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

[oneplusone]

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

hello everyone.
I have been on holiday. I have read up to date and it was quite suprising to see so many of you tal;king about things I have been thinking about myself.

roseability AK book has been very helpful to me, along withh the 'How to talk' books. It gives a good frame of reference, I think, since as you say I have only a dysfunctional family expereince to draw upon.

About thinking negatively of others, skewed thinking. I struggle with this. It becomes one of the bits of evidence I use to beat myself with - I have such horrible negative thoughts about people and their motives that I think my family are right- I'm a horrible horrible person. But if you consider that my parents, especiually my mother has spent my lifetime thinking up horrible nasty motivations for people's actions and telling me these theories over and over again, and that my family, who should have been my main circle of trust and support have subjected me to constant emotional and sometimes physical abuse I should not be suprised.

My mother sent me a text on holiday saying she missed me. Nice? Possibly, but I can't think that. There must be some underlying motivation. Spontaneous acts of affection do not occur where my mother is concerned. I don't think she meant she missed me because I was on holiday- I think she mean't she missed me because I have made myself so unavailable for her to control me. It is all manipulationn and I cannot take anything at face value. She misses me but has been spending her time maligning me, making up malicious stories about me to tell my siblings.
My sis phones telling me she loves me and enjoys hearing my voice, then next thing I know she is disowning me via a text message. Then I get another message from mother on holiday telling me my sis has some minor investigative surgery. All manipulation. My sister is forever having biopsies, threatened hysterectomies, lumps removed. They might well be real- she is vastly overweight, smokes and drinks large quantities of alcohol and has as far as I know been on ADs most of her adult life, so she most likely has poor health.
But I would still maintain it is manipulation, emotional blackmail. Last time she 'dumped me' my mother told me sis had been in a car accident. I called and it turned out it was a minor bump in a taxi.

So I can sypmathise with all those who struggle with these unpleasant thoughts. I feel as though I have a constant battle in my head. Anywhere I go I question people's motives, believe they think badly of me. If someone suggested somethign ridiculously bads about me I would think well they may be right, I may be that thing. I need to genertae some self belief, because at the moment I ams till open to any negative suggestion about me. I am almost faling over myself to absorb them in fact. When someone says something nice about me I question their motives and/or their judgement. Or I just think well, they don't really know me that well, do they?

Sorry, I went on a bit there.

PinkyMinxy - this internalisation of the belief that we are 'horrible people' is a common side effect of being brought up in a toxic family. I have felt it too, all my life. Only now am I beginning to unravel this skewed perception of myself.

Firstly it is easier for toxic parents to blame the child for the difficulties in the relationship rather than their own parenting. It is more convenient to blame perceived or real character traits in the child. On a much lesser scale I have done it myself when I have a difficult patch with the kids. It is easy to think that my DS is stubborn or 'difficult' where as in fact it is because I am tired or stressed. Sometimes the character traits are real and different to ourselves but as long as we don't perceive them as 'bad' just because they challenge us. A child might well be strong willed but this is wonderful and will stand them in good stead for the challenges of life

Toxic parents take it much further. They criticise the child endlessly because they haven't conformed to their ideal. This ideal is somehow needed to feed their narcissistic personaltiy (for I believe all toxic parents are narcissistic to a degree).

My parents carry a guilty secret. Their affair with a wife's/husband's best friend. It tore the family apart and made my mother's illness much much worse

They have projected their guilt onto me and have wrapped themsleves up in so many layers of denial over the years. My adoptive father once said I was a 'fake and a phony'. I now realise he was talking about himself. He stole his best friend's wife and then manipulated and dominated her to such a point that she was prepared to 'steal' her own daughter's little girl. Just so he could have a 'fake' family of his own because he wasn't capable of getting a nice family of his own accord.

I now realise that I am not the bad guy in all of this.

PM - I too think negatively about people and their motives. Even people I cherish such as my DH family. I do realsie this is beacause I have never had the unconditional love from a loving family

Hello all. Am back after a long break from MN (enforced as we went away to a place with no internet access).

Am afraid have only had time to skim through recent posts, so many since I last logged on.

