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

[oneplusone]

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

sorry to hear all these stories and how ongoing the effect is of our parents. Can I join in? Not sure I can go into details right now but have real issues with my NPD mother - full of rage and deep sense of loss at the moment. Feel the effect in all areas of my life, esp w female friends - boundaries/expecting too much/overly cautious etc etc.

wanttostartafresh - I just wanted to say thank you so much for your posts on this, they made me cry but also brought a clarity to the issue which 2 counsellors and much navel-gazing on my part failed to do! I think I'm coming to the realisation that my dm well and truly messed me up in middle childhood onwards and continues to deny me the right to have my own feelings/views/memories heard in collusion with my (enabling?) father and sister. God, I realise this sounds so self-pitying and blaming yet to have any chance of sorting myself out I have to blame the bloody woman!

Hi NewPenName. I think it is often because people are worried they will be seen as too self pitying and blaming that they hold back from getting the help they need.

But once you get the help you need you are less likely to be holding on to so much bad feeling and less likely to take it out on your new family (DH and DCs). I don't think most people take it out on their new families on purpose but it is very hard to stop feelings leaking out onto them.

I don't think getting help is a self absorbed thing to do because I think it improves your relationships with your new family. I feel so much better since I did blame the people who caused me emotional damage and felt listened to and believed by my therapist, and that he was on my side and was disgusted by the behaviour of the people who hurt me.

I think the key for me was focussing my blame onto the right people so that I didn't scapegoat my DH and DCs.

I am starting to see how problems in my friendships/relationships have been caused by my tendency to throw myself into too intense friendships which cross the boundaries of friendship into something else.

I have done this because of my craving for the intense bond I didn't have with a parent. When I've got into friendships/relationships I've pushed and pushed it because of a feeling of never being able to get enough to satisfy the craving. It has led me into doing things on occasions which are wrong wrt my marriage.

When these boundaries are crossed, one person can expect too much of the other and become disappointed when it is not possible for the other one to live up to the expectations. Also one person can feel too overwhelmed by the other or too demanded of, or too taken advantage of.

I think I have sometimes gone into friendships with an intensity comparable to a boy-girl relationship. The closer you are the easier it is to get hurt, especially when you have impossibly high expectations that you get disappointed by easily because those things are very difficult for the other person to achieve. Also, the closer you are the more it hurts when it goes wrong.

Also the easier it is for the other person to get hurt, when you have made them feel so important by getting so close to them, then if you lessen the intensity for any reason, eg making another intense friendship with someone else, it could hurt the other person almost as much as infidelity in marriage. Or, eg. if you lessen the intensity because the other person has come to expect so much from you, because they have got used to it, but you can't keep up all that you do for them because it is such hard work so you start doing less for them.

If one didn't make the friendships so intense in the first place and allow healthy boundaries to be crossed both ways, the people involved would find it easier to cope with each other's imperfections, because they would be expecting less from each other.

I'm starting to think that one shouldn't expect as much from friendships as from marriages and one shouldn't expect as much from marriages as from the bond you should have had with your mother.

When I think about the bond between a mother and child, you can't get much closer can you! You grow inside your mother, feeding off her! You come out of her most intimate area! You suck on her breasts for food! (if breastfed that is). She puts up with all your crying and screaming and puking and shitting all over her and keeping her awake at night because you are her child and she loves you! She puts up with all your bad behaviour and imperfections and loves you anyway, unconditionally, just because she is your mother. She helps you to learn how to behave properly. She puts up with any way you want to treat her and forgives you for it and tries to sort it out however badly you've argued because the relationship is so important to her and she will not let it go. Well this is how I see the 'ideal' relationship between a mother and child anyway.

If you never had this, and you are still craving it, and you are trying to get it from people who should just be friends, of course it is going to be too much and a recipe for disaster!

Friends can not replace parents. They can fill some of the gap from the loss of parents but I'm thinking we must be careful not to expect them to fill too much of the gap. We should also be careful not to let other people expect so much from us that it goes beyond the boundaries of friendship.

I'm also thinking that when I feel I HAVE to help people and do more and more for them that is because I am projecting my needs of what I would like a mother to do for me onto them and I'm trying to be like their mother! Then I feel overwhelmed by it because it is too much to do for someone who is not your child.

I really need to get to grips with this boundaries and assertiveness thing.

Sorry i havent posted. Wanted/needed a break fom it all. i SO FEEL THE SAME RE FRIENDSHIPS ETC ITS JUST ALL SPOOKY BUT GREAT TO HEAR IM NOT THE ONLY ONE!

sorry had caps on dc is on my lap! My question here is who is on ads? I think the therapy is good and i hear what is being said and feel i can make changes in my life but i just feel so rubisdh and tired all the time, is it woth cobining it with sertraline or am i trying to cut corners?

thanks

Do what you can to make it easier for you, what's wrong with that? I tried ADs but they didn't work on me. The therapy and new ways of thinking is what worked. They work on lots of people though.

I am worried that the ads will make me feel better and so then when i go to therapy i will say oh yes i am fine, i feel ok etc. So basically its a sticking plaster and im not dealing with why im depressed......

Just so broke and the therapy costing me a fortune!

Hello all- Hope you are all well.

