"But we took you to stately homes" - Part 4

[oneplusone]

Can't beleive we're onto part 4, although i can't see this thread ever dying.

I was just reading through past posts to try and catch up on the months i have missed and something somebody said has triggered something for me. I know my mother didn't bond with me or love me and i think part of the reason why was because she thought i took after my dad whom she hates (although she is too gutless to leave him). I remember when i was young her saying things like my hair was like my dad's but she wouldn't say it an affectionate way, but quite a venomous way and it always made me feel uncomfortable when she said that but i must have been too young to figure out why.

The more i realise about my mother the more i despise and hate her. I remember she used to play hide and seek with me when i was very young, about 3. Only she would 'really' hide in a place i would never be able to find her. I remember crying and feeling completely distressed one time as i thought she had gone and left me alone at home. It was only after i had been crying for some time that she jumped out laughing from her hiding place. What a nasty, cruel, ugly piece of work and she parades around looking as if butter wouldn't melt and she has a lot of people fooled including my 2 sisters. I know my dad can see her for what she is which is why she hates him and i can see her true colours too which is why i hate her.

I know inside she is deeply insecure, lacks intelligence, strength and integrity. I have witnessed her lie, manipulate and cheat to get what she wants and the people to whom she lies and those who she manipulates are us, her own family. I just can't beleive my sisters cannot see through her, they are totally blind and deaf to her true character and have completely fallen for the victim role she has carved out for herself.

Cutting off my parents was the best thing i ever did and i have realised i need to set some boundaries with my sisters, my last remaining friend and even DH. How to do that is another thing, something completely new to me.

Just spoke to MIL and we arranged to meet for lunch. She text me yesterday to asked if we wanted to meet, and despite not really wanting to I did think to myself that as she hadnt seen DC's for a week and a half we would go.

We have now arranged for her to come here and we will go into town. I said I would drive as its a long walk and a rainy day.
She let me decide but did hint at coming to my part of town.

Just as we decided on time etc she said;

'... and on the way back I will take ds on the train (only one stop) because he loves the train.'

I said ok, but this has made me really again!
And Im not sure why.

I just feel like she is 'still' trying to take control. It's like a game of flaming ping pong.

After our last disagreement we didnt speak for 3 weeks then I broke the ice and we went for lunch, she was all subdued and taking a back seat, but then asked me as we were leaving if we wanted to come round again on the sunday for breakfast. I said no, probably not and she said 'how about monday then' (bank holiday). I said we will let you know.

Lo and behold on Monday evening MIL rings DH on his mobile and says I will pop round, so she did.
She then left her jacket here .

Am I just being unreasonable? Am 'I' being control freakish? Or am I being (as my instincts tell me) continuously manipulated?

I know for sure she will now try and claim Thursdays, by asking 'How about next Thursday?' at the end of today. She will definately say 'Why dont you come for breakfast Sunday?'.

It feels like a bottomless pit and no amount of time is ever enough for this woman.

Should I make up an excuse and say no to train or just let her take ds...I just keep thinking if I dont stand up ro her she will just keep doing this. Then again I think no matter what I do she will keep doing this.

Thanks for the poem, Smithfield. I don't think you are being overly sensitive to your MIL. You know: you have set a boundary and she is eroding it a bit at a time. At the end of the visit, just say you don't want to commit to plans right now. And you do not have to explain.
I am struggling with this- this week...
I want to be nice. I do not want to be not nice-mean. Both of my sister's birthday is tomorrow. My training has been to give to them both equally. At least dollar value, it not actual duplicate gift.
Oldest sister will get a box of goodies because I love her(although a bit late-I will call her.)
What will I give my Middle Sister? I thought a card and modest gift card to a restaurant. Why? asks counselor...because I want to be nice. That is ok because that is something based on my feelings and not out of a sense of "duty" or family role. Long distance RL friend (also youngest of three with NPD middle sister) said WHAT!!! Don't give her anything-she has not recognized, acknowledged, asked about dear baby since she our last conversation March 19-don't give her anything.

So I think I'll just send a card-it is a fact that I am not feeling that much love towards MS. Which would make some sense because that is what I told her to give me last Jan for my birthday-just a card since I am not a child any more . She called back two days later and said she would not shop for me until I told her what I wanted-her terms . And punishment-bad tmsb! (Happy frigging Birthday!)

My procrastination on the matter is telling.
So my break through is no more parity to not hurt anyone's feelings. That is ironic because I was always denying MY feelings in favor of theirs. Crap training, crap training, crap training.

Oldest Sister told me Middle Sister called her recently and asked what she wanted for her birthday-same damn game. Oldest Sister gave MS a boundary and said no more expensive gifts because she can't reciprocate and it makes her uncomfortable. A birthday power play-UNDONE! Way to go Oldest Sister.

