Our 5th visit to the Stately Home

[Nabster]

Here we go again.

I think although we are talking about 'mere' fashion, it goes deeper than that for us. And what we wear does affect how we feel, and also how we feel affects what we wear.

I used to even look at the fashion and style and beauty topics on here with a sneer almost, just like my dad would have. Almost looking down on people who worried or thought about such things. I was never 'allowed' to talk or be concerned about such things by my dad, he despised all that kind of stuff. No wonder i feel scared now to try and be a girl.

AN, It's NOT ok for this stuff to happen to a child, and it's the poster on the other thread who thought it was no big deal who is scary, if she thinks that it is ok.

Thank you

AN It is soo not ok for that to happen to a child.

I think after my session today I am finally getting the idea of two things-

1. That my childhood really was not normal, it was bad, abusive and damaging.
2. I now have an understanding that I can set personal boundaries.

oh and I think DH is ok. I was going through a bad patch last week where I was feeling very paranoid about him.

I think I also know why I have never felt like I have had a life- DH and I have been together a long time, and we have done lots of things together, but I spend soo much time trying to please everyone that I can't just 'enjoy' things. I would really love to be able to just take joy in doing things, ithout anxiety.

I think just about everything I have enjoyed in my life has been tainted by nasty, demeaning comments from my family.

I am not yet ready to say outright to my family that I will no longer be treated in xyz ways, but I am beginning to think, what do I have to lose? They are horrid to me anyway, so let them get angry with me and make abusive phonecalls etc.

I realize also that when my family left us alone after destroying yet another holiday for us last year, we had a nice time, as our little family. My 'old' family took their dysfunction with them.

I am trying really hard to make my life better for myself. This is quite a big statment for me.

I hope I haven't convinced myself it's all in my head again by the time a week has gone by. There is still a lot I have not covered, not even touched upon, but I think if I can stand up for my children against these people and their demeaning comments I wil see it as progress made.

I worry that the way I am so hard on myself when I fail at something, or when something goes wrong will rub off on my children. I try to hide it, but when the panic/fear sets in it is hard.

Having a terrible day today. It turns out that DH thinks when DS is at nursery 2 days a week, I am having a 'day off'. ie sitting around with my feet up drinking cups of tea. In fact the days when DS is at nursery is the only time I have to sort myself out, and deal with the cr*p left to me by my parents. I spend the time reading, thinking, posting on here and just trying to cope with it all. I am often in tears, in pain (emotional), hurting inside. I am absolutely NOT having a jolly time enjoying myself as he seems to think. I am so hurt by his attitude. I thought he understood why that time is so important and necessary to me. Instead he clearly seems to resent the money we have to spend on DS's nursery fees because I'm not working like many parents who send their DC's to day nursery. I feel like it's all hopeless, I'm going through all this pain and working so hard to sort myself out so i am a better mother and wife and DH doesn't seem to appreciate any of it or understand what I'm going through. I feel like giving up. What's the point. I thought he loved me, but he clearly doesn't.

OnePlusOne, my DS goes to nursery 2 days a week as well and I haven't had a job outside the home for a while. My DH sees these days as 'days off' as well although I do cleaning on one of the days and whatever I want (including Therapy if I've got one booked) on the other day. I think it is the way men see things (sorry if I'm sexist). My DH thinks this and I feel that he loves me at the same time he just sees things differently from me. They probably don't understand that therapy is tiring and emotionally hard work because they haven't had it themselves and don't have mega problems with their pasts. My DH thinks I have 2 days on my own but he doesn't have any because when he is off work the children are around him so I am 'luckier' than him. I don't have a counter-argument to that.

He also doesn't like me spending money on the Therapist and won't admit that it helps me (even though I've improved and our relationship has improved!) He thinks that I would have got better on my own over time but this is not true because I have put SO much work and time into untangling the jumble in my head! And lots of things I just couldn't see until Therapist said them.

His attitude niggles me a bit but I seem to be able to not let it get to me very much. Maybe I'm not finding the therapeutic process as difficult and painful as the stage you are in at the moment though. I don't spend my days off crying usually. If I did and I told my DH that he would be angry with me I think. He would say "Don't let those bastards ruin your life so much, they are not worth it" or something similar. I mostly manage to keep the crying/agonising (I don't cry much) compartmentalised within the therapy sessions and the odd bad few hours at home.

I hope you feel a bit better soon

oneplusone sorry your are feeling low. I have to say I am finding the way this therapist helps me a lot easier to deal with than the one I saw initially. I felt like I had had my head burst open afterward. I was very upset during my session yesterday, but the therapist leaves me with 'homework', which I find helps me to regain myself.

