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

[oneplusone]

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

[Roseability]

OPO - thanks for your kind words, they mean a lot. I really identify with your feelings about not fulfilling your potential. However I hang onto the fact that being a good mother is possibly the biggest achievement of all. The very fact that you are being a better mother to your children despite all the hurt and pain you have endured is wonderful. Your children will grow up more confident and undamaged and in turn their children will grow up happy and carefree. You have broken the cycle for generations to come. Being a mum is thankless and unrewarding sometimes, but this is so important.

Also you are still young. Your children will be adult enough for you to pursue some goals and dreams whilst you are young enough. I know nothing can replace that lost childhood and early adulthood but hang on in there.

Part of my PND after DS was this feeling that I wasn't doing enough. That it wasn't enough just to be a mum. Maybe this is because I also wasn't allowed to be myself and pursue my dreams.

[Lemonylemon]

Ahem, ahem, ahem

I was engaged to someone that my mum and my sister took a dislike to. My mum because she thought he was after my money and my sister, because he was very self-conscious and quite shy.

I was 6 months pregnant when he collapsed with a brain haemorrhage. They went on holiday the night that he had collapsed (fair enough, my Mum did ask me if I wanted her to stay, but I said not to worry, just go on hols). He never regained consciousness and died a week later. OK, so I rang my mum and told her - she came back from her holiday 10 days later. She texted me to say she was back and I invited her round for a cuppa. She replied that she was too tired and she'd see me tomorrow. The morning my OH died, I had to phone the Registry Office to cancel our wedding which was in 3 weeks time.

She did drive me to the funeral and I didn't see her much after that. Bear in mind I have a son who was 10 at this time and absolutely devastated (his own Dad had died 3 years previously).

Fast forward to the October and my waters go at 36+1. Mum drives me to and fro from the hospital every other day for monitoring as I bribed the hospital to let me stay out and manage another week before going into labour proper. Mum drives me to hospital and looks after my son. I have an emergency cs and stay in for a week. Mum brings my son to hospital every day. She will absolutely not touch my daughter. Manage to get out of hospital a week later and she drives my daughter and I home and asks if any more needs to be done - I replied no, but after she'd gone, cooked dinner. My son has his 11+ the next day, so I desperately wanted to be at home with him and to take him into school the next day. Mum offers to do the school run for me, which she does for the next 2 weeks. I got the very strong feeling that it was too much for her as there was much huffing and puffing and mentions of tiredness etc, so I started to drive again at 2wks 5 days after having my daughter.

For a while, any mention of my OH was met with criticism and an abrupt change of subject (still does, actually). My daughter had still not been held or touched by my mum. So, I decided that instead of laying myself open to rejection and hurt, I would turn away from my family and concentrate on my little family unit and try to rebuild our lives as best I could.

The situation now is that my mum looks after my daughter for 2 days a week to help me financially with childcare costs. My daughter is now 18 months old and she and my mum get on very well.

I sometimes talk to my mum about being a widow (as she is too) but I don't trust her with my deepest feelings. That's the upshot of it all really - I have had to learn to be self-reliant with my emotions because my situation ended up being "all about her" and I'm afraid that I have had to leave her to her self-centredness because my two children are too important to me for me to be caught up in my mum's life drama - IYSWIM.

Sorry, that was quite long winded

[Lemonylemon]

ActingNormal please see my post above yours. But in addition to what I wrote above (that does sound a bit odd, sorry), my sister said that the only reason I was pregnant was because I'd had unprotected sex and she quizzed me whether my daughter was planned or unplanned. I said it was neither. At my age, you can't plan or unplan - you just hope for the best! I was devasted by their refusal to "validate" my relationship and my loss. That's when I decided to turn away from them and concentrate on us Three Musketeers.

I have the added pleasure of being the eldest child, with my sister being the youngest and my mum's favourite, which affected me for well over 30 years, but I've worked hard on myself, read loads of Louise Hay, Dr Phil McGrath, and other authors and have got to the stage where I'm at now.

