Our 5th visit to the Stately Home

[Nabster]

Here we go again.

ActingNormal. Thank you for replying to my post, I thiink. Quite frankly it scares me. I think I have a persecution complex- like my mother always tells me. It is hard to think that this is not correct. Maybe what is buried can stay buried, so long as I deal with the here and now stuff? Or am I kidding myslef, and beinga coward? There are dark thigns lurking, I know, because in bouts of depression things have come to my mind.

The flicking a switch thing is spot on. I think my therapist saw it, too, bless him. He'snot daft, methinks. Maybe I am not ready yet.

ActingNOrmal,
I just want to say thanks for your reply to my post about my mother's behaviour. Its true that we are programmed to believe in our parents and that we have to reach that rock bottom point with them where we know we can't continue like this. WHat scares me, though, is absolutely how much shit I put up with over the years and still though my mother was a reasonably okay person, who had her ups and downs. SHe is not. She is insane and should never be allowed near small children ever again. Its frightening what our child's mind will justify as normal, because we know nothing else.

It has just occurred to me that middle sister an inferiority complex. She has alwayas been unfavourably compared to youngest sister all her life by our parents. I am sure that is why she is always trying to copy youngest sister in an attempt to prove she is as good as youngest sister and can do anything she does. I am sure she herself is completely unaware of what is driving her to always try and keep up with youngest sister but i am sure that is what is behind it.

It makes me feel better as i know now it is nothing to do with me really, she is not trying to make out she is superior to me because i had 2 NHS births, she is trying to prove that she is as good as youngest sister, because she has felt inferior all her life.

I feel I have to forgive him because I know about the things he has been through himself but would I forgive myself if I had done those things to a weaker, smaller more vulnerable person - NO!!! Whether I've been through bad experiences or not!

I am cross with myself for being so bloody soft that I do feel forgiveness and feel sorry for him and feel I should help him.

Because at the same time I am FUCKING angry with him.

Sorry, I will shut up now

and WHY did I idolise someone who hurt people smaller and more vulnerable than himself so that he could feel more powerful?!

AN, your first post, last paragraph made me cry. It is exactly how I feel. How can people who loved you let you go through that and not stop it. How can sometimes they even not see it at all? Are you invisible? Of course not, but that's how it makes you feel.

You talk of the constant fear that he might turn on you and the constant anxiety and trying to please to ensure he didn't turn. I did this with the bullies, became so fucking watchful, so cautious, so over-attuned to other people's feelings. Constantly worrying 'are they talking about me, are they about to start on me, is someone about to see my utter humiliation?'

The fear is horrible. I feared adults hearing the abuse even more than I feared the abuse. I couldn't bear the thought of the pity and the shame and the disgrace, the total humiliation of being labelled as 'different' and a 'freak' in front of other people. The fear I carry with me now.

I over-analyse everything, things my boss says, things my friends say, I'm constantly on the look-out to see whether there is a hidden subtext or whether they secretly all hate me.

My therapist says I need to deal with the hurt and show I'm vulnerable, to get past this anger and to move on. How can I show I'm vulnerable when last time I did they (my parents) ignored me. I think they tried to understand but they couldnt see what was going on right under their noses.

I'll try the vulnerable thing now. Inside I feel stupid and unloveable, ugly and worthless. I am a freak of nature and I can't believe I had no friends at school, had to spend lunchtimes hiding away from the dinner ladies who would force me outside to 'play'. I remember the fierce hate I felt for the one, she always made me go outside where my being on my own was so much more noticeable, where I wanted to curl up into a ball and vanish. But I couldn't.

AN - I just wanted to say I'm listening to you and I hope you are ok. I don't know what the future holds for us all but at least we know we're not alone x

Your post seems to have unleashed something in me. I've actually not stopped crying since I read it. And now I've sent a very long email to my parents explaining about the 'fear' and the constant worry. Probably the most honest thing I've ever written. I just cried and typed.

