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

[oneplusone]

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

All things have re-surfaced this weekend, all the anger at DH and the same old issues with ds.
This morning I just feel sad and sorry about my feelings toward ds and feel an empty space of nothingness toward DH. I dislike myself intensely as a result of all of it.
Maybe ?I am? a narcissist, just like my mother. After all I am not seeing either of them for who they are?? Am I?
With ds I am pretty sure I am seeing my mother. He just nags and nags at me in order to get his own way. This ?is? what my mother would do she would attempt to control my thoughts, my feelings by bombarding me, wearing me down by going on and on at me until I either snapped or submitted.
I feel like he just demands and demands and nothing is good enough for him. Again my mother springs to mind. But he is not my mother, he is a child, a four year old child and this ?is? how four year olds behave isn?t it. Aren?t they just all mini npd?ers? And that is a normal form of being at this age.
What this all then merges into is my belief that when he behaves like this it is as a direct reflection of me. That I am a shite mother and have not set the right boundaries to help limit his behaviour. My thinking then veers between this and believing I should have a much higher tolerance level than I do.
Yesterday, I?d had enough and just avoided contact with ds, which in turn made me feel lousy. The only saving grace was that I put him to bed last night and forced myself to just be in the moment and read to him 3 books and talk with him and spend time with him.
At moments like these I wonder if this is how my mother felt about me. Three/Four when my dad had left, when I started to have my own needs and demands separate from her to she avoid me because she couldn?t bare me. Felt controlled by me and my bottomless pit of needs, requests, and demands.
I relate to ds in that we are both very stubborn both very sensitive I worry I have damaged him by mis-handling things on so many occasions when I had no real awareness. I wonder how the hell to I get back from this point.

Not only doe this all merge into how I feel about myself as a mother but how I feel about myself as a wife currently.
I feel like all the responsibility is always on my bloody shoulders. The financial responsibility. Parental responsibility. Doesn?t this make dh surplus to requirements? After feeling a lot more serene and losing a lot of the anger and aggression I was feeling toward dh it all seems to have sprung back again to how it was before. Something seems to just click inside of me and I actually feel so much resentment and anger that I don?t want dh anywhere near me.
Yesterday ds had a friend around to play and dh was helping the two of them put a track together and ds lost his temper and called dh a ?stupid idiot?. It is the first time ds has ever said anything like this. I feel it is my fault. He sees my anger at dh and he is now beginning to mimic me. He said to me once ??mummy do you like daddy??
I feel so sad because I am at my wits end with it all. I don?t want to scar my children with this. I don?t want them to see this skewed way of interacting and believe it is normal.
I feel sometimes that the only way would be for me and dh to go our separate ways. Then I think but if this is about something else (as in, I am angry at someone else and projecting onto him) that would be a huge shame, not to have worked all this out.
I try talking to dh about it but he just buries his head.
Sorry I know this post is so self indulgent. I am being SO self indulgent. I have two beautiful children. I know this. I couldn?t love them anymore if I tried. They are everything to me. But I feel I am fucking up royally at the moment despite all my efforts not to.
I have trouble distinguishing whether all this resentment and anger of dh is from the present or from ?my? past. The fact it ?could? be current and therefore REAL fills me with dread tbh, because that would be a huge thing to have to face up to and address, I cant subject my children to the same dynamic as I saw repeatedly as a child I just cant.

Smithfield I can relate to how you feel. I raged and raged at DH the other day. I have been holding a lot in- there has been a lot going on here, and I think I just flipped the other day. It was terrible. WE said some truly awful things to each other, and the children were around, and we were ignoring them whilst we shouted and stomped about like a pair of tantrumming toddlers. I hate myself for this. I too worry that it is DH. He gets very stressed out and grumpy at times and has a tendency to throw in the towel so I will take over. But deep down I think this is normaL human behaviour.
We went ot a friends birthday party the other night and had to take a woman homw because she was falling down drunk. When we got her flat her husband wouldn't help us with her because he was playing a compuer game. There was nothing- not even embarrassment. It was truly horrible.It put mine and DH's row into perspective.
It was an awful row, but we made up and apologised to each other ans we clearly have love and compassion for each other. THis woman is trapped, every time she tries to leave he threatens to kill himself.

