Our 5th visit to the Stately Home

[Nabster]

Here we go again.

[oneplusone]

Pinkyminky, you poor poor thing. I am so sorry to hear about what you went through. It was emotional, psychological and even spiritual abuse. Degrading and humiliating you as a child in a way even an adult would be upset by. Alice Miller talks about contempt in the Drama; that is what your parents and mine showed to us, contempt for us as people and contempt for our feelings.

I'm sorry I'm not up to speed with your current situation, but i do hope you are seeing a good therapist who is on YOUR side and who can see the wrongs that your parents did to you. Please keep posting, I hope getting it out is theraputic in itself for you.

[oneplusone]

Sakura, I honestly feel Alice Miller's The Drama is the only book I really need to help and guide me through all this. She has a website, (google her name), if you go to the Reader's Mail bit, it is really helpful.

[oneplusone]

Am sorry to keep banging on about the same thing, but DH is really p*ssing me off. He feels he has been sidelined and neglected whilst I have been consumed with sorting out my 'stuff'. And it is true, he has been sidelined and neglected to a degree as there simply are not enough hours in the day to accomodate everyone's needs and the DC's have to come first.

I can understand how he feels, but I wish he would take some time to understand the enormity of what I am trying to deal with. The only thing that might give him the tiniest bit of understanding of why this thing can be so all consuming is when his parents die. Then he might understand the sort of pain and grief I have been dealing with. But even then, when his parents die he will feel pain and grief, but it will always be in the knowledge that his parents loved him all their lives. And that surely will ease the pain a little? I don't know. But I am dealing with 'losing' my parents, or actually, not having parents at all, coupled with the knowledge that they most certainly did not love me all their lives.

Even if DH can't empathise, surely he can understand on a purely intellectual level how difficult it is for me to deal with knowing I was abused as a child? He is an intelligent man. But I am beginning to think his intellect is very one dimensional, he can understand facts and figures and has a wide knowledge about lots of things, far more so than me, but when it comes to human beings and emotional intelligence or understanding, his 'IQ' is 0.

[Sakura]

pinkyminky, sorry- if I don't read the full thread then post then my posts sound flippant. I didn't mean to purposely gloss over the incerdibly hurtful things that you have gone through. Personally it is still very hard for me to read these stories of abuse and I try to avoid them.
Please take steps to get your father out of your life.

[roseability]

My father used to call me a fat cow and told me I was 'phony' and a 'fake', that the only reason people liked me was because they didn't know the real horrible me.

My mother used to say she hated me.

I am writing these things down to convince myself that I was indeed abused and it isn't in my head, as my mother tells me.

When I was about 8, I once wrote a sex term/act on a piece of paper. I didn't know what it meant and I presume someone's elder sibling had passed this on to a friend and I wrote it down for some reason. A dare? A joke? Curiosity? My parents found the note and shut me in my room every evening for a period of time. Making out I was dirty or slutty. I was 8 ffs! Did they not have the intelligence to see I didn't understand? This particular memory upsets me. That I was sexualised as an 8 year old. If my child did this I might be a little concerned about where they were hearing such things and try to talk to them but otherwise I wouldn't make a big deal out of it, or try and blame them.

[PinkyMinxy]

Sakura I understand.

Thank you, everyone, for your kind messages.

I am seeing a therapist at the moment, once a week. He is helping me to set boundaries with my 'old family', and to focus on my own, new family.

Rosability it is hard when you have been told over and over again that your memory of events is wrong, that the way you felt about thigns that were done or said to you was the wrong way to feel.

I have spent years with my DH saying to me that the way my family treat me is wrong, that I shouldn't put up with it etc etc. I don't know why but I have only just started taking this on board.

Oneplusone- I am sorry you are feeling unsupported in RL.

I know with DH it has been hard because I have been filled with a lot of misdirected anger, and he just cannot understand what I am saying when I'm upset. Itr is only now that I can talk to him about things without flying off the handle that we are starting to communticate better.