Smithfield, I didn't 'get' the lyrics at first because I was looking for 'badness' in there, but then when you said it is about having the courage to get through life because you know you have the underlying support and love of your mother to fall back on I could see it. How negative thinking does that show me up to be!

Doesn't it make you feel angry that other people have this and you don't? I have felt jealousy about giving my children things I never had and have to stop myself being like my mum with the attitude of 'I never had it so why should I give it to you, I had to go through shit so why shouldn't everyone else' I would probably have avoided listening to the song/reading the lyrics because it would make me have uncomfortable feelings of 'you smug * it's ok for you, why couldn't I have had that'.

What you said about your MIL reminded me of mine a bit. eg. ILs were visiting when DS was a young baby and they wanted us all to go for an afternoon walk. I had an instinct that a walk was too much for him at that moment and he was feeling overstimulated and wanted to sit quietly inside with me and eventually doze off (not sure how I knew this, I just did), but they were insistent on this walk so I took him with them. All the way round he screamed! I thought "why did I not just trust my instincts and say no!" When we got back MIL said in a firm and bossy interfering voice "I will take DS out in the pushchair on our own" She thought I would want a break from him and that he needed more walking to send him to sleep. She didn't ask my permission or suggest, she said "I WILL..." just like your MIL said "I WILL take him on the train", not "May I?". I snapped at her and said "NO, I am going to give him some quiet time at home" (hey, wasn't I assertive!). She obviously thought I was a 'spoilt bitch' and was just trying to be rebellious and 'don't tell me what to do' in a childish way (I really think that is how they see me a lot of the time!). But I have often had to put up with the thought of them thinking that to do what I think is best for the children. DH would never stand up to her!She seems to think she is in charge! This sort of thing used to happen a lot.

I'm wondering if this is a common MIL thing! I think they are really scared of losing their 'status' as I've said before and scared of not being able to see their sons and GCs as much as they want to because some other woman (us) is in control now of 'her' son. I think my MIL is a bit of a control freak anyway and it sounds like yours might be too but I think it is a control issue and it is based on their fear of being cut off! My MIL seems to have gradually relaxed a bit as she realises she will still see us and get to have contact with the GCs.

As soon as we had our firstborn DD she seemed panicky to get her hands on her, almost like she would like to take her off me! I give her as much 'responsibility' with the children as I can stand before I feel she would be taking over and that way she isn't so desperate and panicky and doesn't push and push so much. It seemes to have 'eased' anyway.

TMSB, I'm not sure what I would do in your situation with the birthday presents. I would be really scared not to give both sisters an 'equivalent' present even though I didn't 'mean it' with one of them, which I can see could make you feel hypocritical and like you are being weak. But I don't think it is necessarily weak. Giving them an equal present is just a simple way of not rocking the boat and having to take up your valuable time coping with a sister in a funny mood when she is not worth your thinking time when your DH and DCs deserve your time and attention and thinking space, not her!

Giving her a lesser present is symbolically saying "You are not as important to me as other sister". This may be true but do you need to say it? Maybe you do feel you need to say it and that is why this birthday thing has come up and churned around in your head! Maybe it is your subconscious telling you that this is how you feel - that you want to let your MS know how you feel about her.

Hi all, am really sorry but I just need to get some thoughts out. But they are awful thoughts, I was having them yesterday but i tried to push them away as i felt so guilty and terrible for thinking these sorts of things but i just can't seem to help myself.

It's about DD, sometimes I just wish she would go away and leave me alone. I have noticed i always feel tense when she's around, i never know when she is going to launch into one of her 'strops' or come to me demanding stuff she can't have. I just constantly find her irritating and i just want her to sit quietly in a corner and act like she wasn't there. I don't think she is adorable like i do DS, I don't think she is gorgeous, amazing, beautiful or cute, like i do DS. If I don't find her irratating and annoying at best i am indifferent, at least the intense hatred and rage has gone, but the indifference and intense irritation she now makes me feel is just as bad if not worse.

What is the absolute worse thing about these feelings is that I know this is exactly how my mother felt about me. I just remember her always looking angry with me, or irritated, frustrated at my moods/grumpiness and I can't believe I am acting the same with my DD. How can i feel this way when i know how awful it is to be a child on the receiving end of her beloved mother's irritation/annoyance.

On my better days i know and can see DD is such a lovely, kind, caring, beautiful little girl but it's like i am seeing her objectively without any feeling for her. I hate feeling this way, the last thing in the world i want for her is to have the sort of relationship with me that i had with my mother. But it is SUCH a struggle to try and ensure our relationship is different and I almost feel like i am fighting a force greater than me and that i am bound to lose. I am scared of feeling like this all my life and so scared of our relationship ending up like that of me and my mother's.

