"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.

Hi sakura, thank you for your words of encouragement. I know you're right and i know myself that i have not yet reached the point you describe, when i can actually feel how it was to be that innocent, vulnerable little girl who so wanted just to be loved and wanted by her mother. I know i am slowly making progess towards reaching that point, i am feeling more and more every day. Even when i cry i am happy as it means i can feel which is huge progress for me.

Danae, thank you for your response. My DD and DS both had eczema too when they were babies. And i have noticed a definate link between their flare ups and my moods. In fact my moods almost show in my DC's skin even before i m aware of my mood mysefl. And like you have noticed, now that i am feeling so much better, their skin has improved so much, they are pretty much clear of it altogether right now.

It is interesting that your mother also denied that you had eczema as a child, as i said my parents have also done the same, just pretended i didn't have it. I think they must have seen it as a reflection of their parenting (which it was in actual fact) and therefore they denied it as it showed them up in a bad light. Their selfishness never ceases to amaze me, the deeper i dig the more it shows in all their words and actions, and yet they have this image of themselves as the most wonderful parents that ever lived.

Instead of making an extra effort to boost my self confidence and self esteem because i have this condition my parents actually did the opposite. They made me feel worthless and second best.......i am beginning to think my parents are truly evil, the amount of damage they have caused to me, i would dearly like to take revenge on them, to think they have got away with it makes me really angry. My dad even once said to me (after i had got married) that he thought i would have to marry anyone who would have me because of my eczema. Even my own parents couldn't see beyond my skin to the person i was inside and see some beauty and worth there, what hope would there be of anyone else seeing the real me. Luckily my DH is not as shallow as my parents and loves me for who i am....he has been more loving and caring towards me than my parents ever have.

I remember many years ago when i had a boyfriend my parents didn't like, they told me he was just after my money (i had a good job at the time and my boyfriend was getting paid a lot less than me). I think my parents simply couldn't comprehend the possibility that somebody would like me just for 'me' and would not be bothered about my skin and didn't care how much money i earned. Everything my parents have said and done in this respect just goes to show their own shallow and despicable values and just how little they valued me as an individual and i am so glad i have cut them out of my life, it is truly the best thing i ever did.

OnePlusOne and Danae, I was struck by the fact that both your parents denied that you had eczema when from the way you describe it, it is very uncomfortable (and makes you want to cry when your kids have it as you know how bad it feels) and has a bad effect on your self esteem when it affects the way you look. If you sometimes feel you don't want to go out and be looked at because of it surely it is noticeable enough for your parents to see!

It seems to me that some parents are more focussed on the image of the family than the children's feelings, and can't cope with anything that makes the image seem less than perfect. It seems like they either had children just to make them look good, as accessories, or had children by accident and don't want them 'tarnishing' their image. I feel my parents had us to make them look more like a responsible and normal couple and it looks good for a deputy headteacher to be a responsible family man.

A big part of Alice Miller's writing seems to be about parents refusing to see their children's real personalities and forcing them to be someone else, someone false, who the parents find more acceptable. It is like saying the person you are is unloveable/unacceptable so you'd better hide it. How horribly sad that people have to feel that the real person they are is unloveable/unacceptable and the pain of knowing that their parents don't love that person! I can see why people block this pain out (like Alice Miller says) and act like someone else and numb their feelings in whatever way they can.

People then don't remember their parents doing this to them (because they blocked it in order to cope) and grow up thinking their parents loved them because they showed some acceptance when the child acted like someone else, the false self they constructed to get their parents' approval (this acceptance they showed seems like proof that they loved them), so they don't understand why, if their parents loved them, they have emotional problems, and feel like they must be going mad!

I've got a friend who has this horrible feeling that any minute she is going to be "found out" for not being as good as people think. She has impossibly high standards for herself and I have a feeling her parents forced these on her and made her feel they would only show her approval and love if she was a certain way. I think she feels she has to hide her true self and is frightened in case people catch a glimpse of her if she lets her guard down. I think she has a horrible feeling deep down that there is something wrong with her and she is not good enough and nobody would love her if they knew what she was really like. She avoids seeing a therapist, I think, because she is worried about looking silly because on the face of it everything looks ok and normal and she feels people will think "what have you got to complain about?". I hate it this thing that parents can do where they make you feel everything is normal/was normal and deny, sometimes blatantly, that things happened, and mess up your head and make you feel like you are mad for having extreme feelings and emotional problems when everything was normal

Right now I'm finding it easier to look at other people and understand things before applying it to myself which I'm avoiding because it will be uncomfortable. I've just finished reading Alice Miller's Drama of the Gifted Child and I find her writing makes me have some extreme feelings which feel frightening so I'm avoiding them by applying her theories to other people first. I will apply it to myself once I understand it better, I find her writing quite hard to understand first time around and have to ponder over it.

I feel that Sakura has said a really important thing - that you can remember things that happened and talk about the details and how it felt and rationalise it but until you FEEL it and process it you will not be free of it. Feeling it is frightening and I think we find any way we can to avoid it. I think we need to find techniques and rituals for feeling it at times when it is safe to do so and keep doing it until the 'sting' of it gradually fades.

OnePlusOne, have you ever tried writing down the details of things that happened and how you felt and reliving it that way? I've done it but don't feel I have 'accessed' all of the feelings yet. I've told Therapist everything but never with feeling. Maybe this is what I should do next. Very scary, don't know if I can do it.