You are not a narcissist. I think we have been conditioned into behaving in certain ways that may look a bit like our mothers on the surface, but we are not like them.

The latest saga with my parents may illustrate this for you:

We have been staying with friends whilst the work was done on our house, and at the weekend we decided to go away for a few days. MY parents have been ringing DH becuase they want to see us, ans so we arranged to meet up with them on the sunday. Saturday comes and DH rings to confirm arrangements. Mother decides to pretend we had arranged to come to them for lunch. No says DH we are going to meet you at x as planned. Later we get a weepy call to say she won't be able to make it for lunch it will have to be later, as it is so far to come (about 30 mins drive from their house).

They arrive on the sunday and say barely anything at all to me or DH, they talk to the DC- well to our son- and she is clearly trying to find out where we are staying etc. from him- but he's 4 FGS, he's not going to be able to tell them the details.
AT the end of the visit we are playing with the children in the play are and my mother bursts into tears.

Both she and father then go into some big rant to DH about how I am not communicating with them that I am preventing them from seeing the children, that I am givingg them nothing.
Rememberr the day she left the eatser presents on the doorstep- apparrently I prevented her from seeing the dc that day- it is all fantasy!

They storm off.

I then get a weepy phonecall a few days later. It's in the morning, she's at a train staion going on a long distance visit to a friend (funny how she can get up in the morning when it suits her)and she leaves a message saying how sad she is how she loves me dearly blah blah blah.

I sent her a polite message back wishing her a nice holiday etc.
The next message I get from her she is completely normal.

I can see where my anxiety comes from- it is not knowing 'who' I am going to get when I hear from her or see her.

This is how a narcissist behaves. YOu are not like this, Smithfiled. I do not believe you make people believe they have made you suicidal just to get your own way?

The were someinntersting points about this latest saga.

One was that I did not engage with her/their madness. I did not feel that it was all my fault- once DH and I had gone through every detail ofthe events, anyway- which is a big improvement.

the other was how I noticed that though they complained I was not communicating witht them they made no attempts to speak to me during the visit- the directed eveything at DH and the children. What'sthat about?

I cannot believe I used to think this was normal behaviour.

I think a lot of our row at the weekend was because actually I wanted to scream atmy mother.

pinky- I was both flabergasted, 'astounded' and just generally by your post and the latest developments.
Your mother (term to be used loosely of course) is so manipulative isnt she!

Quick question-Does your father just go along with your mother? Is he a classic bystander? Sorry if you mentioned his role before but I just got the impression that he was joining in in a cowardly way so as to avoid your mother's antics being directed at him?

Also, in your post you said;

'...the directed eveything at DH and the children. What'sthat about?'

My mother does/did this A LOT. She would appeal to people around me like Dh, my friends, my siblings. She would implore them with her '.Oh isnt..she (smithfield)being so unreasonable..dont you think?'

She did it to make me feel isolated and scapegoat me I think. I called her out once in front of my dad, grandad and sis. Night before my wedding and she was saying that she wouldnt come to the hotel where I was going to be getting ready the next day because it was obvious she wasnt wanted. Drama.
I said loudly 'why are you doing this, tonight of all nights? why?'
She looked at my family sat there none of them jumping in to support me as usual lest they end up baring the brunt. She used her wide eyed...'See? Do you see? how she treats me?' Im the victim here... poor me bullshit.
It's all about dysfunctional ways of communication though isn't! Instead of sitting down with everyone and communicating in an adult manner, she/they attempt to use communication as a way of isolating one person in order to maintain their position. It's like drawing a ring around you and saying 'See she is the problem...not us'.
After all if they included you in any of the discussion they had this weekend then that would undermine their position that you are the one who is not communicating.

Oh PM ...They are just bloody screwed up and thats the bottom line.

Well done though for not engaging! You deserve a huge cheer for that.

BTW thanks for your vote of confidence, weirdly I spoke to dh about all of this tonight and he said that he didnt even think I was in a bad mood this weekend ...that he hadnt noticed me interact negatively with ds and that I am just being hard on myself as per usual.
So now Im even more confused.

No Ive not used suicide to manipulate but have threatened to leave him (a lot) in the past (pre dd and ds). Through insecurity I think but also to get attention and reassurance which is manipulative.