I have been taking a break from this for a while so lots to catch up on. Ive got plenty of reading to do.

Im doing really well, although there is always something that comes up from time to time that throws me. For example I've had a spate of contact lately which has had an impact.
All in all I've been feeling so much more 'engaged' with my own life and which is good. It feels great in fact.

I just want to talk through the contact a bit though as I think it might help.
y mum sent me a birthday card. it said;

To Smithfield, Hope you have a good day. Please give my love to the children and tell them I love them.

Love
Mum xx

The card mad me feel really angry. I think it is because my mum has never said she loves 'me', not verbally and never as a child. To me the message may as well have read;

To Smithfield,
I dont miss 'you' a single bit because you mean nothing to me and never have...as for your children though...not seeing them 'that's' what hurts me!

Love
Mum xxx

Also because I still feel like even in a simple birthday card the message is loud and clear. 'Poor me'... Cruel daughter...(keeping me from my grandchildren, how could you). It's all manipulation and hidden messages, there is nothing honest about that birthday message as far as I can see.

When she did have access to my children she hardly bothered. Used to make me ask for help when we lived close by and would flick through her diary to check her 'availability'. It's so about control and nothing about love which makes me sad, which in turn makes me angry.
I have absoulutely no desire to see or speak to her. I have no remorse or guilt, which I used to have.

This is in complete contrast to my father, and proves there are still huge underlying issues around him that I havent dealt with. On my birthday my father resorted to childish tit for tat behaviour. No card from him, probably because a few weeks prior it was 'his' birthday and I didnt send him a card but text him to say Happy Birthday. he didnt reply and I admit I felt hurt by his lack of response.
So.... on 'my' birthday he sent me a text..
Its so childish (the man is in his sixties) but then he was always childish, emotionally unavailable, emotionally inappropriate and a bit of a non entity but I made him into my hero. I formed a strong attachment to him because there was no attachment to my mother. I needed him to survive perhaps.

I also saw my brother last weekend. He brought up an incident which Id completely forgotten about. I must have been 12/13 and we were on holiday and there was a dress I asked my dad for. He said if i could eat five chocolate pancakes from the pancake shop I could have the dress. These were not small sized pancakes by the way. We are talking huge american sized pancakes. I threw up that night, but my dad bought me the dress. I think he found the whole thing entertaining but I saw it as approval.
This is a huge link to my eating habits now. Up until very recently all my issues had been about my mother and now it seems those about my father and the damage he has caused are starting to surface more because | have dealt with so much about my mum.

With regards to my brother I felt quite different this time. We have had a long break from each other and I think this has done us good to be honest. I guess I feel like I 'can' live without him in my life (and he is the only sibling I have any semblence of a relationship with). I think perhaps my brother now senses this or that there is a vibe about me that suggests this. The interaction between us seemed quite different this time. More equal less abrasive. He even seemed genuinely pleased to see me. I know this wont stretch to him making the effort to visit me here, but I think I can live with that for now.

I saw my dad on the sunday whilst we were visiting my brother. We met on neutral ground and with my brother, sil and their kids.

I dont know how I feel about it really. Well actually maybe I do, I felt hurt and sad. There is still the little girl in me who wants 'daddy's attention, 'daddy's approval. I know rationally I will never get it but the emotional pull is still there. I think this is where some of my anger toward my sister and brother stems from. I percieve them as having the 'close' relationship with my dad that I always wanted. I still need to work through some of these feelings.
When we got home I felt fine but I had a really busy pressurised day on the monday at work and Monday morning I just flipped. Really lost it. I have never behaved like that in front of my own family before. I felt embarrassed by it and apologised and felt ashamed.
I must still have a lot of anger toward myself? Towards him? It is all to do with my dad's reactions to me on that day in some way Im sure. He acts as though nothing is happening. There is no acknowledgment whatsoever of anything. Nothing. I have lost a huge amount of wieght and got very fit...my dad never batted an eyelid. Why do I care what he thinks still?

Sb9- just wanted to say that I am on Ads (though due to come of them very soon) and they have worked really well for me but I think you are right in that they can end up just masking the problem if your not careful.

I think If you take them in conjunction with therapy they are more helpful. You could look at dealing with the 'depression' as a seperate entity perhaps? After all the depression is like a symptom of your childhood. The best therapy for depression is (in my experience) a combination of the Ads and CBT.
There is some good CBT online you can do but its a bit like the chicken and the egg, you need to start feeling better first to be motivated to tackle the hard work of changing thought processes that aren't helpful to your mood. Ads can give you that initial kick start and elevate your mood.
I think your awareness that there are underlying issues is what makes the difference here. Many people just think depression is just that and dont seek any other help alongside the ads. Before they know it they are back where they began.

here

Found this quite interesting to read, so thought I would share.

Hi all. Have been away for a while, due to illness etc. Have also been feeling quite good and not really felt the need to post. Have been reading your posts though.

But recently I have been feeling very down without being able to really put my finger on why.I thought perhaps posting on here might help me work out what's wrong.

I have a feeling though that I am feeling down due to something being triggered by a party invitation we received recently. It was from a family friend who also knows my parents and as soon as I got the invitation my first thought was whether my parents were going to be there. And then like I usually do, instead of talking about the whole thing I stewed on it for days, thinking about whether i wanted to go, what would i do if my parents were there, imagining seeing them after having had no contact for over 3 years.