This is partly why i wish i had 'sorted' out my childhood issues before i had DC's. Because that i feel would have been the only way that my relationship with DD would have got off on the right foot from the start, ie from the moment she was conceived. Even though things have improved with DD over the past 2 years since I have been 'working on myself', the most crucial time was the minutes, hours and days immediately after DD's birth. All i felt at that time was either complete numbness or a feeling that I just didn't want DD, I simply didn't want her. Now it is 5 years later and if i'm honest, those initial feelings haven't changed. Like i said i sometimes just feel indifferent towards DD (ie numb or nothingness) or irritated with her, like i just want her to go away and leave me alone (ie I don't want her).

I know from reading Alice Miller that the only way to resolve these feelings is to deal with my own feelings from my childhood when i was on the receiving end of exactly the same feelings from my own mother. I remember so many occasions when i was very young of my mother looking at me with sheer irratation, frustration, anger, annoyance, impatience, and i have NO memories of her being loving, kind, caring, comforting, patient. I don't want DD to grow up with the same sort of memories. But the tension i feel inside at having to pretend to be kind, caring, loving, patient towards is just too great sometimes and i just snap and my true feelings come out and i honestly don't think i can carry on this pretence all my life, i think it will kill me. That's what makes it even worse in that i don't want to try and change my feelings purely for DD's sake, it's for my own sake too, as I said the tension i feel inside is awful. The reality is i just want to shout and scream at DD, i just want to tell her to go away, be quiet and to leave me alone ALL THE TIME, not just now and then as perhaps most mums feel, and instead of doing that, i have to bite my tongue, grit my teeth and 'act', be nice to her because of course she is a totally innocent, defenceless, little girl who has done nothing whatsoever to deserve the sort of feelings I have for her.

I have tried telling myself it's just because of the holidays that i feel this way, but it's not, perhaps the holidays have broght my feelings closer to the surface, but they are always there, holidays or not.

How do i resolve my own very early childhood feelings is what i need to know now i suppose. I have no idea, except that at least admitting to these feelings and being aware of them is a step in the right direction. For ages i suppose guilt and shame were preventing me from admitting to my true feelings for DD but i have realised now it is absolutely futile to try and fight/suppress/stop my true feelings about DD, i just need to allow myself the freedom to feel whatever it is that i feel and beleive that eventually i will come out the other side. What makes the guilt even worse is that i don't feel this way about DS, I have loved and wanted him from the moment he was born and my feelings haven't changed at all, in fact they have intensified. I sometimes think the most dreadful thoughts eg if DH and I ever split up, i would have DS and he would have DD and i would be so happy as DS seems to be the one and only person in the whole world who i truly love, absolutely and unconditionally and without any ambivalence whatsover.

Everything i do for DD i feel i do it out of a sense of duty and oblgation, i will always do my best to do the right thing for her and see that she has everything she needs, but for DS i do it out of love and the two feelings are totally different. And i also know this is how my mother felt about me and my sisters. I know she felt love for my sisters, but for me she tried to do her best (within her very limited capabilities) but she was not acting out of love and i as a child could see and sense that, i could sense the difference in my relationship with her and her relationship with my sisters and i feel a sense of panic that the very same pattern is repeating itself with me and my DC's. After all the progress i have made why is this aspect of my life still the same? Why can't i just feel the unconditional love i so desperately want to feel for DD? As much for my own sake as hers as sometimes the strain of having to pretend with her is just unbearable.

I am so sorry for this long and rambling and uncomfortable post, i have been bursting since yesterday to get all these thoughts out of my head and yet have been trying to pretend that they are not there at the same time. It was a futile exercise i realise now and i had a terrible night's sleep last night and my eczema has flared up today. As Alice Miller says, The Body Never Lies; maybe one day soon i will learn not to try and push my feelings away and will simply admit them however awful they seem to be.

Sorry also for all the typos, have not previewed my post, am just releived to have got it all out.

Sorry, a bit more to add. I just feel awful today, the thought of living the rest of my life with these terrible feelings about DD that i have to keep hidden terrifies me. I don't think i can do it. But have no idea how to do anything aboout it

hello oneplusone,, i have just read your post, and can totally relate to your feelings towards your dd, and you comparing them to your feelings to your ds. i am exactly the same.

it has been affecting me for quite some time, so much so that me and mark my psychologist are now looking to try to break the cycle of behaviour.

he said to me, to think of pavlovs dogs, and how we become conditioned to behave in a certain way towards certain individuals and it is so hard to break that cycle.

i find hugs and showing love to my dd2 so hard, obviously i do love her, but i on a lot of occasions get cross and irratated by her, then feel very "wooden" when i give her a cuddle or stuff, iykwim?