I had months previous to getting help of crying a lot. I feel as though I have gone through some kind of bereavment, if that makes sense, realizing that my mum has a personality disorder, most likely my sister too and an abusive father- it was as though I had lost most of my family, and that the love I craved from them was never going to be. I 'grieve' a lot over my sister. I have always wanted to be a loving sister towards her, and to have a big sister but she is so messed up.. she was the beautiful one, the clever one - given a private education. She was emotionally very cruel to me growing up. Never wanted me around. When we got older she would invite me to her digs at uni and then go out- leaving me on my own for the whole weeekend. Later,during our 20's, she would go out with me but spend a lot of the time asking random men which of us was prettiest, who was the oldest.SHe would ask me which bloke I liked and then get off withn him in front of me. Often she would pair up with some bloke and just leave me wherever we were. She is quite agressively promiscuous, and prone to making up terrible stories. SHe told me once that her ex-husband was dead. He wasn't.

My parents did some very cruel things to her when she became a teenager. I have always wanted to try to 'save' her, make things ok for her. I want her to be happy.

SHe is an alcoholic, as is my father and my mother.

I realise now that I have been 'making up' for the behaviour of my family, making excuses, trying not to get them angry, trying to keep under their radar, trying to take care of them despite the verbal assaults- keeping it all quiet- for the sake of the family.

When I get upset about being treated like a doormat, my brother says 'don't do this, don't spoil the day'

So I am blamed for it all. It is all my fault. I am blamed and I blame myself.

Hi all you girls,

Just wanted to join in, in a very limited way at the moment - I'm afraid I don't have time/energy to read all the posts properly and catch up with exactly where everyone is, but from what I have managed to read on a few visits, there's an awful lot that resonates. And resonates. I am mum to one beautiful boy, and estranged from pretty much my whole original family, and still working very, very hard (as far as time and energy permit...) to heal from the massive damage I suffered as a child and through a lot of my adult life too. It's very hard to explain to most people so it's comforting to find this thread and see othere grappling with similar issues and acually making space to try and deal with them. Most people seem to bury whatever they don't want to think about. For some of us it's just too close to the surface for that to be an option.

Anyway, just wanted to let you know that another person is reading your posts with compassion and identification, and if I have the resources to join in more properly, I will.

Pages hi! I was wondering what you were up to these days. I'm still here...

oneplusone, I noticed you mentioned about finding creativity and I was suprised at what you wrote about Alice Miller- that she started painting once she began to heal from her childhood. I have no-one else to tell so I might as well tell you guys, that since I started healing, I began writing. I've just been shortlisted for a prestigious writing prize in the UK and I'm just waiting for the results.
I think that one reason we were affected so much by our families was because we probably were a little bit more sensitive than the average child(as I said earlier, this should have been respected by our families) and we were also, dare I say it, a little (a lot?) brighter than most of the other members of their toxic family.

"our" toxic families

A really good book on this subject is "THe ARtist's way" by Julia Cameron. She really knows her stuff about what she calls "recovering artists" i.e people who, for many reasons, have forgotten that they are artistic.
As a teenager my only escape from life was reading so I read and read and read. But I always had the impression that anything artistic or arty was a bit poncy. For example I used to think that art was not a real degree and all that. This was definitely my parents influence. I think that their artistic tendencies were definitely stifled as children.

sakura I did two art degrees- BA and MFA and they were definitely considered to not be as important as my db science degree, or my dsis's head for business.

It may be that because I had strong creative tendencies I was 'singled out' to be the non-achiever, and because of my sensitivity, I was an easy target for them.

I am always cited as having been a happy, caring child- I think this was exploited by my parents. I was also blamed for the disappearence of my happiness.

My mother's creative ambitons were apparrently thwarted as a young adult, so there was also a lot of jealousy on her part. I think the fact that she did not achieve as she had wished in this area meant that she could not allow me to, if that makes sense.

However, my mother makes a lot of claims about what she could have achieved- the other week she could apparratnyl have become aprimary school head teacher, but since she only did supply teaching in high schools and retired as soon as my Dad did ( she was age 45, he was 50) I cannot see her point. I could have been an airline pilot or any number of thigns by that reckoning.

Oh I so relate to this. I loved reading and writing as a child and definately had a passion for it. However my father bullied and pushed me into sport, to try and live his failed ambitions through me. Apparently he could have been an olympic athlete but didn't get the backing

He was a nutter. Shouting and screaming at me on the sidelines. Apparently I had the talent but not the mental strength. I bottled it.

No you bullying, nasty f***r. I didn't want to be a runner, I did it to try and please you. I never had the talent to be that great at it.

I am now rediscovering my reading and writing passion. I even embarked on a creative writing course. Funnily enough he hasn't shown any interest, or asked me about it. No praise or recognition.

Parents like this make me sick. He prectically drove me to eating disorders and self-harm with the intensity of it. I had to be a certain weight or I was too fat.