Not to say that it's perfect, but I've come to realise that what people inflict on others is all about them and nothing about the person they inflict their stuff on. Like someone who's downright rude about others - it says everything about them and nothing about the person they're talking about - if you get where I'm coming from

[Lemonylemon]

ActingNormal - I know what you mean by my post - you couldn't make it up!

But: They are the ones with the problems - they can reflect on it all when they have a little insight. I'm not taking on their angst/problems/lack of compassion etc. I've told my mum that i'm not going to be beaten around the head for the rest of my life because she didn't like my OH. I have to admit that I've found it very hard to comprehend how my mum could have stayed away that long after my OH died - I have been at a complete loss to understand it. If the same thing had happened to either of my children, I'd have been on the first flight home. My DC are both so precious to me.... that's why I had to turn away and look inward to my little family unit.

No, you're not meant to drive for about a month after a cs, but it's not a legal requirement - you just have to be able to do an emergency stop without it hurting or pulling muscles - in my case, I just pulled the car seat right forward.

My DS's dad died from a heart attack when he was 39. We had split up a few years earlier, but really, it was such a dreadful shock to everyone. My son has had several lots of counselling on and off over the years since it happened, the poor mite. My Dad died a few months before my DS's Dad did, so my poor DS has had such a lot to deal with in his fairly short life....

[oneplusone]

lemon, hello and welcome. Have just read your post and this line just jumped out at me "I don't trust her with my deepest feelings." I don't trust anyone in my family ie parents/sisters with my deepest feelings and so i never open up to them, and i never have, which must mean i knew not to trust them with my deepest feelings from a very, very early age.

I also don't trust DH completely, i am willing to reveal some feelings to him, but not all and not my deepest feelings.

I don't really have many friends that i trust completely either, maybe 1 or 2 at the most.

[smithfield]

AN- I often read your posts and think you are doing your own natural form of CBT.
I?ve been looking at CBT a lot myself at the moment, and have Melanie Fennel?s book which is very good.
I think (am no expert) that the basis of it is, that it is not events that cause such strong emotional responses in us, like anxiety, fear, anger but it is the thought process following the event. So for example when you spoke to your friend and felt you had said too much, it was not the event itself that would have triggered you but the thoughts you will have had following it.
So it is useful to look at what we say to ourselves following an event that triggers strong responses and try and replace these thoughts with other more useful ones.
In the example of you speaking to your friend, you may have started to ?predict? what might happen as a result. I f your bro found out etc and you began to feel the fear and dread you would have done as a child by upsetting your bro.
I guess by your therapist continually repeating that you are safe now he is trying to alter the thoughts and reactions you have.
If you need permission not to feel guilt about having had the very best intentions for your brother when he went into prison, can I give it? Would you accept it?
Reading your post it feels like it still comes more naturally for you to empathise with others rather than with yourself and to carry the responsibility somehow for others feelings and reactions.
I think this was ingrained in you AN and this is your biggest hurdle because at your very core you still feel responsible for what they did.
You are not responsible for your brothers? feelings or reactions anymore. He is an adult and he made the choices he did just as you have made your choices. If you have changed your mind wrt to what you can and can?t do to support him that is OK and you are allowed to do that without being fearful of the reaction that may provoke from him.
After all if he ?has? genuinely changed he will accept it is your ?RIGHT? to change your mind and not hold you responsible for however that makes him feel. His feelings are his and it is up to him to take care of them.

lemony- You are right you could not make this stuff up.
You have had some really difficult times but as AN said you sound so amazingly strong.
You have had to grieve for so many losses and help your ds with coping with his losses at such a young age too.
I wonder what drives your mother really with relation to all of this?
It sounds almost sinister to me?
You are right though that it is not a natural reaction for a mother to behave in this manner. So begrudging of care and empathy for you at a time whe you need her most.