I have made huge progress with DH. To cut a long story short, when we first got together and got married etc, i treated him pretty badly. I had not dealt with my own issues, wasn't even aware that i had issues. He knew he had done nothing to deserve being treated so badly by me (i would get angry at him for nothing, be hostile, rude and agressive towards him) and i couldn't see that i was using him as a scapegoat, taking out my buried feelings on him which should rightly have been directed towards my parents. After years of being treated badly by me, naturally DH built up inside himself, resentment, bitterness and anger towards me. Although he tried to hide his feelings towards me, they would occasionally spill out and I would then feel that it was DH with the problem, that he was being nasty to me and that i had done nothing to deserve it. And in recent years, my behaviour towards him has been a lot better, but the feelings DH has stored up inside are from some years ago. So we seemed to be feeding off each other in a horribly negative way and i was unwilling and/or unable to see, until now, that the original cause of our problems was me. But i have now been able to see what i was unable to see previously, and have also realised that, as always, even though it appeared to be me that was the cause of our problems, if I trace it back to it's fundamental and original root cause, the problem is/was my parents and the damage they had done to me as a child. Somehow, once i realised that my bad behaviour towards DH was not because I was inherently bad/nasty but simply because i was damaged by my parents and had never learnt to communicate effectively, never learnt to trust, never felt that i was loveable, or worthy of respect. All my issues caused huge problems in my relationship with DH, but the ultimate responsibility for this lies with my parents.

Somehow realising this has meant that all my hostility towards DH has evaporated and i am positive that our relationship will improve from now on. Until now i was refusing to accept that our problems were solely down to me and i would always try and place some responsibility on DH. But the truth is he was only ever reacting to the bad way in which i was treating him I was the original cause of our problems. Until now i simply could not accept that fact and always denied it to DH and to myself. But deep down i knew it was the truth; I simply did not want to face it. But it was not quite the whole truth as like i have said, the root cause was my parents.

It's as if I am suddenly seeing DH in a whole new light and any negative feelings i might have had towards him i know now rightfully belong to my parents.

Apart from that, I have not contacted my sisters for over a month. I have had a text from my youngest sister, which i have not replied to. I still haven't written to them saying i need a break, but will do so when i have time. It's as if they don't exist anymore, i am no longer stewing over them, what they might be thinking about me, whether they are angry with me etc etc. I just cannot be bothered to waste my energy on them anymore.

Have had some more problems with that other mum i mentioned a while ago. She really is a nasty piece of work and again i blame my parents for the fact that i ever got involved with her. If i was a healthy, undamaged person, there is no way i would have let her get her claws into me the way she has done. I will have to think of a way to deal with her but right now she is not really a priority. I think my relationship with DH needs a lot of attention and that is what i am going to focus on.

One more thing, have had, via my sister, a sort of 'indecent proposal' type of offer from my parents. Apparently they have helped her out quite substantially with the house she and her DH have just bought. And she has told me they want to give me the same amount they gave her, with no strings attached. When she first told me about it my initial reaction was 'no', and i still feel i would not want to touch their money with a bargepole. But it is a substantial amount of money and would help us enormously and would make a big difference to our life and most importantly would make a big difference to the DC's as DH would be able to work a lot less and spend much more time at home.

So i have a dilemma as to what to do. I don't want to accept their money, but it would make a big difference for the DC's. It is almost like compensation for all the pain and suffering i have had to go through, and although no amount of money would ever make things better, it would help in a practical way. I would appreciate your advice on this as i really do not know what to do.

My sister has said that even if i turn the money down now, it will come to me anyway when my parents die as it is a sort of 'advance' on my inheritance.

I would not be taking the money from these people and I note this has also come from your sister.

I have no doubt at all that you would indeed use the funds for a better quality of life but would you also feel that you have been "paid off" by them as it were, would they see it d'you think as their full and final settlement with regards to their ill treatment towards you over the years?.

hello
I've been hiding a bit. opo my mum rang me the other day wanting to visit 'with no agenda'. therapist said to me what I thought.. that when someone says there is no agenda there usually is. I would be very wary of this information from your sis.

My parents and my sis are forever offering things- help out financially etc. it never comes to anything but they enjoy dangling things at us as I think they either like to think they are kind and generous and this enhances this fantasy image of themselves, or they think it gives them some power. But they never actually give us anything.

When they have done small favours- like getting my old toy cot out of their attic to give to DD1- you would think they were getting the moon for me.

I would avoid it. If it coems when they die so be it. My sis is obsessed with inheritance and money. If they offer it now or offer to leave it to you, either way if you discuss it with them it will most likely be 'used' and leverage of some sort, IMVHO.