Now I'm back to worrying. What the hell they're going to think when they get it I don't know.

Does anyone know if this is how the letting go of anger thing is supposed to work?? Do you cry lots? I just wish I knew what I was doing. I've got no problem with going through the pain of remembering if it leads to feeling better, at the moment I'm just crying!!

x

HesDoneItAgain, thank you so much for your kind words to me and I so hope you are ok/going to be ok. I am sorry if I have made you feel worse by my words triggering your memories. I feel sorry but at the same time feel it must be a good thing that you are expressing your feelings? I DO think you have to really feel it before you start feeling better and I do think it is hard. I also think it happens in stages. You feel awful then feel a bit better for a time, then you deal with another bit of it and feel awful and then better again etc.

I also sent a long letter to my parents and one to my brother last year and was also very fearful of how they would take it. It felt like a huge relief just to have said everything I wanted to say at last, even if I didn't get the response I wanted (although I didn't expect anything). I felt I was valuing my own feelings enough to say them rather than bottling them up for years more because I was putting their feelings of wanting to be 'respectable' above my own. I felt I could have more self esteem if I showed myself I valued my feelings by telling them how their actions affected me.

You might struggle with your parents response or lack of response to your email. I had made a decision that I hadn't written my letters with the aim of getting any particular response but I still found my parents lack of response hard. My mum didn't even acknowledge that she had read it til 3 months later. My dad phoned the day he read it but all he said really was that he had read it and not much else of any meaning. After a time (about 7 months) the feeling of relief at having sent the letters was much stronger than any feeling of anger at their lack of response.

You DO deserve to be able to say how you feel and felt to your parents and I hope that in time you can feel stronger for having done that and relieved that there are no longer things unsaid, waiting to be said. You are getting that uncomfortable phase over with now so it isn't hanging over you anymore.

I think you have done a very brave thing. I know how much it scared me to do it and I am SO glad that I did it.

I don't think I cried as much as it sounds like you have. I can talk about what happened in the past but I find it hard to say it with a lot of feeling. So I feel like I've expressed some of it but a lot of the feeling has not been expressed, it is still in me. I don't want you to feel so bad that you cry but I feel it is healthy that you are crying and that the more expressive you are about it, the quicker you will feel better.

ActingNormal and Hesdoneitagain

I find it quite astounding to read the posts on these threads, because our feelings are so similar.

I always wanted to make myself small,invisible. I thought that if I held everything in, really tight, made myself as insignificant as possible, everything would be ok.

I worry all the time about wether I have done or said the right thing. I wake up in cold sweats sometimes worrying that somthing I said or did might be taken badly.

I fear saying things even to my therapist. I have no idea where you get the courage from to actually tell yuor family how you feel. My family have made me believe that my feelings are somehow toxic- that my feelings are what causes all the problems in my family. It is very hard for me to shake this idea.

I am getting very anxious just writing this.

I have bouts of what I can only describe as emotional pain. I cry quite uncontrollably. Then it passes. I used to do this as a child, and I cannot tell you why.

You are such brave people.

Thank you AN and PM.

Had a response back. Was very long and very emotional. It has really touched me, they actually listened to what I'd said in the email and responded to it. It is the most honest 'conversation' I have ever had with my parents.

They are genuinely sorry for everything and have opened up re it in a way I have never known before. It made me cry all over again so was obviously things I needed to hear.

I'm not saying we are anywhere near solving this but the relief I feel that they took me seriously, that I opened up and was vulnerable and wasn't ignored or belittled again is immense. I am so so sorry for those of you that have done this re contacting via a letter etc and have not received the closure from it that you dearly deserve.

