Our 6th visit to the Stately Home.....

[oneplusone]

Hi all, took the liberty of starting a new thread. Keep on posting!

I do apologise for hogging this thread. I am making the most of the time I have to myself at the moment whilst DH and the DC's are away for a few days. Sorry it's all about me, me, me. I need to get a load of stuff off my chest and then i promise i will stop.

Bop, thank you for your post. And you are absolutely right in that it was our parents who established the 'blue print' for how we would be treated all our lives unless and until we re-wrote the blue print to our real and true specification.

I can see now that whenever I, as I was then, a needy, desperate child, seeking a mother figure, formed a relationship with another needy, damaged soul, it was always going to be a recipe for disaster. My sisters, certain 'friends', my MIL. Whereas if by chance i met and formed a relationship with a healthy person, i felt seen and wanted and liked appreciated for who i really am inside. The damaged people were unable to really 'see' me, just like my parents. And the healthy people were able to 'see' who i really was.

I think even as damaged as i was, i have met people who were even more damaged than me and i am sorry to say that i realise now i treated those people quite badly and hurt their feelings. When i think about it, i realise i had a 'sense' that the more damaged person was weak and vulnerable and would be unable to fight back if i 'attacked' them. And i have 'attacked' a few people in this way in my lifetime. It was very rare to meet such people, which tells me how badly damaged i myself was as usually I was the person who was being attacked by others. But just occasionally i would meet somebody i could sense was even weaker and i realise now, even more damaged than me, and i admit that i was quite hurtful to them. Perhaps not deeply hurtful, i remember once i said within earshot of a girl at work that i didn't like green cars, knowing she had a green car, but unpleasant and uneccessary nevertheless. Although perhaps in that case the other girl was not weaker, but she was somebody i was secretly jealous of as she seemed so cool and together and was liked by the manager. I can't think of many or even any other occasions where I have been the attacker as opposed to the victim, which i feel goes to show just how badly damaged i was.

I have been trying to think of a good description of how i felt when we were staying with PIL and MIL used to verbally bully me. And the only thing i could think of was if a child had a pet kitten who was totally within it's control ie the kitten could not escape and get away from the child and was dependent on the child for food and water and where that child took pleasure in tormenting and nastily teasing the kitten. That is how i felt during the 3 months we stayed with my PIL just before DS was born (we ended up staying with them because our own house was not available for us to move into for reasons too long to go into here). So I was staying with PIL, DH was out at work every day so i was alone with PIL and also had DD to look after. I had no friends in the area, hardly knew my way around, was 6 months pregnant with DS, all in all i was feeling quite vulnerable. MIL, as i fully realise now, is highly damaged herself, and i am sure she could sense i was weaker than her and vulnerable and would not stand up for myself. And she never let a day go by without making snidey veiled digs at me about all sorts of things. At this time i realise i had formed an unhealthy attachment to her; the child inside me was hoping she would be a mother figure to me. I was always nice and pleasant to her and tried to be considerate and helpful towards her, especially as we were staying at her house. But she kept having little digs at me and i remember feeling so hurt and confused by her behaviour. I felt i had done nothing to deserve such nastiness and indeed i realise now i had done nothing to deserve to be treated so horribly and even cruelly on a couple of occasions. All along, it wasn't me, it was MIL, who i can see clearly now has huge unresolved issues of her own stemming from her own childhood and her own mother who was a nasty piece of work, even by MIL's own admission.

There was one incident which i simply cannot forget. One day MIL came along and showed DD a photograph that had me in taken a few years before, before my eczema had flared up so badly. And in front of me she asked DD, who was only around 2.5 at the time, to look at the photo and to try and pick me out. My heart stopped at what MIL was doing. Because of my eczema which i had quite badly on my face at that point, i looked quite different than i looked in the photo from a few years back and it was quite possible that DD would not have been able to recognise me in the photo. My heart just stopped whilst DD was looking at the photo to try and spot me in it. Luckily, bless her, she did manage to pick me out, even though i looked so different then. But if DD had not been able to pick me out in the photo i am sure MIL's intention was to embarress me and laugh at the fact that my own daughter was unable to recognise me because i looked so different because of my eczema and i think that is one of the nastiest and cruellest things anybody has ever done to me, knowingly and deliberately. I have always been so distraught and depressed over my eczema, it bothers me all the time and it will bother me until it has cleared up completely even though it is so much better now than it was even a few months ago. But for MIL to deliberately do something so potentially hurtful is something i will never forgive and forget and it is one of the reasons i never want to lay eyes on that woman ever again. I haven't yet told DH about the above incident, i feel sad that i have to tell him such things about his mother as it must be very hard for him to hear. But i feel i have to tell him as if i don't, i will be letting myself down, saving and protecting DH's feelings at the expense of myself and that is something i cannot do any longer. There is nobody else to look out for me so i have to do it myself. I find it hard to do sometimes, i am forever trying to protect other people from feeling sad/hurt/upset/worried and instead i carry all those feelings around inside myself almost for and on behalf of the other person. It's a hard habit to break.

And talking about your family thinking you are manipulative and devious. That is exactly what mine think of me. My dad even thought i was manipulative and devious enough to hack into his email account and delete some of his emails when i would never ever dream of doing anything of the sort either to him or anybody else. And my sister was also willing to beleive this of me as she is the one who told me that this is what my dad thought i had done. She didn't counter it by saying she didn't beleive him and she knew there was no way i would do such a thing, she was quite happy to stand up on his behalf and throw the accusation at me herself. My dad and my sister also believed i had somehow planned and pre-meditated my stay at my parents shortly after DS was born. In their minds i had decided to go and stay with them after having DS to try and make sure they had the hard part of having me there post birth whereas i stayed with my PIL during the 'easy' part which was pre-birth. In fact i had planned or premeditated nothing. I made a spur of the moment decision to go to my parents a few days after DS was born as i could stand MIL and her snidey remarks not a minute more. But my own father and my sister were willing and ready to beleive i had some devious motive behind a completely unthought out and innocent move on my part.

