"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.

Message withdrawn

MM, I relate to all of what you say.

If I ever try to discuss with my parents the issues I have with them, they say words to the effect of 'After all we've done for you, how DARE you find fault with our parenting. We have done our best for you and if you don't believe that, it is down to a character flaw of yours'

My mother has used various tactics to exempt herself from her behaviour. For example if she did something spiteful she would say;

'It's not spiteful.....I'm not a spiteful person'

My mother is always bad mouthing me to the rest of the family and making out I am a very difficult person to be around. I know this isn't really true because nobody else I know in RL thinks these things about me. Whenever I have pointed this out, my mother's reply is always 'That's because they don't see the real you'

Hi Electra,

"If I ever try to discuss with my parents the issues I have with them, they say words to the effect of 'After all we've done for you, how DARE you find fault with our parenting. We have done our best for you and if you don't believe that, it is down to a character flaw of yours".

Actually all of these are both classic and typical responses made by toxic parents.

Susan Forward (who wrote Toxic Parents)wrote the following:-

Once you get going, most toxic parents will counterattack. After all, if they had the capacity to listen, to hear, to be reasonable, to respect you feelings, and to promote your independence, they wouldn't be toxic parents. They will probably perceive your words as treacherous personal assaults. They will tend to fall back on the same tactics and defenses that they have always used, only more so.

Remember, the important thing is not their reaction but your response. If you can stand fast in the face of your parents' fury, accusations, threats and guilt-peddling, you will experience your finest hour.

Here are some typical parental reactions to confrontation:

"It never happened". Parents who have used denial to avoid their own feelings of inadequacy or anxiety will undoubtedly us it during confrontation to promote their version of reality. They'll insist that your allegations never happened, or that you're exaggerating. They won't remember, or they will accuse you of lying.

YOUR RESPONSE: Just because you don't remember, doesn't mean it didn't happen".

"It was your fault." Toxic parents are almost never willing to accept responsibility for their destructive behavior. Instead, they will blame you. They will say that you were bad, or that you were difficult. They will claim that they did the best that they could but that you always created problems for them. They will say that you drove them crazy. They will offer as proof the fact that everybody in the family knew what a problem you were. They will offer up a laundry list of your alleged offenses against them.

YOUR RESPONSE: "You can keep trying to make this my fault, but I'm not going to accept the responsibility for what you did to me when I was a child".

"I said I was sorry what more do you want?" Some parents may acknowledge a few of the things that you say but be unwilling to do anything about it.

YOUR RESPONSE: "I appreciate your apology, but that is just a beginning. If you're truly sorry, you'll work through this with me to make a better relationship."

"We did the best we could." Some parents will remind you of how tough they had it while you were growing up and how hard they struggled. They will say such things as "You'll never understand what I was going through," or "I did the best I could". This particular style of response will often stir up a lot of sympathy and compassion for your parents. This is understandable, but it makes it difficult for you to remain focused on what you need to say in your confrontation. The temptation is for you once again to put their needs ahead of your own. It is important that you be able to acknowledge their difficulties without invalidating your own.

YOUR RESPONSE: "I understand that you had a hard time, and I'm sure that you didn't hurt me on purpose, but I need you to understand that the way you dealt with your problems really did hurt me"

"Look what we did for you." Many parents will attempt to counter your assertions by recalling the wonderful times you had as a child and the loving moments you and they shared. By focusing on the good things, they can avoid looking at the darker side of their behavior. Parents will typically remind you of gifts they gave you, places they took you, sacrifices they made for you, and thoughtful things they did. They will say things like, "this is the thanks we get," or "nothing was ever enough for you."

YOUR RESPONSE: I appreciate those things very much, but they didn't make up for ....

"How can you do this to me?" Some parents act like martyrs. They'll collapse into tears, wring their hands, and express shock and disbelief at your "cruelty". They will act as if your confrontation has victimized them. They will accuse you of hurting them, or disappointing them. They will complain that they don't need this, they have enough problems. They will tell you that they are not strong enough or healthy enough to take this, that the heartache will kill them. Some of their sadness will, of course, be genuine. It is sad for parents to face their own shortcomings, to realize that they have caused their children significant pain. But their sadness can also be manipulative and controlling. It is their way of using guilt to try to make you back down from the confrontation.

YOUR RESPONSE: I'm sorry you're upset. I'm sorry you're hurt. But I'm not willing to give up on this. I've been hurting for a long time, too.

Oh yes, those things all sound sooooo familiar! I have indeed been told

'You're killing us, we will have a stroke because of you..etc' This from my alcoholic father who has the most self-destructive approach to his health and well being that I have ever encountered.

Re identity - I think you can create your own. I used to feel confused. I was adopted so wasn't BMum and BDad's daughter and didn't get on with them well enough to feel that when I 'met' them either. I didn't feel much like AdoptiveMum's and ADad's daughter either as they didn't express any emotion and I didn't feel a bond. It felt really important to me to feel part of something or have a definitive job title doing something I felt had purpose but I couldn't find these things for years.