Pinky - I'm not brave, I'm on 60mg Citalopram a day for OCD. The constant worrying etc is a sign of OCD (or could be general anxiety). If you keep going over conversations in your head all the time you could have OCD - see a GP, citalopram really, really helps (sorry I'm not trying to push ADs here but they have helped me immensely)

I think I'm in for a crying a lot stage now x

Just a very quick post. Have had a quick read through recent posts and many of you are asking the same question I have asked all along. How could somebody such as my mother, who claims to love me (and i believe in her own inadequate she does love me) allow me to be horribly hurt and abused by my dad in front of her?

And I have always known the answer deep down inside but have been afraid to face it. It is because my mother never bonded with me at birth. And it is this bond between mother and child which is the crucial requirement which later ensures the mother will protect her child in times of danger, even at the expense of her own life.

In my case that bond did not exist and instead of me and my mother growing closer and closer as the years went by, we grew further and further apart. And so when i was 10 and the incident with my dad happened that terrified and hurt me so deeply, my mother was able to just stand and watch without doing anything at all to save me/stop my dad.

AN, i think in your case it is quite easy for me at least to see that your mother did not bond with you because she was your adoptive mother. IMHO, if a mother like mine who carried me for 9 months inside her and gave birth to me still felt no bond with me at birth nor afterwards, then it must be very hard indeed for an adoptive mother to feel a bond with her adopted child, especially if that adoptive mother herself has unresolved childhood issues which it certainly sounds as if your mother had.

I think a mother can love her child without feeling a bond/connection with that child. I am one of those mothers in relation to DD. I love DD but feel very 'seperate' from her, unconnected. Sometimes i look at her and can't believe she is my flesh and blood. I have felt in the past that she is somebody else's child that i am looking after.

Whereas with DS, it is completely different. I felt bonded even before he was born and after he was born i felt an instant connection with him, he is a part of me and that bond has grown and strengthened every day.

With DD, because of all the hard work i have been doing in sorting out the mess my parents left me i feel there is a bond developing between me and DD. It is quite fragile at the moment, but it is better than nothing which is how things were for a long time. I know i will have to work hard all the time to keep the bond there and to strengthen it but i am determined to do that for the rest of my life if need be.

Another realisation I have had recently is that i have not really had many friends throughout my life.

Until now i realise i have been under this illusion that i have always had lots of good friends whether at school/work etc but actually that is not true. I have only ever had 1 friend at a time. ie at school i made one friend and she was really my only friend until her family moved away. Then i made another friend and she was my only friend until we went our seperate ways at university. Then i made another friend and she and i are still friends, but she is my only close friend really. I did have one other friend but we fell out a while ago as i realised she was quite toxic.

I actually think now all these so called 'friends' i had were substitute mother figures in my eyes (as a child). I remember i became attached very quickly to these friends and would want to spend every waking minute with them. It makes sense to me as my actual mother was unavailable to me and so i was constantly searching for a mother figure. There were no other female adults in my life (eg aunts etc) who I was close to and so I attached myself to my female friends. Once i had a close female friend i realise i always found it hard to make any more friends; i would be content with just that one friend and we would become very close and spend all our time together.

I have found it hard to make new friends since i have become a mum. I think children only feel it is 'safe' to make friends outside the home when they have a secure base at home and a secure attachment to their mother.

However, i did not find it difficult, as i got older, to form relationships with male friends. I have never really had a boyfriend who treated me badly/was abusive/controlling etc. I think this is due to the fact that i did have a secure and healthy attachment to my dad from when i was born until i was 10/11 and he in turn had a good bond with me. I have always wondered about this as after the age of 11 my relationship with my dad broke down completely and has remained broken ever since. But i think the first 10 years of my life have played a huge part in me being able to attract and form healthy non-toxic relationships with men. Every boyfriend i have had has been caring, kind and loving and although we split up for various reasons (until of course i met and married DH), none of them ever treated me badly or abusively. They were all decent men and i have wondered why this was when for most of my life my relationship with my dad has been so bad.

It makes me realise, as Alice Miller always says, that the most important years are the very first years of a child's life and the type of relationship he/she has with his/her parents in these very first years and my relationship history bears out this theory.