In the end the friend asked me if I was coming to the party and that prompted me to aask my sister if our parents were going and if so would she consider asking them not to go as i wanted to go and take the DC's and i didn't want to bump into our parents. For some reason i felt really upset when my sister said our parents had been planning on ogoing to the party but would now not go as i wanted to go. I felt upset that my parents had been planning on going to the party. It felt like they were just carrying on life as normal, despite me cutting ties with them; it really seemed to emphasise just how little i mattered to them. I'm sure when they got their invitation they didn't stew for days worrying about whether i was going to be there, they were quite happily planning to go to the party, as if there was nothing wrong and as if they didn't have a care in the world, which i'm sure they don't.

I suppose what really hurts is that it seems that my cutting ties with my parents seems to have hurt and affected me far more than it has done them, and I wasn't even the one who was in the wrong, i was the one who was abused by them, and yet this seems to have passed them by and they seem to be carrying on as usual as if there was nothing wrong whatsoever. I am the only one who seems to have suffered in so many ways, the rest of them, my parents and sisters, seem totally unaffected and seemingly couldn't care less what damage they have caused to me and how much pain and suffering they have caused. I know it is futile to expect anything from them, any care or concern for me as if they felt that way i wouldn't be in the position i am now, but it still hurts all the same to know that these people who told me all my life that they did care about me and in fact they were the only one's in the world who did care about me and would look after me when nobody else would when in fact they are the very people who have done the most damage to me.

I also feel so tired of being blamed for so much by ignorant people. Of being judged on how good a wife and mother i am, being compared to other people who probably are far better wives and mothers than i have been able to be but who of course have not been so badly handicapped like i was by my family. MIL is one person who immediately springs to mind as one of these ignorant judgemental people, i know i should just ignore her and forget about her and the longer i have no contact with her the easier that will be but at the moment, the things she has already said and done are still fresh in my mind.

I think having a long stretch of time without any contact with MIL and my sisters will be the best thing for me. I was recently meant to go and visit both my sisters but the DC's were ill and the trip had to be cancelled. I feel under pressure to rearrange the visit, but perhaps it is just i am putting pressure on myself as neither sister has mentioned rearranging the visit, so perhaps i should just leave it and and stop thinking about it unless it is mentioned by them. I don't think my youngest ssister put herself under pressure like i am doing to myself, she seemed to quite easily put off coming to visit me and managed to make loads of excuses before she actually came over.

A fairly recent memory came back to me recently, from when i last saw my parents. The significant part of the memory was the coldness in my mother's eyes one day when we were having an argument whilst i was at their house. I could see in her eyes just how detached was to me, there was no warmth or connection there, in her eyes, i was not her daughter, her flesh and blood, i was a complete stranger to her. And it's that coldness and detachment on her part which i know will always stand in the way of there ever being any sort of relationship between us. Because on my part, i feel i have worked eenough on myself and dealt with my anger etc to the point where i might consider trying to talk to my parents but i know that unless my mother works on herself, she will never feel anything for me and therefore there is no chance of a proper mother/daughter relationship with her. I could have a very superficial relationship with her but i don't see any point in that, apart from for the sake of the DC's, but in the end i think it would cause me more pain than any benefit it would give to the DC's. As for a relationship with my dad, I also sensed and saw some coldness and detachment towards me on his part the last time i saw him, but not as much as i saw in my mother. ie there would be more chance of a real relationship with him i think, but he has hurt me too much and has taken no steps to make amends and so i cannot put myself in that position of being hurt again.

I think with my sisters, after a longish period of not seeing them, like smithfield, i think perhaps i might be able to occasionally have a bit of contact, but it would always be very superficial.

I am making new friends, but it is hard work to feel close and connected to somebody and sometimes i just don't have the energy to put into new relationships. I just feel very tired these days, I feel like i have been through a war and i just need time to rest and recuperate from all the battles i have been fighting.

Smithfield, I hope you are getting your recent thoughts gradually into order in your head. I know what you mean about feeling like you want to impress your parents. This is something I keep reminding myself not to do as I don't want to feel disappointed when they don't seem impressed. I have to not care what they think.

That article was interesting and felt familiar to me even though I don't think my experiences were as bad as that person's. Especially the bit about developing a strong ability to act normal and hide strong feelings. Often the thought of not being the 'false self' is too scary.

WTSAfresh, it sounds like wounds have been reopened again and the situation with the party has reminded you of your feelings about cutting off from your parents. Even if you feel it is the best thing for you, it still must hurt. It might turn out to be a good thing for you to re-evaluate whether your feelings are the same or if there are new aspects to them now. I've found several times lately I've thought 'I've had enough shit, why does this have to happen now', then I've thought that maybe it is a useful prompt to get me to make sense of another little bit of what needs working on, and once it has been worked on, I feel even better even though it feels horrible for a short while.