[Lemonylemon]

Smithfield My mum has had serious (I think) problems all her life pertaining to her upbringing. I remember when I was talking to her once, I was kissing and cuddling my son and my mum said that I would never do that with her because I'd push her away and she felt rejected (I think I was about 9-12 months of age when this happened). Well, from what I can see, it's a normal reaction for babies/toddlers to do this, so I just used to grab my son and smother him in kisses and we'd end up giggling. He's still very affectionate now (when he's not being a hormonal 12 year old). My daughter does exactly the same, and I react the same and we too end up giggling. So this emotional pushing away when I have needed my mum is a very long standing "thing". I have intellectualised it and have "tried to put it right" with my own children.

AN I feel that your being overcontrolling of your children when something slightly bad happens is completely natural for people who have had "dodgy" upbringings. They have no control as a child, and therefore, need to have some sort of control over things as adults. The "slightly bad" things make you feel off centre and wobbly. This is when a moment of stillness and deep breaths are handy to get you centred again. You could try just standing there for one minute and question why you're reacting like this...

Also, for all of you - that feeling you get after you've opened up and told somebody "too much" is also natural. What's happened is that you've made a chink in the wall and let something go. They say that knowledge is power - well, if you've given some knowledge away, you've given some power away - and therefore, have made yourself vulnerable - and by that, made yourself anxious. That is learned behaviour from the past. If you are working on what has happened in the past, then this is one of the reactions that you need to address. You should all have a sense of pride for far you have some and you should all say a mantra to this effect several times a day to reinforce it and drive out the negative thoughts. This is in itself, a form of CBT. You can also find the same theories in several books by Louise Hay and others. There's also a book called Psycho Cybernetics which is a book published in the early 60s which my Dad used to read all the time - and one which (if you can get past the psycho language) which is very good.

Someone on this thread was saying about regretting that they weren't as well educated as they would like to be because they lacked the confidence etc. Well, you have the next half of your life to live and to waste all those years in regret would be a huge waste of talent (and emotion) that you have. If you are determined, there is the Open University - you don't have to have loads of qualifications to do the courses. They do "baby courses" - by which, I mean courses which are baby steps back into studying. I too used to regret that I hadn't gone to uni for the very same reasons, then I tried my hand at OU and have done 2 years - I had to stop because I had my son and haven't had the time since. But I KNOW that I CAN do it and when the kids are older, I will pick it up again.

I hope that all of you on this thread take my posts as trying to be encouraging to you all and not patronising - you can all see that I have my issues too. This thread has made me jittery and I've spent a pretty much sleepless night thinking about it. But then, like you all, I have issues going back to my childhood, only some of which I've mentioned.

I hope you all have a good day and an even better weekend and sorry for the length of my post

[Lemonylemon]

AN You said - Some things we can see logically but it takes us a while to feel them.

Which is precisely why we need to say the mantra over and over again - it will eventually sink in. It also helps to say it when you're feeling a bit "wobbly" too.

You will never have complete control over your life simply because you're not the only one in it - there are all the masses of people who you come into contact with - none of whom you have any control over. For example, the man behind the till at the supermarket, the shopkeeper in the corner store at the end of the road, the petrol station attendant etc etc - they all have their lives to lead. We can only control how we react to them.

I have the theory/thought that grief causes us to need something we can have some control over - I've been like this since my OH died - I have to have a fairly tidy house. I have to do my housework every Saturday morning so I have a tidy house for at least 2 hours ) I didn't have control over him dying - though I fought and fought for him.

I sometimes suffer from a lack of self-confidence in what I'm doing - and then I have to shake myself mentally and think that I've got myself (and my son) through the death of my Dad, the death of my son's Dad, the death of my lovely OH and the birth of my gorgeous daughter - all of which have had a massive impact on not just my son, but myself as well. I'm also still cogitating my childhood too. My parents neglected us emotionally, which my brother and sister aren't bothered about/don't think about. We were all lumped together as "the kids" with no individuality. I had very different needs to my brother and sister, being the eldest. I knew a lot more about what was going on and in those days, we didn't have counselling for the impact of my Dad's illness. So, I cannot blame my parents and be angry at them for what happened. I have intellectualised it and have the utmost sympathy for them - they were products of their upbringing. My Dad was heaps better than my Mum at the emotional things when we were older, by the way. But saying this, there's still the little girl inside me who needs looking after and "rehabilitating" for want of a better word - we all have that little child who needs our care - and that's why I recommended the Louise Hay book and the Charles Whitworth book because they mention about how to do this....