Eventually making friends helped and having children helped - feeling part of the friendship group (belonging) and having a job that made me important (mother). What helped more was not looking back at my family for a sense of who I was anymore. I wrote a list of what I think is important and what values I think are important to me in my life and decided to measure myself by these and try to be a person who did those things and had those attitudes.

My 'purpose' apart from being a wife and mother, has become to try to role model the values and attitudes I believe in. You might not think that you have much influence on other people but I do think people pick up on so much of what you are like consciously and subconsciously and ARE influenced just by you being who you are and not even trying to influence them. So I think positive stuff can spread out from you. I was influenced by Paul McKenna's Instant Confidence book in which he said "You are what you do". What you do is something you can decide independantly of where and who you came from.

One of the things I decided I am is (sorry MM) NOT a victim anymore but a survivor of some difficult things which has made me more knowledgeable about life and people, more understanding of people (and you know how making people feel understood and listened to makes them feel SO much better), more appreciative of what I've got now and I realise how strong I must have been to get through things. Therapist said I should not feel shit about myself because of what happened but should feel PROUD because I was strong enough to get through it.

AN, thank you for your last post, it makes so much sense and is so positive, you have inspired me to do the same.

I want to thank you as well for what you said to me last week about our DH's triggering childhood feelings. I have been thinking about this the whole weekend but was unable to post as we were so busy.

But your wise words have triggered an huge realisation for me. You may remember a while ago i posted that I thought DH had married me because he was a bully and needed a person like me who he could dominate. Well that may be true to a certain extent, but, I think much more inportantly, I chose to marry DH because the little girl inside me thought that in DH, she had found her father, whom she had been longing for since she was about 11. I think the little girl inside me put her trust in DH, that he would look after her, love her and protect her and then when events happened in real life where DH appeared to breach her trust, and show he didn't in fact love her and failed to protect her, she was deeply deeply hurt and felt betrayed. I think what happened was almost an exact replica of what happened during my childhood.

For the first 10 years or so of my life, my dad and I were close, I was much closer to him than my mother. He was the one who comforted me if i was upset, I must have adored him, loved him absolutely, trusted him implicitly. My whole life revolved around him. And then all of a sudden it all changed, he had some trauma in his life, he turned from being a loving, caring father into an angry, vicious, brutal man. There was one incident which took place which i am still too traumatised by to post about, but which i can remember clearly down to the last detail. And it wsa that incident which changed my life forever.

The little girl i was then who thought her father loved her and would always love and protect her was suddenly the object of her father's rage and fury, his verbal assaults and physical assaults. I remember feeling so utterly shocked at some of the words he used with me, even at that age i knew they were not words that should be used with children. Throughout the whole incident i was absolutely terrified and the whole time my mother was standing behind my father, and she did nothing to stop him or comfort me afterwards. After DD was born, whenever i was upset, (I had severe PND so i was upset and crying quite a bit), I used to hear a voice in my head saying 'I want my mummy' and at the time i had no idea who it was and what the significance of it was. Now I realise that the birth of DD had somehow awakened the little girl inside me who had been 'sleeping' in a sort of coma for all these years, and it was her who was crying 'I want my mummy' and I am also sure that this is what I must have been crying in my head during the terrifying incident when I was 11. But my mother, as i have said many times, has never been there for me and she certainly wasn't there when i needed her on this occasion.

I have always found it strange that I find it hard to remember how i must have felt during the traumatic incident that i have mentioned. Especially as because it was so terrifying my feelings must have been very strong and intense and yet i have to almost try and force myself to imagine how i must have felt.

But, I am beginning to realise now that a lot of the incidents involving DH, where i have felt betrayed, unloved, unprotected, abandoned must all have their origins in the traumatic incident. I of course have been harbouring a grudge against DH all this time as I have felt he has hurt and betrayed me very badly, but of course whilst DH has hurt me, the extreme and intense and deep hurt adn betrayal that i have been feeling was that caused by my father as a result of the incident.

I have been feeling angry and resentful and cold towards DH when i should have been directing those feelings towards my father. It is quite scary to think that i was feeling so cold and unloving towards DH recently that i was starting to seriously think about divorce/seperation.

And my father even wrote a letter to me recently purporting to say sorry to me but at the same time saying he had no idea that i had been feeling so angry and bitter towards him. Whilst I am not surprised that he has no idea why or even that i have been so upset all these years because of his abuse, because i have realised he is severely narcissistic, i still find it incredible that he clearly has no recollection of an incident that terrified and traumatised me so much that i still can't talk about it 27 years later. I suppose part of the trauma behind in the incident was not the actual events themselves but what the incident represented to me as an 11 year old. Effectively i was betrayed and terrorised by the person i loved most in the world, and who i thought loved me and who also was my only source of love and empathy and compassion given that i had a cold and distant and disinterested mother. I must have felt totally abandoned and alone, no wonder I 'shut myself down' numbed all my feelings, to protect myself from being hurt again.