HDIA, your last post made me cry. You are a brave lady for 'baring your soul and your heart to your parents in the way you did. Opening yourself up in this way must have made you feel very vulnerable to being hurt by your parents if they had not come back with the response that they did in fact come back with. I am really pleased for you as it seems you have opened the lines of communication with your parents and they seem willing to really hear you.

I would love to have the courage to write to my parents in the way you have done. So far all i have done is write them a letter which didn't really touch upon my true feelings at all. It was full of anger and hatred for them. I wrote it about 2 years ago. Since then i have realised that my anger was just a defensive mask for all the pain and hurt i had bottled up inside for years. But i am too scared to tell my parents about my real feelings of pain at the way they treated me. I'm scared they will not respond like your parents have. I think even if they wanted to my parents are incapable of responding to me with any real understanding of how they made me feel, as they are emotionally numb themselves, because of their own unresolved childhood issues.

HDIA, what an excellent result! You must have written your email in a really good way to get them to understand and it sounds like they want to understand.

OnePlusOne, that is interesting what you wrote about bonding and seems obvious when you say it but I hadn't thought about it before. My adoptive mum didn't bond much with her own parents and she has herself admitted that when she 'got' us as babies she didn't know what to do so she handed us over to our adoptive dad. Although he is not emotionally expressive, when I think of my parents I feel more for him than her (although not much at all) and feel more sense of warmth from him than her.

Does this explain why I too felt closer to boys than girls til I was quite old? When I 'fantasise' about having a loving parent I picture a man rather than a woman. I think I had a preference for a male therapist than a female one.

I wonder if some of my problems with DD have been because of the difficult birth I've gone on about previously? When she was born I, like you, also had that feeling of finding it hard to believe she was mine and part of me but I never had that problem with DS. People have said they think DS's behaviour is more challenging than DD's yet I tolerate his behaviour much better.

The thought that I might not have bonded with DD enough really disappoints me because all through the pregnancy I had thought about how important it was to bond with my baby and I did feel I was bonding with her while she was in the womb, but then the trauma of the birth and the fear I felt about not knowing how to look after a baby seemed to override the bonding feelings at first. I SO wanted to do it properly. It was an important issue for me because of being adopted myself and not feeling a bond with my adoptive mother.

I feel kind of angry with the staff at the hospital but don't know whether I should be. They did appear to be unsure of what they were doing (arguing about what to do for the best). But maybe my first birth would have been just as difficult even if they had seemed more decisive. Maybe it just came more naturally to me second time round because I had done it before rather than it all being new the first time as well as without having had good role models of motherhood.

I'm thinking about your theory that if you bond with a baby very early on then you have the instinct to protect him/her at any cost and that you need that bonding to happen to have this instinct. I do feel this instinct to protect DS more strongly than with DD. I can see that my amum's fear of the consequences for herself of protecting me were not overriden by her feelings for me and that could be because she just didn't have that instinct. The instinct must be nature's way of making us do what is best for survival/continuation of our genes and so it is 'designed' to be powerful enough to override our fears.

I so hope that if the bonding was hindered at the beginning that this can still become good later on. DD was about 4 months before I really felt it - I was carrying her to put her on a playmat in the lounge and I had a feeling of not wanting to put her down but wanting to cuddle her longer because I loved her.

I was talking to a man in a pub and he had a child of his own and a step child. He said that now, the bond he feels for both of them is equal and very strong, but the bond with his own child was instant as soon as he was born whereas the bond with his stepchild took time to develop.

I'm also thinking about the fact that for a long time in my life I felt more comfortable around boys than girls (despite abuse from males). I had a mistrust of females. I've read that this is common for adopted people. I wonder if I still favour boys over girls deep down and that is why I'm more bonded with DS than DD. I have closer female friends than male ones now though.