I am also coming to the painful realisation that I have spent my life trying to give my love to a group of people who are just going to reject me, whilst there has, for the last 20 years been someone who actually has the ability to love me unconnditionally. It is strange but I have found this very uncomfortable, until now, and have tested him lots, pushed him away. I think much of this is because of my low opinion of myself. I feel very uncomfortable when people say nice things about me, to me. In some ways it actually makes me feel bad- as if have decieved them, because I have been conditioned to think that to my very core I am abad person.

Does that make sense?

[HBU]

It makes so, so much sense, PinkyMinxy. I too was brought up in a way that made me feel I was bad in my core, I too spent years and years trying to give my love to my old family, who just didn't want it. I realised once I finally met my dh who DOES value and cherish the love that I give him, that having the love I wanted to give rejected was as painful as not receiving the love I needed from them. It's a denial of who you are. And when you are a fundamentally loving person and no one wants that love, and everyone makes out that you're actually bad and unloving (I don't think a day passed without my mother telling me how selfish and thoughtless and uncaring I was, although of course she denies that strenuously, and although of course I can now see that she is the one who is selfish blah blah and it was all projection), it completely undoes your sense of who you are.

I think probably the people posting on here, as well as being brighter than the average, are possibly more loving than the average too. A lot of people can get through life without ever really opening up their hearts, but for some of us that's impossible.

Roseability, I feel for you. It is so hard to be hurt so badly and then to be made to believe that it's all in your head. If it helps, I go through the same stuff all the time too, but the healthy adult in me KNOWS that they wronged me hugely, it's the hurt child parts of me that still can't accept it and are stuck in denial. The denial starts as a survival mechanism when you are a child bbeing hurt by the people you love and trust and depend upon, because you simply can't allow yourself to see/feel what is really going on You couldn't cope. So you pretend it's ok and normal and you get stuck there. Plus, the people that hurt you will obviously bolster that denial because it suits them. And it's very, very, very hard to shake off the judgement of your parents, as they are the original authority figures and for such a long time their word was law. eEven when we grow up and can see that they are flawed human beings, the child inside still sees them as all knowing.

To me, it's a job, like looking after my son - and one I've actually been doing for much longer - to look after the hurt child parts in me. To be the mother to myself that I never had in RL, to re-educate myself to believe that I'm not a bad person and that I do deserve love and a decent life, to slowly reach out and find all the lost child parts in me that are frozen in multiple stages of arrested development, and give by so doing give myself the love I never got from the people who should have given it to me in the first place. Sounds absolutely barking mad to a lot of people, I know, and not something it's easy to talk to most people in RL about, but I'm hoping and guessing people on here will understand.

I'd better sign off here, this topic is so important to me and so hard to talk about generally that it's hard not to write far too much! But again, thanks for posting everyone who writes on here, oneplusone and ActingNormal you both strike many chords too, and I appreciate the courage you all show in voicing these things. It's great to find this kind of forum, as I have felt isolated with a lot of these things for a long time (have a truly wonderful therapist but no one I know in RL is in a similar position).

[vonsudenfed]

Hi there,

I've been lurking for a while and reading, but all the time thinking, oh, I can't possibly post, my family were not as bad as all that, and I've been into therapy and it's all OK now. But as more and more of your very thoughtful posts ring true for me, I'm starting to accept that that's not the case.

I'm carrying this enormous weight of badness inside me, caused by the fact that my mother never really bonded with me, and then my father pretty much ignored me once he married my stepmother, and some how I feel this is all my fault because I was wrong, bad, unloving. (I think I am the black sheep for my family, as my mother was for hers).

I wasn't hit, or shouted at, which makes it hard to explain because it's so subtle.

The other thing that has been very hard, is that my father always wants to rewrite history, in particular to write my mother out of it. When I was a child, I was never allowed to look at photos or really talk about the times before he married my stepmother, he wanted to believe that this new family was all he had ever had. I've had to fight his version of reality all my life - he once said to me, 'I wish I'd never met your mother.' I had to point out to him that this would mean that I didn't exist. It still goes on, he had a go at me for not sending my step-mother a mother's day card last year, but when I started to say, but she's not my mother, he stopped listening and walked off.