Danae, thank you, you have really made me think with your telescope comment. My dad has eczema too (i'm sure i inherited it from him genetically) but he's never had it as bad as i have and also being a man, it is simply not as big a problem as for a woman especially if it's on your face as mine is. But what i do think you have made me realise is the feeling of worthlessness, i'm sure that is how my dad feels, that he is not valued or respected by his family or anyone really, and those are the exact feelings he has made me take on. My eczema is part of it in that he was able to use that almost as a 'peg' on which to 'hang' his feeling of being worthless. I realise now, although i have had this realisation before but perhaps not quite with the clarity that i have now, that my dad did never 'see' the real me, he simply orojected his own feelings onto me and in his eyes i was simply a worthless, useless, defective (because of my eczema) thing, not even a person. I can recall now so many things he has said to me have really hurt because he seemed to see me as a calculating, devious, underhand person which i am not. I was so hurt that he would think those sorts of things about me, his own daughter, his own flesh and blood and the same person who he actually seemed to genuinely care for at one time, when i was very young. I suppose to an outsider it would be obvious that he has been projecting all his own feelings onto me, but it has been very hard for me to see it all clearly as i suppose i am right in the middle of it all.

Something else has also just struck me whilst writing which is that in the same way that my mother seemed to dislike me because i seemed to take after my dad, i think that my dad also after the initial ok years when i was very young, must have taken out his feelings about my mum (who he hates and despises) on me. Because his idea that i am somehow a devious and calculating person is so far from the truth and yet that is how i would describe my mother at times.

Ultimately i suppose all that i need to see is that all the negative things i have been feeling about myself are simply not true, they are projections of my parents own inner feelings. It all makes so much sense as whenever i talk about my eczema to other people it never seems to bother them, they don't care about the way i look, they can see beyond that to who i am inside and i always feel lucky that i have a few very good friends who don't seem to care about my eczema at all. And i am starting to realise now that it is only because my parents have made me think that my eczema is a big deal and it will put people off me that i have thought that about myself for most of my adult life. I am still kind of reeling at the realisation that my own parents, the people who were supposed to love me no matter what i looked like, what illness/condition i had, were the very people who thought i wasn't worth loving because of my eczema, and yet so many people i have met throughout my life have proved that not everyone thinks that way, so many people seemed to have genuinely liked me, even when my eczema was really bad, but all this time despite the reality of what i have experienced, i still beleived i was worthless only because that is what my parents thought of me, their own child.

I remember before i got married my dad tried to put my DH off me by attempting to show him some photos of me that had been taken whilst i my eczema was bad. I didn't actually allow my dad to show my DH the photos because i did believe what my parents had led me to beleive that nobody would be interested in me because of my eczema. As things turned out, it has been DH who has proved to have so much more depth and integrity and indeed love and respect for me than my own dad as even though my skin has been really quite bad ever since i had DD, I know it doesn't affect DH at all in the way he feels about me.

I feel so sad, how can my own parents see me as nothing more than my skin? Whenever my DC's eczema has been bad i feel so sorry for them and and i certainly don't think they are any less loveable because of the condition and yet that is what my dad in particular thought about me. All my life he has never bothered to spend any time getting to know me, who i am inside and seeing that he had a lovely, kind, caring, lively little girl who would have given back to him 100 times over the love he could have shown me.

AN, what you said about parents refusing to see their children's real personalities and instead projecting their own feelings onto the child is i realise exactly what happened to me and probably all of us. You are right about having to ponder over Alice Miller's books as they are quite hard to grasp immediately. But i have read The Drama over and over again and each time i find something new that has helped me further along this journey. Sometimes a sentence that i read ages ago comes to mind when a certain situation arises and slowly i am realsing and experiencing for myself everything she says in her books. What Danea says about not pushing yourself to feel things you're not ready to is right, your body and mind will know when you're ready to deal with certain things and it will just happen spontaneously. What i have found utterly amazing is that Alice Miller wrote The Drama almost 20 years ago when all the psychotherapy establishment were opposed to her views and there weren't any other similar books around. So she worked all these things that we are talking about out for herself which must have been so hard as i feel i am only able to do what i am doing with the help and guidance of her books and experience, but to somehow go through this experience alone and with nobody helping you as she must have done, in my opinion, is truly amazing and courageous.

Sorry this is such a long post, but my eczema has been a big issue over the past few years and yet it has also been such a taboo subject for me, again because my parents never talked about it with me which has made it very difficult for me to talk about it with friends or even DH and yet when i do i get so much support and reassurance that i am amazed as it goes against everything that i have been brought up to believe about myself and makes me despise and hate my parents all over again. All this time i needn't have suffered in silence, i could have talked openly to friends about how my eczema made me feel, but because of my parents 'teaching' me to keep quiet about it that is exactly what i did and it has meant years of distress that i had to keep to myself instead of sharing the burden with others who i realise now were more than willing to share it with me.

It all just goes to show how deep my parents' psychological problems are by the extent of projections they forced onto me and yet they think I am the one who is mad. Every day i thank my lucky stars that i made the break from them and Danae, your last paragraph says it all for me too, so thank you.

I hadn't really seen my parents as narcissists but i realise now they are utterly incapable of any sort of deep feeling like love for another person and their first thought is always for themselves instead of their children. They are despicable and contemptible people and i never want to set eyes on them for as long as i live.

Message withdrawn

Hi AN, you're not being boring at all, and writing things down helps me so I'm glad it's the same for you too. I can't relate entirely to your situation as my parents were dysfunctional in a different way. But one thing i have realised along the way is that whilst it is inevitable that we will spend a lot of time trying to figure out our parents and work out why they behaved the way they did and treated us the way they did, it is so important to also spend a lot of time in trying to work out how they made us feel as a child (when we would not have had the knowledge we have now about what made our parents behave in a particular way).

Your feelings as a child are ultimately the most important thing for you to work out and endeavour to access, although it is a scary thing to do, but you are an adult now and you do have the strength and capacity to survive the intensity of your childhood feelings in a way you couldn't as a child.

For myself i have kind of given up on trying to work out what made my parents tick, as ultimately for me no reason would be good enough to justify the way they treated me and so to me their history and reasons become irrelevant. But i say that now, over 2 years down the line, i did spend a lot time earlier on working out why my parents are the way they are.