Oops, sorry another long ramble....

[oneplusone]

Hi all, still here, am going away at the weekend. Smithfield, i can see there are a lot of similarities between us and our sisters. And how our siblings totally believed the false picture of us that was painted in my case by my dad and in your case by your mother.

But one quite big difference I think is that I have 2 sisters and that is what is the core of the problem for me I think. Because i always feel it's them against me, I'm always the one on the outside. I always feel as if I'm intruding on the two of them, they have never made me feel like part of their group and it seems silly as I am older than them. I should have been the typical 'bossy' older sister, in charge of our little group of 3 sisters. But because i was made the scapegoat/outsider by my dad, my sisters simply followed his lead and made me the outsider in relation to them.

My mother also contributed to it all as she would always take my sisters to eg gymnastics classes/flower making classes etc but she never once asked me if i would have liked to gone along as well. And so my sisters had plenty of opportunity to form a strong bond through shared experiences and activities and as i was never included in any of these, no wonder as the years went by i felt more and more isolated and alone and simply as if i did not belong to this family. I had no place in it, none of the others really wanted me there. I remember always having a feeling like if i wasn't there the rest of them ie parents and sisters would make a nice, neat little family unit with 2 sets of couples ie my parents and 2 sisters and i was just spoiling it all. On top of that, it was always me who seemed to be at the centre of a lot of the arguments in the house, they were usually between me and my dad and of course it was always made to look as if I had caused the arguments. Nobody had the slightest awareness that it was my dad who was constantly provoking me and needling me to cause a row. I am sure he got some kind of satisfaction out of having a blazing row with me, i am sure that is how he grew up and he was subconsciously recreating his childhood using me. If he had any self awareness he would have realised this. But of course he didn't and so he projected onto me for years.

I was thinking today that my situation was slightly comparable to that story in the news a while ago about that man in austria (i think) who kept one of his daughter's in an underground cave and abused her there. His wife seemed to not know what was going on although i doubt that myself, she must have wondered where one of her daughter's had disappeared to for 20 years. And apparently the same man was a perfectly normal father to the rest of the family in the house.

Well, my situation wasn't as awful as that, but it has a similarity in that i was singled out for the abuse and my mother knew what was happening but pretended not to know iykwim and my father treated my sisters relatively normally.

I think it was the fact that it was only me that was singled out for the abuse by my dad and only me that was emotionally abandoned and neglected by my mother that hurts the most. And then afterwards both my parents blamed me for the way i was. My dad used to blame me for being rude and snappy with him, and he would act like he was completely innocent and my rudeness and hostility towards him was all just down to who i was and my inherent 'badness'. And he would always make a point of openly comparing me to my 2 sisters who of course had a very different relationship with him because they had not been abused and he would always make out that i was the problem not him.

And my mother would always make out that she had problems in talking to me and having a relationship with me because i was difficult to talk to. Again i was totally unwilling to open up to her, in fact i was unable to open up to her even though many times i was actually desperate to talk about so many things, because of her abandonment and rejection of me when i was so young. Because she had made it so obvious she was not interested in listening to me by dismissing my feelings so many times when i had tried to talk to her, by the fact she had stood and watched my dad abuse me and did nothing, not just once but for years and years and years.

I must have been in so much emotional pain as a child, but i kept it all inside, i never showed anybody in real life what was happening at home or how i was feeling. I acted totally normally, put on a huge huge pretense of everything always being ok, no matter what my dad said or did to me. I not only pretended outside the home, but also inside the home as well, in front of my parents and sisters; there would one day be a huge nasty blazing row with my dad and he would say really vicious nasty things to me and the next day everything and everyone including me would be back to normal, acting as if nothing untoward had happened. I cannot even imagine now how i must have felt eg going to bed in the evening after one of those rows, how i would have felt the next day. I know i must have just numbed myself so i wouldn't have felt anything, it was the only way to survive at that time.