I'm back seeing a counsellor again now, which I think has brought up a lot of this again, and I do think there is more to go. I've never been truly angry with either of my parents, and I think I need to be. I realised on the phone last week that my father was bullying me to do things his way - just about when we met up - and since then I have been having panic attacks. I think I am afraid of the emotions lurking beneath.

Sorry this is a bit of a rant for a first post, but I have almost set myself this as a challenge - to admit out in the open world that things aren't that good.

[electra]

I can always identify with so much of what I read here. I think that the first time I realised that there was something wrong with the way my mother behaves was when I was about 22 and a close relative who I had a very good relationship with had died. He had a painting of some value, but as he knew the family of the man who had painted it, he had requested that it should be returned to them in his will. My mother started complaining about this and saying how 'wrong' he was I was shocked about the whole thing and pointed out to her that it was in very bad taste for her to be discussing such things and that she had no right to make judgements about what other people had decided to do with their property. She replied 'I would not have done that'. 'Yes, mum - well it was not your painting and his view differed from yours' Then she replied 'Well his way of looking at it is the wrong way of looking at it'.

So, since then I have gradually started to see that every time I did something my parents did not like or agree with, not only was I wrong, but a bad person and that it was down to some obvious failing in my character.

I have always been made to feel that my feelings about something are unreasonable when I am upset - how dare I feel that way?? When I was away at university my mother threw away all my books without asking me if I wanted to keep any of them. I was so upset about it - some of them I had studied and they meant a lot to me. When I told her that I was upset about she she replied 'OH SHUT UP' and I was made to feel that I had no right to be upset.

[electra]

I want to ask all of you - how do other people outside respond to your toxic family? My parents go around bad mouthing me to all and sundry, blaming me for everything that has gone wrong in their lives - it is my fault my father is ill, it is my fault he is an alcoholic....I often wonder whether people believe them or whether they can see that their point of view is at best, unbalanced. I am sure they have managed to poison some people against me but I take the view that if they choose to believe things without enough evidence for verification I should not be bothered about them anyway.

[toomanystuffedbears]

Vonsudenfed and electra- Hi
I think both of your posts are related. To your parents you are invisible as in you don't exist. Of course you are there physically, which makes it hard to figure out, understand, and deal with.

This was my experience. And just this morning, a matter of fact, I was thinking that I did not mourn much for my mother because she didn't bond with me (perhaps due to Dr. Spock's leave them to cry it out mantra- BAD DR. SPOCK!) and the bottle. Anyway, I transferred grief to my dad, who was "going to die next"; but in reality he is the one I did bond with-and he lived for another 18 years. I digress.

You are not wrong. I mean really: there is more than one right way to do just about anything. Just because you didn't do it their way (especially as an adult, good grief ) does not make you wrong. It just clarifies how self-absorbed they are.
When you choose your way over their "advice", you have learned to expect a tissy fit or sulk, no doubt.
And they probably like to treat you as if you were a child-to better justify to themselves their treatment of you. You are not a child.

I could go on and on (and usually do but dear baby is clingy today).

Being around these types of parents is not mentally healthy. Try to develop a filter to process your interactions with them-to detox so to speak. Here's a hint: it is hard to start but...you don't really have to care that much what they think .

You are your own person with your own identity. Don't sacrifice yourself for their superioriry complex, or narcissism, or whatever their problem is.

[Nabster]

Years ago I was advised to but The Courage To Heal. I think I read a couple of pages and just didn't go any further as I was scared. I have just been on Amazon for some cookery books and searched for TCTH. They had all these and I wondered if anyone has read any and found them helpful.

I have my mental health assessment appointment tomorrow and are feeling very scared at the moment.

BTW I think this might be the wrong thread to post on but I find the stately home threads safe from the scarey real world.