It just goes to show the level of projection i have had put on me all my life. My father in particular has never seen me at all. He has obliterated the real me and in her place, in his mind, there stands a devious, manipulative, crafty, selfish, ungrateful, 'operator' (a description he once used for me). And nothing could be further from the truth. I am, to anybody who truly knows me, so opposite from all of that. Far from being devious and manipulative, i often act impulsively and unthinkingly, without any premeditation when in fact sometimes a bit of premeditation would not go amiss.

I feel so sorry for the person that i was who was so badly misstreated and hurt by all these people, towards whom i only ever had the best of intentions. When i look back now, i really cannot believe i managed to survive through such nastiness and cruelty, from the very people i put my trust in and who i thought would look out for me and look after me. These same people were the one's who without a backward glance have repeatedly dug the knife into me. It is no wonder my eczema was so bad when all my buried feelings were released, my eczema represented all the thousands of cuts and wounds inflicted on me for years by so many people, but which i kept hidden away until the birth of DD triggered something inside me and all my hurt feelings began clamouring to be heard and let out.

And it's not just my parents who have hurt me, it is my sisters and various others, including DH, and i realise now that i will not be fully healed or healthy until i acknowledge each and every hurt feeling i have kept buried inside me.

AN, thank you so much for your post and for taking the time to read my post and respond. I am amazed at how perceptitve you are, what you said here "I also get the feeling that they didn't want to think that you were having problems because it scared them that they didn't know what to do about it?" is something i have thought to myself almost in my subconcious and you have some picked up on it simply from what i wrote. And i think you are right, that probably my mother and possibly DH were scared to acknowledge that i was having problems as they didn't know what to do. So instead they just turned a blind eye, and left me alone to sink in the sinking sand i was in, simply because they didn't know what to do. It's like watching somebody drown, or turning your back on them so you don't have to watch the unpleasant scene of seeing a person slowly fading before your eyes, simply and purely because you are too scared to help them. And worse still the person drowning is your daughter or your wife. I can see now why i felt so bad at knowing that the only people who really were in a position to notice there was something wrong and to help me were the very people choosing to bury their heads in the sand. If they didn't help me it was unlikely anybody else would as i had very little contact with anybody else. I was horribly let down by my mother in particular i feel.

AN you are right in all that you say. I did put on a front of acting jolly and happy, more for my parents than DH. But i think my parents should have seen through it. Although rationally of course i know there was no chance of that as they had never really or even wanted to see the real me all my life, but emotionally, i was desperate for somebody, anybody to pick me and hold me and look after me, just like a baby feels i suppose when it's scared/anxious/afraid. However damaged MIL is, one thing i have noticed about her is that she immediately picks up on whenever DH is not feeling well/worried/upset. I still find it hard to tell if something's up with DH just by looking at his face, but his mother seems to immediately notice and she will always ask him what's wrong or she even seems to know if he has a headache for eg without him saying anything. And i guess that's what i wanted from my mother. I wanted her to notice and speak to me if she saw something was up with me. But she never ever did and that's what hurts so much and not only that, even when i actually specifically mentioned something was wrong and tried to talk to her about it, she tried to stop me by changing the subject. If a child cannot go to it's own mother with a problem, then who can she go to? That has been my situation all my life. I have never had anybody either who cared enough or was brave enough for me to go to with my worries and fears and so all my life i have kept everything to myself, bottled up inside.

I hold DH less responsible than my mother for not noticing if something was up with me as having only been married for 2 years, i feel it is highly possible and probable that he simply did not know me well enough to tell when something was up and to see through my 'jolly normal' act. But i do hold him responsible for giving me the cold shoulder for months over some fairly minor falling out over his mother, which in hindsight now i can see led me to go and stay at my parents house for a while, which in turn caused MIL to start phoning me there with her snidey remarks about me leaving poor DH all alone at our flat by himself. I wish I'd been able to tell her that i had left DH alone as he was totally ignoring me anyway and even that was due to her and her behaviour when she came to visit as that was what me and DH had argued about.

And last but not least AN you are also right in that it has taken me 6 years to be able to talk about that period in my life as until now it was too painful for me to talk about, even think about by myself.

As i've said before, i think you know me better than my actual therapist does and your posts offer spot on advice and evaluate my situation perfectly. Thank you so much.

sb, I agree with AN, about feeling angry at my mother's weakness and cowardice being the sole reason for her doing nothing to protect me from my father's abuse. To this day my mother has no idea what she has done wrong, in a letter sent not long ago, she said she was sorry for being a coward and for not standing up for herself more, when i was a child. She feels sorry for herself and i doubt she has even registered that whilst she was sometimes the target for my dad's abuse and bullying, she was an adult at the time, whilst i was a 10 year old girl, suffering the same sort of abuse that was being inflicted on her. How much worse it must have been for me than it was for her, but she has not even stopped to think about this. It's all about her, she feels sorry for herself and nobody else and she has got my sisters feeling sorry for her too and seeing me as the bad guy.

Only on here quickly but oh my god, your last post is soooo true!!! She has said 'it was a horrible time for us all, no one could ever believe what we went through...' and Im like, hang on a minute i was a child!!