anyway mark said to imagine a happy time, when she has been funny and has made me laugh, or when we have engaged on common ground, and interacted well, and try to envisage that, when i pick her up from school, or kiss her goodnight, and if my behaviour slowly changes, then hers will too, and things should improve.

i have been trying this out, and can honestly say, that things have improved a lot, its notr perfect by any means, but i feel i am back on track, and feel stronger.

since i last "talked" on here, i have wrote to my dad and told him the bad things his dad did to me when i was little,(he has not replied,and even though it hurts still, im glad i broke the horrid silence i had carried around for years, because i didnt want to hurt anyone)
i am also trying to be stronger and more confident, and have pretty much cut off my birth family, only "enduring them" when i feel able, and basically being a woman in my own right who is as good as anybody else, i strongly believe i am coping so much better, and even though i still have bad days, i am definitely making positive changes
love to everyone on this thread, and especially to the ones who helped me with kind words when i first felt brave enough to post.
you really are lovely ladies, with very big hearts, and helped me, all those months ago, more than you could possibly know.
keep your chin up oneplusone, you will be fine, i can just tell.
AN, i have emailed you a couple of times, and havent heard back yet
i hope you are well, and maybe we could catch up sometime soon?
bye for now.
all my love,to all of you,
matildax xx

oneplusone-reading your post made me feel so sad. I feel the sadness of what you have written and I feel sad for your dd too.

It is a terrible thing for you to have to bare, and the person I hold responsible in all of this is your mother.
The way she has marred not just your life but coloured your relationship with your own dd.

Several things occurred to me when I read your post and Im just going to write them down in the hope they might help.

My instinct is that you are projecting a deep feeling of being unloveable onto dd.
Another reason I say this is beacause I remembered your story about your teacher and that you said to her '..everybody hates you'. I think this is perhaps what you were feeling? You felt it and the only way to express it was to project it elsewhere.

I also do this to DH. I realise now that deep down I feel like shit about myself and nothing I do is good enough. I feel like unless I can do something perfectly it is not worthwhile.
DH would do something for me, and I would pick out what he had done wrong, pick fault....or out of nowhere I'd yell 'Arrrrg cant you get anything right'
It took me a while to realise I was talking about myself. I was shifting the dreadful pain of my own unworthiness on to him.

Its a hard task because it 'is' painful feeling the emotion of what our mothers made us believe about ourselves...'not lovable, ugly, hated, wretched, useless...'
And that the person that made us feel this was the one person in the world that could have/should have loved us unconditionally.
we looked into our mothers eyes and saw these awful messages reflected back at us.

If someone else could be all those things for me than I could forget for a moment that is how I feel inside.

Im sorry if I am barking up the wrong tree...or barking mad?? But I didnt want to not answer your post, better to write 'something'.

AN- Yes it does make me angry. I always look at other women, women who look happy, confident, pretty, smart, outgoing and I think '...I bet you were loved weren't you'.
I feel a white hot jealous rage, and a throbbing sense of emptyness and sadness all at once.
Ive based my whole life (as per previous post) on trying to win their love, and on the basis of the fact I am in fact useless and unlovable.
How do you rebuild from such a low sense of self and not even have a foundation to bolster it all up?

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I will have to go now as ds had smarties for the first time to day and has turned into a grade 1 hooligan. Never again!
I will be back later.

OnePlusOne, Wow, Yet again I am so impressed with your honesty and courage to say things other people would be scared to admit to!

And I think you are right, admitting it all and saying it exactly like it is has got to be the first step in dealing with it.

It is desperately sad and you can see how it passes down the generations can't you, because it is so hard to change.

A lot of what you say is identical to how I have felt about my DD. I don't feel it all the time though, I have short phases of feeling ok with her for a few days, and since my thoughts the other day (did you read that post?) I am feeling better about her than ever before.

I am desperately trying to put my finger on what exactly has made me feel better about my DD in the last few days so that I can try to help you with it. I will just randomly type ideas as they come into my head:

I felt better as soon as I realised I was trying to make my daughter act like she wasn't there, the way I did throughout my childhood. But you used very similar words so you realise this already about yourself and it hasn't made you feel better.

Do you feel like your DD is 'forcing' you to give her attention and controlling you whereas you are doing it for DS because you want to. Are there issues in your childhood of being controlled and feeling you had no control? In your mind do you think you subconsciously have 'roles' for your children like I wrote about in my recent post? Are they roles that could be rewritten? Does she 'represent' someone from your childhood, yourself? your mother? Are you still in therapy?

What if you visualise your childhood, but superimpose your DD on yourself and see your mother treating her the way she treated you. Feel outraged on your DD's behalf and protective towards her. Say "You are not going to do that to her" to your mother.