[Nabster]

buy not but

[smithfield]

Hi

Woud like to join in this thread again, but feel strangely fearful.

Have been dipping in and out of it for a few months now. Trying to snatch moments to keep up with all the posts
.
I am back at work 4 days a week so finding it very difficult to find any time for any of my personal 'baggage'.

I feel like I have come such a long long way. But still find so much difficulty in just living life. So many hurdles to overcome. So many perceptions of myself handed to me by my parents which need to be broken down and re-processed.

The onion anology always springs to mind.

On the positive side of things, the guilt I felt initially for cutting off from my parents has subsided. I hardly ever feel that immense wave of guilt flooding all my senses as I used to.

Without them in my life I feel like I finally have a shot at happiness. I feel completely connected to my 'own' life. My own 'New' family (love that term). Now I am no longer constantly seeking the approval and love of my 'old' family, I am free to embrace my own life fully.

It's only taken me 40 years to reach this point.

I guess I always thought Id eventually be able to regain some form of relationship with them eventually. But Im too afraid to let the poison seep back into my life.

Every time I speak to my db (the one connection which remained), all the old feelings re-surface. Anger, overwhelming sadness. The need to run away, or do something 'extraordinairy' in order to feel I have worth. I think that is warning enough for me that, as sad and tough as it all is, I can not be around any of them anymore.

I mentioned earlier about being free to embrace my own life. This is a good thing but I am still struggling with so much about who I am as a result of my upbringing...If that makes any sense??

I have realised 'very' recently I have huge issues with perfectionism. It creates huge anxiety for me in every day life. The anxiety then leaves me tense and angry.

I guess thats where Im at now. Wading through the crap. The aftermath after the flood of emotion which came with disengaging from them.

Anyway I have gone on enough about ME.

Ally - If you have any time to read these posts I want to send you my love and hope everything is going well with no 2.

Also want to say hi to TMSB,Sakura, AN, oneplusone, Attilla (sorry if I've missed anyone).

You are all beautiful women with beautiful souls and hearts of gold.
I hope you will allow me back into your fold.

[roseability]

Electra - 'how do other people respond to your toxic family?'

I think this is a very important issue. I believe our society still harbours Victorian values of respecting your parents, believing in their ability to know best and loving them no matter what. It makes it very difficult to distance yourself from toxic family. I believe parents have to earn the right to be loved and respected.

Often toxic parents can come across as 'normal' loving parents. If their child has cut them off, they will get sympathy from other (particularly older generations) people/parents. How could someone cut off their own mother etc?

Especially when covert mental and emotional abuse is happening, which a lot of people don't understand. We are more open about sexual and physical abuse, particularly with all the high profile cases in the news. This is a good thing but we need to recognise the devastating and long lasting damage that mental abuse can cause as well.

My parents have few friends and have damaged many relationships within their family (including mine), so I feel 'justified' in that sense. A few of my close friends understand but I still have that niggle of guilt when I feel someone thinks I am being mean for distancing myself from them.

It is terrible that your parents have bad mouthed you to others. I feel abuse should be brought out in the open, so I hope you can talk to people. I kept quite for years about the terrible way my father treated me. Now I am trying to 'enlighten' people.

[roseability]

Smithfield - The wanting to do something 'extraordinary' to prove your worth and issues with perfectionism really struck a chord with me.

I too struggled with these issues. I used to fantasise (?sp) about how much my father would love me if I fulfilled his dreams of sporting success. I often had periods of low mood and self esteem because I felt I hadn't done anything worthwhile in my life. I realise now that this was my father's grandiose delusions/beliefs that I had internalised from childhood. I still have days like this, but it isn't as bad. I am trying to enjoy other hobbies that I want to do, and enjoy them rather than putting myself under pressure to be perfect at them.

[Sakura]

Nabster, this is the right thread Keep posting.