Thanks for posting PM it always helps to know someone else is there. I live inside my head so much and there is often much paranoia to be found there. Unsurprisingly.

Smithfield I think we have all been responsible for making 'threats' to leave in order toget a response. Sometimes I have felt it is the only way to get across how anxious I feel. I have always had a feeling that everyone would be better off without me. I used to tell DH I would go, because I have always felt that I am the cause of things. Now I realise it must seemto him like a threat, and that it was cruel. Sometimesit does feel like our relationship is exhausted, though. WE have so much on our plate.

I think you are right about the scapegoat thing. It sounds spot on. And that awful story about your wedding sounds very familiar.The births of my children were very similar.

My mother told me I couldn't have a wedding because it would be unbearable to have my MIL there (she does talk alot but bless her she's lovely). Weddings, graduations, big family birthday parties- none of these were for me apparrently. My mother and siblings had them all, but my mother could not bear to let me have them.

MY father is a very angry and aggresive man. But he would not bother to ring me. When I would go to visit them he wouldn't even stop what he was doing to say hello. He used to describe me as shit under his shoe.
I think the reason he has been getting in touch is because my mother has been making a melodrama about everything and it's keeping him from his hobbies. The easter visit story is one of the most blatant examples of my mother's distortion of reality to suit her ends. She must be slipping, because she usually covers her tracks so well.

Sorry I sound very cynical, don't I? I'm so devastated really. I think I still feel very depressed about things.

I said I wanted to scream at my mother. I didn't of course, I sent a text saying I was sorry she was feeling sad. I don't know if she took that to be an apology from me- I hope not. WHat I wanted to say (but there seems little point) is 'I am sorry you are feeling sad, but I am no longer able to take responsiblty for this. The time has come now for you to deal with these feelings yourself.' It sounds very much like an adult talking to a child about growing up, doesn't it?

I think there may be a truth in there for me, too, in the way DH and I behave towards each other when we are stressed.

Don't be too hard on yourself, smithfield. I know lots ofpeople hide from their children from time to time, and they get cross with them, too. They just don't agonise over it like we do!

Sorry about my typing.I have no excuse really, it's just truly terrible!

Sorry not much time or energy at the moment. But smithfield and PM, i have read through your recent posts.

smithfield, i went through something so similar with DH. And i still feel he is 'on trial' with me at the moment. He let me down hugely in many ways during our 9 years of being together and almost desroyed all my feelings for him. We are back from the brink right now as he managed to step up to the mark and do what was necessary re MIL recently. But like i said i feel he is still on trial and needs to prove he is up to scratch. But your situation sounds different so perhaps my experience may not be of any help to you. The only thing I would say is don't make any hasty decisions re your DH. You are still dealing with loads of childhood issues and there is always a lot of 'transference', but it does not always become clear until a lot later. Work through your feelings and give yourself lots of time.

PM, well done on 'managing' your mother. You sound as if you have made such huge progress. You are behaving in an adult manner and she is clearly acting like a child. And i can totally relate to her trying to get your DH and anybody else she can fool onto her side and make out you are the unreasonable one and she is the victim. I'm glad you are able to see this pattern of behaviour and i hope your DH can see it too. You are clearly making progress, so well done.

Sorry just a bit of a rant-no need to respond to this.

I've been trying to pinpoint when my mood dipped before the weekend and why.
It has been a pretty bad week for me with regard to MIL and culminated with an incident that I found quite upsetting.
I had rung mil on friday about something to do with ds's school and she hadn't answered. If she misses a call she normally calls straight back or at least texts me. She didnt and I didnt think that much about it 'until' whilst dh was out picking up a take-away 'his' mobile rang. MIL.
It was at least 8.30 at this point and so she knew dcs would be in bed.
She then rang again when he was back at 9.ish.
She said to dh to tell me she was sorry she didnt get back to me. So why ring dh. TWICE!?
I dont get it.
I did feel cross about it though and cross with dh for not getting the significance of it.
So...she rang dh's phone twice to tell him sorry she didnt have time to get back to me?
Weird!