Are there any times when you feel good with your DD? What are the situations and what is it about them that makes it better?

I sometimes make myself slow down from my life and just sit and look at my children. I look for what looks beautiful, cute etc about them and try to concentrate on it and feel pleasure from it. When DD speaks I think about what she might be feeling rather than what she is actually saying (total gibberish usually). I focus on how things are from her point of view. I think about what she wants from me at that moment - it might not be what she is saying she wants, sometimes I decide it is simply for me to look at her and smile while she is talking. Let your instincts tell you. I think this is like some kind of meditation technique.

When she is feeling horrible and I feel like just shouting I sometimes think I just don't want badness that makes me feel tired so I just do something stupid which will make her laugh instead. My DD doesn't really want cuddles in the same way as DS does and I find it hard to connect with her, but being stupid and making her laugh and tickling her etc seems to make me feel some connection. This might help if you are feeling disconnected and detached from your DD? Reconnecting might be a slow and gradual process.

I felt like I really disconnected from both children and DH for a time when my Bro first went into prison as though I was traumatised (don't know if that is too strong a word) and paralysed my own emotions in order to cope. It felt horrible to feel nothing for any of them but just be there next to them each day. Reconnecting to them was a gradual process.

I wish I felt that I had typed something that might help you but I feel it will just look like a load of bollocks. I will keep my mind churning over it for you as I feel our lives are kind of parallel with similarities in our relationships with our DCs and DHs!

Matildax, I've been checking my emails every day and haven't received them! Can you resend them? This kept happening to my emails a while back didn't it! I blame Hotmail. Got to go and get DS from nursery, will email later x

Smithfield, you said you felt useless and unloveable. Today my therapist kept trying to convince me "you are loveable and important". I can see how I might be important because I am a mother and it is an important job but not sure about the other bit. He kept telling me my DH loves me and I think your DH probably loves you for the same reasons my therapist thinks mine loves me - because he has stayed with you for a long time even at times when you have not been easy to live with and even during periods of no sex, so he isn't there just for the sex, he stays because he wants YOU as a person. He loves you, so you must be lovable! Hope this doesn't sound too much like gibberish!

He also said key people from the past when you were a child were inadequate in their roles and so made you feel unimportant and unloveable so it is understandable why you feel like this but it does NOT mean that it is TRUE! He advised me to look for all the little signs of love and acceptance from the people in my life now and notice these signs (I think I'll have to do the writing it down on a scrap of paper in my pocket each time thing), and from that start to build up a sense of being worthy of love.

Hi all, a few more dark thoughts i need to get out before they slip away. Whenever DD is not around eg staying with grandparents, i don't really miss her and actually enjoy being without her. I think this is because all the tension inside me disappears when she's not around. Once, about 2 years ago, i was out with a friend with our DDs. We were at an outdoor play area and the DDs were where we could see them. Then after a while i couldn't see where DD was. For a split second my heart stopped, but then in the same split second i thought 'I don't mind/care if she has disappeared' and then i can't remember what happened, i think i spotted her again and the moment passed. But i have often thought things like i wouldn't actually mind if i didn't see her again as long i knew she was being well looked after by someone. And also that i wouldn't mind if she stayed with her grandma as they seem to get on much better than me and DD and she could come and visit in the holidays instead of it being the other way around as it is now.

I feel awful for thinking these things, but actually now, after my earlier post, i have decided not to just push these unwanted thoughts away, but to face them, admit to them and try and get to the bottom of why i feel this way. I know it's nothing actually to do with DD as she is a lovely little girl, and i know it's everything to do with me and my own early years with my mother. I need to stop blaming myself and just accept my real feelings and think about why i have them. I feel so much better already even since my earlier post. This morning i felt down, lethargic and extremely grumpy. I think i just needed to get all this stuff out and since i have posted, i feel my energy and good nature has come back. Just like Alice Miller says, if you look at the roots and cause of your depression instead of pushing it away, once you face up to it, you will feel a return to vitality.

Sorry have to go now as DC's need feeding. Back soon.

I even find myself muttering horrible things under my breath and thinking nasty things like 'F off you stupid b, i wish you would just f** off and leave me alone'. I have felt absolutely awful about this for ages. But today i think i have had a breakthrough. I think DD is somehow triggering memories in me about my youngest sister. I remember as a child feeling intensely irritated by her a lot of the time, she was a very active child but also very clumsy, she was always knocking into me and getting in my way and just being a real nuisance and i remember once going to my mother and being totally serious and saying i wanted to kill my younger sister and hoping my mother would allow me to do it! And, now, lo and behold, these are the exact same feelings i have sometimes aboout DD. And perhaps DD is sometimes mildly annoying and irritating as all DC's can be at times, but the intensity of my feelings is what was really bothering me. But now i am absolutely sure that the real target of my feelings should be my youngest sister. What a relief to realise this!