It's all coming out now which is a good thing i know. But the lack of understanding i am surrounded by has made it all so much much harder than it would otherwise have been. DH now seems to understand a little bit more, my sisters not at all and a couple of friends a little bit. I suppose it is always going to be a long hard road but i feel i have run out of energy right now. I need a break from it all but don't know how to switch off. The level of ignorance in our society in general about all of this is so sad. It seems people want to be blind, they don't want to open their eyes to all the abuse/neglect, especially emotional abuse, that is being inflicted on children every single day. It makes me feel very sad.

And today is my birthday, but i can't seem to stop crying. Not even sure why, i don't feel upset really. Since i cut off my parents birthdays have been hugely stressful occasions for me, i think it's just releif that at least one or two people remembered.

Lemon, like smithfield said you are not crashing this thread you are most welcome and i hope you feel 'at home' straightaway, You have been through so much and so has your DS, i respect your courage in keeping your little family unit together throughout it all.

And i have read that book you mentioned "Healing the Child Within" By charles whitfield (i think) and i have found it to be really helpful. I read it some time ago when i didn't fully understand what i was going through, but so many passages from that book come back to me as i gain more awareness and insight. I particularly like some of the poems in the book, they said it all really.

[oneplusone]

Just a little bit more to add. I have realised that i always seem to have a dread/fear/anxiety about people moving away/leaving.

Whenever i make a new friend locally for eg. if they even mention the vaguest possibilty that they may move house at some point in the future, i realise i feel a stab of pain/fear/anxiety about the possibility of losing that friend. I think it probably goes back to my very best friend at school, we were inseperable from age 5 til age 9/10 and then her family moved far away and we didn't see each other again. I made a new best friend quite quickly (or i realise now that i formed a strong attachment very quickly to somebody else as i was completely lacking an available mother/attachment figure in my life) but I must have been so upset at my first best friend leaving but i don't remember actually feeling upset or showing to my parents or anybody that i was very upset at my friend leaving. I suppose i have already been in the habit by then of suppressing my difficult emotions as my mother was incapable/unwilling to 'take' my feelings from me and help me deal with them. So i adapted myself so that i simply didn't have feelings, apart from those that i knew were acceptable to my parents ie happy 'all ok' feelings.

[oneplusone]

Sorry just a bit more; in a way my dad also left me when he turned into a 'psycho'. The nice kind loving dad disappeared never to return and he was replaced by a nasty evil dad who hated me. I must have been bewildered by what was going on, totally confused as to why my dad who i thought loved me now seemed to totally hate me. But again i didn't show or reveal my feelings or even felt them myself, there was no possibility of going to my mother with them. All that did emerge a few years later was a simmering rage and hostility towards my 'new' nasty dad which i carried around with me for years.

[Lemonylemon]

OPO HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU! Take some time out from this exhausting brain swirl and just be ... for a few minutes ... enjoy your birthday )

With regard to your sisters, I had to do the same with my 1 sister and my mum - just turned my back on them and turned inward to my little family unit. If you can distance yourself emotionally from them, then you might find it does you a favour. You can then start to look at them objectively - which is hard, I know. To begin to see things how they are and not how you think they should be, is a step forward. You can never change people, they can only change themselves - the thing you can do though, is change your reaction to them. By concentrating on you and your little family unit, you're concentrating on what is REALLY important - and that is you and yours....

[Roseability]

OPO - your point about being unable to turn to your mother rather than being unwilling struck a chord. My GM keeps leaving bad tempered messages on my phone, making it clear she is annoyed I am not keeping her up to date with how I am feeling. I would love to speak to her and open up about how tough I am finding these last weeks but I know to open up leaves me vulnerable to attack/criticism. I have caller ID now so I ignore her calls when I choose.