OSAHM- Thankyou. It seems ridiculous to me that at our age we still want or need our prents approval.
I understand completely what you are saying about self preservation, because i feel like this is why my self esteem has suffered so badly. Its as if my ego has kept getting in the ring but keeps getting knocked out. It still wants to carry on though despite the subsequent pain and humiliation because the desire to win is stronger than anything else. By win I mean win my dads approval/love.
this is also what I was doing when I was continually chasing after men who were horrible to me and had no real interest in me. I would try and 'make' them want me or love me.

The desire to win my dads approval is so strong but I think its been obscured from my sight for so long because I have had to deal with all the crap about my mother over the years. I also still needed to feel I had one OK parent. Truth is, I dont. He was just as self absorbed and damaging as my mother.

I dont on an intellectual level need his approval anymore since cutting contact or it seems I have more control over it at least. But Its still a deeply subconcious need that Im not sure I will ever completely shift.

The way it effects me today or in the present is that I feel split in every decision I want to make. I feel there is the part of me that wants to do (A) and then I have this internal voice-over that says 'that's crazy, why would you choose to do A', then lists all the reasons why I shouldnt. This voice I feel is probably my mother, as it is always negative and detrimental to my sense of self. Its always fear based and abrasive.

Then there is the part of me or the voice that wants to be impressive, and this is linked to my dad and wanting his love, attention acceptance. This is all about wanting needing to be important. Therefore I might question a decision if it is something deep down that I want but wont bring me any superficial rewards. My dad is impressed by beauty and money.

It is so difficult making 'any' decisions with both of these conflicting voices vying for attention. The voice of my two parents have drowned out my own voice so it is no longer barely audible. I have trouble hearing 'me', knowing 'me', accepting 'my' needs. No wonder I have always felt so sad on the inside, manifested as depression because I have never made decisions that have been true to my own needs.

Actually, that's not completely true. I have at times 'rebelled', and when I think about it now it is at these times I have had most happiness. Unfortunately I always then try and rverse these decision because I feel I am betraying my parents in some way. I revert back to wanting to 'please' them.

I am getting better at this, but it still where I feel so stuck. There are two big decisions at the moment and I seem completely stuck.

Just writing this down has helped though as I can see now why I struggle so much with decision making and why I stay in situations which make me unhappy.

Do any of you argue with yourselves over decisions or over trying to meet your own needs?

Wanttostartafresh- I empathise with what you are saying about the invitation. I think that is where it has also helped limiting contact with my brother, because he was the only source of information wrt to what either of my parents were doing.
It 'is' painful hearing about instances where they are behaving like a normal happy family 'without' us in the mix. We know it is all part of the 'pretence' the facade they have to keep at all costs to protect themselves, but it doesnt stop it hurting does it. It will always be painful I think because it is a reminder of how willing they were to stand on their own child so as not to burn their own feet.

my god Ive turned into a thread killer .

Just wanted to say I found what you said startafresh really interesting;

OhI'm also thinking that when I feel I HAVE to help people and do more and more for them that is because I am projecting my needs of what I would like a mother to do for me onto them and I'm trying to be like their mother! Then I feel overwhelmed by it because it is too much to do for someone who is not your child.

This 'is' exactly what I tend to do. Its given quite a good insight into how I behave in relationships with other women. Some relationships are like this and others I want them to mother me.

Smithfield - have you read Children of The Self Absorbed (a guide to getting over Narcissistic parents)?

I just read it and it has helped me

smithfield, hi, of course you're not a thread killer! I haven't been able to post recently but don't really know why. Have just been feeling really flat and down, again have no real idea why. I don't know if it's simply down to being constantly struck down with viruses recently and just feeling ill, tired and worn out. But then i've been ill before and it hasn't really got me down like this.

I think probably a big part of it is my eczema. It has improved loads but it's still there and still in very obvious visible places. I am worried that I may have caused permanent irreversible damage to my skin by using medication when it was very bad in the past before i realised the connection between with my emotional issues.

I feel down also at seeing how both my sisters simply have not been affected like me after having their DC's. Having DD over 6 years ago was the event that triggered all the buried memories and emotions of my abusive childhood. And caused my eczema to flare up and caused PND etc. It is obvious that neither of my sisters actually have any particularly traumatic memories or emotions buried away and therefore there was nothing of significance to be triggered when they had their DC's. It's not that I want them to have suffered like me, it's that I don't want to have suffered myself and to be the only one out of 3 siblings who has suffered both mentally and emotionally and physically. It's just so unfair. And to see that they have not been so dramatically affected and changed by childbirth like i was, and to know that the reason for this is because they were not abused is proving to be such a hard fact for me to accept. In fact I am not even close to accepting it right now. I cannot accept it. And any contact with either sister just emphasises to me just how different our lives have been; or just how hard and difficult and painful my life has been compared to their far easier, smoother, trouble free and abuse and neglect free their lives have been.

Even as I am writing this I am thinking to myself that the only way i can see of my coping with the fact of our drastically different childhoods is by totally cutting contact with both sisters. I feel less of the guilt i used to immediately feel before whenever i used to consider cutting ties with them, not sure why that should be. Perhaps i can see now just by the passing of time just how little it actually impacts on my DC's that they have not seen their aunts/uncles/cousins for over 6 months. What real difference would it make if they didn't see them for another 6 months? None at all really.