This makes you feel unimportant

And yes this is exactly how I feel!

sb, yes it makes you feel unimportant to your mother and also 'unseen' by her for the child that you were at that time. I was invisible to my mother i suppose. She could only see my sisters.

hello all
I have been in a bit of a bad place recently. Lots of suicidal thoughts, feeling trapped, like I am a curse to my children.. not good.

There is a woman I have to come into regular contact with who triggers me really badly. SHe complains all the time about how horrible and controlling her DH is, how awful he is with their children.. Ok she complains alot, she gossips- all things my mother does which makes me very wary of her- but the thing that really triggers my anxiety is the fact that she is letting this man do lots of things to his DC that my father did to me, and she openly admits these things, and we are all supposed to say 'oh, poor you, isn't he awful'. I suggested she leaves but she doesn't want to becuase she would struggle financially. I have realised that what I actually want to say to her is 'you are a terrible mother for letting this happen to your children' and for the sake of money. it makes my blood boil. coward.
I so identify with these children. If she thinks that the children will just love her whne they grow up she is in for a shock- becuase I am realising that the person I hate the most is not the perpetrator but the bystander. When my mother would punch me and push me around and get everyone to tease me until I cried they did it, they let it happen, they told me it was my own fault. Why? Becuase it meant it wouldn't happen to them, because it made them feel connected in some way as a family? United in their scapegoating of me. I feel this woman is touting these tales of her DH's meaness towards their children as a way of bolstering her image of victim, and it makes me so angry.

I took me ages to work out what it was that has been setting me off, but now it makes so much sense.

I have to detach myself from these things. She wakens in me that confused and lonely inner child who just wanted someone to make it all stop. But that was then, and this is now. I am no longer that child. And I cannot fix her situation. I cannot rescue her children. I have three of my own to look after.

I don't think, FWIW, the situation is anything like as bad as the one I was in.SHe is not my mother/father/sister/brother. I don't have to be so angry with her - it is not this lady that I am angry with. Things are becomming clearer to me- in the way I react to people I meet- the fearand other feelings their behaviour triggers in me, and it is not their doing- it is the ghosts of my past. Things do not have to be so black and white, and I do not have to emotionally invest in evryone who tells me their stuff. But this is difficult to absorb and will need practice.

Opo, sb, when i had a breakdown at age 13-14 my mother always refers to this as when I put her 'through hell'. My feelings had no place at all.

opo your story around the birth of your DD is so sad. It resonates with me so much- that thinking your parents were your allies when actually they were your enemies. I allowed this to undermine my relationship with DH so much. We are getting on so much better now. I hope you can find a way with your DH. He needs to put you first, not his mother.

AN, a point you made that i had missed earlier. That the feelings of being unnoticed and ignored when i needed help mirroring what i felt as a child many times is again spot on. There are so many times as a child when something was wrong and my parents simply failed to notice, not innocently, but because they were just not interested enough in me to be alert to problems i might be having that i may not be talking about.

By contrast I am constantly and always on the alert with my DC's, always watching for any sign that something might be wrong in whatever way, always thinking and worrying about them. Perhaps i worry too much and am too concerned, but far better that than to be totally unconcerned like my parents. My parents were just oblivious to the obvious signs of distress i was giving out by getting into trouble at school, shoplifting, being angry and aggressive at home, or completely withdrawing into my shell and constantly reading or escaping to a friend's house all the time and then eventually when none of that worked i think i internalised my distress and it showed up as eczema which at that time was very mild.

During this little window of opportunity i have right now i was going to write a letter to my sisters telling them i would like a long term break from our relationship and trying to explain why. But at the same time i wonder if it's all futile and a waste of time. I just have this feeling that whatever i say to them, i will simply be criticised for dragging up the past, being oversensetive, selfish, ungrateful for all the good things they have done. As things stand right now, i simply have not returned any of their calls/messages/texts in recent weeks and i wonder if i should just continue doing that. Or just tell them i want a break without going into the reasons why. As i feel by giving them my reasons is almost like giving them ammunition to use against me, i just know they will tell me i am wallowing in the past, i am being melodramatic and i know i will feel even more hurt as i will know for sure at that point that they do not care one jot as if they did they would see how much they have hurt me and feel some empathy for me. But i just know that isn't going to happen, i know i am setting myself up for a fall, and yet i do need this break from them. I need some space where i know they will not contact me and will not expect any contact from me. I need to think about it a bit more i suppose.

acting normal so so true what you say about our mothers being held responsible for not protecting us from others...

mine was shit

i just dont get why totally non maternal women choose to pro create

PM i am sorry to hear you have been feeling so low. I have felt very low too recently, and just like you say i also felt horribly trapped for a while. I realised in my case it was due to the start of the summer hols and the prospect of 7 weeks alone with the DC's with little or no break/respite during that time. Could this be a factor for you? Or is it something else altogether?

I totally agree with you about hating the bystander more than the perpetrator. That is why i hate my mother more than my father (although there's really not much in it tbh). The woman you talk about, i'm sure you have worked it out correctly, she and her situation is triggering you. And no you are not responsible for her or her children, only she can sort their situation out. And only you can sort your own situation out, which you seem to making good progress with. Being able to work out that you are being triggered and then working backwards to locate which part of your childhood history is being remembered is key to healing yourself. If you can feel now how you would have felt as a child you will have integrated a previously split off part of yourself and you will thus have moved one step forward in healing yourself and becoming the whole person you were always meant to be.