I had to reply to the "extraordinary" comment too. I can so relate to this. Being me has never ever ever been enough. My mother, while abusing me at home, would boast to others about my petty achievements, as though they were her achievements. I studied so damned hard for my degree and got it and she feels as though it is her personal work that got it for me. And yet if one of my brothers or me ever end up doing something wrong or bad (my brothers drink and fight a lot-no suprise after their childhood), this apparently has nothing to do with her.
So frustrating. So about that writing competition I mentioned, I would never let my parents know I was shortlisted as they would feel validated that, despite my terrible behaviour towards them, they had raised me right because look how well I was doing for myself.

Regarding that writing competition, it has become so so important for me to do well in it. Ridiculously so. I feel if I could just get published or do well in something, then nobody could touch me or harm me anymore. As though to say, "look, I have achieved this, so now you have to respect me." I feel this regarding DH too. I feel he doesn't see me for me. And as I still have some contact with his toxic parents I feel that my worth would increase in their eyes too and they would finally begin to respect me and treat me as a human being.
But then I think, why do I need their (or anyone's approval)? What they think shouldn't matter. But I feel so invisible in my very core that I need to have something tangeible of substance to prove that I am a human being. I can really relate to people who feel they need the latest car or clothes to prove their worth (MIL is like that), though it seems that I haven't been affected in quite the same way. Outward symbols of material success have never really been that important to me. FOr me it has to be intellectual attainment. But this is also just as wrong, I know that. Its still a sign that you feel you are not good enough. I need to learn to do something simply because the pleasure of doing it gives me satisfaction.

[electra]

'I believe our society still harbours Victorian values of respecting your parents, believing in their ability to know best and loving them no matter what.'

You're absolutely right, roseability. To extended family and friends, my parents paint me as a 'problem' character, a kind of 'black sheep' who does nothing but cause them heartache when all they have done is love me. I often feel that as I'm an only child, I am their scapegoat for everything that goes wrong in their lives. I do believe, though that if I had had siblings, I would probably have a bad relationship with them because my mother has a game of playing me off against my father. She has also started playing my daughters off against each other - something I absolutely will not tolerate! She does not appear to know what she is doing, and I suspect she has been doing it for years and years.

[beldaran]

Hi all,

I have read all of the other threads that you guys have written and wanted to know if i could join you? I have yet to read the Toxic Parents book that you recommend but it all rings true with me.

Electra...from reading your posts i think we have a lot in common. I too am an only child and have been labelled as the problem of the family. So much so that they have spread lies about me to extended family so i now have no relationships with any of my side of the family. If it hadnt been for DP and his Mom i think i would have gone crazy.

I have never had a good relationship with my parents, i was constantly shipped off to other members of the family to be looked after and i feel now looking back that they never actualy told me that they loved me.

Everything i did wasnt good enough, they wanted me to go to university..i didnt want to go, they tried to control every apsect of my life from who my friends were to what i wore. But it all came to blows when i met my DH, i wont lie, they hate him! They think he has "turned" me into the person i am now. But in reality he gave me my freedom and i love him so much for that.
My parents and i fell out over my wedding and didnt speak again until i told them i was pregnant and even then you could tell in the tone of their voices that they dissapproved ( though i fail to see why!). After my daughter was born we had some problems (DD ended up in hospital then diagnosed with cerebral palsy). All my parents did was try and out do my PIL's, they had to be there more than them, buy her more stuff etc etc. In the end they just didnt want to accept the fact that their granddaughter wasnt "perfect" (to them not me i love her to bits) and we now havent spoken for 2 years. They send presents on her birthday but they are just trying to buy her affection, i have been there and done that and its not going to work. They have told god knows what lies to my aunts and cousins, it must be nasty to have them make abusive telephone calls and swear at me in town. I have since changed my phone number! and now when i go into town i feel really panicky, i have that thought in my head of what happens if i run into one of them.

My god that feels so much better that i have it out in the open. I would like to persue proper councilling but i dont know where to start.

I hope that it was ok for me to off load when this is my second time posting on MN.
Thanks.

[oneplusone]

smithfield, hi. Nice to hear from you again. I did often think about you whilst you were away and wondered how you were getting on.