Happy Birthday! Please try and treat yourself today. I know it must hurt on occasions like this and I can tell you are sad. The situation with your sisters complicates things

I alluded to that abuse case in Austria a while back. I was pointing out that the evil man that did that to his daughter was considered a nice and decent man by the community. If someone like him can cover up his abuse so well, then it stands to reason that our parents can pull the wool over people's eyes. It gave me strength to believe that my parents are wrong and it isn't in my head as they keep telling me.

AN - you are so right. Fuck them indeed! My DH keeps saying this to me. Their opinions don't matter, they are like strangers.

[smithfield]

lemony- sounds a bit like your mother has parentified you. Turns the mother child relationship on its head. She wants you to nurture her and meet her needs?
What was her relationship like with your dad? What was her relationship like with your ds' father? Sorry being nosey arent I.

AN- I didnt expect such a reaction from you . Was just saying it as I saw it, plus I think I identify with that feeling of being responsible in some way for other's reactions. It's exhausting isnt it.

opo Happy Birthday my dear. Go and do something lovely for yourself.
Agree you should take a mental break/holiday as well for the weekend, things may become clearer if you give yourself a break for a short while.

[Lemonylemon]

Smithfield - yes, I think you're pretty much on the nail with my mum's problem. Have you ever read The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield? He does a series of books and in the second book, identifies personality types (I know that they are very generalised, but useful, all the same). My mum is a "poor me"/"glass half full" type of person. She did have a rough childhood back in Ireland, but she was with my dad for long enough to have taken heed of all the personal development etc. etc. that he was doing and involving all of us in.

She has got all the self-help books, my sister, brother and I to talk to about stuff (in a non-judgemental way), but she would prefer to sit in her house isolating herself which I think is a big waste of a life to be honest. She's the sort of person who won't call someone, she'll just wait and wait for them to call her. I used to call her every night after my dad died to check that she was OK and to see if there was anything I could do, but stopped this when my OH died as I thought that it wasn't all about her anymore and I had my own situation to deal with and just couldn't run around after her at the time....

Her relationship with my dad was good. They were together for over 40 years - and happy. My dad was a lot older than her. Her relationship with my DS's dad was OK - well, before she found out that he'd pissed all our money up the wall, got us into arrears with the mortgage; bailiffs appearing at the door when DS was 6 weeks old (and in my arms when I answered the door); left us with no money to buy food at Christmas; my having to bail him out when I was on maternity leave - you know the sort of thing......

But, I cannot be responsible for her reactions to things - she is an adult and I don't put myself in a position any longer where she can continue to let me down emotionally, a line has to be drawn somewhere and I think that it does take a lot of determination and giving yourself a good talking to, to get to that stage

[bohemianbint]

Hello,

is it too late for me to join in here? I've done a lot of posting about my (toxic) parents on here and some of you have been kind enough to help me over the last year or so.

In brief I was brought up by my father and SM and I am coming to realise they are both frighteningly controlling. We had a wedding a month ago and I invited my mother as well as them; they tried for months, every trick in the book to get me to not invite her. I stuck to my guns and I believe they are now punishing me. My father made the shittiest speech (probably would have appeared innocuous to people who weren't in the know) sticking the boot into my mother for not being there and going on about how bringing up kids is such a terrible sacrifice. Fortunately she wasn't there to hear it. He then refused to speak to me all day and left without saying goodbye, despite the fact I went over to him. He snubbed me and it has made me come to a point where I have taken a month out of having to talk to him, because I just have no energy left to deal with it.

I (finally!) have a counselling session in a week to help me come to terms with the situation. My SM got in touch last night for the first time in 2 weeks to see if she could "help" with the children. They never want to see the children, it always has to be under the guise of help, them doing something for me for which I should be grateful. I said we would be out in the morning, she said she had a lot on in the afternoon so when did I want help? She offers help, makes it impossible so complicated to accept, and then goes about all hangdog saying we reject their help. I don't want to cut them out entirely but any interaction with them at the moment involves my SM putting major guilt trips on me and placing all the blame for the current state of our relationship at my door. And I don't know how to deal with this, short of cutting them off, which as I say I'm reluctant to do.

Is this sort of behaviour fairly typical of control freaks?

Will start to read this thread in reverse now I think!