And yes, my parents were my enemies not my allies. I remember during the worst months after i had DD, my mother used to just turn up at my door, uninvited, tagging along with my sisters who i had asked to come over. It wouldn't have been so bad if she had turned up and noticed i was dying inside and done something to help me, but no, she used to waltz in, big smile or her face, say to me "Alright?" to which i knew i could only answer "Yes, I'm on top of the world!" even if i was feeling suicidal, although she wouldn't even hang around me long enough to hear my answer anyway, and she would waltz over to DD and coo over her and play with her and feel so proud of herself at how good she was with DD. This was in front of other people. I remember when it was just me and her alone in my flat not long after DD was born and DD would often scream if she hadn't been winded properly, then my mother would look petrified and wouldn't have a clue what to do nor any ideas why DD might be crying. I found myself thinking she was pretty useless considering she had had 3 children herself. I felt i was much calmer and more in control than her and i worked out quite quickly that DD needed winding.

I am beginning to realise that she just acts like she knows what she's doing with babies in front of other people as she wants to look good and get their praise and admiration. When it was just me and her, it was obvious to me she didn't have a clue what to do with a newborn and was more of a hindrance than a help i realise in hindsight. And i think it was something that she said which in fact caused the argument between me and DH about his mother.

What havoc that woman has caused. She needs to be locked up.

Sorry I'm jumping all over the place but one of the things that hurt a lot was when my mother used to waltz in and casually ask if i was ok and i knew i just had to say i was fine. It was the sort of greeting you have with a distant aquaintance to whom you are not at all close, you superficially ask each other how you are and you are not in the least bit interested or care what their answer is and it is like an unwritten rule that you always answer "ok" and under no circumstance should you admit your true feeling to the other person as they would be shocked/horrified/embarressed that you had been so 'familiar' with them. That is what it was like with my mother. If i did actually ever reveal my true feelings, she would always be shocked/horrified/scared/embarressed and would immediately turn away and make it clear it was highly inappropriate of me to talk to her like that.

facefook, yep me too. My mother should never have had children. I think she saw children almost like toys that would be fun to play with and so that's why she had us.

Feel bad reading the above. Yes i think my mum failed me but i dont think it was her 'fault' i just dont think she knew/knows how to handle things herself. She is a lovley caring woman but just cr*p at these things, think she believes things will just go away.

I dont feel so strongly that my dad abused me or anything but i do know some of the things he has said and done in the past are clearly not acceptable and are hurtful.
I will give examples as just not sure what sort of 'abuse' this was...

• Saying he would come on holiday with us, taking us there and then leaving us to come home for a week saying he wasnt coming.

• Turning off our tv programmes to watch his own, even if it was just the film credits

And as an adult the most thing he does which i find so hard is saying things like I am selfish, we then talk abou it and he denies he ever said it and he doesnt think that and then weeks later says the same thing.

Oh and also, i lived with my dad when i had a car accident, he left me in bed after i got out of hospital as he was going to stay at my sister for the weekend. I couldnt move so had to phone my mum to get me.

My mum again was there for me, disgusted my dad had left me yet said nothing...

sb, your dad sounds to me like he's only a dad when he wants to be. ie, he thinks that he can just switch off and stop being a dad whenever he feels like it, whenever it gets too much for him. That's not real parenting as I see it; if you can't rely on him to be a father at all times, what good is it how nice he can be at other times? Leaving you on your own after a car accident???? ffs! and not even making sure someone else was there to do what he couldn't be bothered to do?? Also, what you said in an earlier post about him saying he didn't think he could walk you up the aisle and say nice things if he didn't mean them... well. That one left me speechless.

I don't want to try and say what I think you should be thinking or feeling about any of this, I know that's not my place or what you want, but I just wanted to give you my personal, honest response to the things you've posted. Fwiw.

pinky, sorry also to hear you've been feeling so low - I suppose we have to go through this really dark stuff, though, I think it's part of the healing process. I don't know if this will be of any use to you, but the way I try to work with it (when I have the strength/energy, which isn't always the case, especially when you're really "in it"!) is to try and find the mother in myself who can take care of the hurt child. Sort of dividing myself in two. I then try and have a dialogue between the two parts so that the mother part can really look after and help the child part. It probably sounds a bit nutty but it works for me. The theory being that the part of you feeling like that is the child who was never listened to, validated, understood, rescued - and that you are then doing that for yourself now. Would write more but DS just woken up, will gladly explain more if anyone wants to know.

Sb I too am rather shocked by the instances you describe. You are not something to be picked upand dropped again at him whim. How awful.

Bop, opo, thanks for your messages. I have been doing better but right on cue I have another missed call from my sis, followed by a text telling me that she is never going to speak to me again and that my treatment of our mother is 'disappointing at best'. She even phoned my DH at work to complain about me, about how I owe my mother so much since she had been coming three days a weeks to take care of the children.?? I'm not sure where that comes from.

I said to my friend when I saw the missed calls- I wonder if they are wishing me a nice holiday. She laughed. I guess she was right. The message from my mother does wish us a happy holiday, but it is full of careful detail- like not sure if you are going but remember my DH mentioning something about it ( well she knows we are going on holiday becuase I told her the dates- this is another pinky never tells me anything statement), and the tone is very controlled, formal and sombre.

I was going to ring her this evening, but the things my sis said to DH make it plain that my mother has told her some vicious, fabricated sob story and I'm not sure I can bring myself to speak to her.

My sis complains that I do not ring her. I have done, but she just lets the phone ring out, and I send her friendly text messages but I just get crap in return, and told that she doesn't appreciate my contacting her via text.
She told DH the best time to ring her was between 8 am and 12 noon our time- so why does she always ring me at 3-4:30 pm?