Sorry xposted with you both

PM- I am really shocked by what your father said to you. That is horrible. What a horribly angry man he must be. He sounds hugely narcisstic.
Isn't that what damaged children do, they push whatever emotions they feel onto the adult. That is why adults have to be in control of their emotions as much they can be with such children because otherwise you become their outlet
Big role reversal in 'all our' cases with the damaged adults (our parents) pushing their uncomfortable emotions onto us as children.
Maybe that's why I am mad about latest incident with MIL because I suspect that is what she is trying to do with me currently.

Oneplusone- hope you are ok. Hope it is a nice (had a full weekend lack of energy) you are experiencing.
Yes I do see your point. I feel like there i just a never ending barrage of emotions to wade through and Im tired of it. Sometimes want to wade through as quickly as possible. I just want to feel happy and functioning and full of vitality.

Especially with all this

BTW- MIL has just done same tonight. contacted Dh instead of me re tommorrow and looking after dc's.
It was only a few months back she demonished me for not communicating with her directly instead of going through dh .

PM- Also with regard to you feeling depressed about it all I do think that it is a huge step forward for you to not react to your mother but you are probably still absorbing her moods.
I think this is what has happened with MIL she is no longer getting the reaction from me but I am still absorbing her emotions so I feel depressed by her.
It will take more time and practice to get to the point where you are detached enough to let it all wash over you. To be able to shrug her negative feelings off.
It will happen though. Be kind to yourself pinky. You're doing just fine.

Smithfield and OPO thank you. I too long for all this to be over. 'wading through the emotions', as you say. I just want to skip to the end and have a 'normal'life.
I'm sorry your MIL is playing games. I do think that detachment is the key, but it is a long term goal, d'you think?

definately a long term goal yes. I am not even really comparing like for like anyway.
If I had a phonecall or even a text from my own mother pinky I might just about manage to hold it together enough to not react but I would be a gibbering wreck afterwards.

Sorry it is Roseability here. The change of name was for another thread but I didn't want to lose my post so I will just post this one then change back to Roseability!

PM and Smithfield - It is a huge step forward to not react to these vile and dysfunctional people. Also very true about absorbing toxic mother's moods. I so want to get to the point where I am detached enough to let it wash over me and shrug negative feelings off.

PM - your mother sounds very similar to my manipulative GM. I am now 38 weeks pregnant and she is stepping up the game. It is so 'poor me, poor me and poor bloody me'. Yet if I express any negativity, it is my fault and in my head. I have just stopped telling her anything about my life and how I feel. I just try and stick to mundane things like the weather.

I have limited phone contact to once a week. I have caller ID which means I can ignore other phone calls. I hardly speak to my adoptive father. He phoned me on his birthday on Monday but it felt so strange and so distant. There really is nothing between us anymore. He didn't bother to phone me on my last two birthdays (including my 30th) yet he manages to phone on his birthday and my DS birthday. Last time I phoned home and he picked up, he didn't even ask how I am, just handed me straight over to my GM. He doesn't care, I have not met his conditions for love and concern. He will try and stay in my DCs lives in the hope that they may fulfil his warped sense of success. There is no way on this earth I will ever leave my DC alone with him or my GM for that matter.

Smithfield - I too just hold it together on the phone (most of the time) but I am so affected my the phone call for days afterwards. Not one phone call is nice or normal. Always an atmosphere and my GM trying to manipulate. Always, always the topic of conversation comes back to her. She complains like PMs mother that I don't comunicate enough, that I don't give her enough. Yet if I try to talk at any length about my DS, what he is like and what he is up to, she changes the subject, sounds bored or has to go.

You are doing so well, so keep wading through those emotions and one day I am sure they just won't affect you in the same way

Has anyone heard of a book called "People of the Lie"? It's by M. Scott Peck, I think, the guy who wrote "The Road Less Travelled", which I've never read - but this one, the people of the lie, I have read and found it very useful - illuminating, you could say. He gives quite a few case histories from his work as a psychologist (psychiatrist?) of families of clients/patients of his that were just, in his words, evil (their families that is, not the patients). It's useful because you're seeing from an outside, objective perspective just how committed to the denial and lying and doing things AGAINST their children's welfare these people are. He had contact with some of these families and was shocked at how impossible it was to get through to them. It helped me see my parents as part of a wider pattern, that there are these people out there who really don't care about their children the way parents are supposed to, but that they can always find a way to justify and defend themselves and make it seem as if their child is the one in the wrong, and how plausible they can be, and how far their influence extends.
One family in the book, had a teenage son who killed himself. They then gave the gun he used to kill himself to their other teenage son for his birthday. And they had a "justification" for it! They had managed to convince themselves in their minds that this was a good, reasonable, loving thing for parents to do....