Smithfield, i have been meaning to mention to you that i missed my sister's wedding early last year. I didn't want to see my parents so there was no way i could have attended. I explained my reasons to my sister and she was ok although my younger sister seemed more annoyed with me about it when we met sometime later. I sent her a card and a present and kept myself busy on the actual day and it was all fairly painless. I know things might not be the same for you but i just wanted to give you a positive story if you feel you really can't attend your brother's christening.

I have been strangely emotional the past few days. I burst into tears again today, seemingly out of the blue. But i realise now i was reminded by an ordinary event that happened today about certain similar events in my childhood. I think the memory that was triggered was from a time when i was around 8/9 and we had gone on holiday. As soon as we got to the holiday I disappeared off by myeslf without telling anyone to go rollerskating in the nearby rink that i had spotted on the way to our holiday cottage. I remember i didn't tell anyone where i was going, i just went by myself and i was gone for around an hour at least. When i came back i was expecting my parents to be frantic with worry about me and searching for me everywhere. But of course they hadn't even noticed i was gone and made no comment to me whatsoever about where i had been. I remember even as an 8 year old being surprised by their reaction as i knew how they should have reacted. Although i don't remember feeling upset at the time (i must have blocked/suppressed my feelings) i must have been upset as their lack of concern about me must have felt like they didn't care (which i now know was true). I can now remember many other incidents where normal parents who actually cared whether their child was alive or dead would have been worried but mine just couldn't care less. They never asked me where i had been if i wasn't around for a while, never showed any concern if i told them i was going somewhere alone that was potentially unsafe.

I think now they really couldn't care less if i was alive or dead. And in fact if i had died, although they would have pretended in public to be upset, i think secretly inside they would have been glad to have got rid of me. That's how they made me feel, i was just a nuisance, the troublemaker, the black sheep, the one with the horrible eczema that was letting the side down.

That's why now when they have written to me appearing to say sorry and pretending they care about me it just falls on deaf ears. They had my whole life to show me they truly cared about me, the real me, but they didn't care at all. They didn't even know the real me as they never bothered to take any interest in apart from when i did something they could show off about to their friends/relatives although they never actually praised me for anything.

If i ever have the time, i think i will write them a long long letter describing each and every one of their faults and failings and although i know it won't change them one bit, it will give me a great deal of satisfaction to do it......a metaphorical beating with my frying pan, not quite as good as the real thing but good enough.

Hello
I'm new to Mumsnet and put out a bit of a plea on another thread a bit ago about not getting on with my mum. Found this thread through Smithfield and I just feel like crying. So much of this hits home it's overwhelming. I don't want to barge in, but I will unload at some point. Hope that's OK.

foxtrot- Hi there and well done for making the effort to come here and post.

I will come back later but have a grizzly bub to deal with atm.

I read what you wote at the end of your thread and you are right none of that was notmal, and none of it was ever your fault.

I never paid any attention to thing about the money because I knew it wasnt ever about that for you.

I know you would give 'anything' to have parents that truly love you unconditionally.

You will get lots of support here, and it is unconditional, so dont feel the need to step back...start writing now about whatever comes to mind. Got to go... (((((hugs))))))

Hi all, I just need to write some things down to try and clear my head.

I have noticed a definate feeling of tension inside me when I'm around DH and to a lesser extent DD. I posted quite a bit about DH a while ago and i realise now that because DH was at home every day as he had 2 weeks off from work the tension must have built up inside me like a pressure cooker and i had a few blow outs at him.

Now he's back at work the tension has eased, but reappears immediately he gets home from work. I really noticed it yesterday as i was feeling fine but as soon as i heard his key in the door i felt enraged. At the time i was trying to get DS to go to bed but he wasn't co-operating so i was getting a little frustrated with DS, but i wasn't particularly angry, but as soon as i heard DH come home i felt a huge amount of anger. But, of course i couldn't take it out on DH as i didn't even really know why i was angry at him so instead i got cross with DS for not going to sleep . I suppose I am also quite scared to get angry at DH as he is a bit like a sleeping tiger, he's fine as long as i don't make him angry (by being angry at him) but if i do make him angry he gets really mad. So i suppose i have learnt not to really show him if i'm angry at him and instead i bottle it all up inside.

The trouble is i don't know, when i do feel angry towards DH, whether i am really angry at him or whether he has triggered feelings from the past and my anger should really be directed at my parents. Alice Miller says if anger is transferred and directed onto the wrong person it will never be released.

I've also posted on here before about being unable to criticise DH in any way as he simply thinks i should be grateful to him for sticking by me and that i have no right to be angry at him about anything. But i feel i am justified in being angry, hurt and upset about many incidents in the past but i am being forced to bottle my feelings up as DH is not willing to take them from me even though he should by rights.

Because i have a lot of space from my parents and sisters it has i realise been easier for me to work out my feelings about them and also work out how they made me feel. But because i see DH every day i don't have that same space and perspective and it confuses me.

The other day i had gone to bed and because the DC's rooms are both being decorated at the moment they are both sleeping in our room. I woke up in the night and realised DH was not in bed and for a moment in panicked and then quickly realised he was in the spare room. I felt hurt and i suppose rejected that he wasn't with me. But i pushed my feelings aside and 'rationalised' that he had slept in the spare room as otherwise he would have been disturbed at night by DD's coughing and DS's wake up cry at 6am and he needed to get a decent night's sleep so he could function well at work. Logically i knew this but his sleeping in the spare room still felt like a rejection, even though ironically i slept quite well myself as i had the whole bed to myself.