I don't know why I am not allowed to contact either sis or mother via text. I know for a fact that they communicate with each other by this method all the time. So why am I not allowed to do it?

I was tempted to reply to her latest text saying I would prefer it if that was the last message I receive from her (as she said it was, though she has said this before), but I have resisted. I think I will wait til after my holiday to see how I feel. But I just cannot see what I am getting out of these relationships. She says I have put no effort in, but in truth I had been doing all the running on the emotional, supporting side of our relationship forever, and all I have done is step back a bit. And honsetly just missed a few phonecalls from her becuase I have three very small children and I'm beyond busy!

I know from things she has said in the past that she really does think she has been a pillar of strenght and support to me, as my mnother does. They really are strange people. But again I have nagging doubts that they are right and I am all wrong.

So again I am doing something that I should be enjoying, looking forward to our holiday and again my lovely old family squash it all with their own agenda and leave me doubting myself and feeling like I'm the bad guy.

Who in their right minds thinks it's a good idea to bully someone into contacting them for a 'chat'(which sounds ominous in itself).

Sorry to go on.

his whim. sorry. You will notice that my typing is really bad.

Hi all, very sorry but this is going to be about me again. There seems to be a lot of stuff coming to the surface right now and i need to get it out whilst i have the chance.

One scene that i keep replaying in my mind over and over again is the last time i was at my parents house. My dad and I were having a massive row about something. And during it he said to me "....I know the way you operate..." and then he carried on about something else and i must have said something as well. But that line has stayed with me, even though i can't even remember what the argument itself was about. What he said just stopped me in my tracks, even though outwardly i didn't seem shocked by what he had said. To me that one sentence shows just how far apart my father and i were at that time. Even though until that time he and I had had many rows and disagreements and i did not feel in the least bit close or connected to him at all, i still thought that despite all that had happened over the years, there was still a little love in his heart for me, even if it all it was was a remainder from the time when we were close, the years up until i was 10, when he really did seem to love and care about me and i as a child certainly loved and felt close to him.

But that sentence showed to me that for him there was nothing left from that time, the years before the abuse started and it all went so horribly wrong for both of us. That sentence told me that in his eyes when he looked at me or even thought of me there was no memory left of the little girl that i once was, the daughter he once loved, and all there was was this nasty, devious, manipulative person who had nothing but the worst of intentions towards him at all times. And nothing could have been further from the truth. I have never had bad intentions towards either of my parents, despite everything i had been through. Yes, i was angry at them for what they had done, but if they had managed even the smallest of apologies and shown genuine recognition and remorse about what they had put me through over the years, i would have forgiven them and been willing to work at rebuilding our relationship. Because i didn't want to cut ties with them, i didn't want to leave myself with no family, completely alone like an orphan. But they gave me no choice, i did not feel i could survive any more of their abuse, having already survived it for 36 years, and in order to survive for the sake of my DC's i had no choice but to walk away.

I was with some friends last night, a couple who were having problems. I said to the male partner that even though he was in his 30's, in his mother's eyes, he will always be the little boy he once was and his mother would want to know that the partner he was with would look after him well. And then i thought about myself and the incident i have described above. And i realised that in my dad's eyes, i was not forever going to be his little girl, who he wanted to make sure was always looked after and loved and protected. In his eyes, i stopped being that little girl when i was 10 and i turned into somebody who was cunning, manipulative, devious and who was always out to use him and take advantage of him. Of course i was nothing of the sort, even though something had changed in my dad's mind to make him see me in a terrible way, i was still a little 10 year old girl, no doubt terribly confused, scared, and devasted that her once loving and caring dad had almost overnight turned into a nasty 'wicked stepfather' type of person.

And although i didn't realise it at the time, from then on, i was on my own. My dad had suddenly turned against me, and i had never had my mother anyway, she had always been distant and cold and uninterested in me. So i was responsible for myself, for looking after myself, not in a practical way as my mother always cooked meals and bought us clothes etc, but in an emotional sense. I had no parent to whom i could go and talk to about anything; I was completely on my own with my worries, fears, anxieties, sadness, pain, lonliness. I survived and adapted to the situation by pretending i did not have any worries, fears, anxieties, as soon as i felt a worry/fear rising up inside me and taking hold, i pushed it back down down, made it go away, ignored it until it seemed like it was gone. And i have done that all my life including until very recently. I did exactly what i have described just 2 weeks ago when i got a, to me, very scary text message from the mum who i have had problems with recently because of her son. I got a text from her and i felt terrified, petrified, my hand was shaking. And yet i forced myself to push all those emotions away, forced myself to regain control of and appear composed and unaffected by her text and then started acted like it hadn't bothered me in the slightest, acted tough and like nothing or nobody could shatter my composure. But why did i act like that? Why could i now show that i was scared and shaking because of this person's text? DH was at home at the time. Why did i need to cover up my true feelings in front of him? I know the reason why, because it is a habit that has become hard wired in my brain over the past 29 years. I really want to break it but i don't know how. I don't know how to show my true emotions when those emotions are feeling scared/anxious/worried/scared. I always seem to suppress them, push them away, compose myself, and then talk about them but in an emotionless way, in a calm controlled and measured way which i think makes it very hard for whoever i'm talking to to understand me as to them i appear perfectly ok as i have made sure they did not see me when i was shaking and terrified. And i know this behaviour was learned at home when i was a child, i must have often felt petrified of my dad but i don't think i ever showed him once, just how scared i was, i acted tough like i wasn't scared at all. I realise now i must have been terrified. Perhaps my extreme reaction to the text was simply triggering long buried emotions as rationally i have no need to be scared of this other mum, what can she do after all?

