I hate my mother. I cant take it anymore

[MinnieMude]

Hello ,
I really dont know where to begin.
I have always had a rubbish relationship with my mother, I have 3 younger brothers, it has always felt like she hates me, she was quite abusive towards me when I was young, I know I was no saint, and apparently I was a difficult child according to her. She has always had a seriously bad temper, if I did something 'naughty' as a child/teen I never got a mild smack like my brothers, she would slap me across the face, push my head against the wall, bang my chest, once when I was 7 or 8 she chased me (i cant even remember what Im did to deserve it) and when she caught me she grabbed me by the throat with her arm and tried strangling me, Mum and dad devorced, I have a great relationship with my dad, I used to tell him about her....She used to push my face into my food, and throw my food into my face, there are so many things....
Im 27 now with two girls and a husband, I havent spoken to her for 7 months after a row we had at my house, she was telling me I have problems, to which I replied and said I did because of her, I mentioned some of the things she used to do to me to her and she told me I was lying and I was making it all up, I was so so so upset, I was a mess, hysterical, and raised a fist to her and told her I never want to see her again, I never hit her, I wouldnt have, I was just so so angry with her telling me I was making the past up.
Im very very close to my brothers, but they refuse to get involved, I dont blame them...
I was on Facebook last night chatting to my brothers (he lives with my mother)..and he said, Oh mum says hi... Then I had a phone call from her, she was horrible on the phone, still telling me that I was making all the abuse she gave me up!
I dont want her to not lose contact with my dds and arranged for her to see my eldest before christmas, I thought I was doing the grown up thing, and I arranged it all, she told me on the phone, that when she dropped my DD off, my husband, who answered the door to her, was cold and took my daughter and closed the door, this wasnt true, I heard my DH, he was very pleasent and asked if everything went ok, and she was the one who left in a hurry....
She has told all of my family about our arguement and none of them speak to me, only say hi, we live in a small town, and I often see my family, but I can see that they feel awkward speaking to me....
Oh, and she never sent my DD a birthday card, she was 5 just after chrismas....
Im making my self ill, Im so angry and upset, ive taken to the bottle , im already on anti depressants,...My husband is a very good listener, but he never knows what to say.my husband works away all the time tho.
Is it me??....im such a mess, Im lost...I have no 'close friends' to talk to, I hate her, why is she like this to me, she is always on facebook saying how much she loves her 'boys' my brothers...
I wish she would vanish.

feck, that was almost as long as your post op! sorry again

OP would your GP be willing to refer you for counselling on the NHS? Worth asking.

i am sorry but imo i would not let her be with your children on her own?

why would you after she did what she did, it was abuse after all.

Wonderif, it is often not that straightforward. Abusive parents can be wonderful in other relationships. My mum is a good granny, just an appalling mother. My children see her for THEIR benefit rather than hers/mine.

I don't know if it's already been suggested but please take a look here

It's not you, please believe that.

Thank you everyone, I was a little apprehensive about posting on here tbh, Im very glad I did, the advice and links some of you have posted is incredibly helpful, especially the info on Narcissistic Mothers, something I had never realised, but so true. Thank you.

Minnie

If it's of any comfort, I recall mentioning two specific incidents to my mum as an adult, which happened as a child, and she denied both... both of which there were/are witnesses to, but she still denied them.

My dad spent most of his time in the pub, whether it was to avoid her or to be able to face her I dunno, but when he was at home he wasn't a good parent either. (I have had counselling for his actions towards myself & my sisters, I don't want to say in as many words, but you get the picture.)

It's funny, but as my parents have got older, they have seemed to rewrite history - three of my sisters have done the same, only one 100% agrees with me, as she was the one who came out worst off every time No matter what the rest of us tried to stop it.

Grace - do you really mean you were happy when your dad died? I often think about how I would feel, as I have mixed feelings for mine, I will never forget the past, but part of me feels something, and from conversations I have had with other 'survivors' a percentage of them feel the same way towards their abusers.

Minnie, I'm not in the position to offer you advice, but I can offer you support xo

MM there are many of us on here who have parents who are or were abusive. I have no advice for you, except to say that I have managed to take a step back by imagining a glass wall between me and my Mum. For a while I had to turn my back on her and concentrate on my own little family unit (my daughter had just been born and my OH had died, my son was also suffering too).

I don't hug my Mum or kiss her, in fact I don't even touch her. I encourage my children to hug and kiss her though. This is the only way I can deal with her rejection of me as a toddler. She said that she didn't hug or kiss me after I was about a year old because I pushed her away.... and she never did again.

I think that there comes a time when enough is enough and the natural wanting of children to gain their parents' approval has to be curtailed. I think this is what you need to do because she's sucking the life out of you by her unnatural self-absorption and the fact that she has so little empathy towards you.

Connie, I had the complexity of feelings you would expect. It's enough to tell you: I chose to see the body. I stared at it for ages, the single thought running through my head ... "You can't hurt me any more."
The hurt he'd already caused was so extensive, I'm still dealing with it. But that day meant he would no longer cause any more. Of course I was pleased.

Lemony and MM - the glass wall is a good idea! I have an invisible blue bubble

am in the same boat,and am convinced if my dad dies i wont make a flicker but even though my mum wasnt the best and has let me down all the way upto our contact ending i still worry it will damage me,i know i am very fragile and just holding things together and worry i wont when she dies. as my husband says "its time to be a cold hard bastard like me" i really wish i could

saggy no, you don't have to be a cold hard bastard - you just need to self-preserve more. Different thing. Try the glass wall thing or the invisible blue bubble thing if that suits you better. By metaphorically turning your back, you can concentrate on you and yours and are you able to get hold of all the toxic parents books that have been recommended by various posters?

Grace - I have the blue bubble over our house....