Roseability, I agree with every single word of your post of 8 March. How other people, particularly my extended family (ie aunts/uncles/cousins who are my parents' brothers and sisters and their children) have taken me cutting off my parents is something that has been bothering me ever since I did actually cut off my parents.

My own sisters were angry with me for cutting off our parents and saw me as the baddie and they have at least a little, first hand knowledge of how toxic my dad is. So if even my own sisters hated me (i don't think they do now, or they could just be hiding it better) I can only imagine how the extended family view me. Particularly as my mother in particular put on an oscar worthy performance all my life of being the perfect mother. My dad never really seemed bothered what others thought so he often was himself ie grumpy, moody, and rude, and so i think the extended family had a fairly good idea of what he was like and probably don't blame me for cutting him off.

But my mother is a completely different story. She not only has painted herself as a good mother but also as a victim within our family so i know the extended family will feel sorry for her over me. I know they would be totally shocked if i were to tell them how much I hate and despise her. She comes across in public as nice, funny, kind, and not afraid to speak out if she doesn't agree with something. At home of course she was a completely different person, she NEVER spoke out against my dad when he was abusing me, she never stood up for me and she never looked after me or protected me. But if i tried to explain that to any of my aunts and uncles I know they would simply not believe me.

And that's one of the things that angers me so much about her. She has got away scott free with being the worst parent possible, and not only that, she has everyone feeling sorry for her when I, and my sisters, are the true victims of abuse within our family.

I have thought many times of telling people the truth about my mother, but i just know it will fall on deaf ears. Her brothers and sisters will never beleive me. I have told one or two family members who i felt would understand and they have been amazingly supportive. But when i told one of them the truth about my mother, she was completely shocked. I could see she was having great difficulty in reconciling the image she had of my mother, as portrayed by my mother and the reality of our life at home as told to her by me. I know she beleived me, but it was still upsetting for me to see how shocked she was at hearing the truth about my mother.

I know my extended family do completely have the victorian values you describe, about loving and respecting your parents no matter what they do to you. I think they also cannot imagine that what went on in our family actually happened as nothing similar occured in their families and i know from experience that it is very hard for people from loving, caring families to imagine how parents can be so cruel/neglectful of their children.

I still have this feeling that i am the 'outcast' within the extended family, and it angers and hurts me as it is my parents who should be the 'outcasts'. They are the ones who have done wrong, not me. But i know my mother's brother's and sister's loyalties will always lie with her. Wrt my dad, he has ruined many of the relationships with his own brother's and sister's and with his brother's and sister's in law, and so in relation to him, i think not many people would be loyal to him. But my parents i suppose come as a 'package' to my extended family so if they are loyal to my mother they will automatically be loyal to my dad, even if it is only superficial.

I also feel angry that because of this misguided loyalty on the part of my extended family, my DC's are missing out on knowing their extended family. My DC's are not even aware that i have a huge family on my side, they have only ever met my sisters and one cousin who i talk to regularly. It upsets me as DD is a very sociable, outgoing, extrovert little girl and i know she would love to go to the many family gatherings and events that take place on my side of the family. But i cannot face going to these things as i never want to see my parents again and as they attend these events, it means i can't go. But it should be them not attending so that i can go as i have done nothing wrong, they should be the outcasts and not welcome at these events.

Sorry to go on so much, but this is one of the aspects of cutting off my parents that always niggles at me.

[AttilaTheMeerkat]

Hello Smithfield!!. I have been wondering how you've been getting on.

I think you describe your current situation very well and the onion analogy is a very good one. You will have to deprogramme their damaging lessons towards you and I think you're doing great.

I would say that it is better to take 40 years to reach where you're at now rather than never realising or only doing so in your dotage.

With best wishes

Attila x

P.S mis parentes are still crap and outlaws are both narcissists!. Neither have any empathy whatsoever. FIL is the classic bystander in that house of dysfunction and chaos is their friend. Do not get me started on Narcissist BIL - he was cut out of our lives over a year ago now. Phew!!.