Hi everyone

It is quite pleasing in a way that this thread hasn't made it to 1000 posts yet. I hope it means everyone has been doing well.

I had my first therapy session yesterday though I am not sure how it is going to go. I am getting more pain than progress by going atm but maybe that is how it works.

You may remember my emotional affair last year with my first love and all the pain and upset that brought with it and the inability for me to just cut all contact. Or if i did, to stick with it. Well, a few weeks ago we were meant to meet. I cancelled him and told him it was best for me if I never spoke to him again. I realised lots of things, gave a lot of thought to how I was feeling, and I am pleased to say I have not had any wish to contact him for about 4 weeks now and while it might not seem a lot, it is a big deal for me. I am just so glad I didn't see him and I am feeling much lighter with cutting him off.

I recently met up with my foster mum and her son and grand daughter and that was amazing. It has brought out some very feelings though as I never realised I was with them as long as I did so my mother demanding she have me back - then changing her mind the next day - was a much bigger deal than I realised.

I was sent to a children's home as the FM had had enough of my mother. I was very happy there for 6 months and then sent so a foster home where the mother and daughter hit and kicked me and the father sexually abused me.

I am so cross with myself for hating my mother for doing this.

Sorry. Just needed to get that out.

Better go and do some laundry now.

Best wishes to you all.

OPO, That money thing is a massive dilemma! It would benefit you and your DH and DCs and it would seem to show that your parents want to show that they still have feelings for you and want to treat you the same as your sister by giving you the same amount of money. These are the good points. The bad points may be that if you accept it you will feel forced to have more contact with them than you want and that they will feel that one grand gesture lets them off the hook for everything they have done wrong (which would make you feel very angry). If you were going to be back in contact, what would they have to do for you to make you want to? Or is the answer, never, there is nothing they can do to make up for it? If the latter then maybe that would go towards a decision to wait to receive the money in their will.

Like Attila said, your parents themselves haven't actually spoken to you about this and I wonder why this would be. If they have intentionally told your sister, hoping she will repeat it to you, that could suggest that they are dangling a carrot to try to manipulate you into getting back in contact. You just won't know really though unless they communicate directly with you. And we know from recent posts that lots of us are likely to think the worst things until we know the truth because our experiences have made us less trusting. Maybe the best thing would be to do nothing and wait and see if your parents contact you directly and then depending on what they say and how they say it, think about it again then, but for now, don't let it clog up your brain and sap your energy.

FabBaker, you wrote quite a lot compared to what you normally do and this seems like a good sign - as though your thoughts are more free than before so you can get them out more easily.

It seems like getting some time and distance away from OM has reduced his 'drug-like addictive' effect on you allowing you to think more clearly about the situation.

I don't think you should be cross with yourself for being angry with your mother because if she hadn't done what she did then you wouldn't have ended up with those awful people.

It is funny, AN but when I had travelled to see my foster mum when I was there I did feel like I did belong somewhere and it felt good and I have also been more settled since I have been home.

I don't really feel I fit in anywhere and I have not been happy living here for ages.

So maybe if you think of yourself as coming from your foster parents that were good, before the bad ones, you will feel more 'rooted'? I think it is really important to feel you know where you come from and it is hard to explain why. We just feel it strongly. It is difficult to explain to DHs etc if they don't know what it feels like to not have lived with their original parents and kept them.

Understanding more about what happened and why is really important as well and it sounds like you found out a bit more truth from your visit.

I think of myself as coming from a bit of a 'mess' really, but I'm ok with that now as I feel proud of myself for surviving it and learning from it and getting back to being 'normal' and 'natural' by having my own offspring family and learning how to be 'normal' with them! I feel I have a place in the world if I have them. Thank god (or whatever powers are at work) that I was able to have children as I can't imagine how awful it is for people who want them but can't!

I found myself saying something about children's behaviour (my foster brother to me and my children to each other) being normal to my therapist and that felt like a huge step forward.

Aha, knowing what is normal and what isn't and trying to become normal - this has always been my ambition! I'm feeling more normal than ever before, even thinking of chaning my name as I don't feel like I'm acting so much!

I'm the same. I feel I just want to be like everyone else.

AN and Fab, trying to be normal is just what I have been thinking about this morning. AN I feel more normal than i have ever have too, i'm also not acting nearly as much as i used to.