But what i am unsure about is whether somehow the above incident triggered memories of feeling rejected perhaps by my dad when i was a child. I suppose if i think about it i must have felt rejected by my dad, especially when he suddenly started being abusive towards me after being a fairly loving, caring dad. But that must have felt like a huge rejection to me as a child, whilst the rejection i felt by DH wasn't that great.

It's so confusing, maybe the rejection by DH was just that and only that and was not a transference of my feelings of rejection from childhood. And also my anger at DH about various things, I don't really think it all stems from my childhood.

The touble is don't know how to work it all out, i think perhaps i need to write a letter to DH which i won't give to him and see what that brings up.

Sorry for the ramble, thanks to anyone who has read this far!

It's difficult because I love my folks and have a lot of respect for them too, but in so many ways they're not great.
My mum has mental health problems- supposedly Bi Polar disorder but to tell the truth I'm unconvinced- it doesn't seem to follow most of the hallmarks of manic depression- she's more depressed with psychotic episodes (eg hearing voices). Quite often when I was a kid she'd be really really out of it and sometimes wouldn't know who I was, or think she was a child and I'd have to look after her as if she was the same age as me. She's also always been physically unwell all her life, but once again lately I'm wondering if some of this is true. That sounds awful. But some of the things she says she's had would have killed or crippled her by now - emphysema, spondalitis. And some of the illnesses are really serious but she gets over them really quickly without seeing the doctor- shingles, pneumonia, pleurisy. Either way she was (and is) ill a lot, however one defines illness. So my Dad was in the position of being her carer (she always worked full time though). So the emphasis has always been on mum and her illnesses. I wasn't really (god this is so self pitying) given that much positive attention- not a lot of playing, not checking homework, not supported when I was hit by teachers in school. She gave me codeine to help me sleep (of course that 'never happened' and I have 'mental problems' for ever bringing it up) and later on tranquilizers. When I predictably went off the rails around 14 they gave me money to go out drinking with, never stopped me, never asked why- even when I got arrested, even when I friend I was passed out with had to be revived by the paramedics. When I got expelled from school (of which my Dad was a governor) they didn't go to any of the meetings leading up to it. My dad once putt me through the back door window after my Mum told him I'd smashed her head on a cupboard (I hadn't). Later on my Mum would send me Prozac through the post knowing that I was selling it/swapping it for ecstasy.
They are deeply flawed people, but it's difficult for me to put this all into context, because they're also my parents and I love them. And they love me, but especially since I've become a mum myself they're (especially my mum) getting progressively more unpredictable and strange.
I have to go for a hospital scan now, but will be back later. God I feel awful for writing this down. i've always been told not to tell anyone anything about the family.

What makes me angry about DH is how he always thinks he is more important than me, his job, his feelings, everything and this is how my parents made me feel, that my sister, especially the younger one, was more important than me and her wishes always got preference over mine and that always used to really hurt and upset me and it was mainly my dad that made it obvious that to him, i was totally unimportant, my wishes and needs and feelings simply didn't matter to him, what my sister wanted was far more important to him.

Realising as I'm writing, DH is triggering feelings from my childhood. Whilst DH does make me feel like I don't matter sometimes, the 'original' feeling comes from when i was younger when my parents made me feel like i and my feelings didn't matter whereas my sisters' did. This is another reason i always kept quiet about anything that was bothering me and never told my parents whereas i used to notice my sisters quite often talking to my parents about various issues/problems they had. The difference was they had never been made to feel like they didn't matter, they were made to feel their feelings did count and so it was natural for them to turn to my parents for help/support/advice when they felt they needed it and my parents i suppose did try and help them as best as they could.

I on the other hand was always taught the opposite that nobody was interested in me, i was just used by my parents to dump their rubbish on. So i felt unimportant and like i didn't matter. So now when DH does something quite minor, which makes me feel unimportant as compared to him, all my old childhood feelings come back. It makes sense as i know i am important to DH and he shows me this in many ways but the feeling of being unimportant seems to engulf me when it comes up and overrides other instances when DH clearly has thought of me and put me first.

Gosh what a ramble I've been on, but for me it's been construtive and taken me a few steps forward so it's a positive ramble.

Danae, thank you for that recommendation. I do actually use some products from her range already. I'm very glad they've helped your DD, as it must be awful for a baby/child to have this condition. I didn't find the products to have any real impact on my condition although i admit i didn't follow her regime religously.

But, I have noticed that in recent months my eczema is gradually and slowly starting to improve of it's own accord. I say of it's own accord, but actually i think it's directly connected to the progress i'm making in my emotional health. It's almost as if the more i can feel, the better my skin gets and i think that it's because i am gradually able to feel my emotions consciously which i was unable to do before and therefore my emotions found an outlet through my skin. Now they are finding an outlet by me being able to consciously experience them and are no longer almost automatically being buried,

foxtrot, hi and welcome, well done for posting, it's a brave first step. Have you read any books about dysfunctional families? You may find it helpful in understanding your family dynamic and the effect it would have had on you as a child. Toxic Parents by Susan Forward is a good starting point.

You have been through some traumatic experiences as a child from reading your post, I hope you found writing about them to be theraputic. Keep posting and let us know how you're feeling.

Foxtrot, the thing that really got me in your post was that your parents told you not to talk about the family to anyone! (maintain the respectable image, dad as school governor etc). If they don't want you to talk about it perhaps they know they have done wrong. But must preserve the family image and ignore the feelings of their daughter (making you feel your feelings are 'mad' or just not important).

OnePlusOne, the thing I am trying to get a feel for by reading your posts about your DH is - is he 'bad' enough for you to take some definite action with him eg big confrontation, or is he just a trigger but you feel so awful because the things he triggers were so awful?

The thing about the eczema clearing up as you feel more must be proof of what Alice Miller says! (I like to have proof before I believe things). That is amazing. You are feeling it with your conscious mind so it is not being stored so much in your body and 'leaking out' through physical illness - eczema.

