Horrific parents, still struggling almost 50 years on

[Biculturalfamily]

Has anyone had terrible parents and actually managed to move on? I just had a stressful project at work. It was successful but was intense for 4 weeks or so. For me, it seems that any stress of any kind brings the worst memories of my childhood back. I remember all the shame and all the hatred I felt growing up. It just overwhelms me. And it feels so ridiculous to be responsible for anyone or anything when I feel like such a piece of crap. My mother has never smiled at me. She has never given me a compliment. She used to say " bad weeds grow fast" when someone commented on my height. She used to say "she has nothing else to do but study" when I did well in exams. When I told her about work success She said "I suppose you think you are important". She told me I was evil. I have a picture on my wedding day with her that I asked my friend to take deliberately to capture how miserable she looked, when I was really beautiful, so that I could remember that she's insane. She still gets to me though. I can't shake off the utter contempt she expressed to me. Obviously she was abused herself growing up but,tbh, now that my kids are teens, I am even angrier than ever and have no sympathy for her. I think I may be a miserable mum, with a million depressive episodes, but I am not cruel like she was to me. I married a man with little appetite for affection. Naturally, how could I accept an affectionate relationship? He is a good guy and he did/ does love me but gets furiously angry with me when I get sad about my past or stressed about my work. Looking to the future, I wish my children freedom to move on from life with me and strength to.unravel this crap that I have burdened them with. I am furious that my parents are still alive and could turn up at any moment. I blocked their messages at least because any message can unsettle me. My kids would probably be better off without me at this point though taking my own life would cause too many problems. I don't know how to stick around and fake it though. But I need to. How do I let this go? How can I stop feeling like such a horrible piece of crap and wrong at everything? Are there therapies that actually work? Should I try to get medications? I take sertraline at 50mg but obviously that's not working. I see a counsellor who is very sympathetic but doesn't help to make a change in how i feel. Is there something concrete that I can do to make a change?

I was very sceptical about EMDR therapy, but this is how my therapist explained it to me.
Imagine all your memories are stored in a filing cabinet, and you can take them out and read them. Some of these files will be very upsetting to read, and when you put it back in the filing cabinet they don't go in properly, or they are put back in the wrong place, or even left lying around all over the floor. Eventually you get to the stage where the fing cabinet is a complete mess and it's difficult to close the drawer.
With EMDR therapy, you read each file one by one and process the negative feelings associated with them. So you can file them neatly, in order, and you dont necessarily forget about them, but you no longer need to take the files out again to read.
The difference this made to me was astounding. Before, I couldn't even talk about anything relating to the abuse from my mother. I hadn't even told my DP of 13 years anything about it. And now I am able to talk about it without any feelings of hurt, abandonment, anger or shame.
I really hope this helps OP.

Try the Hoffman Process. It's not cheap but it's unbelievably healing for precisely the sort of childhood pain you're experiencing. I did it and it was life changing.

That is a really good question @Biculturalfamily I’m genuinely having to think about it.

My emotions are of a very difficult childhood and those emotional patterns definitely affect me to this day. My parents were all about appearances and how we looked outwardly as a family. They had no concept of how dysfunctional the family actually was with a tonne of sibling abuse going on under the surface that they largely set the culture and tone for with their own issues on playing favourites, distributing out a power imbalance among the siblings and deep, deep misogyny.

Thinking it through I deal with a lot of shame, not feeling like I’m worthy as a person, feeling unlovable, profound sadness but interestingly since I cut out my own family of origin much less loneliness.

My experiences with my own family felt very superficial, disconnected and unloving. I had to overfunction massively in my family growing up to get attention and there was little to no affection or closeness. I chased some friendships that had a similar feel to that in adulthood until I started to see more clearly how those patterns were playing out.

None of these emotions represent my life now, I have people in my life who genuinely love and admire me as a person. I have a lot of genuinely positive experiences in life and I really do like and love my life.

However even still those childhood emotional patterns definitely play out. I am much better at feeling them/sitting with them and managing them as they arise but there are times when they still feel like they could sink me, especially as you point out when I’m feeling weakened by some external tension or stress in my life.

I too would love to know if it is ever possible to fully shut them down or manage them fully.

I had not heard of the Hoffman process. I see they have residential programmes. Thank you so much. I am going to look into this.