Thank you for your post about my parents' offer. I think it came via my sister as my parents are at least respecting my request for them not to contact me in any way and they have communicated things via my sisters before as well. In fact around 2 years ago they made another offer of money, again via my sister, which i turned down completely. It was a smallish amount of no real consequence and i didn't think twice about turning it down.

If I were to accept the recent offer, I was thinking of writing a very short note to them saying that if they wish to transfer this money to me then I am willing to accept it strictly on behalf of the DC's and I will open an account in the DC's names and my parents can transfer the money into that account. And i will use it for the DC's education in the future. If they do not wish to transfer the money then so be it, but either way i do not want any contact from them.

The only language my parents know, or at least my dad, is money, he has always been financially generous, even whilst being emotionally and verbally abusive. Perhaps it is his way of trying to say sorry for what he did. It is of course nowhere near what i actually want from him but he is not capable of doing what i really want and i have to accept that.

I am going to think about it for a while, my sister told me about the offer about 2 months ago and i have been thinking all this time and still not been able to decide.

My middle sister's baby is due soon, in around 3 weeks. I haven't heard from her in ages, i haven't contacted her in ages either. I don't feel at all excited about her baby. I feel flat inside. I feel how a stranger would feel about somebody they didn't know who was about to have a baby. My sisters treat me like I am a stranger, i am not part of their 'inner circle' so no wonder this is how i feel. I want to tell them i want a break from them but i don't know how to word my letter. Perhaps they will just get the message if i simply don't contact them?

I am sure they will criticise me for my lack of enthusiasm about my sister's baby. I don't even want to go and see her or the baby after she has it. After the way she treted me about the news about her pregnancy, i simply have no interest in her.

They do not realise that just like my parents, I did at one time, truly love and care about both of them, but they have completely destroyed my feelings for them by the way they have treated me over the years and now i feel nothing for them. Not love, not hate, just nothing. But they will never see things this way, they will blame me and tell me i deserved to be treated badly by them so it is a hopeless situation.

Something in me is holding me back from writing to them though. I genuinely didn't have the time for quite a while due to the summer hols and DC's being home etc, but now I do have the time, and i am not doing it. I wonder why? I think i want to wait until after my sister has had the baby before i write to them both. Even though i don't want to go and see her and the baby i think i just want to at least know that everything went ok with the birth and that they are both ok before i can say what i want to say.

Re being normal - some of it is realising that the way you have reacted/turned out IS a NORMAL reaction to the sorts of things that happened to you! If the people around you who you consider to be normal had gone through the same things it is likely they would react similarly! When you no longer see yourself as being abnormal because you know this, it helps you to be more normal.

OPO, that is a really good idea about asking your parents to put the money in accounts for the children but telling them you still don't want contact (if you don't).

Re your sisters - do you actually need to tell them you are having a break from them? Can you not just stop contacting them? Or is letting them know part of a kind of 'revenge' thing to make them see what effect their behaviour has had? I felt this sense of revenge about my parents knowing that I felt our relationship was irreparably damaged and why. Although admitting to revenge feels 'distasteful' it has helped my anger a lot to feel that they haven't 'got away with it' with no consequences.

OPO, I also meant to comment on your change in feelings towards your DH as it was similar for me with mine. It seems like my brain looked for ways to see his behaviours as similar to people who hurt me previously so that I could take out my unresolved feelings from then on him. It was safer to take them out on him.

I think the same thing happened with DD where my brain looked for ways to see her behaviour as the oldest sibling as being similar to my brother's in the past so that I could get my feelings out onto her . I didn't actually take them out on her apart from being irritable with her but the things I felt seemed so wrong and venomous and evil! It's what made me start seeing Therapist.

It was getting better and better and then suddenly quite recently something slotted into place in my brain and I just don't feel those venomous feelings anymore - not towards her anyway.

This first thing that caused this acceleration of my 'curedness' was what someone wrote on here about the baby ape experiment. I'm sorry I can't remember who it was because I want to say Thank You again because somehow it made such a difference to me! The thought that I wasn't facing up to my own pain, because I was scared to, but feeling like taking it out on my DD (like the mother ape stood on the baby ape so she wouldn't have to withstand the pain of the hot cage floor) really 'woke me up'.