I do feel a bit guilty also as it might seem as if i am punishing my sisters for a situation that is not their fault by cutting ties with them. But cutting ties is not something i am doing out of revenge or malice, it is simply to protect myself from further harm and to avoid re-opening old wounds. It makes so much sense. I think it is definately the best option for me right now. I will perhaps ask DH to take the DC's to visit their cousins but I myself will not contact my sisters at all. I realise now I was waiting to see what happened after my middle sister had her DC and it seems it hasn't impacted on her like it did with me when I had DD.

I am sure in years to come my sisters will be very close and their DC's will grow up together. Am not sure how i feel about that, but it certainly does not seem to upset me thinking about it as it did a while ago. I hope that means i have made some progress at least with this issue.

I am sure that the biggest remaining issue for me now is to get my physical health back on track. I do feel very upset still about the fact that the debilitating eczema i have suffered with on and off most of my life has been due to my childhood; the abuse and neglect which left me without the ability to properly process my feelings meaning the blocked emotions caused a physical 'malfunction' in my body. And although from time to time my parents would show a bit of concern for me wrt my eczema, generally they left me to deal with it myself both in terms of seeking out treatment and the emotional impact it had on me as well, as it caused a number of depressive episodes and also prevented me from doing so many things i would have liked to do. My parents seemed to have no idea how it was affecting me, or if they did have some idea they didn't seem to care and certainly made no effort to offer me help and support in the way i know i would if my DC's suffered anything similar to me.

I just don't know how a set of parents can be so neglectful of their child and still have no idea that they have done wrong, how they have so dismally failed in their duty to look after the well being of their child. But i suppose in a horrible way it makes perfect sense why my parents neglected me and my condition so much, as if they had cared about me in the first place i am sure i wouldn't have had the eczema in the first place. It's a bit like a catch 22 i suppose. Or a vicious circle. Once again, as i write, i thank my lucky stars for the day that i decided i would cut all ties with my parents, it really was the best and healthiest thing i could ever have done for myself.

I feel so much better after posting. I hadn't realised how much i had swirling round inside my head which i needed to get out. Sorry for rambling on so much about myself, i don't expect anybody to respond, i just needed to write for myself.

wanttostartafresh is that the former OPO?

I was actually thinking the other day you haven't posted for ages and I was worried

Have you seen the website Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers? It is brilliant I think and really highlights the affects of emotional abuse. There was a section about scapegoats and golden childs which made me think of you and your sisters. They too are the victims of narcissism but they might not know it yet. Maybe they never will but it is their loss really because although you are suffering, you have insight and you are trying to heal

I see what years of denial have done to my adoptive parents and they are truly damaged people. It is better to know the truth and to work with that.

Have you ever considered that your parents might have some degree of narcissistic personality disorder?

I have had a real lightbulb moment recently as I am sure my parents have this. My adoptive father is a classic narcissist and my grandmother is an inverted narcissist I think. These people just don't know how to love properly.

I have just read Children of the Self Absorbed and If You Had Controlling Parents and can highly recommend them

I am now back in counselling but really getting somewhere and learning to grieve and move on. I am currently not speaking to my adoptive father and only on the phone to my grandmother. She is so poisonous though, I really have to keep up huge emotional barriers.

Glad to be back on this thread and keep posting

BTW sorry if I am way behind the times with the narcissist thing and your name change. I have been in the clouds recently with all the family stuff that has been happening

rose, hello, yes it is opo here. Please don't apologise, I think people can only post when they are able to, sometimes life is so busy, there's just no time. Thank you for thinking of me and responding, I realise I had forgotten how supportive everyone on here is, I seemed to have gotten out of the habit of posting. Perhaps that's why I have been feeling down recently, I have stuff I need to process and I'm not doing it because I haven't been posting.

I haven't looked at the website you mentioned, but I will take a look. I do think my mother is narcissistic. But she is not obviously or overtly nasty, or at least not in the way I have read about on here. She is narcissistic in a a more sort of 'pathetic', cowardly and self pitying, victim sort of way. I know she is always thinking 'poor me' and feeling sorry for herself because of my abusive dad who was also abusive and bullying towards her. And her self pity completely obliterated her ability (if she had the ability) to think about me and the impact my dad's abuse would have on me. I think i mentioned on here before about the letter she wrote to me where she admitted she had been a coward when faced with my dad's abuse and bullying, but she was only thinking about herself as she said in the letter that she should have stood up for herself more against my dad. It clearly has not even crossed her mind that she was actually supposed to have stood up for me and that is what i meant when i said she was a coward. But it was not just the lack of her standing up for me and at least attempting to stop my dad's verbal/emotional attacks and assaults on me, it was her complete neglect of me in an emotional sense. I can identify so much with children who have been physically abandoned by their mothers, left all alone, to fend for themselves. And yet to the outside world, i did not appear to have been abandoned, i had a mother and father, but i was abandonded by both of them. Feeling abandoned is a really accurate description of how i felt throughout my childhood. I was not abandoned physically, i was fed and clothed and housed, but i had no emotional connection or closeness with either parent, no bond of attachment, and it is well documented now just how important the child/parent bond is to the healthy development of a child.