The more i think about it, i think fear is one of the main emotions i continually buried as a child. I always acted tough and stood up for myself, as if i wasn't at all scared or affected by my dad. But i was a little 10/11/12 year old girl. My dad was a 30 something year old man. Of course i must have been scared. I only have to imagine DD a few years older and involved in some argument with a grown man, she would be terrified, in fact she wouldn't last 30 seconds before she would be crying and come running to me. But i knew i couldn't cry and go running to my mother as she would do nothing to help me. I knew i was on my own and i tried to survive as best as i could. But all my survival techniques from childhood are no good to me and in fact are causing problems rather than helping me to survive as they once did.

So i was totally responsible for my own survival from the age of 10. A bit like a lion cub who has lost it's parents and is left out in the wild to fend for itself. That was my situation despite appearances showing otherwise ie that i had 2 parents who appeared to be looking after me as they fed and clothed me and gave me a roof over my head.

I think this is why i have found the responsibility of looking after the DC's so hard and burdensome and overwhelming. Because before i even had them, i had already had a lifetime of responsibility for myself and i could just about cope with that, but to add any more responsibility to that was like the straw that broke the camel's back. I simply could not cope. I needed a break from the responsibility i had already carried on my shoulders from the age of 10 before i could take on any more. I needed somebody who would take on the responsibility for me, who would think about me and look out for me and look after me as i was tired from doing it all myself. A child who is burdened with responsibility from the age of 10 is robbed of her childhood. Early childhood needs to be carefree and lacking in responsibility and as the child gets older, responsibility can be added, gradually, bit by bit, and never more than the child is capable of bearing. But i was dumped with far more responsibility than i was capable of coping with, and not gradually, all at once, and i carried it for years and years. No wonder i always felt i have essentially brought myself up as opposed to having been raised by my parents, all they did was feed and clothe me; the rest was up to me. If i had been a pet, i would have been ok i guess. A rabbit or a goldfish that just needed feeding really but i was a child and my needs were much greater than that and i had to meet those needs myself. But i was not capable of doing that so i pushed my own needs away, pretended i didn't have them. But they never went away, they just lay low for a while but now i am fully aware of them, but again at a bit of a loss as to how to meet them. I can try and meet my needs myself, but i find it exhausting because i also have to meet my DC's needs as well and there simply is not enough of me to go around and I always put my DC's first.

Again, sorry to ramble on so much about myself, but i feel better now for having got some of this stuff out of my head.

My dad has said I am manipulative and once said 'you are so selfish, i dont know where you get it from' That stuck in my head too as it crushed me as Im not!

Oh he admitted once he said horrible things are we were going to move to another country and this news had hurt him so much that he wanted to hurt me as I had hurt him!!!

Oh and interestingly enough my dad was fab until i was 12. He is nice now too but i just dont trust him to not hurt me again...
I feel like if i say something 'wrong' out will come allthe nastiness again.

Hi all, me again. DH and DC's back tomorrow so am trying to get everything out whilst i have the time.

I have realised, athough it should have been obvious all along, that the feeling i had all throughout childhood of feeling isolated, alone, not a part of the family and feeling there was no place for me within the family, was not an irrational feeling based on no tangible evidence. The feeling i had was a normal response to the way the whole family was treating me. Although they were not i beleive, consciously colluding together to make me feel left out and isolated, their actions were in effect 'synchronised' and although each of them made me feel left out in a different way, the effect from all of them was the same. And the type of behaviour from all of them towards me, although different in fact, always had the same underlying theme.

My dad always tried to divide me and my sisters and always made a point of emphasising how, in his eyes, we were so different, my 2 sisters of course being far better than me in every way. My mother always divided us up too and was always together with my sisters in a little sub-group of their own in which i was not included where they had their own little jokes/phrases/ways of doing things that i was excluded from. It was obvious my mum and sisters all felt they were alike and connected and they made it obvious they thought i was different from them, different and seperate. My 2 sisters also were like a couple, it was never a sisterly 'threesome', always the two of them as a twosome and me out on my own. It was obvious they saw me as different from them in every way possible, physically because i had eczema and they didn't, and personality wise, i was hostile towards our parents but they weren't, obviously because i had been and was being abused and they weren't, although they were oblivious to this fact at the time and even now they seem to be completely unaware how differently we were all treated.

So it was like a catch 22, i was treated differently so i behaved differently to my sisters, which led my dad to point out and emphasise the differences which pushed us even further apart; my mother always created a little group consisting of her and my sisters not me, which further emphasised my 'seperateness' from the family. Between the four of them ie parents and sisters, there were various bonds and connections in various directions between them, but i was never a part of it. There was no bond or connection between me and any other family member, i was always on my own, whatever combination took place between the rest of them. I was always on my own.

So i wasn't imagining that i was always left out and excluded, it actually was happening, in lots of little ways all the time. My feeling of intense lonliness, isolation and exclusion, even whilst living at home with the 4 other family members was real and justified. I told my mother about it once and she completely dismissed my feelings and told me i was being silly. And yet i will never forget the look on her face, even whilst she was telling me i was imagining feeling left out, she knew what i was talking about, she knew how i felt and yet she delibarately chose to ignore me and dismiss my feelings. Probably because it suited her for me to the one who was left out all the time, as if i hadn't been me, it would most likely have been her. It reminds me of that experiment with chimpanzees that I think AN mentioned a while ago, some of the mothers stood on their babies to avoid feeling the pain of the hot floor themselves. That is exactly what my mother did. She used me to protect herself from the pain of being left out and excluded and made me feel the pain instead.

