Hi all, have not been able to log on for longer than 30 secs in the last few days. I'm glad others have mentioned feeling overwhelmed by all the new posts and being unable to respond as you would like, I feel like that quite a lot. I feel bad for not responding to everyone, especially as so many points that are made i feel i can relate to and post about. But i just feel paralysed sometimes, i can read but not post or respond.
PM I just wanted to say 'Bravo!' for changing your locks! What a simple but brilliant thing to do. Well done.
I can relate to the thing about feeling like your psychotherapist is 'trying to get rid of you'. I feel exactly the same way about mine especially since she suddenly announed one day that she could no longer see me on the day i had been going for the past year. She did apologise but didn't seem overly concerned that unless i could re-arrange my childcare i would not be able to see her anymore. I think she doesn't feel a connection with me, she often seems to forget what i've told her and i feel she just doesn't 'get' me and my story. I haven't seen her since she changed the day, even though i could have as she has another slot free when i do have childcare. But something is holding me back and i guess i should trust my gut feeling. I suppose i have known she was not quite right for me for ages but i have not had the energy to try and find a new therapist and to try and tell them my story all over again. I have been managing by myself til now but I do feel i still need to see a therapist, if only every few weeks rather than once a week.
I have had an emotional couple of days. All the issues to do with my MIL are still swirling around. I had a talk with DH about it all, this time it was a proper talk not a row. He said that although he agreed his mother had greatly overstepped the mark and had gone about things in a terrible way, ultimately all she had been doing was looking out for him as she could see, even without him saying anything to her, that he was unhappy and things were not right at home. This is all going back a number of years, after DD was born, not now as apparently now, according to DH, MIL now feels she has no real concerns about the way I am looking after DH.
It was not news to me that behind MIL's vileness to me was her concern for her son, DH, but I felt so upset whilst we were talking about it; all I could think in my mind was "Where were my parents throughout all this time?", "Why didn't they notice, like DH's mother did, that I was not happy?", "Why didn't they speak to DH, like his mother spoke to me, because they were concerned about me?"
But then i know the answers to my questions already, why would my parents suddenly now change the habit of a lifetime? They had never ever been concerned about me, not since I was a child, so why on earth would they suddenly develop concern for me now that i was an adult? And they would certainly never notice that i was unhappy like DH's mother noticed about him even without him saying anything to her; my parents didn't want to know even when i specifically told them i was unhappy about something so they would hardly come running to my aid when i hadn't mentioned anything to them.
The bottom line is neither of my parents could care less whether i was unhappy or not, perhaps my dad had a little bit of concern for me once or twice, years after he had largely recovered from his mental breakdown, but by then he had so alienated and distanced me that i was completely unable and unwilling to open up to him and talk to him because of his past betrayal and pain he had caused me over the years without any sort of apology or attempts at reparation on his part. My mother had never even once shown any concern for me. Even once i remember i was crying alone in my bedroom one night, from the sheer lonliness and exclusion i felt within the family and she heard me and came into my room and asked what was wrong, i told her i felt like an outsider, like i wasn't part of the family and she completely dismissed my feelings and told me i was upset about something else which simply was not the case. If she had taken my feelings seriously and allowed me to talk about them and really listened to me, things could have been so different for me. But I remember the look on her face when i told her how i felt excluded and lonely, it was almost as if she knew all along that was how i felt but she didn't want to change things because it was in her interests to keep the status quo. Because it meant that i would continue to be the scapegoat for my dad and i would continue to be his target for when he needed to vent his anger, i would be his target instead of my mother. And also if I was suddenly to be included as part of the family it would probably mean she would be excluded, or that she would then take up my position within the family and she would then be the scapegoat and punchbag for my dad. I would take my mother's place in the little group she had formed with my sisters, from which i had always been excluded and she was unwilling to allow that to happen as she would be the loser.
She would rather one of her own children should suffer than herself. That's what it boils down to. She exploited the power she had, as she did have the power to change things within the family so i wasn't excluded and so that i was included within the group that included my sisters and her but she knew that if me and my sisters became a unit, she would then be forced back into a role as target for my dad and she was unwilling to do that. I remember when i was very young, before my dad's breakdown, that he used to argue a lot with my mother, but was always nice to me and after his breakdown he started targetting me as well and to a certain extent i think he started attacking me in place of attacking my mother, possibly because i was 'triggering' him although he totally unaware he was being triggered, and also by that time and having been married for 12 years, my mother had learnt to keep her mouth shut in the face of my dad's attacks. So he got more 'satisfaction' out of attacking me as i would not simply keep my mouth shut, i would verbally fight back, and my dad got whatever it was he wanted out of the attack. So of course it was in my mother's interests to keep me in my place as the target because it simultaneously meant she was no longer the target. So she and my sisters got away relatively easily with only some stray bullets heading their way, whilst i bore the brunt, taking most of the flak and not only defending myself but also defending my mother and sisters a lot of the time.
When i fully realise just how much my mother used me to protect herself and how she never once stood up for me, whether against my dad or MIL or anyone else, how she was so completely not interested in any problems i told her about and blatantly ignored problems that i didn't tell her about but which to even a complete stranger would have been blindingly obvious, i feel furious all over again. I thought i had by now 'purged' a lot of the rage i felt towards my mother, but it seems like there is still more anger buried inside me and i only realise it and feel it when i really sit down and think very deeply about just how selfish and cowardly my mother has been and how she callously put her own needs and feelings before that of me as a 10 year old little girl.
To those of you who have expressed a desire to seek revenge on their parents I can only say I absolutely 100% know how you feel. And if only i could get away with it without any consequences, I would get in my car, take my baseball bat and go and beat my mother into the ground and leave her snivelling on the street for people to step over. However much I dislike my MIL, I do have some respect for her as a mother, she has stuck her neck out for her son and tried to look out for him and protect him and for that I simply cannot fault her. Whereas my own mother has never once done anything like that and yet she seems to think she deserves gratitude and loyalty and respect from me for supposedly looking after me as a child. She did not look after me. She fed me to the lions. And for that I most certainly am not grateful.
And the way she has got my sisters and most of her family feeling sorry her her right now make me so mad. I really thought i was 'over' feeling angry towards her but right now I feel it all again, as strongly as ever. I just wish I could act on my feelings towards her, but unfortunately society will not allow me to go and kill my mother as she deserves.
And I am very sorry for the extreme nature of my post, i don't want to upset anyone on here. I didn't even realise I was feeling so angry until i started posting. I feel better now for having got it all out. Thanks to anyone for reading this far.