Wrt my sisters, i understand what you have said that they are victims too but they are unaware of the fact. I agree they are victims in a sense, but i feel that they have been 'fcked up' by our parents in a 'normal' way. ie in the way that pretty much every child is 'fcked up' in some way even by the most loving, caring, nurturing, non-abusive parents. And I think those sorts of people are essentially healthy and functioning as adults, because the damage done to them is really minimal and doesn't interfere in a significant way in their functioning as adults. I think DH falls into that category and I feel that my sisters may also fall into that category. Perhaps i just haven't wanted to face up to it for a long time, but i feel sure it's true. I honestly feel our parents were like 2 completely and utterly different people in their relationship with my 2 sisters. I was their sole and only rubbish container and precisely because they could dump all their rubbish onto me, meant my sisters almost had a set of 'normal' 'functioning' parents. Dumping their rubbish on me is exactly what enabled and allowed our parents to function normally or healthily wrt both my sisters and any failings on their part i think fell within the 'normal' range of mistakes that even the most loving and caring parents inevitably make.

I think i have been comforting myself or fooling myself by telling myself that my sisters will have been affected by our parents, even if it was not in as severe a way as me, but deep down inside i think that is not actually true. Because i have seen the sort of relationship they have with my parents, and it is what I would have wanted to have, it is far more what i would consider 'normal' and healthy and functioning. There does seem to be genuine communication between them, my parents seem to genuinely care about my sisters in a way i feel parents should care about their children, there seems to be a closeness and bond there that i have never experienced. I know deep down that i have almost been desperately searching for 'evidence' that my sisters have been damaged as well by our parents and was managing to convince myself that there was enough evidence to show they had been affected as well, but that is simply not true. Even if on occassion my dad might have been midly abusive towards my sisters, he also showed many many times that he cared about them deeply and both of them have always had a very close, caring and loving bond with our mother from the very start.

I think i do need to face the fact that it is almost as if i had a completely different set of parents to my sisters. They had relatively normal, healthy, functioning parents who did make mistakes but these mistakes were within the 'normal' range; and I had a set of parents who were respectively neglectful and abusive. And that is a fact i can never change, so i suppose all i can do is face up to it and accept and work out how to cope with it today.

I am sure that despite whatever minimal way my sisters will have been affected by our parents, in the same way as DH, they are essentially whole, healthy, functioning adults who do not have and most likely will never have the issues i have had to deal with during the past 6 years.

We grew up in completely different worlds and we still are in those seperate, unconnected worlds. I can see that the sooner i can accept that and move on the better off i will be.

I haven't had any contact with middle sister since she had her DS, who is going to be 3 months old soon. Apart from exchanging a few texts with her DH i have not contacted her in any way and nor has she contacted me. I feel no inclination whatsoever to contact her and although it is hard, i am following my feelings and not going against them like i normally do. And the same with my youngest sister, i haven't contacted her and she hasn't contacted me, will leave it like that, even though it is hard. Hopefully it will get easier as time goes on.

Sorry to keep posting, feel like the floodgates have opened after i posted earlier. I am beginning to think now that feeling down is very much related to middle sister having her DC. I think i was slightly jealous that she had a DS as although i have DS who i love absolutely, i wanted to have a DS first. I know it sounds so ungrateful to say that but it's how i feel/felt, I always wanted first a boy then a girl, i don't why i have always felt that way, i just have. But anyway, that is a very trivial and minor issue.

The greater issue is the fact that giving birth clearly has not been a trigger for middle sister in the same way it was for me. Admittedly i haven't actually spoken to her but i have seen lots of photos and had a number of texts from her DH i can tell from those that things are fine with her and she is clearly not in the desperate situation i was in after i had DD (even though i hid it pretty well, apart from the eczema which i couldn't hide unfortunately). And the reason things are fine is because as i have already said, she essentially has nothing of signifance to trigger. And I am sure she will find being a mother far far easier and more natural than i did with DD, I am sure she feels the bond with her DS that i still don't feel at times with DD; i am sure for her the experience will be far closer to the far happier experience i had with DS.

Yet another experience we don't have anything in common with each other, something else that makes me feel different and disconnected from both my sisters. I think perhaps that i was secretly hoping that with middle sister there was something that would be triggered when she had her DS, i felt there was more chance of this happening with her than with youngest sister who definately has nothing buried away. But my hopes were in vain, middle sister has nothing either and i know deep down that i knew this all along, i just didn't want to face it. I wanted to hang on to the one little bit of hope i had of not being all alone in my world, of having an ally, somebody who understood at least some of what i had been through and how i have been feeling all this time, but i can see now how silly i have been. I was refusing to see reality and to look at what i knew to be the truth because it would be too painful and would mean me giving up any hope of having a close connection with at least one member of my family.

In fact i think having DC's has pushed me and my sisters further apart and at the same time it will push my 2 sisters closer together where before they weren't actually as close as they appeared to be. I think my stepping away from all of them has also pushed them all closer together in a way they weren't close before which is ironic.

I was reading another thread earlier about a MN'er who was feeling very fed up with her life, but it seemed that a lot of her problems and issues were due to mistakes she had made in choosing a partner and career problems etc. I have also been feeling fed up but my problems are not due to my career/DH, but due to something totally out of my control, simply being born to my particular set of parents, i was bound to have problems from the second i was conceived and there was absolutely nothing i could have done about it. I had not made a mistake or made a bad choice, i had done nothing which makes it so hard to deal with. If i had done something to deserve how i had been treated it would almost make it easier to accept but that's not the case.