The poster went on to talk about her mother and said something like, her mother is not willing to suffer any amount of pain from her past, even to shield her children from it (by not ending up taking it out on them). I was like this too because I had the irrational fear that if I felt some of it, a huge deluge of it would descend on me and engulf me and my life and I wouldn't be able to cope with it. But the thought that my children were going to feel it (even to a lesser extent), indirectly, through my snappiness and rejecting behaviours, instead of me made me really ashamed. How could I put it onto small vulnerable children without the life experience to cope with difficult emotions instead of onto myself! So I decided I COULD take the pain of facing up to things from the past because I would do anything to shield them from anything like that.

The second thing that accelerated my 'curedness' was the last EMDR session where I couldn't stop thinking about punching people I was angry with in the past over and over again. I could really feel myself doing it and could feel a release as I did it. I didn't have much faith in EMDR at first but something magic about it made me feel like I actually had in real life, vented my anger on the people who originally caused it! I really think it redirected my brain channels and linked my anger back up with the people who deserved it and away from innocent people I felt like taking it out on.

Another big thing was finally seeing that the things that happened to my brother were NOT a good enough excuse for the things he did to other people and that he deserved the consequences and deserved my anger and other negative feelings. I realised how my unhealthy attachment to him had come about and recognised that it was unhealthy. Once my anger towards him was unblocked, my 'brain channels' could be redirected.

AN, yes, I agree with you about what being normal means for those who were abused/neglected as children. I suppose for me, I have been so consumed with dealing with all this stuff over the past 2 years that I haven't been able to do 'normal' family things, be a normal mother etc. I have been comparing myself constantly to the other mums at school and feeling a failure, hopelessly inadequate and just not as good as them at being a mother. I used to look at the mums who volunteered to help out at the school, some of them had 3 DC's as opposed to my 2, and feel so rubbish that I couldn't do such things, even though i only had 2 DC's. I knew in my head that even though i had one less DC than the other mum i had a lot more on my plate to deal with, but still, i couldn't help feeling a failure.

I feel a bit different now. I seem to be beating myself up a bit less about not being able to do as much as some of the other mums and I know that it's not due to me being useless, incompetent and disorganised, but simply due to the fact that i have had to use so much time and energy in sorting myself out that there was nothing left over for any 'extras'. I have always known that rationally but not 'believed' it emotionally i think. It wasn't my fault, it was my parents' fault and i no longer feel guilty about all the things i haven't been able to do over the past few years whilst i have been dealing with my issues.

Thank you also for your comments re the offer from my parents. I feel anything i receive from them is a form of compensation and i don't feel i will owe them anything as a result, they owe me and are simply paying off some of their debt to me. Even if they gave me millions of pounds it will never make up for what i lost, my childhood, so i don't feel as if i will have to have contact with them afterwards. Nothing would persuade me to have contact with them ever again, so i hope for their sake they are not expecting anything if they do transfer the money to me as they will be sorely disappointed.

Re my sisters, i feel like i cannot just stop contacting them and leave things 'dangling' as it were. I would rather tell them i have thought a lot about our relationship and feel that for the time being it would be best to have a break as i don't feel they need or even really want me around. They have each other and i am clearly an afterthought for the both of them and i feel i deserve to be treated better than that. I also have been deeply hurt by the way they have treated me since i opened up about my childhood abuse. They do not believe i was abused and i cannot have a relationship with anybody who thinks I am exaggerating/lying about what I went through. The fact that they do not believe me shows their complete lack of respect for me and my integrity as a person and there are also so many other examples that prove what they think and feel about me. The wedding present thing is just one tiny example.

I also need to work out how to deal with this other mum at school i have had problems with. The problem is her son and DD are good friends and are always asking for playdates after school, although it is always her son who asks DD for a playdate not the other way around. She has now told her son that DD is not allowed to go to their place for a playdate because she and I had an argument about her calling me rude because i was unable to return a phone call from her immediately. This is completely untrue. I put a stop to the playdates as they were getting far too frequent with her son coming round to our house after school uninvited and even after being specifically asked not to by me. Their teacher had even noticed that her son was becoming possessive over DD at school. But how do i deal with a woman who you cannot reason with?

Sort of related to my last post, thoughts I have had about why my friend's family treat her so badly might help some people:

Her mother didn't want her at birth, went a bit 'mad' and went into hospital for a while. Her aunty took her and demanded that she would be the one to look after her and her father let her aunty do this.

The mother came out of hospital and went on to have 5 more children who she kept.