That anger you feel as soon as DH is near you - I often feel that about my DD - as soon as I collect her from school. The last couple of days has been awful. It could be because I feel so tired (can't make myself go to bed early enough and can't sleep and new pills seem to be making me feel ill and anxious and aggressive - nothing I try ever seems to bloody work!).

After I wrote about my bro yesterday I think that he is the one she most reminds me of because she is so constantly demanding of all my attention in such a forceful way - not physically forceful but the way she is you just can't ignore her, she is right in my face talking and talking and going on and on about wanting more and more and nothing is ever right for her and she gets loud and very angry. It doesn't matter if I'm trying to do something else or talk to someone else, she is still right there on and on at me and I can't escape her (just like I could never get away from him). It feels like she takes over my life and I can't have my own life (just like my bro was) but I can't express how I feel about it too much (just like I couldn't with him), although not because I am scared of her like I was scared of him but because I don't want to be awful and rejecting to my own child! It all builds up in me after a day of her demanding until I feel totally overwhelmed and can't concentrate on anything. I've read a lot of your posts OnePlus and your DD sounds similar to mine. She is making me feel like my blood pressure is going right up right now. I just want her to be away from me and away from DS.

How do I know DD won't treat DS the way my bro treated me? DH says it is obvious she won't because we are bringing her up differently to how me and my bro were brought up and she doesn't have some kind of mental illness and she does love her brother and doesn't appear to take pleasure in hurting him. But I still feel anxious. Sometimes I get so anxious I don't even want her to talk to him. I don't like leaving them in another room together.

I have a horrible fear of bad things happening to my children without me even knowing about it and I am so hypervigilant it wears me out. Is what happened between me and my bro unusual and therefore unlikely to happen with my children? Or is this something that happens a lot and I should really look out for it? Because whatever happens to you as a child you tend to think of as 'normal' because you don't know that it is different for other people, I still don't feel sure about what really is normal and whether my children are likely to be at risk of the same things or not. I'm just finding it so hard to relax as a mother. My anxiety and tenseness is making DH and the DCs tense as well.

Hi foxtrot

'Quite often when I was a kid she'd be really really out of it and sometimes wouldn't know who I was, or think she was a child and I'd have to look after her as if she was the same age as me..'

That must have been incredibly painful for you as a child. To not have anyone to turn to to take care of your needs.

How old were you at this point? Do you know how your mother managed when you were a baby? Who took care of you then?

You were horribly neglected...you do know that dont you?

All this would have sent you a message that said you were'nt important and that is what you are reacting to in the here and now.

And to then let 'YOU' carry all the guilt for what was happening to you at home...by saying 'Shhh dont you tell anyone!'

Reading your post it feels almost as though your mother was 'competing' with you.
As if she was blocking any attention you should have had as a child with her illnesses.

There is a sense about your mother of intense jealousy actually. Lying about you to your father....And as for your father .

He could have been feeling intense rage toward your mother I think but he took it out on you. After all what had 'you' done to deserve such anger directed toward you.

Nothing.

Your father is not without blame here. He was also an adult and had a 'duty' to take care of your needs if your mother was unable to do so. He is as they call it a 'bystander' to your abuse.

It is abusive for a child to be so emotionally neglected.

I do think reading may be useful and 'Toxic Parents' is a good book to start with, there is a whole chapter (I think) on having a parent with mental illness.
Writing on here is good therapy but you can also keep your own journal. Write your parents a letter (but dont send it!).
And if you can afford it find a therapist.

The more conscious you make yourself become of your childhood and it's impact on you as an adult the better parent you will be. That's just my opinion but I think we can carry so much over (unconciously) into our own parenting. Awareness gives insight and insight is key.

Hi AN, what you have asked about my DH is exactly what i am asking myself. And i just can't seem to figure it out. But i happened to see something on tv this morning about men hitting women and the consensus seemed to be it was ok if in self defence but not otherwise. Unfortunately that is the situation i have been in with my DH. He has hit me a couple of times in the past and pushed me. I have always felt I provoked him and i know i certainly provoked him into being angry. But i am beginning to realise there was no reason for him to hit me as he wasn't trying to defend himself, he just hit me out of sheer anger and frustration. The trouble is a lot of these episodes were quite a while ago before i began this process and i realise now how difficult i must have been to live with. I was angry a lot of the time, now i know the anger should be directed at my family, but i used to direct it at DH and blow up at the tiniest little thing. Without going into lots of boring detail i can understand DH feeling like he was being pushed to a point where he felt he was going to explode, but does this mean he should react with violence?

Of course not, he should have talked to me when we were both calmer, but that is easy to say with hindsight, and at that time my judgment was so warped and skewed and my self esteem so low that talking to me wouldn't have done any good. I myself could see that my behaviour wasn't right, but try as i might i couldn't change it. I have only changed now i come some way on this journey and have so much more insight into myself and my behaviour than i did before.

So I can see for myself that the situation is not black and white and i almost feel DH's anger and violence were also as a result of him being a victim of my parents' dysfunction.

I really don't know what to do at times, i feel DH and I have a lot of unpleasant history behind us which is marring the present. And things are different now due to the changes in me, but in a similar way to my childhood, my past with DH needs to be confronted and dealt with. If i ignore it it will just fester and ruin our future. But trying to talk to DH is very hard like i have said before as he just gets very defensive and will not listen to any criticism of his behaviour. I think for now i will just have to write him a letter which i won't send and try and let go some of my feeling that way.