Sorry got to go, back soon.

I was thinking about my family again today - not thinking about them so much lately but have had more time the last week or so and have been ill and lots of stuff has come to the surface for processing - and I think maybe for the first time ever I was able to really acknowledge to myself as a blunt, scientific fact - my parents don't care about me. It's like another wall of denial has come down. It's almost painless - I've done so much grieving already - it's just sort of objective. I'm not trying to prove it to anyone, or to myself, or trying to prove the opposite, to keep the pain of that abandonment at bay, like I naturally did for so long. It's almost like a relief. Pretence over, drop the charade. They don't care about me. Whatever care or concern they have appeared to show for me in the past actually comes from them trying to meet their own needs, and if meeting my needs coincided with meeting their own, then they did some seemingly nice things. But nothing they have ever done has ever been purely motivated by real deep down care and concern for me. So it makes perfect sense that they have never thought "oh, this situation must be so painful and hard for Bop, we must try and resolve it somehow out of love for her" - because that kind of love is something they have never felt for me. (Or anyone else, probably.) It feels really good to have dropped another layer of (unconscious) denial. I have known this intellectually for quite some time, but today it felt like an emotional knowing and it's great.

My mother wrote to me again a couple of months ago, and did her usual thing of half apologising for an extremely limited batch of stuff, as if that were some huge grand gesture; the letter was all about her and how hard her life has been and how nothing was actually ever her fault at all, the message was essentially that she's the biggest victim in the world and so she doesn't have to be held to account for anything she did to me, because at the end of the day whatever happened to me just doesn't matter in the context of what happened to her. She signed it "your loving mother" which made me puke. I have told her quite specifically that whenever she contacts me it reopens the old wounds and really hurts me and destabilises me, and asked her more than once to stop contacting me for that reason, but she of course felt that she knew best and it was her god given right to ride rough shod over my wishes and feelings as she has done since the day I was born (or more likely conceived, as you say, startafresh!). Because of course she has never respected what I say, never thought "hm, if Bop's saying this, then there must be a good reason for it".

Anyway, it made me so angry I just ripped it up. And then sent it back to her, like that, with the cheque she'd enclosed to "get something for yourself and DS too if you like" likewise ripped up and returned. No other message. It felt GOOD! Anyone can call themselves a "loving mother". It doesn't mean they actually are. Actions speak louder than words, etc etc. Vanessa George calls herself a loving mother, fgs.

Anyway I haven't heard from her since. I'll probably never get over wanting her to be a mother who really loves and cares, on a very deep unconscious level - and tbh why should I expect myself to get over that? It's a primal need, hardwired into us, and I was someone who actually did love my parents and brother so very much and very deeply that inevitably I should have hoped for the same in return. If I see a letter that could be from her, my heart misses a beat - part "oh no, not again" and part "oh please, maybe this time" - but I think that's a normal human reaction, probably I will carry a certain level of grief with me for the rest of my life, and I am gentle and loving and patient with myself about that kind of thing nowadays. And so happy that at the heart of my life now are two people who really DO love me as deeply as I love them, MY family, my DH and DS.

It feels so good to accept that they don't care about me. To stop fighting against the truth. With no shred of self blame attached. I still lose quite a few battles - lots of stuff always going on - but I win a lot of battles too (internally I mean, in my own process, not against other people!) and in the last couple of months I've started to feel like the tide has turned and I'm now winning the war too.

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I am going to apologise in advance for the following huge ramble; I seem to have gone from not posting to too much posting overnight. Please feel free to ignore.

Bop, thank you for your post, you have said so much of what i want to say and how i feel. Especially what you said about dropping the pretence at last and feeling good about doing so. I have been through that so many times throughout this whole thing. It's funny really because it seems one holds onto the pretence as it seems too painful to let go of it and face the truth, but in actual fact it is much harder to maintain the pretence and a huge relief and feeling of liberation comes once it is dropped and you face the truth.

But I have done it so many times over so many issues, held onto something i know deep down inside is not the truth, but which i found too scary and painful to face, i would rather try and convince myself the lie I am holding onto is the truth.

I realise just how much I have been doing this wrt middle sister. I desperately wanted to believe that she had suffered in the same way as me, at least due to our dad if not our mother and that over time and after having her DS, she would be an ally with me instead of being allied to younger sister. And i remember trying to convince myself that middle sister had suffered as much as me but in a different way and would be affected by it all just like i have and i even convinced myself to feel sorry for her because i wanted to beleive she was worse off than me. At the root of it all was me trying to escape the feeling that it was just me who had been singled out and abused/neglected, only me who had suffered emotional and physical damage as a result; I desperately wanted to avoid facing the fact that it was just me who had been horribly abused and neglected and so i constructed a story to fit in with my fantasy and i remember even trying to convince my therapist that my middle sister was the worst off out of the 3 siblings. But it simply is not true. Middle sister herself may feel she was abused but i know she wasn't, because what she sees as abusive, i know is not abusive but genuinely caring behaviour on the part of our dad. She was at once stage involved with a very unsuitable boyfriend and our dad was very concerned about her and he had words with the boyfriend and soon after that they broke up. Middle sister took it very badly and was convinced our dad was deliberately trying to break up her relationship but she couldn't see that he did it out of concern for her and was willling to risk himself being hated by her for it, but knowing he had done what he could to look out for her in relation to her boyfriend. Whereas in relation to myself, our dad didn't seem to care who i married, in fact he had the attitude that i was so worthless that i would have to marry anybody who would have me and he said as much to me once, whereas middle sister deserved far better than the unsuitable boyfriend she was with at that time.