As an adult it's difficult enough when say, a friend breaches your trust, betrays you and/or abandons you, but to a little girl, to be treated like that by the person who she loved and looked up to most in the world, must have been absolutely devastating, horrifically painful and so wonder I still feel too traumatised 27 years later to even talk about that day.

It has taken me years to even see or realise what is going on. I have just found a thread I posted here 4 years ago, where I was bewildered and upset by yet another falling out with my mother and I couldn't understand what was going on.

Sorry, I hope nobody minds me asking but do any of you have mental health problems as a result? I still don't have a diagnosis - I've seen three psychiatrists and they think I have either manic depression or borderline personality disorder. One of my psychiatrists thinks I'm even more damaged as the result of being an only child because I don't have siblings to bounce things off, but I can see how having siblings could be problematic too. He said that I haven't been given the right tools to cope with life, and that I have developed self-damaging coping mechanisms instead.

AN - I have a friend who tells me I should use the 'you are what you do' thing.

AN, thank you again for your insightful post. I can't post much right now as DS hasn't gone for his nap and will come and disturb me any second.

I just had one quick question for anyone really who is able to reply which is that do you think it is a sign that you have 'healed' from the pain of your most traumatic childhood experiences if you can talk about it/them without feeling angry/scared/tense/anxious?

I don't really where i am with regard to the incident I can't seem to post about. I didn't tell my first therapist about it at all, in fact i didn't tell him anything really, no details just general info about my family.

The second therapist i like you, AN, somehow 'forced myself to tell her very quickly and briefly about my 'worst incident' and without 'feeling' any of the associated emotions. I was very anxious about how she would respond and to my immense releif she agreed that it was an awful thing for an 11 year old child to go through. But i didn't want to talk any more about it all and i quickly changed the subject and we never returned to it.

Like i have said i think some of the really intense feelings of betrayal and breach of loyalty that DH has triggered were originally felt as a result of the 'incident' but at the time i didn't make the connection.

Thank you for your suggestions AN, i will give it a try, i think just writing about the incident and not posting it on here may be what i need to do. My biggest enemy is simply having the time to do that. I always feel the need to be completely by myself before i can write and that is not very often.

AN what you said about your 'relationship' with the OM is interesting in that you also seem to be trying to 'recreate' or 'create' something that you lost or perhaps never had but always wanted and longed for as a little girl.

With my DH i think i was searching for the man my father was before he turned psycho and i can see there are similarities between DH and my father in this respect. DH is very 'solid' and reliable and before my dad turned psycho i think to me as a little girl he must have seemed like my 'rock' ie always there for me when i needed him unlike my mother who was by contrast never there and was always cold, distant, unfriendly and disinterested. Even during my dad's 'psycho phase' (which lasted around 5 years in it's 'intense' phase and then seemed to ease off a bit) I remember times when he was really nice and kind and generous, more like his old self. But of course by that time he had completely destroyed our previously close relationship by the abusive incident and no amount of 'niceness' afterwards could repair it, not without him openly acknowledging what he had done, how much he had hurt me and sincerely apologising and realising that he had to take steps to build up my trust and faith in him again. He did none of those things and so the relationship remained in tatters the way he left it after the incident. I remember in the years after that incident and a few others, none quite so bad as the first (the phrase 'the first cut is the deepest' springs to mind) i turned into an angry, aggressive person. I was often rude and snappy with my parents. My dad even used to ask me why I was like that when my sisters weren't. I used to answer "because of the past" but if he had asked me to elaborate which he never did, i wouldn't actually have been able to talk about the 'incident' as it wasn't even in my conscious memory at that time. It only came into my conscious memory after i had cut off my parents which was over 2 years ago and i only felt able to talk about it earlier this year, but like i said, i talked without any emotion and made sure i changed the subject as quickkly as possible.

I suppose i feel 'shame' about the incident even though i know it wasn't my fault and i am also scared people will say it wasn't that bad, why are you making such a fuss? That's why i was so relieved when my therapist recognised how traumatic it was for me and didn't tell me i was making a fuss over nothing. I suppose i find it hard to articulate how and why it traumatised me so much but i am starting to find the words now, by remembering how i felt when DH triggered the feelings again.

I also have complete amnesia about what happened after the incident, but again, i think it is like a 'blackout' after an accident or something, i have read about how people forget everything and that it is the brain' way of protecting you from your feelings until you are ready to feel the intense and strong emotions provoked by huge trauma. I feel i am getting nearer to that place, where i can talk or write about the 'incident' and feel the associated emotions without being too scared and pushing them away like i think i have been doing til now.

I think you are right about me talking about other 'lesser' traumas more freely as a way of avoiding and distracting from the 'main incident.'

What really annoys me sometimes is when i talk to my sisters (who are still in touch with my parents) and they tell me my parents do love me. When i tell them how they treated me and question if that is loving behaviour my sisters have no response. I think they are just in complete denial, they don't want to really face up to what my parents did to me and are quite desperate for the family to go back to how it was. I repeatedly tell them it will never be like that again, but i suppose it may take a long time yet for them to really believe it.