You would think I would be more angry with males because it was males that were abusive to me, yet I have felt more angry with my birthmother and adoptive mother than with the males in my past, the ones who actually did things. My mum did more activities with me throughout childhood than my dad and I talked to her more yet I feel more for him than her now.

Maybe it was a woman who hurt me first - my birthmother for giving me away, then I wonder how much the baby felt about being taken away from the temporary foster carer as well, then my adoptive mother just seemed inadequate and I'm angry with her for not being up to the job and not being able to give me enough love and comfort and reassurance to get over the earlier abandonments. I don't think it would have been enough emotional input for a child that was her own even but I think maybe an adopted child needs more? Then she didn't help me when I asked for her help with her father and my brother. I feel I have been failed by women. I've learnt a strong lesson not to trust women! I see my mothers as being cold and self centred and even competitive - they want to be better than me! (When I met my birthmother she seemed to be trying to outdo me in everything and show off about herself and was more interested in having someone to show off to than in me.)

PinkyMinxy, I used to feel that fear about saying anything about my family at all and wouldn't post on MN for a long time. Occassionally I feel fearful and feel like maybe I should get all my posts deleted but then it passes. You really do seem like you are very strongly repressing a lot of stuff and things must have affected you deeply. I used to write things in tiny writing on small bits of paper and lock them in a box as a start to admitting what happened to myself, then gradually being able to tell other people.

It feels scary to release it from the repressed place it is in but it might not be as bad as you think. When you first went through it you were a child, less strong than now, with less support and less knowledge and skills for coping with things. It must affect a child more than an adult so if you let yourself have the 'knowledge' of what happened to you now, it might not be as scary as when you were a child - well maybe not completely true - probably at first you will feel similar to how you felt back then, in a reliving it way, so it WILL feel almost as bad as it did then, but in time, as an adult, you could cope with the knowledge of what happened. When I say knowledge, I know that you do know the details that you remember but in my case I felt that although I knew things I wasn't really admitting to myself that it was me that they happened to. I had detached the knowledge from myself.

I feel you may be about to go through a very scary and painful phase but I hope that you won't be put off from seeing it through because at first it may be making you feel worse. It honestly is worth it when you get through the worst bit and feel a bit better, then have more bad bits off and on but they are not as hard as the first bit I don't think. I really do think it is worth it. Did you say you have a therapist? I don't think I could have done it/be doing it without mine.

The book I am reading keeps mentioning childhood abuse/deprivation causing impaired itellectual development in children. I know I was a bright child but I am sure i didn't achieve my full potential at school/uni.

But what I am most worried about now is the effect of the emotional deprivation on DD during the first 5 or so years of her life. She seems to be very intelligent but is not doing very well at school. She has recently been receiving extra learning support in the classroom.

I don't feel guilty as such that somehow her brain development has been affected by the emotional deprivation she suffered from birth til very recently but I feel very very sad indeed that my problems may have affected her development in such a fundamental way.

It's hard to know whether it is 'your fault' or whether this would have happened anyway. People respond to different learning techniques in different ways and she just might not find the way it is taught in a classroom is her best way.

My DH is also very intelligent and has progressed in his career to a high level, yet at school he was in the 'thick group' and didn't get very good qualifications. I got very good qualifications but have gone nowhere with a career.

My DD is quite advanced I think for her age in lots of areas and is doing well at school despite the fact that I feel that a lot of the time I have not been a good parent to her.

DS has had a lot better parenting from me but already I can see that he is not at the level DD was at when she was his age. He finds it incredibly difficult to focus to do anything (eg drawing, writing dot to dot letters, sticking to simple rules of games, jigsaws etc) and doesn't have any particular talents that seem to stand out yet. I worry that when he starts school they might find him difficult to teach.