My friend grew up with the aunty and her husband and their son and they were all abusive in different ways and no affection was given. They eventually threw her out for having a boyfriend when she was 17 and she went to live with him for about 10 years. They said that if she left she would never be allowed to come back and they would never speak to her again. She chose her boyfriend because he showed her affection and they did not.

When things went wrong with the boyfriend she felt very alone so she knocked on her birthparents' door and hoped she could build a relationship with them, telling them she forgave them for anything they had done. They said "What are you doing here!" and rejected her. She has tried over the years to build relationships with different family members, which there are loads of. Several times one of them has been in regular contact and things have been going well, but then under pressure from my friend's birthparents, blood sister and the aunty who brought her up, they have cut her off again. They blank her in the street or find ways to let her know about things they are all doing together which she is not included in.

They say that she is a troublemaker and a nasty piece of work and that if people don't really know her they will soon find out what a nasty piece of work she really is. They act like everything is her fault.

I could never comprehend why they would do this but now I think I get it. The birthparents can't face up to the guilt of rejecting my friend at birth and her aunty can't face up to the guilt of bringing her up abusively. Instead of dealing with their feelings about this and feeling their own pain they look for ways to see my friend as the bad one. They want to keep her well away from the whole family because her presence reminds them of what they did and they can't cope with the guilt. So they tell anyone who tries to be in contact that she is bad and tell them to cut off otherwise they will cut them off. The one who was in contact is so scared by the prospect of being cut off by the main family that they cut my friend off.

How weak they are for refusing to feel any of the pain from what they did but instead making their child feel alone and abandoned and rejected and ostracised and demonised - making her feel pain instead of them when she has done nothing to deserve it! They, as the senior adults who could have withstood the pain better, put all that pain onto a baby, then a young girl, then a young adult, then a younger woman who now lives with an ingrained lifelong pain.

I feel some of you might identify with aspects of this story , but that it might make it clearer how the way you have been treated is not your fault

So I wrote my parents a letter and I got one back saying that my adoptive father wishes no further contact. My GM would like to be kept up to date via phone. Vile, vile people!

The letter was merely questions about my past and a chance for them to come clean about things. It also asked for an apology for the horrible things they have said to me and to say they didn't mean it.

My DH is in the process of writing to them and telling them how awful they have been. I doubt it will make much difference but at least they will know it isn't just me.

I have been reading your posts and I am sorry not to be replying directly. My DD is now 12 weeks and not sleeping well and I am dealing with a lot of family s**t at the moment. I am meeting my GF for the first time next week.

Thinking of you all and have a good weekend

Well done for writing the letter Rose, and being strong enough to cope with a newborn at the same time as fighting your issues! You sound like you are doing really well!

AN thank you for that story. I do so identify with your friend, because it's me. . Everything she has been through i have been through. It once again reminds me of the story you posted on here a while ago about the chimpanzee mummy's standing on their own baby chimps to stop them from feeling the pain of the hot floor beneath.

It shows so clearly how our parents are/were highly damaged and defective individuals when they had us. Something was severely wrong with their ability to parent in the right way and as a result the child under their care was damaged. They are unwilling/unable to face up to their own defects/damage and also unwilling/unable to face up to the damage they have inflicted on their own children. Because it is possibly the hardest thing one can do to face up to this fact. It takes guts, courage, strength, perseverance in huge amounts and not everybody is up to the task. Some people are weak, cowardly, lacking in integrity, and so choose to take the easy path and bury their heads in the sand and blame others even their own children for their own faults and failings. My parents fall into this category. But somehow, i was fortunate enough to be born with the courage and strength to overcome the damage they inflicted on me and for that I feel so grateful. Of course i feel sad for my losses which can never be recovered, but at least i have managed to remove myself from those who wish to damage me and have come a long way in healing myself.

Rose well done for writing the letter. And I am sure the response you got did not surprise you. Unfortunately your adoptive parents will never give you what you are looking for, the only thing you can do is to stop looking. Much easier said than done i know.

Don't feel you have to respond to posts, you have got a lot on your plate and need to focus on looking after yourself and your family. My younger DC is now 3 and it is only now that i feel things have got a lot easier, you have a 12 week old baby who is not sleeping well (not that any 12 week old baby sleeps well) so don't worry about anybody but yourself right now.