I was thinking yesterday about how he sometimes, unintentionally makes me feel, like the other day when he went up to his study after putting the kids to bed and left me alone downstairs watching tv by myself. I felt unwanted, ignored, rejected and abandoned. And I'm sure I 'originally' felt those emotions in childhood, probably very early on. I don't really have any memories of actually being left alone and physically abandoned, but perhaps i have just blocked them out. What I have always found strange is that i have no memory whatsoever of my mother going into hospital to have my 2 sisters. I would have been nearly 5 when she had my middle sister and 7.5 when she had my younger sister and that would have been old enough to remember such things. I can't remember a single thing about that time but i'm sure i would have felt abandoned by my mother and although i don't have any factual memory i think there must be somewhere inside me an 'emotional' memory which was triggered by DH. What really annoys me about DH is not so much what he does as i am absolutely fine about him spending the evening in his study if he has work to do etc, but what upsets me is his complete lack of communication. If had just popped his head around the door and said he was going upstairs as he had work to do and then he was going to sleep in the spare room as he needed a clear head for a meeting in the morning or something i would have been absolutely fine and not upset in the least.

So maybe this is not a childhood thing but a male/female communication thing. DH is very bad at communicating, he just doesn't do it and I'm sure he's not the only man out there like that but when you both live together in one house there has to be at least a basic level of communication to stop the other person from feeling completely ignored and like they don't exist.

AN, we have similar DD's! It is so very hard and i agree about tiredness making everything 100 times worse. I think i underestimate how my being tired has an effect on how i am with the children, but i definately have much less patience, am much more snappy and cross than when i'm not tired. But a good night's sleep for me is a long distant memory, perhaps about 6 or 7 years ago i might have had one of those.

And with regard to my eczema i can absolutely say that it is definately improving. And as much as i am pleased that it is improving, i have also found it 'helpful' in a bizarre kind of way. Eg, if i wake up and it has flared up again, it makes me think about the previous day and try and work out if i have buried some feelings. And each and every time i realise something has happened which has triggered some feelings but i ignored them and so the next morning, hey presto, a flare up. So it has kind of guided me through this journey and i almost now see it as my inner/subconscious voice which speaks out when there is something that i need to take notice of that i have ignored. Now that i have realised my own behaviour patterns, i tend to ignore my feelings much less, i am consciously aware of them and so there is less need for my inner voice/eczema to speak out and draw my attention to my emotions. I have to say i am truly amazed at my body's capacity to heal itself, without any medication, but the real healing is taking place in my mind. There's an advert on tv at the moment i think for Heineken in which the message is 'Get the Head Right and the Rest will Follow' and when i see that i wonder if they really know just how true that is! (The ad is about a man who has to hug his big fat hairy boss and he imagines him as saving his life and this enables him to hug him).

I feel i have started to do what Alice Miller calls 'emotionally mapping my childhood history' ie recognising feelings when they are triggered by an everyday event and pinpointing them as coming from a particular point/place in my childhood. I have only recently been able to start doing this consciously, i have had quite a few emotional moments recently and each and every time i have realised that a feeling from my childhood was triggered and i have slowly managed to work out which event/episode of my childhood caused the original feeling.

The important thing for me is that i am actually able to feel which is entirely new for me although i didn't even know i couldn't feel previously. I realise i was completely and utterly numb, i couldn't feel a thing and this must have meant that i had buried all my emotions so deeply and tightly they were inaccessible. And yet to the outside world i seemed to function normally and yet i realise now all i was doing was acting. You must have had this realisation a while ago (i'm guessing by your name), but i only realised fairly recently, i suppose gradually over the course of the past 2 years. I am now 38, and i was probably a teenager when i started acting, so i have been an actress, without knowing it, for around 24 years. Gosh, i think i need to stop now and go away and think about what i have just written.

There's been a thought at the edges of my consciousness that until now i have been too scared to admit into my conscious mind. I think that DH and his mother are both as split off from their feelings as i was from mine until recently. And they are as unaware of this fact as i was again until recently. I know enough about DH's family and his grandparents on his mother's side (who are now both dead) to know that his grandmother was a nasty, manipulative, harsh, critical, woman and i can clearly see these traits in my MIL and some in DH.

I'm sure MIL and DH are split off from their feelings and this will necessarily mean they will lack the ability to empathise with others. They have many times shown a complete lack of empathy and compassion and sympathy not only to me but to other people but at the same time seem completely unaware of how hurtful and inappropriate their behaviour is.

There was one instance a few years ago when my SIL, after having her first child and enduring an extremely traumatic labour and emergency C-section, suffered from extremely severe PND to the point of psychosis. She was admitted to a mental hospital and stayed there for 3 months. This was the first time any of us had experience of such a condition and we were all worried about her prospects of recovery. I can fully understand that whilst my MIL was worried about her daughter in law she was also worried about her son and the consequences for him if for eg. his wife didn't fully recover from her condition. Nevertheless, i was extremely shocked one day when my MIL said to me that she didn't know why daughter in law had to get herself in such a state over the birth of her child to the point she was in a mental hospital, after she (MIL) had also had a traumatic birth with her first son but she just got on with things afterwards and didn't make a fuss (decide to have PND). I was really shocked to hear her say something so unsympathetic and uncompassionate. I had had DD about a year earlier and luckily had a fairly easy birth, but i could easily imagine that had it been traumatic, i could have also suffered quite badly with shock and depression afterwards. But my MIL seemed to have no compassion for her daughter in law; it was as if she was saying she had no sympathy after she had had a difficult birth so why should daughter in law expect any sympathy?

