Struggling with childhood memories and resentment

[PurpleSky300]

I just wondered if anyone else sometimes struggles to come to terms with their past.' I find myself dwelling on things eg

• my dad was violent to my mum but it took 10 years to leave. Neither of them ever acknowledged that I witnessed it. I can't comprehend why she left us in that situation

• my Mum was a heavy drinker and never paid any attention to my schooling. We lived in poverty and I went to school in unwashed uniform a lot and got bullied

• my parents did not do right by pets. At one point, our house was infested with fleas and my parents did nothing, we all got bitten to hell and back and the cat never saw a vet.

• I had to care for my grandma when she got dementia and I didn't do a good job. My grandma didn't get the care she deserved and I feel very guilty

In 20 years, things have changed a lot. I have my own life, I'm comfortable, good job etc. My mum stopped drinking, got a job, sorted herself out and she's a different person. My dad is ashamed, we have a difficult relationship but we try to move on.

They have changed for the better and I do recognise that. But sometimes I am just CONSUMED by resentment and part of me wants to rub their face in it. I would never ever make the decisions they made. I'm furious that they were so shit. I want them to say it and acknowledge it and nobody ever will. It eats away at me and I feel horribly guilty and complicit in it all.

My advice to you is to request some counselling to address these issues. You may find some freedom.from.these emotional shackles. In my area yiu can refer yourself on the NHS- I am.in England. I am currently doing this. Having a safe space where you can say what you like is incredibly liberating. See this as an investment in you. Take care.

It’s hard. I grew up in a household where there was a lot of arguing / fighting between my parents. My mum does address is occasionally and saw we should have never stayed together. It’s affected how I lead my life, I split with my ex pretty quickly when I knew it wasn’t going to work out but we remained good friends. I didn’t want my kids growing up with parents who hated each other. I try and remember we lived in different times, but that doesn’t excuse them. I think a professional counsellor will help you work through everything and decide how to take it forward, whether you address it with your parents or not

@PurpleSky300
I am so sorry you experienced this. Be very very clear that none of it was your fault. With your grandma you did the best you could with what you knew at the time, forgive yourself for not knowing more. She does.
Try and replace any feelings of self pity with self respect. It’s ok to be you, and it’s ok to feel what you feel. Feel the resentment and try to accept that this happened to you and this is how you feel about it, it’s then easier to let it go, rather than pushing it down all the time. It just gets bigger.
I completely agree that counselling is the way forward, in the meantime have you thought about keeping a diary of your feelings?
Wishing you all the best @PurpleSky300

I agree with pp who have said counselling is a good idea, but I suspect family therapy would be useful, too. I think it's really reasonable that you feel angry that all of this has never been acknowledged or discussed, and its hard for you to process it on your own. It would be good to have a safe, mediated space for you all to sit down as a family and process this. It's not something I'd always suggest (e.g when people are in a situation where parents' abuse/alcoholism is ongoing), but it sounds like your mum is sober and did isn't abusive now, so it might be a good time to try.

Good luck with whatever you do!

So, essentially, your feelings were silenced by your parents as a child, that child is still inside you, and now you are the one who doesn't let her speak.

No wonder she's more and more furious as your life ticks by, is there?

You need to find a way to listen to and respect her. She's your heart.

What a lovely post @Watchkeys ❤️

Yes me.

I've been having counselling and I think it's helping me to get some things out and process them. I feel so angry and resentful at the way I was treated as a child and I wish there was a way to get over this. I hadn't realised how much it had affected the trajectory of my whole life.

Yes, I've been struggling with the same feelings for a long time, especially over the last decade or so - I'm 54.

Both my parents are neglectful narcissists ... neither wanted to be parents in the first place - in fact my mother told my father when they first met that she couldn't have children - she was knocked up within 6 months of them meeting, and as she is a practicing Catholic, they 'had' to get married. Add in that my father was only 18 at the time, and my mother 23 (he had lied about his age)... they ended up with 3 children, all born within 4 years.

My father cheated on my mother the whole 23 years they were married. He started working abroad when I was 9, we trailed after him around the world for 6 years until our education was getting seriously affected. My mother resented having to stay in one place with us greatly, because she knew the minute my father was out of her sight he'd be shagging around again. Of course she was right.