I don't really know the answer to your question of whether i am scared of reliving the incident or scared of people finding out about it......I suppose it's a bit of both. And now i'm scared of talking around it so much that when i finally do perhaps post about it everyone it will be an anticlimax and people will say "Is that it? Why were you so scared to talk about it, it's no big deal." Maybe I feel like that because when i have very briefly told my sisters about the incident i get no reaction from them at all. They don't say either "oh that was terrible" or "what's the big deal?" they just say nothing and make me feel like it was nothing and i am making a fuss over nothing.

But perhaps they are just not really wanting to consider what happened and really think about it too deeply as it would shatter their own illusions about my parents. But it means they are denying my reality and i find that really hard. I think both my sisters are also split off from their own feelings and actually cannot empathise with me or with the little girl that i once was and i'm sure this splitting off is also a survival mechanism they had to use as children as they too experienced and witnessed many terrible scenes.

Am so sorry for the long and rambling post, i have been bursting to get all this out of my head.

Another thought i had today was that i think my mother used to 'palm' me off onto my dad because i am sure i didn't turn out to be the child she was hoping for or expecting. I think she found it really hard to cope with me but blamed me for it instead of herself and her own inadequacies. I'm sure that's why i always did things with my dad when i was young as she found it too hard to manage me and resented me for it. As a child i felt her rejection and resentment but luckily initially at least i had my dad who at least did seem to want me and enjoy my company.

Even when i was older my mother used to blame me for her inability to talk to me and empathise with me and i realise she must have been doing this all along, secretly blaming me for not being the child she was expecting and being unable to simply accept me just as i was. Instead she rejected me as i was and i was forced to adapt myself to become a child she would find more acceptable and less threatening, who didn't challenge her abilities as much or at all.

So that meant i wasn't able to develop my true self, she had to disappear and hide as she wasn't wanted, and instead i developed a false self, someone who was acceptable to my mother, but who was not the real me.

One of the books i have read was by Charles Whitfield calling Healing the Child Within, have any of you read it? I read it ages ago and it was all theory to me at the time but now i am finding a lot of it is coming back to me and making so much sense. I would recommend it if you haven't already read it.

DS has fallen asleep so I have gone on for longer than i thought it would.....sorry.

Am going to post some more whilst DS is still asleep!

I have been thinking about the sort of child i must have been, before i was forced to change because of the abuse. Although i think i had to change from who i really was even before my dad's abuse as my mother could not accept me as i was.

I think i must have been what is termed now as a 'spirited child'. I don't think i was a quiet, shy, placid, child. I think i was quite loud, quite vocal, very bright and intelligent with a velocity of thought that my mother probably couldn't keep up with or understand. I may have had intelligence/thought/knowledge seemingly beyond my years and my mother, being of much slower intellect probably just didn't have a clue how to deal with me or cope with me. I know at the time i had cousins who were slightly older than me who would be happy playing with just a piece of string for hours on end but i don't think i was like that. I think i needed constant stimulation, had a very low boredom threshold and to my mother i'm sure i seemed very demanding and difficult. However i'm sure my dad appreciated my qualities as he is far more deep thinking and intelligent than my mother and probably was able to cope better with keeping me amused/entertained/interested.

I'm sorry if i sound as if I'm blowing my own trumpet, i really don't intend to, i am just trying to figure out how i might have been as a child as i suppose that will help me in finding out who i really am as an adult, and help me to cast off my false self.

OnePlusOne, thank you for posting on that thread in Behaviour/Development. I am feeling a bit vulnerable and tearful thinking about my problems with DD and the fact that I have admitted details of what I've done on there and people are going to judge me. I deserve to be judged and the way I feel now will motivate me even more to improve but I still feel vulnerable, and to see a post from someone who I 'know' and who I feel understands me comforts me.

From your posts on this thread, it sounds like as a child you were like your DD and my DD, but suppressed this person in order to be a person who your parents would approve of/tolerate more. Do you feel kind of angry that your DD is allowed to be herself and you were not? Yet she doesn't seem to appreciate what you do for her sometimes? And you feel you would have really appreciated it if your parents had given you what you give her? I think this is kind of how I feel about my DD. Yet I'm not sure if I would have been like her or more like my oversensitive, soft, emotional, affectionate DS. If I imagine being like him and then having to deal with the things that happened I feel like crying and crying. There is no way DS would be able to cope with it without having to change into someone else and deny all his softness - which is what I did, developing an obsession with striving not to be weak in any way.

I think DD is how I would have liked to be, I really admire her and feel she would have coped with it all better than me. She just wouldn't allow anyone to treat her with such disrespect! Therapist says anyone would have found it hard but I can't help feeling a stronger person, less sensitive, would have been less affected by it. I just don't know, I mean my bro went through similar to me and I don't see him as being as soft and sensitive as me yet he was so affected that he ended up breaking the law and going to prison. So I still have some 'confusion'.