I suppose I'm saying all this because I think that when you're dealing with this level of denial, and I think a lot of us are here - although I know that one about the gun is an extreme, unusual example, I think the principle is actually very common - you cannot hope that they will start being reasonable and caring. Not consistently, anyway. Pinky, your mother - would she know the truth if it came up and coshed her with a wet haddock? I doubt it. All she cares about is getting her needs met, and she wants to keep using you to do that as she always has done, because it's EASY for her. But of course she will stick to her story that it is you who are difficult/uncaring etc no matter what, because she's got to look like she is a caring mother. Ditto your mother Smithfield, your GM Rose, my mother... I think they all care far, far more about their image as caring mothers than they do about actually being them. Or indeed about us, their daughters.

I am so sick of this lying. So, so sick of it I can't even say how much. That's why I finally called it a day with my family. Why should I bend myself in two to agree with their lies when I KNOW the truth? When I KNOW they're lying? It is so wrong! I am so sick of being the one cast as the bad guy, the one who "hurts" my parents, the one who "doesn't love my brother enough" because unlike everybody else in the family I won't say his temper is ok and harmless, while no one questions whether he actually loves me at all and if so why he thinks it's ok to treat me with pure contempt (his own word for it) - just lies, lies and more lies.

I really feel for everyone going through agonies about parenting. It is so hard when you didn't have good parenting yourself. I think everyone on here is doing a really good job, because at least we're trying to recognise what's going on, at least we're thinking about these things and doing our best not to pass on the crap. Smithfield, I wish I had some wise words for you in your current situation with DH and DCs, I thought that was such a courageous post you posted before about recognising how you had hurt your DH, and I know it's really hard when you have a breakthrough like that and then everything goes back to how it was before - but that breakthrough did happen, and it will have had an impact, however small. I do personally think projection is the root of just about everything, but I can see your confusion and worry about what is what here.

I think you made a very good point about your DS being like a mini narcissist, and how for his age that's appropriate - exactly. A child his age is meant to be selfish and demanding, although of course that doesn't mean it's easy to deal with! But it is natural and not blameworthy. AN, you were asking a while back why it's acceptable for children to be treated a certain (hurtful) way but not adults, and that's a huge question I think. I personally think our society is nowhere near as child-loving and child-friendly as it would like to think it is. We may collectively recoil in horror at violence against children but it still goes on, a lot. And emotional abuse - I sometimes think it's almost commonplace, to some degree or another. It's acceptable. The bias in our culture is still that children are somehow "bad" or "difficult" - how many times do you hear parents saying their kids are monsters/driving them mad/a total PITA; and how many times do you hear parents say "I'm finding the job of parenting really hard at the moment and not always coping"? So I think it's fantastic that people come on here and say they are struggling - I know it helps me enormously to know it's not just me.

OPO, your posts a while back about your family/sisters, the whole exclusion thing - really felt for you, and wondering how it's going at the moment. It's very painful to be the one that nobody needs. I speak from experience. The rest of your family are all legitimising/denying the abuse that was handed out to you because they don't need to recognise the truth - they have each other, and they don't want to risk rocking the boat; it's easier to keep pinning the blame on you. That's how I feel with my family. My brother is in total denial about what my parents did to me, and what they let him do to me; and my each of my parents is in denial about what the other one did, as well as what my brother did - they all legitimise each other, so it means out of the original unit of four, each of the other three has two defenders, two allies; while I am compeltely isolated. (Plus the silent voice of my dead "sister", which may sound weird, but growing up there was a consciousness of her and she wouldn't have been on my side either, in my head; she was the perfect daughter who would have been so good they would have loved her, so I couldn't co-opt her as an ally either. I now realise of course that they wouldn't have loved any daughter they had.) Anyway, it sounds the same in your family - they all bolster each other and support each other in their lies and you are left completely out in the cold, from the sound of it.