How does one process such a fact? How do i deal with the knowledge that my mother put herself and her own needs above mine and knowingly allowed me to suffer in order to save herself? I simply cannot get my head around it. It is incomprehensible to me. It's like being punched in the stomach over and over again, no matter how hard i try, i cannot get over it and move on as it appalls me so much.

Have any of you managed to 'process' something similar and move on? I feel i might be forever stuck at this point as i simply cannot get over the fact of how my own mother exploited me so horribly. And all the while she appears to the outside world so loving and caring and friendly, like the perfect mother.

I can see now even more clearly how i cannot continue the relationship with my sisters. They idolise our mother whilst i despise her. We are totally opposed in how we feel about her, it is impossible for us to have a relationship that is not full of tension and undercurrents. And i have been longing to tell my sisters how i feel about our mother but have been holding back as i know it would destroy our relationship, but now i have reached the point where the need to be honest about how i feel about our mother, the need to be true to myself is greater than my need to continue a relationship with my sisters. I feel relieved that i can finally tell them exactly how i really feel, i no longer have to keep it inside, feeling so false and so fake everytime we meet. I think i have always known this was inevitable, that it was never going to be possible to have a relationship with my sisters knowing how diametrically opposed we are in how we feel about our parents. But i still felt i needed my sisters until now and i was not ready to end our relationship, but i am now and definately think it will be far better for me this way.

I hope i haven't killed the thread with my incessant posts. Please do not feel under any obligation to respond or even read, i just needed to get a load off my mind. Hope you're all back soon!

Hello guys...

This has moved on alot since I last posted in the SH threads. I was on the original, woth pages etc, so some of you may not know my story.

Brief recap, my mum didn't want me & - in short - made no real attempt to try & love me or show me love. It all ended when she said that throwing herself down the stairs while pregnant with me failed to induce the miscarriage she wanted so much.

There was a life time of nasty retorts etc, until I cut her off at 19. Best thing I did!

I have been having counselling for a different subject, but the past was of course, raised during a session recently & proved to be very tightly linked with what I am fighting at the moment. Which is, I am terrified of getting pregnant again! I have 2 wonderful girls, but find myself having panic attacks at the thought of getting pregnant with #3....very telling I guess, is that I was #3! Dh is currently looking into a vasectomy, so it isn't going to be a lifelong worry, but it has been overwhelming me recently! Not so much now I am back on the BC pill, and we have had sucess this month!

Anyway, during the last visit my counsellor told me that I only have my mother's word for it that she didn't want me. That she may have said it as a 'power trip' kind of thing, to keep the control. You know how it can be, when you fight you find the worse thing you can say, which you know will really hurt the other person.

It was a turniing point really, because I have honestly never thought of it like that before. The counsellor also said that mu mother was extremely emotionally abusive, again not something I had realy thought of, just thought she struggled to love me, never thought it was emotional abuse!

And I do feel better for knowing this, although it doesn't take away the hurt & the wondering why, if that makes sence!

Also, it seems that my sister is turning into my mother & I feel like I am losing touch with her! I am in Australia & she in the UK & save for limited Facebook remarks, I get nothing form her! No emails, no cards for my birthday/christmas. Along with Dad & my brother, she didn't acknowledge my younger daughters birthday nor my eldest's. Which hurt! Alot.

Counselling is teaching me to expect nothing, so anything I do get is a bonus, but I hate that I cannot rely on what is left of my family!

Hi sandcastles, I do remember you from the earlier threads, but thanks for the re-cap of your story.

I can relate to you being terrified of falling pregnant again but in a slightly different way. I was the eldest of 3 and i am convinced that if i had had only 1 sister things might have been very different for me. But because i had 2 younger sisters, both close in age to each other but a big gap between me and them, it was always 'them' and 'me' as you will no doubt realise if you read some of my posts on this thread. I am also terrified of falling pregnant again as the absolute last and worst thing in the world for me would be to have 3 children and risk one of them being left out in the cold as i always was. DH has had a vasectomy, but there is always a slight risk and if ever AF is a bit late, i am petrified of what it might mean.

So i do kind of know where you're coming from even though my reasons are very different.

I agree with your counsellor that your mother was emotionally abusive by telling you she had tried to get rid of you. I'm glad your counsellor can see your situation clearly. Although my mother never actually told me that she didn't want me, her actions made it very clear that she was not interested in me at all and that she much preferred and felt closer to my 2 younger sisters. I have always thought i was emotionally neglected by her but i suppose it is also emotionally abusive to reject one of your children and favour your others.

I can totally relate to you feeling like your sister is not interested in you. I feel exactly the same. Neither of my sisters are interested in me, apart from when they want to use me for something which is when they will get in touch, but apart from that, there is nothing from them. It hurts a lot as you say. And the only way to handle it is to have no expectations as then you cannot be disappointed. But it is very hard if not impossible to have no expectations of one's sister, one's own flesh and blood.

I have struggled with this for a long time. I have finally decided that the only way for me to avoid being continually hurt and disappointed by my sisters' thoughtlessness and lack of feeling for me is to end the relationship and that is what i will be doing over the next few weeks. I have written a letter to them which i am going to leave for a while before sending.

My situation is different from yours in that i have 2 sisters and it has always seemed to be a case of they have each other and don't need me. And instead of constantly wanting to be included by them and always feeling rejected and unwanted and unimportant to them, i have decided to walk away. Instead of feeling sad about my decision i feel strangely excited and liberated, i am sure doing this will open new doors for me, to friendships that are far more 'sisterly' than my relationship with my actual sisters has ever been.