Re parents trying to stop you doing what you want in life and trying to make you do what they want - this proves something I've been thinking lately I think - that parents with issues themselves can't see outside of themselves and their own problems and can't see their children fully. They can't see what makes you, YOU. So they can't see what YOU want to do and what you are good at (or don't care), they can only see what they want you to do.

One thing my parents actually did right I think was to 'approve' of me doing my hobbies of art and music and paid for flute lessons and I am grateful for that at least. I feel very sad for those of you who could have had a life up til now of doing the things you love, that make you feel happy, but you have missed out on this by doing what your parents pushed you towards instead. I'm happy to read that you are finally thinking about what YOU want and what makes you happy and beating your parents negative influences.

I want to keep saying though, that I think it is really important that we keep looking at our children and really seeing them fully and looking for what makes them, them and loving and valuing those things. Just take time to sit still, empty your mind and look at your children and listen to them and take in everything that is wonderful about them as little unique people who are miracles of nature! Let yourself feel the positive feelings and I think these will emanate to your children and they will feel it. When I do it I also find myself saying and doing loving things without even thinking about it (which is something that never came naturally when I first had children, I had to learn it). I know from myself that it is hard to focus on the external world outside your head and your problems when you have difficult thoughts and feelings. You do need to think about your problems and get them worked out but I'm trying to not do it ALL the time but put it aside for lots of little moments in the day and focus on the children (and DH). I think if we can do that then it will really help us to do a better job than our parents.

AN it's funny you say that. I was reading siblings without rivalry last night and especially the part about not labelling your children- about encouraging them to be fully rounded people. My childhood was full of labels, about abilities, and 'character'.

Iam tryin really hard to fight against the impulse to do this with my DC, so their lives are not distorted. My old family ( I love that phrase!) are still stuck in the roles they were allotted within the rules of my parent's 'game'.

The idea of doing something because it gives you pleasure, is also important, not just attainment.

Pinky, I like that "Old Family". I'm never sure what to call everyone.

I suppose they could be Old Family or Original Family or Childhood Family

and what we have now could be called New Family or Offspring Family?

I like having words for things!

sorry I hope my swearing didn't offend. Was just feeling angry. Acting Normal that is so true about seeing your children as 'whole' beings and not just what you want to see

God that was satisfying - I got some real venom out with some force and expression in my therapy session just now. I'm getting better at expressing it, not just stating the facts but saying it with expression.

And Therapist really made me feel like he could see just how fucking crap things really were in the past. That feels SO good and SUCH a relief! He is really clever. Another person eg DH could say things that mean the same thing but Therapist finds a way of saying things which is 'in my language' and really makes me 'get it'.

He did a Post Traumatic Stress Disorder questionnaire on me today! Am I really that bad? Or does he want me to keep going back so he can get paid? He keeps saying he could do EMDR on me but we have always got talking about something else and never done it yet. If it DOES work though, (even if I'm not as 'mad' as having proper PTSD) it will be SUCH a relief if I stop feeling so terrified in the car/scared about getting up and facing the day/scared about doing the smallest task in case I get it wrong and someone gets angry/scared I'm doing things wrong without even realising/overwhelmed by ordinary life so that I doubt my ability to be a useful functioning adult/picking my fingers til they bleed because I can't relax/feeling exhausted a lot of the time/finding it hard to leave the house unless I feel I have done things to prepare for anything bad that might have a tiny chance of happening etc.

I see the logic of why I think/feel the way I do and I can see when it is not necessary or helpful yet I can't seem to 'logic it all away'! So maybe this EMDR thing might help.

I'm always saying to him that things that happened to me weren't at the 'worst end' of the scale of what happens to other people and if I feel like this, how must people feel who are at the worst end! He said "There is no scale. What happened simply should NOT happen, ever. It was wrong" I find it hard to see where the boundary is between something being ok and wrong but he seems to see it clearly. I wish I did. Maybe the thing to do is to think, would I do this to my friend/my child? If I did, how guilty would I feel and how crap would I think I was! Wow, I think that could work, I just tried imagining myself doing something that happened to me to a smaller, weaker person and I know I would feel ashamed and disgusted with myself for the rest of my life!

OnePlusOne, are you feeling any better today? Are you having any more thoughts? Please don't isolate yourself.

AN I think that is a very good strategy. I think having your own children really puts things into perspective. I could never treat my children with the contempt my parents treated me.

There was a lot of casual hitting from my mother- slaps, cuffs to the head, a lot of pushing me about- I'm not talking about chastisment necessarily, it was just a kind of rough treament. Possibly she was bored of being with me, or annoyed about something else, or was just another of her 'control' methods. SHe claims to know a lot about child psychology- about how to treat children so they behave. I shudder to think who taught her these methods.

