Aibu for turning back into a child with my family?

[Guiltridden12345]

I’m mid 40s, professional, happy marriage, lovely kids. Normal stresses and strains but no real problems. Except one - my childhood. It wasn’t happy. My father was a bully and I grew up frightened and anxious. He didn’t physically abuse my mum but all other elements of abusive control including financial and just being continually really horrible and aggressive and dominating. We were all scared of him and my mum, instead of calling it out, told us to be quiet and good until it blew over. What a lesson. My first romantic relationships were with terrible men as a result of what i saw as normal. He has mellowed for sure but I am unable to forget the past and we have only a very superficial relationship. Mum was and remains downtrodden and tiptoes around him. It infuriates me and I feel all that anger and frustration of my youth so viscerally. As an adult I am a new person, I moved away, got a great job, married a wonderful man, have a lovely family and a new life. I feel incredibly lucky. I cut off everything from my childhood and never go back - that wasn’t conscious, it just happened. I reinvented myself and I just don’t engage with that history if I can help it.

I have kids. We live miles away from parents so hardly see them. My kids love them. My dad has in the main behaved, and is on a constant warning that bad behaviour will result in not seeing his grandchildren. This message is through my mum of course, he’s emotionally stunted and would never have this discussion openly. He uses silence and avoidance as tools, probably why he has got away with behaving like such a child for so long.

There was an incident in recent years where his behaviour put my mum in danger and which was also unspeakably cruel. It was little different from past stuff but extreme and dangerous and just awful to hear about. I was furious. My mum told me like it was amusing, but it simply reminded me of all those days as a child either tiptoeing around an angry man or waiting for things to kick off. It lit a torch paper in me that had clearly been smouldering.

I refused to see them for a while but it caused me so much anxiety that I relented. But seeing them causes me as much anger/pain and resentment as not seeing them. So it’s a total lose lose. I have an older sibling but he has a different relationship -I grew up angry and wanting to protect myself and everyone in my family from this bully, whereas he became forgiving and a bit of a soft touch. I don’t blame him, it’s his way of coping. He has his issues too but is desperate to pretend we are a happy extended family when we are not.

I had some counselling a few years ago but it made things worse as it identified, for the first time, that I’m also furious with my mum, perhaps more than my dad, for not protecting us and herself when we were young and continuing to pander to him. I had genuinely not realised her part in it, or my anger at her, before. So it made things worse really and I stopped the sessions.

When they visit they stay over as they are a 5-6 hour car journey away (I never visit, I just hate being in the family home, it makes me so unhappy so I avoid it). They stayed recently. I hate it. I want them to see the grandchildren, who have no idea and have a really good relationship with them (we see them rarely so it’s a novelty). But the smallest things rip off the giant scab, from the way my dad walks, to the minor panderings of my mum around him. These things turn into unbelievable irritations that literally make me want to scream and/or get up and walk out of the house (extreme but true - it must be fight or flight or something as it feels like a physical need to run away). I turn right back into an unreasonable teenager and become moody and can’t bear to be in the same room. I go to bed early just to escape. It’s awful but more awful because although I can’t stand to be near them, when they go I feel dreadful guilt, especially for my mum, and wish I hadn’t been so moody/cross. I feel awful guilt that I can’t bear her company, that her life is so sad, that she continues to be so bloody downtrodden. Every time they leave, I feel like I owe an apology for my behaviour whilst being bloody furious that no one has really apologised to me for my own childhood. I have no desire to have a showdown discussion - we had a minor one over the recent incident but I was so stressed out by it that I had to let it slide for my own health. In my work i represent people with no voice and have no doubt that this is a psychological way of assuaging my guilt at still having no voice on my own issues as an adult. Rather, I have a voice but the emotional strain of using it is just too much. So I get my kicks by helping others have a voice which is what keeps me going to be honest and makes some sense of my weird childhood because I channel all that negative into something more positive.

Aibu to feel like this? What on earth is the solution other than putting up with infrequent visits and minimising contact which makes me feel guilty too? I feel I’m in a total lose lose scenario and my greatest fear is my mum dying and then feeling terrible guilt that I wasn’t kinder to her in her last years.

Sorry this is so long. Once I started I couldn’t stop typing.

I think if you don't tell these people how you feel, you will always have a sense of unfinished business.

"That’s why it feels like regression."

@Guiltridden12345 This struck a chord with me. I had great parents but my sister... not so much. In adulthood, I always felt like a little kid whenever I went to visit. Over time, as I met someone and settled down (and saw what decent relationships and families were like), I started to question... and to remember things that happened in my childhood that I'd bottled up, tried to forget, blanked out... you get the idea.