They finally split when my father had his exit affair, he left for the other woman 6 months after my younger brother turned 18. My mother blames me for it all, as I had 'made him feel old' by getting married when I was 21 (he was 42). She's told me this numerous times, the latest being only last year. My mother won't even acknowledge in the slightest way that our childhood was shit, even though my sister-in-law has told her that my older brother has no happy memories of childhood. She gets incredibly defensive to the point of making very nasty personal remarks if you even dare to try and talk to her about any of it. Blames my father for everything, even though I know (from retrieving her diaries from the rubbish and reading them) that she was a more than willing participant in everything that happened.

I've been no contact with my father for 34 years and very low contact with my mother for 25. I've not seen her in 13 years, I deliberately live on the other side of the world from her. Neither myself or my two brothers have had any children of our own.

Sorry this is so long. Like previous posters, I recommend personal counselling.

I want to thank you so much for this.

I'm struggling with aspects of my childhood too and particularly so in the years since I became a mother. Lately that anger has been bubbling up as my DM increasingly relies on me and I struggled to verbalise why this is... and you've clarified it for me.

I think I also need to find someone who will listen to that little girl and then help this middle aged woman make sense of it all.

OP I'm so sorry you went through this. Come over and join us on the "but we took you stately homes" thread.

My parents are both alcoholics and despite counseling and a huge amount of work on myself I still feel resentment towards them. It's made worse how I have a child and live overseas as they insist on coming to visit for a month at a time (!) and I really struggle with it.

They will never ever speak about it and minimize any emotions or feelings I try to share on this.

It's so hard and you are not alone.

I understand my version of this. Life was hell when I was a child. Both parents mentally ill, much older sibling in an abusive marriage, me hated by all older siblings, left to my own devices and had no voice.

Life has moved on for the whole family. But if it wasn't for the therapy I've had I wouldn't be here now. I had to give the child in me space to speak. In doing so I've been able to relate to my family as an adult and vice versa.

I feel for you. It's not easy but therapy can help massively.

Hi OP

Like you, I also still talk to my parents. They pretend none of it ever happened. They talk about their ‘young married life’ as if it was a bit of silly bickering, when men have been in jail for far less than my father did.

If I hadn’t siblings I think I may have lost my mind. When we got to about 30 and all had our own families we started talking about it. We wanted to check we all remembered it, and that it was the way it seemed. That’s the power of the dissonance denial creates. I think denial is one of the worst aspects of abuse. It’s very hard to move on if people are pretending it didn’t happen.

Just telling someone independent of me was a massive relief. It took me til I was 35. The best thing I ever did was told someone I respected and whose opinion I valued about the stuff that happened in my house growing up. I was worried they’d judge me. They were kind to me but obviously taken aback because I don’t think they had a clue; I do seem okay.They said the word ‘abuse’ and I felt guilty (because I had kept my mouth shut for so long, because we were told what happens in a family stays in a family, because like you, I feel somehow to blame for something I had zero power over) but latterly, like a huge weight had been lifted. Very strange feeling. One of my siblings went for counselling after an unrelated incident and ended up speaking about her upbringing and our parents; the psychiatrist diagnosed severe PTSD. All of us have chosen careers which relate to DV. One of us prevented a murder by running into a potentially fatal (to them as well) situation and physically disarming a man who was in the process of killing his wife. My sibling said that if they hadn’t had the horrible experiences they’d had as a kid then that woman might be dead, their kids in care. Instead that man is in jail. That’s an extremely long game bit of positivity, not gonna lie, but also, that sort of thinking does help us. If it wasn’t for this, I wouldn’t be that. But in a good way.

I’m getting quite upset writing this, so please don’t underestimate the validity of your feelings and what you’ve endured has meant to you as an adult. You’re not dwelling on the past, you’re living with it. This stuff has an effect for years after it’s over. Maybe our childhood never really leaves us. I still get panicky around my parents sometimes and they’re very old now. I don’t know if it’s possible to get counselling on the NHS where you live but I think it would be worth a go. I was sceptical about it, because like yourself, I wanted acknowledgment that it was damaging from the people who did it. I wanted them to say ‘we are sorry that was very wrong of us.’ But that ship has sailed for us, and also, I don’t know if ultimately it really matters. I wonder what age you are? (I found my perspective changed dramatically with age and so did that of one my older siblings. Younger one, less so).