I think you are quite hard on yourself because you are so concerned not to make your DD feel the way your parents made you feel. You are likely to see all problems that she has as being your fault I think, especially as you feel that most of your problems are your parents fault. It is a hard job to work out which things are your fault and which aren't but try to be aware that not ALL the problems she is going to have are going to be your fault. Everybody has some problems anyway despite their parenting.

I feel I should take heed of what I just said as well! I feel that parenthood is such a huge responsibility which I sometimes feel overwhelmed by because I feel that anything bad the children go through and any problems they have or will have will be my fault! I feel this because I feel such a lot of my problems are my parents' and brother's fault.

....and my parents were shite but I did incredibly well at school and university! (Just not so well in the real world after)

AN thank you so much for your post. I have been feeling quite worried and i suppose guilty about DD. I am not totally sure it's down to me. But it could be. I'll never know perhaps. What makes me think it could be me is that DS seems to be extremely bright. He picks things up in a flash, as compared to DD who seems to have memory and concentration problems. DS can do jigsaws and concentrates really well. And like i said i had no bonding problems with him whatsoever.

Like you said it is very very hard sorting out what could be my fault and what could have happened anyway. I think the book i am reading is not helping as it keeps going on about emotional deprivation causing impairment of brain development and children not reaching their full potential. You are right also in that my own childhood experience is heavily colouring how i view DD's childhood experience so far.

Thank you again, you have made me feel better.

Thank you AN. I will try the writing down thing.

I was worried about bonding with my DD1, because I was very poorly with HG when I was pregnant with her, and I was scared I might resent her. I was certainly depressed but she is so funny and gorgeous, I barely remember being ill at all.
I do worry about DH and I having rows and the effect on the children, and being too emotionally drained becuas of my old family to give my DCs what they need.

DS called himself rubbish the other day because he couldn't do something. I have never called him this, but I have called myself rubbish, useless etc. and he has heard me. I don't want him to talk to himself like that.

Had a row with DH today, because he took DD1's hand. I was looking after her, we were walking to school. I felt DH did not want me there, then I felt he thought I was incompetent with the DC's because he took her hand whilst I was looking out for her.
DH was upset, but at playgroup, when I said sorry he said it was not my fault. It is because of my old family.
But still I felt terrible. Walked to my appointment with therapist feeling that everyone would be better off if I was not around.
Therapist spent most of session explaining to me that it is not my fault. That I have been conditioned into feeling this way by my old family for the whole of my life. Just because there are more of them then there are of me does not make them right.
It is not my fault. I was abused as a child and my family still use me as a scapegoat now.

It may finally be sinking in.

Walking home a memory came to me. It was the incident with the iron. It seemed very clear, but fleeting. This time my mum picked me up and put the iron on my arm, because I had been getting under her feet. She just put me back on the floor, told me not to make such a fuss, and carried on ironing. I had a long burn up my forearm. She was angry with me, but the act seemed deliberate, not the accident in the heat of the moment as I had thought before.
I don't know what is the truth, and I prolly never will, but the way she dismissed my pain
and carried on with what she was doing was definitely real.

I am beginning to realise that incidents like this, together with being physically pushed/shoved/pulled around, gripped so tightly her nails dug into my skin,told she wouldn't hold my hand because she didn't love me, that nothing I did would make any difference now, because I had spolied everything, constantly being told I was bad, a pain, a mess, cack-handed, didn't deserve what my siblings had, laughed at, mocked, humiliated, have embarrassing private issues told in a loud voice to whoever would listen. Told I am over-sensitve, attention seeking, that I use people up, that I think I'm somebody but I'm not, I'm nothing, I'm a piece of shit, I'm nasty, selfish, deluded.
Then shut in my room. The silent wailing, the rocking. Being left on my own to cry and cry....
And then sometimes everything was 'normal'. I would be told nice things, have clothes made/bought for me and such like- so what do I have to complain about?

This is what is meant by conditioning?