[ActingNormal]

Hello Smithfield, you are back!

It is so good that lots of people are starting to 'come out' on here and start facing the bad things that happened and that what others say encourages us all to say things we were scared to say!

The wanting to do something extraordinary struck me too! I bet it is common to loads of us! It must be because we felt unnoticed (for who we really were) and like nobody was impressed by us. We must have thought that if we could impress them they would love us. I felt a bit like an 'accessory' to my parents respectable image (I think they wanted children so they could look like a 'normal' 2.4 children family). I felt unnoticed as though I was a part of the furniture and so long as I didn't want too much of anything or make any noise I could be tolerated. My brother must have felt the same because he said to me "I just wanted someone to react to me" (which is why he provoked me so much).

I used to have a horrible feeling of time is running out and I haven't achieved anything big yet and I am still nobody! I have been quite attention seeking with my friends. I have found it hard to resist trying to get mens' attention even while I've been married. I just wanted to feel important by being noticed and impressing someone, rather than just dumped in the world by accident and tolerated. I bet loads of you feel the same.

Having children helped a bit because I see parenthood as the most important job there is and I'm doing it! Having DH and realising what I've got in him has also helped. Recently I have been able to think about things a bit more moderately than in the past. I have some importance and recognition and praise by being with DH and DCs and having some nice friends and I am learning to be content with what I have got now compared to what I used to have in the past. I'm not so much 'can't get enough'.

I like to say I am proud to be ordinary and proud to be a wife and mother doing what most other wives and mothers do and feeling like part of nature because it is such a natural thing to do, going back from primitive times up to now, raising families. I feel more sense of belonging being a mother because it can be such a hard job at times but there are so many other people going through the same things and I feel a bond when sharing parenting chitchat because you and the other person are both talking about things that are quite intense but easily talked about because it is socially acceptable to talk about it.

I just feel more NORMAL the longer I spend away from my old family and the more separate I feel from them because I felt so isolated from the rest of the world when I was with them. I feel like the more I have got away from them the more I am doing normal things and sharing those experiences with normal people and feeling much more connected to the world. I feel an urge to 'follow the crowd' and do things other people are doing and feel that I am fitting in. I just want to feel I belong.

I feel I don't need that attention seeking 'outrageous' image I have had any more, I don't want to stand out as being different to everyone else. It used to get me noticed and that seemed good at the time but then I realised it felt like I was noticed almost as an object of fun or ridicule, just to amuse people, but people didn't necessarily think of me as someone to bond with closely (which is what I really want).

I know what you mean Smithfield about when you have too much contact with your old family you feel pulled back into the negativity. When I used to go to my parents house before I had children I used to feel like I was being sucked back in time and feeling my confidence I was building up by being away from them disappearing. I felt like being with them was making me revert back to the person I used to be who I didn't want to be. I feel like saying to my old family "I don't want to be with you negative people who seem to want to keep me thinking like you, I want to be in my new life with normal people and not kept from that and kept isolated by you". I think negative people do want to keep you thinking like them because it makes them feel validated and that they are right in their negative thoughts about the world.

Got to stop writing and get other things done, even though I can go on and on as you know!

[oneplusone]

Not only do my parents seem to have got away scott free with abusing me, other innocent people have had to pay the price for what they did.

DD has suffered because of my parents. Before i fully realised that it was my parents to whom I should rightfully direct the rage i had inside me, i was directing my rage at DD, probably because she was unwittingly triggering my rage. I cannot now turn back the clock and I have to live with the knowledge that my poor innocent little girl on a number of occasions was the target of all the rage and anger that i should have been directing towards my parents. She will always carry around with her the terror, hurt and upset I caused her when she was younger.

DS has suffered because I have to send him to nursery so that i can have the time and space i need to sort myself out. If i didn't have these issues i wouldn't have to send him to nursery, or at least not from the age at which i sent him initially or for not as long.