Sometimes someone else acknowledging what has happened to you can be enough. It helped me move on. I am not all the way there but I would say I’m a lot less angry and at peace. I still feel it sometimes when I look at my own kids and remember. The complicit guilt thing you wrote really stuck a chord with me. It’s a messed up way of adding insult to injury. It’s maybe worse than the actual abuse itself.

I really hope you can find peace, you deserve it. X

Mine were shit. I went nc. I told them straight when I was an adult, I asked why, and then I killed the relationship.

I neither forgive or forget, but learn from it and I have moved on. You cannot forgive the unforgivable and forgetting would be a disservice to myself and in their favour.

It doesn’t eat me up but they don’t get a pass from me. They are not people I wish to associate with, as they are cruel, abusive and selfish. They cried, which is much more self serving manipulative selfish behaviour.

the issue here is you’ve decided to maintain a cordial relationship with them, when you also do not forgive and forget, and as such you’re hiding your feelings, and if you can’t address it, you will be resentful for ever.

Also op if add maybe the reason I was able to move on from what they did, and I won’t go into detail as it’s harrowing, but not only did I address it with them, and go nc. I told everyone.

As an adult, i told my grandparents, their siblings, my cousins, I’m fully open about it with my close friends even now.

one parent is now dead, the other still alive. They have no contact with any of their family. Both very lonely people after everyone knew.

it doesn’t give me satisfaction, but it wasn’t my shame. It was theirs. I was never going to be complicit in it and I was always going to grow up and hold them accountable

i actually told them, if you seriously abuse a child, you should realise. That child is going to grow up and they are going to make you pay for it. They would have been better killing me. Because I took their dignity in return. I did it politely, quietly. But I did it and I spared no detail.

Unless something like this reminds me, I honestly don’t even think about it. I feel no shame, no guilt, no resentment. It’s all on them.

I grew up in an abusive home. There is no acknowledgment from my mother that this has a massive effect on me. She sees herself as the only victim of what happened, but she isn’t. There were helpless children affected too.
I ended up in an emotionally abusive relationship and had a child. DC was 9 before we got out. I am deeply ashamed and guilty about it. I should have protected DC and I failed. I will have to own that to DC when the time comes to have that conversation.
I don’t know if that little child inside you ever fully gets over what happened to you especially when the people that did it don’t stand up and take responsibility for what happened.
What your feeling is unfortunately all too common.

Me too. My job now means I deal with child protection records. Some of them I have to redact, which means reading through them. I was surprised to read about similar stuff that I went through and to find that it was taken incredibly seriously. I realised I had been a 'Child at Risk' and probably should have been on a child protection plan. I do feel resentment and don't really enjoy my parents' company. But they are old and sometimes, unbelievably, I feel sorry for them.

Wow. You should be very proud of the strength you had to do this.

OP I think it's true that you never really get over it, it never goes away entirely, because those formative years affect who you are and a stolen childhood is something you can never get back. Therapy can help you come to terms with it, but it's very difficult not to feel anger and resentment when the people who did it carry on with their life as though nothing happened and there's no acknowledgement or apology. Are you sure you want to maintain contact with them?

Thank you so much for these responses. Some I've read again and again, upset myself, started again from the top, etc. It feels such a relief to read them. I have hardly ever spoken about this stuff.

Someone asked my age - I'm 30. No family of my own yet but at the age where it's on the horizon for my friends. I see them striving, trying hard, planning every detail and I understand my own background even less. Sometimes I resent little kids for being pampered, I know that's cracked but it's true.

@Elfidela1980 - what you say about dissonance, having to 'check' your memories, that's so true.

People are complex. My Dad, for example. I learned things about him when I grew up that I didn't know then. He was physically and emotionally abused by his own Dad, he was bullied in school, he was/is addicted to drink and drugs. On the day of my Grandfather's funeral my Dad (and his siblings) talked about the beatings they used to get and the 3 of them were crying like little kids. Yet I've also seen him strangle my mother, so how do I reconcile those things? And in my own way I have "punished" him because I have told women he was involved with about his history, and they ran for the hills. My Dad needs therapy more than anybody I've ever met.