So now when something happens I blame myself. I take it all on myself. I slap myself in the face, bash my head against the wall and say over and over stop feeling sorry for yourself.. stop feeling, it is all your fault just deal with it and snap out of it. aND SO i DO. The numbness comes over me again and I find my normal voice, my composure, my mask and resume my life.

This is normal, for me. But I don't want it to be normal for my children.

I have taken the things my old family say at face value, but I am becoming aware now that it is some sort of sick game, that I am being manipulated, played with. My sis is over. My family have stopped contacting me, they are now ringing/texting DH. Are they trying to get him stuck in the middle, get him to collude with them? Who knows?

I rang her. She says she would like to come over, one afternoon. They have lots of days out planned, her and my parents. We are not invited to any of them. She wants to pop over one afternoon- she just wants to see the children. So I am doubly dismissed. One afternoon, dependent upon the weather, but only to see the children, mind. And she does want to see us, but we are not a priority. Sightseeing is more important.

I am feeling guilty again, now. But I am going to hit post.

But I'm sorry for going on with myself.

PinkyMinxy - well done. That was so brave. And I'm so sorry you went through what you went through with them - likewise with every one on here, so many awful things that people have been put through.

I've not been able to post for a while, partly because I'm just so tired all the time (me and DS both have sleep issues) and partly cause I've felt a bit overwhelmed by all the posts - well, not so much the posts, but my reaction to them. I always feel I have to comment on everything, reply to everything, which is of course bonkers but it's the old "got to make everything right for everyone else" stuff. That was one of my roles in my old family, I was literally brought into existence to mop up their pain, and then used for a long time to make them feel better about anything and everything. Then of course I also want to reply because there are so many parallels, but I just don't know where to start. I'm a serial deleter of posts before they're even posted.

I suppose I've always felt that I didn't have the right to want anyone to help put things right for me. That I didn't deserve to have a good life myself, only to help other people have good lives. My therapist identified it as "existential guilt" - I was made to feel guilty just for being alive. I was the scapegoat too. Or the sacrificial lamb, that's another way of seeing it. I seemed to exist solely so that other people could have normal, functional lives - they all used me as the safety valve, the pressure release, so they could dump all their unresolved shit and trauma on me and I had to carry it, which eventually made me monstrously incapacitated and unable to function properly in any sphere of life, while they all just got on with things and saw it all as "my" problem.

I read about a mother burning her little girl's arm with an iron or parents who don't even bother to remember their daughter's birthday and it hurts so much. It hurts because although I never experienced those particular things, I know full well the kind of situation where it's ok to hurt the small and the vulnerable and the weak, where someone's feelings just don't matter. I know what it's like to live in fear of "provoking" a bullying, unpredictable, volcanic older brother, to have to have yourself on "mute" the whole time, even inside your own head. And at the same time, to have to appear confident and normal because if you show any signs of weakness that's your fault too and you will be attacked for that as well.

ActingNormal, I think it was you talking about not crying.. it made me think of a time at primary school, where there was one teacher in particular who constantly singled me out for bullying, abusive behaviour. She was always angry with me, always looking for something to be angry with me for - just like my family. She would say really weird things, like "you are such a disappointment to your family, they must be so ashamed of you" - she said that once in front of the whole class, to dead silence, and once when she collared me alone in the corridor, bearing down on me, just me and her. And I had and still have no idea what she was talking about, I was top of the class every year, I was actually unhealthily good at that age as I was too scared to get into trouble - my best friend at the time (who also bullied me) was always pushing the boundaries but not me, I was shocked by what she did and couldn't imagine doing the same. I was absolutely tormented by this teacher's words, but on both occasions, I couldn't say a single thing back. Couldn't ask her what she meant (you didn't talk back to a teacher in those days), couldn't defend myself, nothing. Because I DID feel like a disappointment to them - but underneath, underneath the layers of personality I had cultivated in order to survive. The surface me thought I was loved and my life was normal. And I couldn't defend myself because no one ever defended me. I just took the attacks, at school as at home - mostly verbal, emotional, mental - and soaked them all up, like a sponge, till I was a walking bag of hurt.