I felt like I regressed every time I went over, and now I realise she was actually abusive in lots of different ways. Physically, emotionally, mentally, the whole shebang. I never fully escaped until I went NC. Yes it was hard, yes I needed counselling (and could probably do with more TBH), but it was necessary. I honestly think I would have had a breakdown had I not severed ties when I did.

Unpacking your past is never easy, especially when you're in a situation as you are. I agree with PPs who have recommended books to read and other useful content. It can really help, even if you don't want to go down the counselling route again just yet. Take care and go easy on yourself, that teenager still needs looking after (as my younger self did) 💐

Bless you. Just because your scars aren't visible, doesn't mean you weren't wounded.

Practical suggestions-

Schedule it. Look at the year, at extended family events where you will see them, and add in perhaps one extra meet.
Consider meeting in the middle, on neutral ground, or combining the visit with the extended family events you mentioned.

You are aiming for reduced impact as far as you can.

Lastly, try and reframe things. He's awful and she's inadequate. They have nothing to offer your dc, and they damage you, so minimising contact is the correct, healthy thing to do.
Use your partner- get him to stand between you and your parents when you have to see them. Build a routine if they have to visit that involves you breaking up the visit with lots of trips out alone.

Reframing who they are- remind yourself he isn't in power any more, he is an irrelevant, powerless little man- sad, really.

I had similar work to do. I had to accept that my lovely dad had spent his life appeasing my mum, so I could not intervene differently when he was finally vulnerable. That just wasn't the choice he'd have made. It was hard accepting it.

Also - would suggest moving this to Relationships - lots of smart people who will help work this through

Thank you all. Ooh how do I move it?

Report to MN and ask. I'll do it, too.

Although I think you're right that she should have been your protector, there are many, many reasons why some women can't leave their abusers. And remember, that was your father, not her.

Are you able to feel some compassion and realise that deep down she is still terrified of him?

How does your husband behave with them when they stay with you?

Please read adult children of emotionally immature parents.

Your mum is just as emotionally immature as your dad. Emotionally mature people protect their dc. She's a passive immature person and just as damaging.

The books great actually and the end chapters are about detaching and having an unemotional relationship. Seeing them for what they are and not trying to get anything from them.

"guiltridden

re your comment:
"I had some counselling a few years ago but it made things worse as it identified, for the first time, that I’m also furious with my mum, perhaps more than my dad, for not protecting us and herself when we were young and continuing to pander to him. I had genuinely not realised her part in it, or my anger at her, before. So it made things worse really and I stopped the sessions"

A real pity you decided to do that as this was ultimately a wrong move. Please reconsider and address this through therapy. You need to find a BACP registered therapist and a person at that whom you can work with, they need to be able to fit in with your approach.

Your parents are still very much together and that does not surprise me at all.
They both get what they want out of their abusive and codependent relationship with each other and she is also most unlikely to leave him. She equally cannot and will not. I can imagine her own father was abusive too. You have gone onto make a good family life for yourself despite them, not because of them. You do not owe these people anything now, let alone a relationship and I think your own fear, obligation and guilt re them has made you think you do.

If parents/relatives are too toxic/batshit/abusive etc for YOU to deal with, its the SAME deal for your kids too. Neither one of your parents is at all emotionally safe enough to be at all around.

Hi OP, sounds very much like my own childhood and parents situation. I still have a lot of residual issues going on as a result but am very low contact now.

If you do have to see them, I suggest that they either stay in a hotel or local airbnb. Ok it costs a little cash but you need boundaries.

Or alternately if you have to go see them, you stay in a local hotel or airbnb. Again, a cost worth paying.

Keep visits very occasional. Meet up with your mum, without your dad around if you feel able to do so.

I strongly recommend you read the book about CPTSD by Pete Walker, it's a really fascinating read because it will help you understand both your own issues now, and why your parents behaved the way you did. It was like a lightbulb switching on when I read this book. I cried a lot and I found it very therapeutic.

And do keep pursuing therapy in whichever forms that takes. I see it as an ongoing thing. I don't always find talking therapy helpful, sometimes infuriating, but I go through short bursts of it. Then I do some yoga or some decluttering or meditation or other alternative therapies that I find just as helpful TBH. Reading and watching youtube videos of people like Gabor Mate are also really helpful because you can objectify their behaviour a bit more once you understand it. It helps me process these things. And sometimes, taking a break from all the delving is equally important.

Forgot to mention - in the book I mention above he gives specific steps for dealing with your residual anger, and all the other manifestations of having such a difficult childhood, all of which are super practical.