And how can I hate my Mum? She was being kicked from pillar to posted, throttled, she had no money, I'd probably drink too if I lived that life.

I want to forgive them both more than I want to hold on to all this anger. I just wish they "saw" it through my eyes. And because they minimise it all I just can't do it. I need to purge myself mentally somehow.

It's often having children of your own, feeling that absolutely unconditional love for them, that brings these things to a head, because it makes your own childhood even more incomprehensible when you feel the intensity of instinctive parental love yourself. It throws it all into even sharper relief, so I think you're doing exactly the right thing to deal with this issue now - whatever the right outcome of that is for you - rather than have it hit you like a ton of bricks when you have a baby and it disrupting your time with them. I hope you can find a therapist who specialises in this area that can help you to work through the trauma and decide what to do, prioritising yourself and your future for once.

I want to forgive them both more than I want to hold on to all this anger. I just wish they "saw" it through my eyes. And because they minimise it all I just can't do it. I need to purge myself mentally somehow.

The problem is that by refusing to acknowledge it they are making it impossible for you to forgive them and move on emotionally. It's yet another form of abuse. They are forcing you to either live with the lie that everything is fiiine and deny your own emotions, or walk away from the relationship. Those are the only options left to you if they won't discuss it. It's another kind of control.

In my opinion it isn't yourself you need to purge. You need to redirect your love and energy to yourself. But only you can reach this conclusion and it's completely normal given what you've been through that you'd need a therapist's help to process it all and get some clarity. When we bury trauma it keeps doing damage, like a knotted ball of string with knot upon knot so the longer it's left untreated, the more tangled it becomes. EMDR therapy can be particularly helpful, especially if you find it hard to discuss it or put it into words.

The grief you have for the little girl you were is for the family she should have had. But at some point you may be able to accept that it's an imaginary family you're grieving, not one that you can ever make your family into, no matter how hard you try, because none of this was your fault to begin with.

I cry sometimes for the little girl I once was, when I look at my daughter. She's so similar to me. Before everything awful happened. And sometimes I daydream about an imaginary family for myself that I've made up, a different childhood. But my family are not those people and never will be. I need to comfort my inner child when she cries, and focus on the future so that my own children don't ever carry that kind of pain with them.

And how can I hate my Mum? She was being kicked from pillar to posted, throttled, she had no money, I'd probably drink too if I lived that life.

You don't have to hate her. But it is a fact that she failed you. She was an adult, she had choices. She coukd have prioritised you and left. There was help to do so even then. But she didn't. To refuse to even acknowledge the effect on you is not acceptable. She is probably burying the trauma herself and happy to pretend it didn't happen but agajn that is her prioritising her wellbeing over yours even now, when she could get therapy herself and address it. If people around you continue to behave in a way that's damaging to you, like they've done all your life from your description, then it's completely acceptable to draw boundaries to protect yourself and tell them that while they continue this behaviour to you, you cannot be around them.

Oh this is so true. When I had my first child I never wanted to let him go.

Same here. And then I just couldn't comprehend at all what they'd done to me. I always knew it was awful, but that made me realise how awful. That's when I got help but I wish I had done it before having children.

Perhaps the best way to deal with it is to accept that they were damaged people who didn't really know what they were doing. Your dad clearly suffered. Had he been loved and well-treated he'd have been a different man. In a sense, you, your mother and your father were all victims of your grandfather's cruelty.

There was a lot of pain and sadness in my family as well. Compared to many people I was lucky, but even as a kid I realised that the adults in my life were all damaged in some way. My father had had a miserable childhood. He wasn't wanted by his parents, struggled at school, got bullied, had no friends, etc. He carried a lot of rage and had terrible abandonment issues. At times, he was like a live grenade. My mother had grown up the only child of unhappily married parents, and she spent most of her childhood shielding her beloved mum. But then, their parents were like that because they too had been hurt. My grandmother was selfish and useless because she'd grown up in 1920s Deptford as the child of a drunken father and a mum who literally dropped dead from exhaustion. And my grandfather was that way because he'd been abandoned as a child in the 1930s and raised in poverty in the countryside.