualifications. My parents stopped attending parents evenings when I was 6...he hadn't even started school. It was also discovered when he was about 30 that he'd been going around with a skull fracture since he was 14 - he'd had a bad fall at school and hit his head...the school wanted to contact my mother to tell her, but my brother knew she'd just be angry that she'd been bothered by them, so he persuaded them he was fine....once again, it was the 80s so there was no automatic trip to the hospital. He went home and never bothered mentioning it to my parents. It healed badly and he's been left with a permanent large lump of bone on his forehead.

That's just one tiny example of how shit they actually were.

Abuse is normal to the abused because they don't realise that normal parents don't behave that way

This hits the nail on the head.

I'm still learning that some things I thought were normal aren't.

Oh and my mother refused to be believe I was bipolar until I was 50 - 4 years ago. I couldn't possibly have a serious mental illness as that would suggest she was a less than perfect mother. Because of course that's how it works....or it how it does in the mind of a raging narcissist.

Dacquoise I have tried meditation on and off for 30 years. I can tolerate yoga nidra but a lot of other meditation styles give me a racing heart. I listened to an Irene Lyon video the other day about why some of those techniques don't work with trauma irenelyon.com/2022/09/25/why-biohacks-dont-work-when-healing-the-nervous-system/

@damnyourdogs

So much resonates in your post, except in my case she strove to have me labelled and diagnosed and medicated so that it was definitely "a chemical imbalance" and of course, therefore not her fault, or anything she did.

Over 20 years later my DM due to a change in career holds forth all the time about the link between experience of abuse and trauma and mental health.

Has she ever acknowledged that if that's true, it also applies to me?

Nope.

I'm sorry it hasn't worked for you but well done for trying. It's the avoiding and denying that keeps us stuck. I would never in a million years be able to tell my family that I'm in therapy, meditate and practice yoga. They would see it as proof of my 'mental problems', something I was brainwashed into believing as a small child.

I don't think an abused person will ever be 'reset' to the state that an unabused person enjoys but, hey, it makes us bloody interesting, quirky and gives us strengths that the 'normal' don't develop.

What exactly does OP need to be forgiven for?

I can completely relate rn.
My daughter is 14 weeks and it's made me reassess a lot, most of which I'd thought I could now gloss over.
Turn out not so much.

Yes. I hear you. I'm in a similar boat.

I recently started therapy and it is helping a lot. My therapist recommended the book "The Emotionally Absent Mother" by Jasmin Lee Cori and I am finding it helpful. It has helped me see what the problems are, why they may have come up and how I might deal with them ongoing. Just because there is usually ample reason for a parent to have treated you badly due to their own issues does not mean that you just have to suck it all up. You don't have to have it out with them, either. First and foremost you need to work on you.

I had the same derelict parents. They dotted on older brother and ignored me and sister. Mother turned blind eye to dubious sexual predatory behaviour from father and brother. Sister and I left at 16 - dread to think what would have happened had we not had each other. We were ostracised by them for years after. And now mother is a widow and brother lives overseas we’re expected to visit twice a week, have her over on a Sunday and basically be her carers….
it sucks and it grates

I just realised from an early age my mum didn't really like me for some reason and accepted this. Not once did she ever tell me she loved me.

I did but only at 44 when I went into psychosis and had psychological help afterwards. it destroyed my life. I kn ew I had had a challenging childhood but didnt know I was so utterly traumatised. I was so highly successful in my life I didnt think I had been effected.

You are definitely not alone. I also had parents who were completely emotionally absent, who gave me everything materially but were unable to show any love or warmth. And even now, at over 50, they still don't see me as an independent person, but as a child who needs to be taught and patronised. Since a disastrous Christmas (with another (and last) attempt to be seen and respected), I have been trying to maintain very low contact with moderate success, as there is no insight and complete incomprehension without even the slightest willingness to reflect on themselves. Unreachable sums it up very well.