With DH there was a time when we were in Australia, it was just me DH and DD. We were there for nearly a year and weren't working, DD wasn't at nursery so it was really hard to make friends and i used to feel really lonely and miss my girl friends back home and girly chats and outings. Anyway, i had made one friend, she was a scottish girl who was working as a nanny and we hung out with the kids and got on ok. We arranged to go out to the theatre one evening and i was really looking forward to it, but she let me down at the last minute and i was really upset and disappointed. I told DH and he showed no sympathy at all (he didn't like this girl for some reason) and said it was my own fault for being friends with someone who was so scatty and unreliable. I knew she wasn't the sort of person i would normally be friends with back home but i was in a position where beggars couldn't be choosers and over in australia at that point in time she was all i had. So i got angry at DH for being so unsympathetic (harsh, just like his mother) and it escalated into a huge row and he threw a bowl of food at me. I remember sobbing and crying and feeling so utterly alone, without a soul in the world who cared about me, like there was nobody who put me and my feelings above anything else, even their own feelings. DH has made me feel like that a few times, and each time i have felt such despair, and lonliness, like i desperately want someone to see through my anger to the little girl inside who felt so lonely and hurt and upset and yet there was nobody who could see her, who wanted to see her, who was interested in her and who cared about her. I am realising whilst writing that these were feelings from my childhood that had been triggered by DH, but it was at a time when i had no way of realising what it was that i was feeling. I remember the intesity of my despair and anguish and sadness, and yet i was unable to comprehend it myself or explain it to anyone at the time...not that anyone actually asked me to explain or talk about what i was feeling.

I think these feelings must have been from when i was a very very young child, experiencing intense emotions but being totally unable to explain or understand herself and having nobody around who was interested enough to help me make sense of my feelings. I am guessing as a child i must have wanted my mother to understand me and be in tune with me so that she would know what i was feeling and help me in an appropriate way, but my mother was incapable and unwilling to do that and so i must have got angry and frustrated which in turn made her become irritated and angry with me. The vicious circle of contempt (for feelings) as described by Alice Miller.

I am amazed by all that has happened to me over the past few years, it is as if i have slowly been coming to life, waking up from a deep sleep and regaining consciousness. I realise i had to almost put myself into a 'coma' in order to survive the pain of my childhood, so that i couldn't feel the hurt of my parents' rejection, abandonment, disinterest.

OnePlusOne, I love your posts as they really seem to make sense to me. The thought that there is someone a bit similar to me in some ways makes me feel more 'normal' (which is my ambition .

DH hitting you, pushing you, throwing a bowl at you is wrong. Even if you made him angry it is still wrong. I have made my DH very angry on a few occassions and I have been scared by his furious shouting and swearing and felt that that was quite wrong, but he hasn't done anything physical to me out of anger. Two times he walked out of the house because he was so angry. I think he did it so he wouldn't be able to hurt me. After reading your post I feel 'pleased' with him for doing that.

Last time DH shouted and swore, I told him, after we had both calmed down, that his shouting and swearing and intimidation were wrong and tried to get him to admit it was wrong. He did admit it, but he said "But you drove me to it". I said to him, "this is what men who beat up their wives say!". I had to stop talking to him about it after a short time because he said he could feel himself getting furious again. I can't talk to him about things he has done wrong either because like your DH he is very defensive so he won't acknowledge any of my negative feelings about what he did, then because I don't feel validated I keep on and on about it to try to make him understand and it is me keeping on at him about the same thing (he said) that makes him lose it.

I have written him letters, and given them to him, several times but I'm not sure if it has helped. I'm not sure what the best way of communicating is when they are like this. Maybe I will look it up on the web!

I can see that you love your DH and don't want to leave him yet you feel he has wronged you and you haven't been able to let it go because he hasn't acknowledged your feelings about it. Would this idea work: in your mind, separate your time with DH into two relationships, one where you were both more immature and more messed up in the head so you both made some mistakes, him moreso, and one where you were both a bit more 'sorted', (you having made the most progress) and in which things like that (hitting etc) don't happen anymore. They don't happen because you will no longer let them happen because you have more self respect and won't accept that behaviour. You know you deserve to be treated better than that.

Tell him that you have been reading about women's husbands eg on MN or in a magazine who have been aggressive towards them and they felt x, y, z (the way you felt when your DH was aggressive) and you realised you were glad that your DH doesn't behave like that anymore even though he has done a few things that made you feel like those women in the past. Say I realise how different I feel now and that I wouldn't tolerate that behaviour now. Say it as though you are telling him because you found what you read really interesting.

If he says "what would you do if I did it then?", say I would consider whether I want to stay in a relationship with someone who would treat me that way. From what you have said in previous posts, it sounds like he thinks you should feel grateful that he has stayed with you when you have emotional problems. I wonder if he thinks he can get away with treating you badly because he thinks you really need him and would never leave him. I have thought the same thing about my own DH. If he thinks you would consider leaving if he treats you badly he might be more careful not to.

Lately I have been feeling more like I could cope without DH if I needed to although the sadness would be terrible, and I've been imagining how I would do it, which makes me feel stronger because I have had a horrible fearful dependency on him I think that what if we split up, I can't cope on my own. This scares me because it makes me think I would stay with a man who was no good for me because I'm scared to be alone. When you feel like you are stronger and less dependent, even if you don't say it, I think it shows in ways we don't understand! Just like the way our children pick up on our moods. I think our DHs will treat us with more respect if we feel this strength!

These are just my crappy theories/ideas, feel free to ignore them. Trying to think of ways to help your situation has made me think I will try these dimwit ideas on my own DH and see what happens!

Hi AN, thank you! I remember when i first found this thread i felt so good when i read through it and found other people i could relate to and who seemed to have a similar history to me. In fact i remember telling DH exactly what you have said, that it made me feel 'normal' and not some sort of weirdo.

Thank you also for your suggestions re dealing with DH. I am going to think about it and perhaps give it a go. Let me know how things go at your end if you go first!

One thing that i have wondered about DH is, following on from the fact that i think he is also emotionally numb like i was, is that he may also have a lot of anger buried inside him which should be directed at his mum, but he is directing it towards me as I'm triggering childhood feelings/memories in him. He has in no way even considered doing what we're doing, he doesn't think he has any issues .