I know what you mean, OnePlusOne, about worrying that what happened won't be seen as bad enough by other people for you to be so affected by it. The thought of what happened being belittled or dismissed (again) when it hurt you so much feels like nobody cares about you and like you are going mad. Also it isn't just what happened that affects you, it is what it means to you or what it symbolises as well, eg in your dad's case, what he did made you feel that he didn't love you when you had thought he did and that is what it meant to you which sounds like it could have been worse than what actually happened physically (if you imagine just going through it but not having any thoughts about what it meant). I hope this makes sense, I know what I mean just can't find good words.

I think you get over the physical side of what happened quicker than how it made you feel emotionally and how it affected your developing sense of self and self esteem. I remember the emotions and thoughts much more vividly than I remember pain or physical sensations of things that happened. But if you tell someone about what happened now it seems like they will look at what happened just in physical terms because it may be harder for them to see how it made you feel emotionally. So they won't see the full impact of it.

Sorry if I'm not making much sense, I'm kind of working things out as I write. Your posts always make me look at things from different angles and work out new things to understand.

AN, it's not surprising somehow that I found my way to the other thread. One of the posters asked me how i am dealing with my anger problem. I said the answer to her question was on this thread, all 700 pages of it (if you print it out, all 4 parts of the thread) and that gives an idea of how complex the problem of my anger (and if you don't mind me saying so, yours) is.

I totally understand what you have just said in your post and you have hit the nail on the head. I can quite easily describe what happened physically during the 'incident' but not so easily the emotional impact and significance of it to me and it's the emotional impact which caused the greatest pain not the physical aspect.

In answer to your question, tbh I personally don't feel angry that DD is being allowed to be herself whilst I wasn't. Or perhaps I should phrase that as I don't yet feel angry about that. Now that you have mentioned i realise i may feel some anger about that at some point.

Right now i just feel a great sadness that my mother just couldn't appreciate me just as i was....but then am i not doing exactly the same to DD? I do wish sometimes for her to be a much quieter, shyer, less demanding child. I feel sad that I had to hide my true self in order to make sure my mother was not faced with her insecurities and inadequacies when surely it was her duty, once she had had me, to put her own needs aside and to put me first. But then i suppose that is just what a narcissist is incapable of doing so it would have been impossible for her.

If I do feel anger I think it should be directed towards my mother for failing in her duty to me and letting me down and then placing the blame on me, for being a difficult child and as an adult, difficult to talk to.

The other thread has been interesting as it seems to have helped me work out how i might have been as a child and also confirms my memory of my mother always being irritated/impatient/cross with me.

I wonder whether the posters on that thread (those who are not part of this thread already) also have suppressed anger in themselves that they should be directing at their parents but which they are directing towards their DC's.

I heard a quote once along the lines of : This world can be divided into 2 types of people, those who know they have issues and are dealing with them, and those who don't know they have issues."

I think now, if one has parents, one has issues. And as in the quote the only difference is some of us are aware of this fact and are dealing with it, and the rest are not aware.

What you said in your post about you perhaps being a particularly sensetive child has just struck me. Because the original title of Alice Miller's book The Drama was 'The Drama of the Sensetive Child as opposed to the current 'Gifted Child'. It may be that certain children are more sensetive than others and are affected more deeply than others and perhaps that is why the original title was at i have said.

I hope you don't mind if I summarise today's therapy session on here to consolidate it in my mind:

Last weekend I went to the pub with DH and some of his work mates and then they came back to our house. One woman, X, was very drunk and very emotional. I had been giving her some attention and listening to her talk about her lack of confidence and social life and that is fine, I enjoy listening to people and trying to understand them and say things that might make them feel better, although I also probably say too much about myself and my personal stuff, too soon, to people I don't know well enough.

Because I am so soft and too open, people like her seem to go over the top. So by the time we got back to our house she was physically all over me, cuddling me but with her hands accidentally going everywhere and saying over the top affectionate things and making me promise that I would contact her and arrange to do things just with her. At the time I said I would, because I was drunk and because I seem to feel so sorry for people that I will do whatever they want because I want to make it better for them, but then when I'm 'trapped' into it and feel the person is controlling me and expecting lots from me I feel overwhelmed and want to get away from them. I don't think about what I want and don't want until it is too late.

Being touched too much is a BIG TRIGGER for me and makes me feel very disturbed, but I didn't feel I could stop X touching me because I was scared of upsetting her when she already seemed 'messed up' and feeling unloved. I didn't want to reject her. And part of me thought it can't be sexual because she is a woman so I don't have a good enough reason to make her stop.

The same night, a man who was there, Y, who also has self esteem issues, wanted to talk to me on my own in my kitchen which again, is fine, but then I felt he was getting really intense, really staring 'lovingly' into my eyes and saying things like "you really understand me", which is ok, but I was starting to feel he was also going to get too close. His wife was in the next room and looking like she wanted his attention but he had ignored her most of the night. I didn't want to be part of him ignoring her because this is also something that I know feels bad. Then whenever I said any word that could be associated with sex he was saying "every time you say that word I get an erection". At that point I couldn't take it and found an excuse to just walk away from him and be with the others.