I have also been feeling intense guilt and sorrow about how i must have inevitably passed on some if not all of my rubbish (which i got from my parents) onto DD. I only realised i had all this rubbish to sort out when DD was around 3.5 so for her first few years i was sure i had passed on loads of bad stuff. But i have been thinking about this today and i think in actual fact i have been turning a lot of my issues inwards onto myself which is why i have had such a bad flare up of my eczema since DD was born. The eczema of course has been horrible and depressing in itself, but at least it means that DD has not had as much bad stuff as i first thought. And I have also realised that to eradicate all my parent's rubbish in one generation is simply too much to ask of myself. I have been doing and am still doing my utmost to deal with all the issues i am aware of and i think i have stopped say around 95% of my parent's rubbish being passed onto to DD. That leaves her with 5% about which i still felt guilty. But i have finally realised that i have done and am doing the best that i can which is far more than my own mother ever did and i feel i am being a 'good enough' mother which again is far more than my mother ever was. I cannot go back and change the past, i cannot undo the first 3.5 years of my DD's life, but what i can do is do my best to bring her up to be a strong person so that if and when the time comes she has the courage to deal with her issues, in the same way that we on this thread are dealing with our issues and to also be there for her as a loving parent in the way my own parents never were. And in that way, perhaps DD's children will be the first generation to be be 99.9% 'free' of my parent's legacy and i feel proud of myself if that is the case. All i can do in my lifetime is a be a 'good enough' parent and that is something my counsellor has said to me many times but i am only now beginning to beleive it and realise it for myself.

Thank you AN, Smithfield and Matilda for your kind posts. I feel quite exhausted now, i think my brain has been in overdrive today, but i have skimmed through your posts and there is definately a lot of food for thought in what you have said. I will have more time tomorrow and will hopefully be able to respond properly then. But thank you for taking the time out to read my post and respond. I think it is a credit to all of you that i feel safe enough on this thread to post my deepest darkest thoughts and yet whilst i am writing i know somehow that i am not alone and there are some of you who are feeling the same way and that gives me the courage and confidence to keep writing. (((((hugs to all of you)))

smithfield, hi, i have read through your post again and thank you so much for your thoughts. Right now i feel quite confident that the intense irritation and frustration i feel towards DD and wanting her to just go away and leave me alone are the exact same feelings i used to feel towards my youngest sister. As per usual with my parents, whenever i went to them with my feelings as a child i was just ignored and so i had to 'swallow' and suppress them and i think they are now being triggered by DD and coming back to the surface and into my consciousness. I will have to wait and see how things now go with DD since i have had this realisation, if things improve as i can now direct my feelings at the person who actually caused them ie my youngest sister (might write a letter to her that i won't send) then i know i'm right.

I totally relate to what you said in your post :"I always look at other women, women who look happy, confident, pretty, smart, outgoing and I think '...I bet you were loved weren't you'". I am exactly the same, i feel jealous and so sorry for myself that i was never able to achieve my true potential and the time for that is gone and can never be reclaimed.

AN, thank you for your post. I do feel a sense that DD is 'forcing' me to give her attention when i don't want to. But why don't i want to give her attention when i am happy to give DS all the attention he wants? I guess DS is not so demanding, he seems much more self contained and doesn't 'force' me and so i give him time freely. It's a vicious circle, the more DD 'forces' me the more i pull away and so the more she forces etc. I hope things change with my new found realisation.

The other thing you said about if there were times when i feel good about DD. That really made me think as there are times when i feel good about DD but, they are nothing to do with her and everything to do with myself and how I am feeling as opposed to how DD is behaving. This makes me all the more certain that my feelings towards DD are actually nothing to do with her but everything to do with me and my childhood history.

Danae, WOW at your post, what amazing insight and wisdom you have. Thank you for your response to my post, it has given me a lot of hope for my relationship with DD...all is not lost.

I totally relate to what you said here:"what is tormenting me now to no good use, is a dreadful, obsessive brooding upon how different my life could have been if I'd make this break when I was 20, not 40." I have posted about this before and iirc, Alice Miller describes it as a 'lifelong grieving process' and whilst that sounds depressing i don't think it means you are in deep mourning all your life, but that throughout your life you will probably always feel a bit of sadness at what you have lost, what you missed out on and can never claim back. I think the grieving is important as i think it ensures we take care of ourselves 'now' so that our future is not lost as well.

I totally relate to your last paragraph as well, that is a place i was not so long ago and i am still there sometimes now. This is why i have posted a few times about wishing i had done all this long before meeting DH and having DC's, so that i could have 'lived' some of my life whilst it was still mine, now my life belongs to my DC's and i feel i never had my own life, not unless you count the empty, numb, shell of an existence i had before i embarked on this journey.