DH has suffered because i have not been the wife he wanted, needed and expected. I have been consumed with my issues for the last few years and I have neglected him. He has also been the target of my anger and insecurities which again i should have directed towards my parents. I have sometimes been completely unable to seperate him from my dad and have accused him of feeling and thinking things about me which he doesn't think and feel but are the legacy left to me by my dad. Unravelling DH from my dad has been so difficult and DH has undoubtedly suffered unnecessarily in the process.

I thought i was getting better at 'spotting' when i was confusing DH with my dad but i'm not so sure i am. I rhink what has been happening recently is that i have been 'testing' him. ie testing him when he says he loves me and wanting to know 'how much' he loves me. We had a ridiculous situation recently where i found a ridiculously expensive item on the internet that i decided i wanted. It was totally out of character for me as i have never been an extravagent person nor a big spender. I am always very cautious and careful with money. Anyway, i mentioned this item to DH and i realise now i wanted him to 'prove' how much he loved me and valued me by saying immediately that it was ok for me to buy said item, even though we couldn't afford it and it was horrendously expensive and extravagent. DH, to his credit, stayed calm and said if i really wanted said item i could buy it when we had a bit more spare cash, hopefully towards the end of the year. I felt upset at this as i had wanted him to say i could have the item even if it meant us getting into debt as a way of him proving how much he loved me and that i was worth getting into debt for.

I can see now how ridiculous it all was and i no longer want the expensive thing i was after. I realise that i wanted to feel valued, worth something, that i was worth making sacrifices for. But i was looking to DH for all of these things because they were missing from my childhood. I realise as a child i must have been longing for my parents to make me feel i was special, and of value to them. Instead i was always made to feel worthless, like i certainly wasn't worth making any sacrifices for or any special effort on their part.

In the end when i realised what i was doing, DH did say what i wanted him to say. But it upsets me so much that i have had to wait nearly 39 years to be made to feel i am worth something to somebody.

Whenever somebody is nice to me it makes me cry. This again makes me realise how i have been longing, for nearly 39 years, to be shown some genuine kindness, compassion, sympathy and understanding, without any expectation of receiving anything in return. I seem to be meeting more and more people who are like this. People who are kind to me without wanting something in return. People who can see and appreciate a kindness i have done to them and who are able to show their appreciation in a small way. It shows me that there are so many lovely, kind, beautiful, decent and honest people in this world, and that for so long my life was filled with nasty, toxic, selfish people that my view of people became utterly warped. I thought everybody was like my family, i had no experience of the good, decent, honest, kind people in this world. I didn't even know they existed. It is only recently it seems that my eyes have been opened to the good people and i realise yet another loss i have suffered all my life til now.

[Nabster]

I wish I was strong enough to leave.

[vonsudenfed]

There is so much here to respond to that I don't know where to start.

But for one thing, I am fascinated to find so many people who feel the need to excel. I was expecting to find perfectionists (I can't just be 'good enough', I have to be perfect, and then perhaps I will be lovable), but the need for fame and recognition seems to be quite a common response too. AN almost all of your post could apply to me too; whoever I am has never been enough for my parents to care.

Sakura I was particularly interested to see you talking about the writing in that way, as that's exactly what I've always felt too. Although it's interesting, because although my parents would, perhaps, be impressed if I got a novel published, I'm not sure they'd like the emotional truths it would contain. But - and I don't know if this is true for you as well or not - but I also write to fight back against the invisibility. I am writing to preserve all of those parts of my life and times I had that no one ever 'saw'.

Smithfield - I sometimes see things not so much as an onion but as a spiral. So sometimes I am going round, and I am back in the same place and dealing with the same old stuff, or so it feels like. But I'm further out on the spiral, I know I've been here before and I can see it from a different angle. That feels better than thinking of it as an endlessly repeating burden from which I can never be free.

Where am I today? Still suffering from 'free-floating anxiety' (c my old therapist) that dreadful sense of there being an exam or something terrible just over the horizon. I need to write here, and in my diary, while DD is asleep, and that usually helps calm it.

Nabster - hope the appointment goes well today