Me again, just snatching a few minutes whilst DC's are occupied. Have been thinking a lot about recent problems with the mum 'friend' i have mentioned a bit.

I feel so sad that this has happened to me. I can't even quite beleive it, that as well as all the pain and heartache i have had to cope with wrt my family, i have also had the misfortune to get involved with a toxic friend. I feel realy hurt that it has all ended up this way. I feel i did absolutely nothing wrong within the friendship, i was just getting on with my life, minding my own business, but because of this other mum's own personal unresolved issues, i have once again been the target of her paranoia, anger and nastiness.

I said to DH recently that i am thinking we should get a dog as i am fed up of people, at least pets are loyal and don't stab you in the back like most of the people i have been involved with seem to have done to me.

opo- Hi-I am still reading and listening with interest albeit when I can snatch some time. I am having difficulties posting at the moment. Partially because of lack of time but also I seem to go through these phases where I shut down a bit and feel completely unable to post.
The tone of your recent posts really struck me. It feels like something in you has really shifted? As though since you finally made the difficult decision of cutting ties with your sisters you have felt free-er to express yourself?
A couple of things struck a chord with me as well. The part where you said you just didnt know how to get passed your mothers treatment of you. I feel stuck like this too. Its as though everyday Im carrying this deep sadness in me and I dont know what to do to heal myself any further. Cutting her out has helped but there is still a lot of anger there too and this I find more problematic than the sadness.
I feel like I cant meet other peoples needs easily because I have a lifetime of unmet needs to make up for. This for me is also problematic.
Also where you were talking about the isolation. I felt that too as a child. Greatly. I grew up in a family of six! but totally alone and I am only just realising that I carry that with me. It has been the main dominant feeling when I have sunk into depression. That sinking feeling that I am totally alone.
I always thought that the age gap was the issue, but I dont think that now. I think thast my parents were responsible for playing all of us off of each other. Just like your mother. That is another kick in the guts because I feel not only has she robbed me of the childhood I should have had but of the adult life where I 'could' have had close bonds with my siblings. Something that I crave so much now I (and my brothers) have children. It's a whole other lot of grief to get over.

sandcastles - I do remember you. I found that very interesting what you were saying about your counsellor. That what your mother had laboured to you all those years may not have been true, but her attempt at controlling you. Keeping you in your place with emotional abuse.
Im glad knowing that has made you feel better. I guess I could apply that thinking to my situation. Maybe my mother didn't think I was fat, thick, trouble (all the things she implied and re-enforced to me for many years) maybe that was her way of 'controlling' me because of her own deep insecurities.
Im glad I know these things. If I didnt know how would I be with my children? Yes the urge is there sometimes for me to shout (especially to ds, who seems so demanding to me) YOU ARE SO SELFISH! But knowing what I know I can keep myself in check.
If you were to have a third child you would not behave as your mother did. Her actions were designed to keep you down and to isolate you. You know far too much to 'allow' this to happen to any of your children.

As an aside, recently I have begun to trace my family tree. I always thought that my mother was the youngest of three (actually of four, but the third child died). That her brother was the eldest and sister the middle child.
As it turns out mums sister was the eldest by 'some years'. She was the scapegoat. Then came mums brother. He was the golden child. Then came the brother who died at nine months, then my mum.
This (apart from the death of a sibling) mirrors my own family. I am the eldest by some way and the scapegoat. None of my mums siblings are close. They go years and years without speaking.
I feel quite shocked by how history has repeated itself.
I know I am in danger of scapegoating ds. Or creating difficulties in his relationship with dd. I have to be so careful and I worry all the time abvout recreating the damaging patterns of the past.

Has anyone read Alfie Kohn's Unconditional Parenting? Some great parenting advice and some of the issues we face are explored i.e. something we all have in common are very conditional parents

Hi Rose- How are you? How are you managing juggling two? I found it quite tough in the beginning I have to admit. I will have a look at that book.

I have had a dreadful day today. Have been completely triggered by my boss. Now I have calmed down I do understand where he was coming from. That he was trying to help me because I told him I was struggling. Like a typical man he wanted to fix things.
He was talking about being more organised and forward planning.
All I heard was 'blah, blah, blah...you're crap' I take anything so personally especially from him because I see him as a parental figure.
I refused to cry in front of him but I went to the loo afterwards and balled my eyes out.
I felt just like I did as a child, I was in touch with the hurt and frustration I felt so often as a child. That nothing was good enough and that no matter how hard I tried to please my parents it was never 'enough'. They would always latch on to the 'one' thing I hadnt done right. So I feel/felt like giving up. What is the point?
I know this was me being triggered but I find it so hard to deal with.
I think maybe underneath I feel like Im crap so if I hear someone say anything negative I hear 'your crap' and that is ALL I hear and it bloody hurts.
I dont know how to get over this really, because I have to be able to take criticism or advice at work without crumbling.
I would also like some 'honest' feedback here. I feel like I am struggling to cope. Four days a week work (or trying to do a full-time job in four days)plus housework and two small children. Am I just weak? I feel like Im crap at all three and there is never enough hours in the day. I feel like I am drowning here?
Part of me just feels that I am being crap and weak and that I 'should' be able to cope. But then again maybe I 'could' manage my time better.
I just dont know anymore. I feel like I hate this job and I want out. Like a square peg in a round hole. Or am I just wanting to run away from the feeling of being crap. Which is a very painful feeling for me. Sorry for the self indulgent post. Feel a bit lost atm.