Then this one day that I'm thinking of, this teacher had an old girl who'd come in to visit her and they were chatting away at the front of the class. Meanwhile, four of us were squatting down in a line looking at a wall poster close to the floor. The girl at the other end from me lost her balance and we all toppled over like a row of dominoes, with me the last to go under all the others. We were all giggling so much that she looked up from her chat to see what was happening, saw me and shouted out in a really angry voice "[full name], what on earth do you think you're doing, get back to your seat at once!" And to the others - who were all "pets" of hers - nothing, not a single word, like they weren't even there, like the thing that had just happened was someting completely different to what had actually just happened. And I went back to my seat, utterly humiliated and defeated, broken, powerless to react or stand up for myself or to have the truth recognised. And I sat down and tried to read a book, and I can still see the single tear that dropped down onto the page of that book, the tear I was doing everything in my power to hold back because worse than anything was being perceived as weak or having feelings by the others in the class. And the shame I felt at not being able to hold it back. And the embarrassed looks and silence of all those around who had witnessed it all.

I'm wondering why I'm going on so much about this story as in so many ways it seems a relatively minor incident, and the consquences weren't obviously severe; and it's partly because it's easier to talk about what happened at school than what it was like at home. But also because, I think, what was so aawful and what I couldn't deal with was the rearranging of the truth, bending the facts. She made it into a situation where I had been deliberately misbehaving, and had done so off my own bat and alone. But that didn't match at all - at all - with the facts of what had actually happened. And yet I had to accept her version of events and somehow bend my brain to make it fit and to make it ok for adults in authority to act like that and for me to be unfairly vicitimised and punished, albeit in a superficially very minor way. I had to just take it. And that has massive parallels with my home life.

And I think what really hurts is acknowledging that there is this huge part of me that is like a whipped dog. Just scared and beaten into submission. Most people would never suspect it of me because I am seemingly articulate and have good social skills on the whole and most people would probably imagine that I can defend myself pretty well. But I can't. If someone has that bully DNA, they can still find me with their radar (although thank god not nearly as easily or as often as they used to) and if they look at me or speak to me with that contempt that is so familiar, I am still mute.

DS is waking up, I'm going to take courage from PinkyMinxy and press Post before I revise and delete again. Sakura, also wanted to say that my wedding was pivotal in the journey to cutting out my parents too.. and words fail me about your mother. I'm so glad you didn't risk going to see her with our baby. ActingNormal and HDIA, congratulations to you both on sending your letter and email and getting such good responses.

Sakura - your baby. Obviously. Or Freudian slip?! Haven't taken my DS to my parents' either....

Pinkyminxy, you poor little thing (the little girl you used to be) .
When I first started having these "realisations" as I call them, I did the corniest thing in the world and went back in my mind to myself as I was a child and I had an image of myself crying and hiccuping on the bed. I took this little girl in my arms and stroked her hair and told her I was going to look after her- and the little girl was me, of course. And strangely it worked and I felt better. She could never be a mother to me, but I can look at myself objectively and know that I was never born wrong or shameful or bad, but that I was born a bright little girl and wasn't given my birthright i.e to be treated with respect and kindness.
I hope this helps

Just a quick one from me.

I also sent an email to my parents when all her crap kicked off 18 months ago. It was angry but I was just letting off steam. I never received a response.
The only time my dad has been in touch is if he feels guilty and sends me money or wants something himself.
Really good to hear AN and HDIA on getting the positive responses you so deserve.

I've been having flashbacks too. Parts of my life where I've just shut it all off, thinking I was being naughty. Inspecting those memories a little more, I wasn't just crying through punishment, I was SCREAMING.

Yet I just bury it all with a drink. And drink and drink and drink until I'm pissed and ready for sleep. Then those demons can't get me anymore.