The point is, that something about me seems to encourage people who don't have the correct boundaries WRT other people's space.

When I first started my last job I somehow let a man latch on to me too quickly and he became 'dependant' on me and wouldn't even walk up the corridor without me. One minute he was nice to me and the next minute he would be doing a character assassination on me, like my bro used to do. I never stood up for myself, I pretended I found it funny and it was ok (again similarly to with my bro as children). I didn't want to reject him because he had told me all about his problems and I felt sorry for him. Then it became too much one day and I shouted at him and he was hurt and felt rejected and has never really forgiven me.

Then I had another woman at work get dependant on me, but we somehow have sorted that out over time and now we are good friends.

Then a couple of years ago I got sucked in by a woman's problems and did loads of babysitting for her and driving her and her kids around and helped her move house and gave her a load of our old stuff out of our house and listened to her problems. She was phoning me several times a day and wanted to see me nearly every day and I felt it was too much but didn't say anything. She never did anything for me, I just did what I could for her. I took her everywhere with me, but then she started upsetting my other friends by saying judgemental things to them, then she started criticising my parenting when her own children were badly behaved but I had never said anything. My other friends refused to see her anymore but I still did, then her DH, who had been stuck overseas, came back and she just cut me off and seemed to disappear off the face of the earth!

Then a year ago I met another woman who said she was lonely and nobody wanted to be friends with her and she was isolated at home because she couldn't drive and struggling with her 3 kids and I felt sorry for her too. Before I knew it I had agreed to driving her and her kids wherever they wanted to go (and I'm slightly phobic of driving!). I started seeing her a lot and listening to her problems. She rarely listens back. She keeps asking me whether I still like her or whether I am going to leave her like everyone else and keeps asking me what I mean by everything and thinking I am feeling negatively about her. I feel too sorry for her to reject her and now I feel she has come to expect certain things of me and take me for granted and use me. And again, her children are badly behaved and I've never said anything but she has started criticising my DS and saying it is his fault if her DS bullies him.

So these are the relationships I keep getting into. I open up too quickly, before I know someone is going to be 'healthy' for me, because I'm desperate for human contact. I let them make demands of me because I feel sorry for them and they become more and more needy and push the boundaries further and further until I can't take anymore and I reject them - which is exactly the thing I was scared to make them feel in the first place.

Therapist pointed out an important thing that I had never seen before - I do the SAME thing with my children! I'm scared of rejecting them in any little way so I let them be really really demanding and sacrifice myself totally to them for a while before it becomes too much for me and I lose it and go the other way and say things like "get away from me" and get really angry with them and make them feel really rejected, the thing I was scared of in the first place!

On the other hand he thinks that if DD is demanding and wants more attention it IS because I haven't given her enough attention! And contrary to people saying that I should 'toughen DS up' because he cries at every little thing, Therapist says I must pay no attention to this but comfort him and reassure him as much as he wants.

We talked about consequences for DD because she is thick skinned to tellings off and just laughs in my face and this makes me be really nasty to her to make her regret her behaviour. Therapist said the best consequence is exclusion for a short time. He said he has a dog and the dog would rather he beat it than ignored it and ignoring it drives it wild. He said children are the same.

oneplusone, I've just logged on and only have a minute, but I had to reply to your post about how you thought you used to be as a child. I can absolutely relate to that.
In one of my mother's hate-mail letters she wrote that as a child I just wouldn't stop talking, that she couldn'T shut me up. Her answer to this was to have me doing gymnastics, ballet, piano, violin, dance, swimming, tap..and much more, every night of the week, so she would never have to see me. And the times she did see me she'd usually be beating the crap out of me. So I think I was what could be termed as a "demanding" child. SHe wrote that she was so glad when I took up reading (escapism?!!) at around age 8 because then I calmed down i.e became inconspicuous.

THe reality was that, like you, I was an extremely sensitive child and still am to a certain extent as an adult. Its only in the past year or so that I've discovered I'm quite artistic. All of that was squashed of course. THe interesting this was that although she clearly despised my personality traits, if they showed her in a good lightfor example I was good at pianoshe would behave as though these were her achievements, as though I was sensitive and good at piano because of her . sO the sensitive me was only okay when it suited her.

My DD is an extremely sensitive and what you could say 'demanding' child. But I relish her behaviour because I see myself in her and I know that I was never ever doing anything wrong. DD had terrible colic, had to be walked for hours every night, now at 2 she needs almost constant emotional attention. She shrieks if the doorbell rings and I have to pick her up. She still can't handle the hoover. But instead of seeing her as "demanding" I can see her for the sensitive little girl that she is. And my GOd there are plus sides to having sensitive children. Our stupid mothers were too blind to notice how amazing sensitive children are. She notices changes in atmosphere, if something is different in the room. I planted flowers yesterday and this morning she went out and pointed to them and said "MUm...flowers...Oh Niiice".