I am back to feeling like nothing bad happened to me and I am deluding myself, that it is me who has some kind of madness.
When the therapist says to me, this is abuse, that was wrong, you have been manipulated and controlled into feeling this way, I think yes, thaT MAKES SENSE. Then after a few days the old self-doubt creeps back in.

When will it start to fade, this feeeling?

I think you have suffered some terrible experiences, and mine are very minor. Ithink you are doing amazingly well.

I also often feel that I am deluding myself. That I wasn't really abused or treated badly, that my parents are good people and it is 'in my head'.

Hi, all thank you so much for your posts. Your concern about me feels so nice. Sometimes it seems you are the only people who do have any concern for me, nobody in RL seems to give a d*mn at times.

I am better today thanks. I had a real 'blow out' at DH yesterday. I sent him loads of really long texts about how I felt about his 'day off' comment and lots of other things that had been bothering me. I felt so much better for it. He has apologised for some things from the past which had really hurt me so that was good.

The main thing is that the lines of communication have been opened and we are both talking about things which are quite difficult. I have loads of things i have avoided talking about for fear of hurting/angering DH. But suddenly I don't care, I am going to say what i feel and think and i am not scared if he doesn't like it/agree/understand.

Sakura, i agree totally with what you said about 'us', as children being more sensetive than others, also perhaps a bit 'brighter' than other children/rest of our families. I have always thought this, but it seemed unPC to say it. Glad you did though, and like i said i absolutely agree. I was one of the brightest kids in the class at school and although i don't remember being very sensetive, i know now that I am very sensetive, my feelings are hurt quite easily, and so it stands to reason that i was also quite a sensetive child. Alice Miller also says this in the Drama, that we were the children who felt things especially deeply and were also often brighter than average.

Also, Sakura, congratulations on being shortlisted and well done for entering in the first place! I would love to do something like that, but don't feel I have the energy or time at the moment.

AN thank you, you are so calm and measured in your posts. You have helped me put things in persective with regard to DH, so thank you.

Re labelling, there was definately lots of labelling in my family. My dad in particular couldn't/didn't see me, exactly as i was, at all. He projected so many things onto me, and his paranoid personality didn't help much either. Again Alice Miller constantly talks about the crucial importance of seeing and understanding and accepting each of your children exactly as they are and allowing them to be exactly who they are without projecting your own fears/needs onto them.

oneplusone I am glad you are feeling better.

I will come clean, too. I was one of the brightest in my class. I was a creative thinker, with thoughts and ideas of my own. Not good in the situation I was in.

Thinking also about the anger and the violence. Alongside the casual slapping and shoving, there were other incidents. Moments of anger- I was hit with a hot iron by my mother. I don't think she meant to do it, she just lashed out, burning my arm. I was about 4-5.
There were things like this.
My dad would chase us around the house in a fit of rage sometimes, then corner us and wallop us really hard. It wasn't normal corporal punishment 70's style, it was lashing out in anger, and it was scary. There would also be spitting. This was really only with me and my sis, as far as I can remember.

He would beat our dog with a stick if her didn't come when he was called. Deliberately take him off into the woods and beat him.

These incidents were rare, though, I think.

The thing my Dad used to love doing was excluding me from family conversation. He found it really amusing. Does she have to speak? What is she eating (peering into my plate with a look of revulsion). Talking about me, to my face, but not to me. He did this a lot. What am I saying, he still does it- family meals etc.

He also had this oh I'm soo bored of this person manner he would adopt. This was very hurtful, to the point that if anyone says something to me and then my name at the end, it makes me feel humiliated.

I used to sing to myself when eating. I think it was to block out what was being said, or the horrible silences. Or the fact that I was not allowed to join in. I was forced into being a shy, introspective person. Pretty much the opposite of what I think my real personality is, or may be. I have always felt like a square peg jammed, hammered into a round hole.

Sorry to go on. I feel I have to say these things to confirm that they were real. I have carried them a long time without telling anyone.

THis thread moves so quick! PInkyminky, I read what you wrote about your childhood being "full of labels" and realise that I am a bit like this with DD!! Well actually, to be fair, it is mainly DH who is like this because he is from a highly toxic family but has no idea about it. I think just to keep the family harmony I just go along with DH when I says DD is "neat" or "clever" but I realise now I should make much much more of an effort to stop the labelling. I've told him already to stop going on about how clever she is because first of all its probably only us who think that, secondly what if our second child just plain isn't clever. What then? And thirdly its going to give her complexes that her father can only love her if she's clever and not for who she is. I've told him this and I think he's starting to get it but I will have to be more vigilant because labels really do affect children.
oneplusone, I haven't read Alice Miller's books but they sound good. I will have to order them. I've been putting off doing some more emotional work for a while but I think its about time I did again.