With my brother I've realised it's just much, much easier for him to keep blaming everything on me - he doesn't have to risk knocking our parents off their pedestal (he thinks he sees them for who they are but of course it's a very idealised version) and he also doesn't have to ask himself any painful, soul searching questions. He doesn't need me. And I'm actually starting to be ok with that now. I had this pressure on me for such a long time that I had to somehow make everything allright - that if every single part of the story wasn't resolved perfectly, then I hadn't brought about the happy ending I was born to bring, and I had failed and coudln't be happy. But no one's life has every single part resolved perfectly. Mine will probably have these great gaping holes in it for ever; but it will also have enough good, solid stuff to make it more than worthwhile. That's the fairy tale happy ending I'm going for now.

Wanted to ramble about yin and yang in relationships too, but have run out of time; but will try and post again soon.

BOP - you are so right about our society's attitude to children. It is why it is so difficult to be open about emotional abuse. I am ashamed to admit that a few times I have smacked my DS. Not hard, a tap on the leg and I know because I don't threaten it as a form of punishment but rather have just done it in a moment of anger/sleep deprivation it doesn't register with him. However it is my loss of control and I believe on these occassions I have abused him and his trust. I feel incredible guilt afterwards and usually apologise and hug him. The problem is that it is impossible to be a perfect parent all the time. I do believe this is where a more supportive and child loving society would help. I am absolutely not blaming society for all my parenting mistakes but it is an issue that needs to be adressed.

When my DS was a baby and I had PND/anxiety I used to get angry and believe he was a difficult baby. I used to get angry with my MIL because if I moaned about him, she would always say how good he was. I somehow believed she was trivialising my problems and making me feel guilty. However she was right! Babies aren't difficult or bad, it is parenting that is tough. I now look at my DS and see the angel he truly is! Yes we have bad moments (like mentioned above) but I try not to moan about him to friends/family and rather say the truthful positive things. If I do have a moan, I try to rationalise it as I am finding being a Mum difficult today because my DS is being a normal three year old and playing up. This is not deliberate but healthy three year old behaviour! Possibly I need support/help on such a day in the form of a break or company.

Whenever there is a relationship problem with parents, it is the child who is difficult. Even my MIL, who is genuinely a good mother and non toxic said something that triggered me once. She was talking about a friend who found her DIL difficult. She then went on to say 'even her own mother found her difficult'. This upset me. It seemed that justification could be found through the eyes of parents who think their children are the difficult ones.

Last paragraph - I meant 'it is the child who is portrayed as difficult'

One thing I have always vowed as a parent is that if my DS was to turn round as an adult and express difficulties in his relationship with me, I will look to myself first and foremost. How could this person who was my innocent, loving child grow to dislike me for no reason? How could it be his fault?

There is a great quote in the film Gladiator where the father says to his son 'your failings as a son are my failings as a father' (or something like that)

Sorry havent read last few posts I will do in a bit and rerspond but I just want to get something off my chest here, while it is fresh in my mind.
Having just written this post I should warn you that I am really angry in it so please dont read it if you think it might upset or trigger any of you!

I have been thinking about my mother again quite a lot. I have had a couple of dreams about her too. always the dreams are about my constant feelings of frustration and anger at her. I also am thinking about writing to her.
I read something recently that REALLY upset me. It was just a woman that wrote a letter to a psychologist online. She was explaining that she had three children and that the eldest (a daughter) was from a different relationship. There was a lot of bitterness surrounding the ex.p as he had abandoned her and the baby and was physically violent toward her during the relationship.
She had since married another man and had two more children with him.
The problem that she had was with the eldest child. She realised she was probably seeing her as the ex.p (she looked a lot like him). She felt that she often didnt like her dd to the point where the child had leaned over to kiss her baby sibling and her hair had brushed against the mothers arm and the mother felt repulsed by it
She admitted that she only ever communicated with her eldest dd with either anger eg snapping at her (never physical) or ignoring her.
The only time she had a relatively normal relationship with the child was when ex.p was due a visit. It was at that point she felt able to seperate the two of them and began to see her dd as a seperate person.
This story mad me feel incredibly sad and incredibly angry at the same time.