ActingNormal, your posts are so insightful. You have so much insight into why you might attract someone with no boundaries. I think as well as the point that you just craved attention from someone-anyone, there is also the issue about feeling responsible for the other person. I am like this too ( though much less now) and it is clearly because whenever our parents were in a foul mood, or dissapointed or whatever, they'd take it out on us- as though we were the source of their bad feelings. When in fact it was the big bad world out there that had got to them not us. SO we were made to feel as though it was in our hands to make sure our parents weren't upset- not ever doing anything to rock the boat, and (heaven forbid) not expressing our most basic needs, while at the same time taking care of the adults emotional needs. That is why you feel guilty saying no to people, or you feel that their happiness is in your hands.
One thing I learned is that I can not make another person happy, not my friends, my husband, not even my children and certainly not my mother. You have to give up this responsibility and put it on them. People are responsible for themselves.
THat doesn't mean never helping anyone but I think it means being selective TBH. A friend of 10 years who asks you to babysit her child once while she goes into hospital is a situation where I would definitely help. A relatively new friend who calls me late at night sobbing about something is someone I would keep at arms length.
In my experience learning about boundaries comes with knowledge and practice. I read everything I could about boundaries and when I began to understand the concept more I could put it into practice in real life. A good guide is this:ask yourself whether you yourself would behave the way that person is behaving with you. If the answer is no, time to draw a line.
And then as you put it into practice you start to notice it more easily in others. Also, you realise that your world doesn't fall apart when you say 'no' to someone or draw a line. In fact, good things happen instead because you're free from all their negativity.

I haven't been on this thread for a while but felt I wanted to share something though not sure why.

Tomorrow I am going to see someone who has to assess how being abused and in long term care has affected me. It will be used as evidence in a court case. I guess this is the first time I really do have to tell everything and it scares the life out of me. In a very strange way I am looking forward to it as I am hoping it will feel like a weight has been lifted to get the words out. Does that make me sound crazy?

I have had stomach pains today and I know it is because of the worry of tmw.

MAmaG, I hope it went okay with having to talk about your 'secrets'. Do you feel better about things, or did it open a can of worms?

Thanks for asking.

What a day! Got to Greenwich to find the tube was shut. Had to take a very long bus journey, hoping we were going the right way with every traffic light on red. Got there 10 minutes late so not too bad. In the few hours we were there we had about 1 hour free time and a lot of that was spent walking. We did have a nice lunch though and DH is going shopping to get some dinner on the way to get the kids so I don't have to cook.

TBH the can is always open to a degree so it isn't ever going to be opened like that. The man was very nice and we were only there for 1 1/2 hours so not too long. I feel better now it is over and relieved it is a one off and he also feels I can have some treatment which will help me.

I will have to wait now while he does his report for my solicitor.

Have had a 'down' day today. At first I put it down to not feeling well and being let down by our babysitter. But a while ago I realised that some painful feelings have been triggered recently by various things. I think the main thing that affected me was talking to my sisters recently. They are worried about my mother and her upcoming heart operation. I know it probably sounds selfish, but I think those conversations with my sisters have triggered feelings from when I was a child when my mother always seemed to be concerned about my middle sister and she used to mention her concerns to me and I remember thinking whenever she did this 'What about me?'. My mother always used to say that my middle sisters was extremely sensetive and we had to be careful how we treated her and again my first thought always was 'I'm sensetive too, why do you never seem at all worried/concerned about me?'. But of course I never actually said anything at the time.

I guess those feelings have been buried for a long time and were triggered now by my sisters being so concerned about my mother. Even now I am feeling sad because nobody seems concerned about me. My health has really suffered over the past couple of years, ever since I had DD really, and nobody in my family seems worried or concerned. Even when i directly bring up the subject as i did once with my mother when we were still in contact; she just ignored me and tried to change the subject. Why? Why does she have so little concern for me? I am sure now I was a deeply sensetive child, just like my middle sister. But my middle sister was able to show her true emotions and did not have to hide them as my mother was there for her, she cared about her and how she was feeling. If I showed any sort of difficult emotion such as pain/hurt/upset my mother just ignored me so i quickly learnt that those particular emotions were unacceptable to my mother, she didn't love me if i was upset/in pain, so of course i learnt not to have such emotions: I repressed them.

This morning DD hurt herself quite badly. She was crying and clearly very upset. In a very wooden, stilted and unnatural way, I managed to comfort her and she sat on my lap for a while and clearly felt a bit better. I didn't feel anything inside though, i was just pretending to be concerned for her and the fact that she had hurt herself. Even this though is an achievment for me. In the past I would have actually got angry at DD for managing to hurt herself and the fact that at least today I didn't get angry with her is something.