I'm not sure talking about "rewriting history" is helpful.
If 3 different people see an event they will remember different things about it and years later will probably view it differently.
Your mum maybe just remembers the event differently to you. I think insisting your rememberance is the only true rememberance of the event and anyone else, sibs parents etc who remembers it differently is lying and rewriting history isn't helpful.
I'm sure there are many incidents from my own childhood where my parents and I have different views of what happened. Insisting I am right and they are wrong doesn't help and just antagonises people.
I can understand that you were hurt by stuff in your past, but I doubt that your mum is deliberately lying about what happened. She just remembers it differently to you. Also discipline was stricter 30-50 years ago so many older people do regard physically disciplining children as nothing to make a fuss about.
I really think you have to put the whole childhood thing firmly in the past and move on, going over stuff doesn't help.
It sounds as though your mum doesn't seek out your company much which upsets you but if she prefers the company of other people you will have to accept that and find people who do enjoy your company and stop thinking about your mum and wanting a relationship that isn't there and is never going to be there.

Er, 2rebecca, the OP says:
"she would ... push my head against the wall, bang my chest ... she chased me and when she caught me she grabbed me by the throat with her arm and tried strangling me ... She used to push my face into my food"

Possibly there are things from your own past that you prefer to hold in their 'rewritten' version, but I don't see how you feel that belittling the OP's stated experience might help her.

Thank Christ you are not a counsellor 2rebecca. You are sputing simplistic, damaging nonsense. Perhaps you should respect the advice of the people on this thread who have begun the healing process rather than jump in to a sensitive subject which such a patent lack of understanding.

Sexual abusers of children "remember" their actions differently to the children they abuse. And they lie. And their victims can't help but "go over stuff". Emotional and physical abuse has a similar legacy. Perhaps you ought to reconsider posting to people who have been abused??

thanks 2rebecca are you friends with my mother by any chance?

2rebecca has said bollox on other threads. Just ignore.

2rebecca. I'm sure you mean to help (giving the benefit of the doubt here) but your post of 18:39 is quite astoundingly crass.

Oh no I think 2rebecca is spot on.

All this time and I could have just pulled myself together, stopped dwelling in the past and just gotten over it.

Simples!

That post by 2rebecca is shocking! It's the sort of post the op's Mum would probably make.

I would have to say I personally would cut all contact with her and would definately not leave the children with her. I had a horrific childhood, was abused since I was very tiny-left in the garden in winter with only a nappy on at 12months whilst my mum went out, she would put me on the bonnet of my dads car as he was driving off to stop him from leaving, shut out of the house all day from a young age with no food or suitable clothing, make me eat food that was mouldy/months out of date, eat my food out the dogs bowl, woken up at 2/3/4am beaten to a pulp and screamed at, left alone for a week whilst she went on holiday etc etc etc
you get the picture

I havent had contact since 15/16 so nrly 10 yrs now and Ive felt totally liberated since then. Ive not had a contact although the past 2 yrs shes written to me twice, the latest b4 xmas, she cant understand why i wont get in touch "theres no reason to" etc etc

But there is, because she will never ever change, she is who she is and I would never allow my children to get caught up in someone with such a warped minds life.

2rebecca -your post is extremely offensive and utter bollocks. You would never be able to understand unless youd been through similar

Against my innate desire To Be Liked - and against my revulsion at 2rebecca's post - I'm going to advance a view that sounds like hers .

After LENGTHY, in-depth therapy, I am able to take a view similar to what she outlined. I appreciate why my mum is like she is; I understand how my sibs' experiences of our childhood came to differ from one another. In spite of all this intensive work - quite a bit of it full-time - I still reach a fresh understanding once a week or so. I still 'recover' memories every so often and, each time, I need to grieve for what went wrong at that moment.

I have a great deal of sympathy for my mother. She is, in the final analysis, more fucked-up than I am. She copes by denial: the poor woman holds in her mind two, mutually exclusive but simultaneous, pictures of her life and her self. It wouldn't surprise me if that inner conflict is the origin of her health problems. Over the past few years, my mum & I have discussed & argued our history. She's conceded some of my more hideous memories and that was all I could ask of a fragile, elderly woman. In return, I validated her "reasons" for what happened & didn't happen. That was all I could give her.

In a way, the resolution we strive for is like what 2rebecca outlined. We can't make a bad mother into a good one. All the care & sympathy we wanted (and deserved, being children) from our mothers is missing, and can't be put back, except by our own good selves. There's a world of difference, though, between "That's the way it is, get over it" and "That's the way it was - how far can we heal it?"

Sorry if this comes out garbled. It's a big concept to discuss in one post!

Can I say Minniemude that you may find if you don't see your mum anymore, give yourself space and don't have to submit to all those sh*y comments she can't help making; that you won't actually need a counsellor. I saw a counsellor after deciding to go no contact with my dad, and it took 2 sessions to realise that all I was worried about was other people's perceptions about my decision. I have not regretted this decision - a year now - feel stronger and more confident. Some people don't understand but I know it's for the right reasons.

I hear you when you say you want to hurt her for the harm she has done to you, but the hurting has to stop. If I were you I'd just quietly drop out of her life and only spend time with people who love and nurture you.

Jolly good for you, mitfordsisters. How do you get along with your mother?

OP - www.daughtersofnarcassisticmothers.com is where I had my lightbulb moment. I see it has already been mentioned in this thread.

I recall a time watching my mum throw my younger sister around the kitchen by her hair and throwing her into walls. We were around 7 and 8 at the time. It is so fresh in my mind..

However is MAY just be that me and my sister have remembered it differently to my mother....

Aargghh. Throwing children was my dad's speciality. Mum used to stand there, whimpering "Don't do that, you'll make them insecure"

Parents. Can't live with 'em. Can't shoot 'em.