This was me I was the dd in that story.
Ok I had the same father but I was born (a mistake) my father left us when I was 3/4. He abandoned us for another woman.
My parents did get back together eventually but the bitterness was always there. Nothing was ever addressed. It was all just swept under the carpet. The screwed up communication that exists in every toxic relationship.

The deal was my mum had to give up work and move back to London if her and dad were to get back together/make a go of things. Being as damaged as my mother was she accepted this without question at the time.

Anything rather than the pain of abandonment and rejection.
Well OK I get that. BUT. The resentment, the anger. She poured it over me every day It was as if she was emptying her dirty dishwater over my head and I would be left there cold, abandoned and shamed each day. My mother saw me as my father and that is where the stories merge.
At six years old my db was born. I was sick and went to hospital for a major operation. She wouldnt even stay with me.
Deep down I knew she didnt like me. She didnt love me. Ive lived in denial all this years. The truth is too painful. No more painful maybe than believing I am a piece of shit unworthy of love (which is often how she made me feel). Then again it is probably equally painful to carry this self belief into adulthood. But as a child! It was just survival. As we have often said as a child accepting that your parents do not love you would have been like death to me.

I am angry that she never EVER addressed this. The woman who wrote, whose letter I read. SHE had guts. She was willing to stand up and take responsibility. SHE was saying LOOK this IS WRONG. THIS MUST STOP. Oneplusone you stood up and said; 'this is MY issue I must deal with this NOW or risk my daughters mental health and self esteem.'
You had the courage and strength to do this. That makes you amazing in my eyes! Why couldnt I have had a mother like that? Why?
Why didnt anyone step in? My father (pah fat chance- hero to zero in my eyes now). Useless bastard!
My nan? AS much as I still have feelings of love for my nan, after all the only tiny bit of comfort I ever got was from her. SHE did not stop it either. WHY?

The person I blame most however IS My mother. She did not stand up. SHE was happy to sacrifice me, her daughter, my mental health. MY self esteem. To save herself from any negative context.

I hate her! I fucking hate her guts. ANd I want to go round now and beat the crap out of her. She really is a gutless cow.

ANd I beat myself up over the kind of mother I AM?

I guess because I normalised her behaviour and saw her as being 'not' abusive, because my self esteem was so low. Because my view of reality was so warped by all of them! I think I truly believed my mother was just cold and emotionally unavailable to me.

Therefore I believed that if at times I too was emotionally unavailable or appeared cold at ANY time to my children that they would end up as damaged as me.

But this isnt true!

I may be emotionally unavailable at times. Yes. BUT I am constantly trying to make sense of all this shit as well as hold down a job, a marriage etc.

BUT I do love my children BOTH of them equally. When I look at them I feel love not anger and bitterness and NEVER repulsion!

I know that perhaps if I had different circumstances? If one of my children was born to a different father? Or I sufferd abuse from DH? Would I be different?

No. I am not my mother. I think I would still have the strength to protect my children and even if I did take the wrong path with regard to either of them emotionally I believe I would have enough insight to correct myself. I would have enough courage to take responsibility for my own reactions toward them if my reaction/interactions were wrong.

I think this is where the anger and aggression stems from with my interactions with my mother. She was never a mother to me but constantly tried to parentify ME! So using me for her own needs whilst destroying me at the same time.

She is a true narcissist in every sense of the word. I hate her.
I think this is why I struggle so much with parenting at times because being a parent reminds me of having to be a parent to my mother AND my father. They used me endlessly, neither of them really loved me at all.

To love someone you have to have 'some' compassion surely. You would not be able to bare seeing someone you love suffer. I know if either of my children are hurt or in pain I feel a rush of love for them. A need to comfort or protect them.

My mother was often overtly cruel toward me. I never got an ounce of empathy from either of them. In fact, every time I was at my weakest or most vulnerable my father 'attacked' me physically rather than show me empathy as if my weakness or vulnerability disgusted him.

That is probably why I struggle to show any weakness or vulnerability to anyone. Why I have a hard shell around me. Inpenetrable at times.

Im sorry for the venting and the language. There is no need to respond to any of this. It feels good to get it out. ANd I am so grateful to have a forum where I KNOW i will NEVER be judged.
It is good to get all this anger out into the open and direct it to the person who really deserves it. THat IS healthy. Or we can live in denial and rationalise everything these bastard people did to us, then go home and take it out on those who dont deserve any of it.