He of course has no idea that this is what is happening, but as I've been through it and understand the process/dynamic i think i can recognise it in him. And like i said i also feel i know his family well enough, especially his mother, to know that he must have issues as she is a nasty piece of work, although if you met her she appears as all 'sweetness and light' and she even has her own son fooled. I think her other younger son is less affected, and it stands to reason as it is most often the eldest child who gets dumped on the most by the parents.

So, if i am triggering rage from DH's childhood, but he is unaware of this, he definately has no insight into himself, it will be very difficult to work out how to deal with it, if at all. But at least if it happens again in the future, i hope i will be able to take a step back from him and see what is happening, even though he won't be able to see it himself.

AN, do you think any of my theories about my DH could apply to your DH? Could you be triggering memories in him? What are his parents like? What sort of relationship does he have with them? I don't mean to be nosy, these are just questions which might help you figure out your DH. But well done to him for walking out before he hit you.

Gotta go now, have to pick up DD.

OnePlusOne, Yes I do think my DH is affected by some things from his childhood which make him the way he is.

His Mum was desperate to have a baby and took so long to conceive that she had fertility treatment and finally got DH. He was so wanted and so precious and she was very attentive to him. She had fertility treatment to have another child and got twins! Twins must be really hard work anyway but one of them cried and cried which made it even harder. Suddenly DH wasn't getting so much attention and he found this really hard. He was really angry with his baby brothers and broke the head off the action man they had 'given' him when they were born.

He has always been really competitive with his brothers, especially for his Mum's attention. When they get together now they act like children and they are half joking I think but you can see how they would have been as children. They argue over who has been given the biggest portion of pudding and whose photos of whose children have been put in pride of place and "You've put his picture in a posher frame than mine". DH says things like "Was I the best child Mum?, was DB really naughty but I was good, was I Mum, Mum, Mum, I'm the best aren't I" I'm not exaggerating!

DH has always been very competitive, probably learnt from competing from his brothers. He sometimes disregards other people's needs and concentrates on getting what he wants because he learnt to push for what he wanted or he might not get it. He is competitive with me, mainly about who has to work the hardest, who has the hardest life, who is tiredest, who is more ill (when we get the same illness), who is right about things - he says "see, who was right and who was wrong". He has never admitted he has been wrong really.

He will never admit that anything about my life is hard at all and won't sympathise if I am ill or tired. He says things like "what about me, look how hard it is for me".

When we first got our cat he was really jealous that the cat kept coming to sit on my lap and not his and when I got anxious when we first let her go outside he said something like "If you keep being so obsessed by the cat I might have to leave you"!!!!!!!! He wanted the cat to love him the best.

With both babies he didn't like me breastfeeding too much and got angry and said I was giving them it when they didn't need it. I think he was jealous because it was something he couldn't do. Also there were times when they were crying and crying and I felt they wanted me, but he wouldn't give them to me (his Mum was the same). When I eventually got the baby off him or his Mum they stopped crying. He didn't like it. He wanted them to love him the best.

Now, he keeps saying to the children "come and give Daddy a cuddle" and sometimes they don't want to, or worse, they want to cuddle me and not him. It makes me feel so uncomfortable because it makes him feel so bad.

He asks DD who is the best Daddy out of all her friends' Daddys. She used to say X's Daddy and ever since DH has been obsessed with this man and always going on about what a twat he thinks he is and when DH does something good he says I bet X's Daddy doesn't do that.

I think he felt quite abandoned when his twin brothers were born. and it has made him a bit guarded. He won't say things like "I love you" if he thinks I wouldn't say it to him first. He won't phone his friends, he always waits for them to call him.

He was also affected by some bullying at school, not physical, but he had a nice group of friends at the small primary school he went to but when he went to secondary school they all abandoned him and went round with other kids and they ganged up on him and teased him. He has always been keen to strive to be in the 'in' gang and will modify his behaviour to fit in with friends he is with. Sometimes this is annoying because he isn't being himself.

When his friends used to tease him about being 'under the thumb' with me he treated me as though I was less important because he wanted to fit in with them. He wouldn't marry me until his friends started getting married and it wasn't seen so much as being under the thumb. I felt he was ashamed of being with me at times. When we were alone together he was lovely.

Different times when we have been with DH's friends he has ignored me and dismissed me so that he could get more of their attention. This was particularly hurtful when he wanted a woman's attention because she was one of the 'in' people. He did this with 2 women. Sometimes he would compete with me for other people's attention. I want my husband to love me not compete with me and try to be better than me and therefore push me down! I already feel less important than 'normal' people anyway. When he has done this I have felt so alone.

It is all to do with the hurt of getting less attention from his mother when his brothers were born. I think he was subconsciously taking this out on me by ignoring me and giving his attention to other people. Because being dismissed and ignored is one of my trigger things which makes me feel really really bad I couldn't let what he had done with his friends go for years and distanced myself a bit from him because it hurt me so much and did some things I shouldn't with other men, subconsciously for revenge I think (I know it is wrong and I have stopped doing it recently).

God I've gone on and on, again.

Quick one from me while I haven't posted here in absolutely ages.
In a nutshell I stopped speaking to my parents a year ago, plus a venomous email from me on Xmas Day.

Am having a few family probs here. (single mum. alcoholic. kids missing school etc)
Social services are now involved and have the child protection team knocking on my door uninvited.

They want to contact my parents and get them involved. Parents poured out their venomous poison to my kids over the time and filled their little heads with shit about me.

I cannot see how much SS involving my parents would benefit us. I am starting to get over the anger and am feeling much better in myself, God forbid SS going up there and telling them I'm having probs. Mum would be on her soapbox. 'I knew it, PO, I knew you'd be a shit mum' etc 'you made your bed, you lie in it' attitude.

Is there any way I can prevent them (the SS) from doing this and making contact with my parents? It's the last thing I need right now.