OPO - Your last post has touched me. The bit about it taking guts and bravery to admit mistakes in our parenting is so true. To be able to apologise to our children is crucial. I was not the best mum to my newborn DS and although I am in a better place now I still make mistakes. I suppose for toxic parents to admit they have caused so much damage and messed up the most important task in life is too hard and painful. It is easier to go into huge denial and blame the child in some way.

To offer a child unconditional love particularly from a mother is the most important gift. Although as women we may need other things in our life e.g. a career, hobbies, friends etc most of us would admit that this is what matters most to us. I am maybe being a bit taboo, but I do believe a woman has to feel she has been a good enough mother in order to feel fulfilled in life. It is natural. For our toxic mothers, they have failed this most crucial role in life and therefore are bitter and twisted individuals.

It is a long hard road to question ourselves as mothers and try to change but I would rather take this route than the 'i'm in denial about being a perfect mother' route.

I would like to add that I don't think women have to become mothers in order to feel fulfilled! Just that if you do become a mother, you need to feel you have done a good enough job of it.

It wasn't me who first wrote about the chimp experiment it was BopTheAlien, and I want her to take full credit because I am really grateful. It really shook up my thinking onto the write path!

Thank you BopTheAlien

Right not "write", duh!

Roseability thank you so much for replying to my post the other day, especially when you have so much going on yourself. Well done you for standing up to your parents, but that as usual they come up very badly short.My therapist said to me the other day, 'why expect a pig to do anything other than grunt' and I feel he may have a point.

I have been struggling with stuff, too. My mother had got her friend to ring me, saying she could hardly speak or function she was crying all the time etc. Well I rang her and she sounded perfectly fine to me. I have noticed that when I speak to her she is not interested in chatting, she just wants to find things out about what I am doing. It's hard to explain, becuase it's not as though she is genuinely interested in my life, she just wants to know stuff - maybe so she can talk about it to other people,I don't know. But I was cross with myself because she asked me soe direct questions and I couldn't do anythign but make excuses. I suppose I shouldn't care, but I don't want her taking little snippets of my life to twist then into nasty gossip for other people to hear.

BUT..I am getting a funny feeling recently..like I am a grown up, and a real personwith a life and a personality. It is strange but the 'good' things about me do seeem to be emerging, little by little.

I agree so much with what you guys have been saying, about passing on the baggage- it was exactly why I started this process too. OPO I feel I was terrible in the early years with DH, I brought all the toxic chaos of my childhood with me but I think the fog is lifting here, too.
I am actually having days like today- where I feel very little anxiety and wow it is wonderful, isn't it? I think I have processed a lot of stuff as regards my anxiety over 'losing' DD1. SHe is quite a runner but I have been letting her walk with me to places and she really is learning, and so am I. I was very scared when I knew I was havign a girl- and I have been terrified of damaging her from day one, but she is such a happy, confident little person. I know that a lot of my fears over her and my DCs behaviour is about my mother and father, but I foind the days when my anxiety is low that their 'voices' in my head are very quiet, and sometimes not there at all.

I have been soo tired recently and I think much of this is down to my brain trying to disengae itself from my mothers toxic thought processes.

I too have had to accept that I cannot do all those 'supermummy' type things ATM. My priorities are to make sure I create a good home life for my DC's and get myself 'well' for them. Baking in school etc. will have to wait a bit, but I don't think this will harm my DC. If I try to do too much and get all anxious and messed up, that would harm them, I know it would.

AN my heart goes out to your friend. I recognise her pain of being the one cast out, set aside to be the thing to blame. The day I moved away to uni my mother got rid of my bed at home and that was that. I had to stay there once for a few months, in my sisters room but they treated me as their skivvy. I would take them breakfast every morning and my dad would roll his breakfast tray out as I came up the stairs (I could hear it) and then pretend to be asleep when I went in. I made them breakfast every morning after coming home from my cleaning job, then I would clean their house before going to my studio, where I would try to work but I just felt like such a shitty failure inside and so unloved, and unlovable it was impossible. I would go home in the evenign and my parents would be getting drunk in the sitting room. Dad would have a bottle of whisky next to his chair and mother a bottle of gin and as they got drunk they would get angrier and angrier at me, their faces getting redder and the hate in their eyes and I would go to bed and cry. I wished I could die so many times over and felt like a coward for not doing it.

I don't know why all that just came out. sorry for going on so much. You all seem so articulate and insightful and I just ramble on about my own crappy memories.