Not my family. Not even my MIL. She (my mil) has given me more help and care than that evil witch of a mother ever has.
That is where the anger should be directed. At my mother.

(and, btw this only applies to my situation because some of you (you know who you are) have incredibly toxic Mil's!)

Think I will go and buy a punch bag or something I need to find a physical release for all of this.

smithfield again not much time or energy (busy full on day with DC's on half term), but well done. It seems to me you have had a breakthrough. Alice Miller constantly talks about finding the rightful anger of the little girl inside you who has kept quiet for so long but who was so badly treated and who has every right to be angry, furious and raging at her mother who let her down so completely. I can see you are feeling that anger now and it is such a powerful, energising and liberating feeling. It is brilliant that you can articulate your feelings on here and i agree that finding a physical release is important too (i bought a baseball bat and pounded the sofa a lot).

Your DC's are so lucky to have such determined, courageous, intelligent mother like you. Like you said, if we had had such mothers, our lives would have turned out so differently. You and I will always be there for our DC's, on their side, not selfishly always thinking about our needs, and our DC's will never know what could have been their fate which is exactly how I think it should be.

Pinky, your mother sounds like mine, a bit. Nothing's EVER her fault, EVER. She's perfect.

That was from the heart, smithfield.

Rose, good to have that confirmation from you, that you agree and see things the same way. And I think we all lose it with the DCs at times, it's normal. I think parenting is bloody hard - for anyone, but especially for those of us coping with this stuff - but that's just the point, it's parenting that's hard, not the child who is difficult. So glad this forum exists where these opinions can be shared and aired, so many of these things I have thought for years but not had anyone to share them with outside of therapist (and DH in his way). You say things I could have said myself, and it means a lot.

Yes that anger is so liberating!

Having read again the letters that my mother wrote when she was ill and the letters my GM wrote to social services about my mother, I now see the truth.

My GM would write and 'tell tales' about my mother. How she would shout and scream at me and not put the heating on for me when I was cold. Well I have shouted at my DS and I have selfishly not put the heating on recently because I am very pregnant and hot all the time. Does that mean my DS should be taken away from me? It struck me that she didn't have anything really bad to tell socail services. It is all petty things. She once even called the social services and NSPCC because a neighbour had spotted my mother drinking and going to bed with a man in the afternoon

The social services supported all this. The alienation of my mother and my GM manipulating her and making out she couldn't cope because it was the easy option. I am so angry at them too!

So I am angry, in fact I am f***g furious. But OPO that anger is great and it allows me to see the truth. It allows me to distance myself from my adoptive parents, to tell my friends that I was raised by my GM and step-grandfather NOT my mother. My DC will know the truth and know who their real granny was. It allowed me to be brave enough and tell my GM that I think it is wrong that I called her 'mum'. She said it was what my mother wanted, I said I doubted that so she replied 'well she wasn't in the best frame of mind at the time'. Manipulative, cruel bitch!

My Aunty tells me my mother coped okay when she was lucid, that she DIDN't want me to call my GM 'mum'. I know who I believe. I have a photo of me sitting on my GM's knee as a baby. She is grinning manicly at the camera, teeth all bared. She looks evil. My poor mother is stood in the background looking miserable. It is a photo and a moment in time, but it symbolises what went on to me. That my GM wanted to play the happy, doting mother and undermine her daughter. Because she is so messed up and bitter.

I believe that is why my mother is dead today. That this made her illness so severe that she deteriorated over the years. Especially when my adoptive parents moved me away, knowing my mother couldn't travel long distances to see me. It is her birthday today, she would have been 49.

To top it all off, my GM let my adoptive father emotionally abuse me. And I believed all these lies. That the sick feeling in my stomach and the wrongness of it all was in my head. Not any more!

I have not been brave enough to cut them out completely but I have so much more distance now. Knowing the truth means I don't allow myself to be sucked in. That I can focus on my family and this new baby.

This thread is partly to thank for that. Sorry for the rant and lack of reply to other posters. Just needed to get it off my chest. OPO great idea about baseball bat. I am guilty of sometimes taking my anger out on loved ones.