Our parents will never ever comprehend what they have taken from us, mine seem to think that the fact they fed and clothed me was good enough and i should be grateful to them for that. They have written to me saying sorry but they have no idea what they are saying sorry for which makes it worthless.

God Danae you've described exactly my experiences with men when I was young. It didn't matter how stupid, ugly, unpleasant or awful he was, if he hit on me, I'd go along with him. I remember being raped once after a party and then going out with the bloke for about a month afterwards as he was so persistant and insistant and his brother was in my English class and I didn't want to upset anyone (it didn't occur to me that my being upset might be just as important, or heaven forfend, even more important for me, than anyone else's feelings).

Oneplus, I have always had a big unease about my relationship with DS, whom I simply didn't bond with the way I have done with DD. I realised this a couple of years ago and have trained myself to notice him, to hug him, to make space and time for him. For the first few months it felt really fake and artificial, but as it has become more natural, he has responded - he's much more likely to hug me now, tell me stuff, talk to me. It's like before I was pushing him away or simply not responding to him so he didn't bother either. And it feels more natural to me to hug him and make sure DD doesn't push him out (this was one of they dynamics which made it easier to ignore him). It gets easier the more you do it, and I very rarely consciously have to think about reaching out to him now (though I still catch myself sometimes automatically switching off from him and still have to force myself back into a state of mind where I can engage with him).

I guess I knew this day would come along- Just spoken to middle db and he has said my nephews are going to be christened in November.
I dont know how to face it. And if I dont go I feel that will be the end of my relationship with middle db.
The thought of having to face everyone again after all this time makes me feel physically ill frankly.

Had a bit of an unexpected emotional moment this morning (ie crying) at the school run this morning. I was talking to another mum who also suffers from quite bad eczema and we always, when we see each other, have a chat and a moan about our skin as it's hard for people without it to really understand how it feels to live with this condition.

Anyway she was talking about a boy staring at her arm in the park one day as her arm was quite badly affected and he said 'horrid' or something to her. She told the boy off and said it was not nice to say such a thing and she said her own little boy who is only around 6 or 7 was very concerned for her as he gets quite protective about her. And that's what set me off crying, i think i got very emotional as i have had eczema on and off for most of my life and and i have sometimes been stared at but nobody ie my parents has ever been protective about me and tried to stop other people/children being nasty to me about my skin.

The ironic thing is that i never really got teased or commented on about my skin at school or by friends, the person who tormented me the most, in fact the only person who i can recall tormenting me was in fact my middle sister. I think my younger sister may have too, but i think she was just joining in with my middle sister and following her lead, my middle sister was always the instigator of the nasty and hurtful comments. And were where my parents all this time when i was being tormented, teased and bullied about my skin? Nowhere to be found, certainly not protecting me and stopping my sister. As always i was left alone with my hurt feelings and upset. To think that my friend's 6 year old felt protective over her and yet my parents have never felt protective about me made me burst into tears.

And i am also so angry as my parents when we were older always used to boast about the alleged fact that neither me or my sisters ever had any illnesses as children as if this was somehow a reflection of their great parenting skills. In fact it wasn't even true as i remember getting all the usual coughs and colds that my DC's are now getting as a normal part of the development of their immune system.

It just reinforces my feeling that i was just a non-entity in our family. I didn't exist as my dad once mentioned the supposed lack of illness at a time when i was suffering a bad eczema flare up. I suppose it explains why my parents never even bothered to get me any treatment for my skin, they just left me to suffer and only when i was old enough to seek out treatment for myself did i manage to get it under control. I absolutely dread to think how it would have been if i had had a life threatening illness, no doubt they would have just ignored it and left me to deal with it by myself. I remember when i was in contact with them thinking that if i ever got cancer or something i would certainly not bother telling my parents; there would be no point as they wouldn't be interested and would probably just leave me to deal with it all by myself without any support from them.

What makes me even angrier about their total neglect of me whilst suffering from this extremely debilitating and depressing condition is that i now actually think it was triggered by my parents in the first place. Because i have always had to suppress all my feelings, especially my anger towards my parents and my sisters, those feelings found an outlet through my skin and have caused me physical distress and emotional distress for years.

The other thing that struck me about my friend was that she had the confidence to stick up for herself when she was stared at by teh boy in the park. Perhaps now i would do the same thing, but until very recently i would never have done so, my already low self esteem was pushed even lower by my eczema and i honestly thought i was worthless. I have seen other people with similar conditions who nevertheless have self confidence and self esteem and i realise now that it must have been created and nurtured by loving caring parents whereas mine have always made me feel ashamed of my condition and have never talked about it with me as if it was a dirty secret or something. And to hear them talk about me as if i have never had a day's ill health all my life when i have literally spent months suffering terrible eczema flare ups makes me so angry at them and simply incredulous that they seem to beleive that they can now simply say sorry and that will somehow eradicate all the years of misery they have caused.