Like you have said Bop, dropping my pretence about middle sister being as bad or even worse off than me has been like dropping one of the last remaining protective walls i had built around me. And like all my other realisations, once i have faced the real truth, i feel silly for thinking anything different as it is so obvious what the truth is and has always been. But i guess at the time the denial of the truth was simply a self protection mechanism at a time when i was just not ready to face the truth.

I have been feeling a lot of fresh resentment towards my parents wrt my eczema. Because although it is a direct consequence of the abuse i suffered, it is also something that has caused me huge distress, pain and suffering in itself, as well as the emotional pain i have been through. The eczema has been like a disability, preventing me from doing things even during times when i have felt emotionally strong and ready to face certain things or people, my eczema has held me back as it has completely destroyed my self esteem and self confidence purely about my appearance. I feel very resentful that not only have my parents caused me huge emotional damage and pain, the eczema has caused physical damage and pain and whereas before all this happened i was a fairly ok looking person, the eczema has drastically altered my looks and i look very different now compared to how i looked before i had DD. And i am realistic to know that the mere fact of having children and the sleepless nights etc were always going to take their toll on me physically, the eczema has been a severe, additional factor that has also taken it's toll on me physically but it has been caused purely as a result of the abuse and neglect i went through, which as i have said already, left me without the ability to process my emotions in the normal way, leading the blocked feelings to cause a malfunction elsewhere in the normal functioning of my body ie in my skin and whatever processes normally take place within the body to produce normal healthy skin. And i am also sure that if i had a brain scan, even now, a doctor would be able to detect parts of my brain which are damaged/underdeveloped, being the parts which are supposed to process your emotions.

I was put into situations that caused me to feel extremely powerful and strong emotions that a child is simply not equipped to cope with and my brain just shut down the relevant part that would normaly process those emotions as it knew it could not cope with the strength and force of the emotions that were being stirred in me as a result of my dad's abuse, and once it was shut down it seems to have remained shut down and all my emotions have been stored unprocessed in my body, until they were triggered when i had DD. But even though the emotions were triggered and were no longer laying dormant as before, the relevant part of my brain that was supposed to be able to process them now that i was an adult was still shut down and so those emotions somehow tried to find an outlet via my skin, or alternatively, mt brain tried to process the emotions but it couldn't and this caused another part of my brian to malfunction which in turn caused my skin to 'malfunction' and flare up with eczema. I guess a neuropsychologist would know all the ins and outs far better than me but i am convinced i am thinking along the right lines.

I resent my parents for simply having no inkling whatsoever about the magnitude of damage they have caused in so many respects and i keep coming back to their offer of financial assistance not so long ago where they had the audacity to say it was no strings attached. I feel they are in no position to be calling the shots in any way, and far from their offer being a generous unselfish act which is no doubt how it appears to my sisters which may have been the intention of my parents all along, (ie to reinforce them as good, unblameworthy parents in my sisters' eyes, as compared to me, the unreasonable, ungrateful, unappreciative, selfish daughter), i think my parents owe me an unquantifiable amount to compensate for the pain, suffering and losses they have caused me. Of course they will never see it that way, but i feel that perhaps i might try writing them another letter just to let them know how i feel about their offer.

They have given the same amount to younger sister and she and her DH have bought themselves a huge house with it. I guess i do also feel a certain amount of resentment and jealousy towards her, not so much for the big house, but at the smoothness of her life, the lack of problems, the good health she and middle sister both seem to enjoy. That is a big issue for me, my poor health as compared to them and knowing the reasons for the difference. And they seem completely obvlivious as to how i have suffered as a result of my health issues and how debilitating it has been for me and how much i have been unable to do and achieve because of my health issues. They seem to have no compassion, concern or sympathy for me at all. I really am wondering why i have bothered with them at all over the last few years. They are not worth it in the slightest, and i have stupidly been ignoring the many signs and signals they have been giving me over the years indicating just how little if at all they care about me, know me or like me, let alone love me. I am going to do my absolute best to not have anything more than telephone/text contact with either of them during 2010. I will have to make a whole load of excuses i am sure, but i do not want to be in the same room as them for a long time. Like BeginningAnew said, i have tried minimal contact but it doesn't work, the only thing that is truly effective is zero contact. Any contact, however minimal, seems to re-open old wounds and create new wounds, no matter how strong you think you are feeling and how much stuff you have processed.

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Startafresh, just wanted to say that I'm glad you found what I wrote useful, as so much of what you write resonates with me and my post last night was to quite an extent prompted by your recent posts. Thank you too. And thank you to all the posters on here, the recent talk about looking for mothering in our friendships is all stuff I could have written myself, for example, it's so good to see that it is part of a pattern, that it's not just me who was affected this way.