But it is still so hard for me to have any real empathy for DD when she is crying and upset. It makes me realise how much I am still cut off from my own feelings, from the little girl inside me who was also many times crying and upset but whose mother never came to cuddle/comfort her.

What I find strange is that i know i do have the ability to be genuinely warm/comforting/soothing as when DS is crying and upset I can feel his pain inside myself. I just can't do it with DD, but I am sure this is because in order to feel DD's pain I have to feel my own pain as a little girl and I suppose I am just not there yet. I have been feeling so many emotions recently, I hope it is just a matter of time before I reach that particular point on my personal 'emotional map', where i can get in touch with and feel the upset/pain I didn't allow myself to feel as a little girl.

Perhaps I am not yet ready to feel the pain of the little girl inside me, I suspect there is a huge amount of deeply felt pain she has suppressed, as it probably goes back to when she was a baby. I am sure that when the time is right it will happen and I am sure it will also open the door for me to be able to empathise with DD. I felt frozen this morning as she was still very upset when DH was trying to give her a bath, she was really sobbing and I knew she was deeply upset and yet I didn't feel the urge to go and comfort her like i know i would have had it been DS, and the absence of any feeling inside me is what I think caused me to feel so down all day. I so desperately want to be able to empathise with DD, I want to be able to comfort her when she is upset and not have to be all wooden and uncomfortable and have to pretend. I want to feel her pain and truly empathise with her. I think that when I am able to do that, I will have reached a milestone on this journey. But that part of me still seems to be 'closed off' at the moment, I know from past experience that I can't 'force' myself to feel, it will happen when I'm, or the little girl inside me, is ready.

NotMamaG, congratulations on getting through your meeting ok. What happens next?

OnePlusOne, your DD was your first born wasn't she? What was the birth like? Were you the first born in your family? I'm not sure why these things might be relevant. We might identify with a particular child because of being the same birth order and your child with the same birth order as a sibling you found difficult might bring back feelings towards them that you had towards your difficult sibling. This could be drivel, I'm not sure.

I think in our house though DH identifies with DD because he was also the oldest and I identify with DS because I was also the youngest. We have our 'favourites' even though people aren't supposed to admit to having favourites.

DD's birth was difficult and I didn't feel an instant bond and my relationship with her now is more difficult than with DS who I instantly felt a bond with. His birth was standard. Also there is less fear getting in the way when you have done it before and have knowledge.

I'm just trying to work out why we would feel more about one child than another. I definately feel DS's pain more than DD's as well. A friend of mine has 3 children and she finds it hard to feel for the middle one. I think the birth was ok and I'm not sure that birth order had much to do with it as my friend wasn't raised with her siblings. But she has described cuddling the other two, then the middle one asks for a cuddle and she feels like she is forcing herself to do it and almost holding her at a slight distance away from herself "as though she was a piece of shit" (her words).

I think I will go and look it up on the internet as I find it hard to understand.

I can totally understand your feeling of "what about me" and understand why you would think 'why should I care about her (your mum) now when she never cared about me when I needed her to'. You felt abandoned to make way for your middle sister. Do you have the same feeling of "what about me" when your DD is being demanding and attention seeking? I know I feel like giving my DS more attention than DD because he doesn't seem to be demanding it so much, or not in the same way as DD. I feel like she is forcing me to, so I don't want to.

Sakura, I liked what you said about measuring what you want your boundaries to be by thinking about whether you would do what the other person is doing or not.

What you said about feeling responsible for the other person's feelings reminded me of something, not sure if it is relevant or not. I used to feel very tense at family meals as a child. I constantly watched my bro and monitored his mood. I was on edge, scared to do/say anything or even have a facial expression which might make him angry.

I tried to have NO facial expression. This became a habit throughout life and I still do it sometimes. I sometimes feel my face has gone stiff and sometimes feel like it is going to start twitching when I'm trying to have tight control over it. I tried to mirror my bro's mood eg if he seemed moody with our parents I would act moody with them as well. If I had been all chatty with them when he was feeling angry with them he would have got very angry with me and would have taken it out on me later. HIS feelings mattered. I disregarded my own and tried to ignore them. Maybe ignoring my feelings and closely monitoring other people's is a habit now.

It will be another long wait while he writes his report and then the solicitor passes it to the barrister.

I think, if you have never had a mother or one that was warm and loving, etc, that it is hard to then be a mum and I think you should be proud of every little thing you can get right (which is more than you think or realise.)

I don't sit and read to my children anywhere near often enough, but when I do I really enjoy it and wonder why I don't do it more! It's like when I have feelings of pure happiness, it scares the life out of me and I have to squash the feelings as I am so not used to them.

NotMamaG, What a wonderfully simple but encouraging and reassuring thing to say to us all, and yourself, thank you!:

"I think, if you have never had a mother or one that was warm and loving, etc, that it is hard to then be a mum and I think you should be proud of every little thing you can get right (which is more than you think or realise.)"

Thank you for saying that. I am well aware that I post for support and haven't been able to help for various reasons so I very much appreciate your comments.