At this moment if they were in the room with me i would not hesitate to go to the kitchen, get my large heavy frying pan and beat them both about the head with it. That is a constant fantasy of mine, whenever i feel angry about my parents, i imagine beating them both over the head with a frying pan......just wish i could do it in real life.

My parents made me feel ugly and worthless because i have eczema; they honestly are the scum of the earth. They never once helped me or supported me in any way whatsoever in dealing with this condition and on top of that they caused it in the first place.....sorry but right now i am so angry with them that i could kill them with my bare hands. Their smugness and self righteousness infuriates me, they love boasting about what wonderful parents they are and they are always putting down other people and the truth is they have been the absolute worst parents anyone could possibly have and they should NEVER have been allowed to have children in the first place. I feel like writing to them along those lines, i don't think i have anything to loose by doing so and it will give me some satisfaction as i clearly cannot go round there with my frying pan.....or can I?

Sorry once again for rambling on, feel free to ignore, i just needed to get it out.

ACtingnormal, I think describing these domineering MILs as "panicky" hits the nail on the head. That exactly describes the feeling I got when dealing with mine. Its as though she was panicking that the ball was not in her court anymore because the focus was off her, had to be off her, because there was a baby on the scene. A baby demands attention and gets it in a way that an adult can't compete with. So what these MILs do is they try to cling on to the baby to somehow glean some of the limelight. also of course, they want to be loved by the baby. This is not the same thing as loving a baby. If you love a baby you stand back and ask yourself what is best for the child. most of the time you look to the mother beause the baby's mother is tuned in to the child's needs in a way that no-one else can be. Thats biology, survival of the species. OUr MILs want to receive love i.e meet their own needs for love and on top of that simply cannot stand that fact that the baby naturally gravitates towards its mother! They are sick. I don't pity them, I think they are mentally ill because they behave jealous and pouting like a 3 year old, but they are 50+ That behaviour is NOT normal in an adult. When DD was born I felt like I was looking after the needs of 2 children and it was more than I could cope with. Thats why I cut her out.
I cut mine out for about 3 months. Her controlling, undermining, panicky behaviour got her the opposite of what she wanted. She now sees DD about once a week (without me there).

Oneplusone, regarding your daughter, I do believe there is hope. I think you have to go through more of your childhood pain to reach that point. You are on the right track.Writing it down on here an intelletualising what has happened is a big part of it. I know you have already done this to a certain extent but one day you will reach a point where you actually feel again, in all its entireity, how it actually was to be that tiny, vulnerable little girl that you were. And then to realise that your parents could have altered that situation but they didn't, and that they will never, ever change. Its true that you have to "feel" it, not just remember it. So you'll go through feeling scared to death, angry and then you'll come out the other end lighter. When you'Ve gone through this, I think your relationship with your DD will be fine. I know it might sound scary, but its not. Even when I was bedridden and going through all my flashbacks ,I began to immediately feel a sense of release. You and your DD are going to be fine, I'm sure.

DAnae,your post about that guy makes it hit home, as you say, how much we must have suffered as children, and how much pain we must have stored up in our little bodies just in order for the "organism" to continue. Jean Liedloff says "the organism will survive", that is, we are designed as humans to fight for our lives at any cost. This means that if any of us here had truly experienced our pain it would have killed us one way or another (suicide or illness). So the way we survive, perhaps even now, is through a variety of neuroses. We may become perfectionists, alcoholicts, workaholics depressives. Or those among us who are completely "normal" after these experiences are inadvertantly taking everything out on their loved ones. THis is why our mothers need us to be insane and "bad", because they were obviously abused in some way themselves and to keep their demons out of their head, they'Ve sacrificed a child.
I remember that I had very happy experiences with my friends, so I think in my case my personality actually split. In order for me to experience some sense of normality I believe my brain split my life and emotions into two camps a la borderline or bipolar disorder. I couldn't integrate the two personalities until just before I married DH when I was flung into a huge, suicidal depression resulting in me cutting my mother out. Now I believe the two "me s" are the same person. I'm on an even keel and I have no need for the huge highs that I would get from alchohol or fighting or pain (tatoos- hidden, thankfully!) But I don't sink to deep lows anymore either and if I feel myself sinking I am able to put the world and my life into perspective, whereas I couldn't before.

Bless you Danae and your crying over your little daughter's skin. You really are a good mother, you know. Believe it. And your DD loves you. I just hope you can see this one day. Something tells me that getting your mother out of the way will help you...