narcissistic mother\angry, depressed father

[elizabeth26]

I am not living with my parents currently, I moved out as soon as was possible for me. I recently decided to go back through my childhood memories and figure out why my parents behaved the way they did. It has been very difficult, as I thought I was over everything and definitely can pretend like I had a good childhood. My parents are very different now. My mother has a bad outlook on life but I don't think that will ever change. I have always known that there was something wrong with my mother but I feel like I have a better idea of what exactly the problem is now that we are on better terms. She was always overbearing and over-involved in my life growing up, until she wasn't. It was hot or cold with her. I was made aware that me and my sisters were a reflection of her, which is normal I guess but at times it did not feel normal. she could do hurtful things, like waking me up in the early hours of the morning to tell me what was wrong with my behavior, on school nights. She would correct my bad behavior when we were out by grabbing my arm under a table where no one would see and squeezing it really hard, or pinching me, while looking at me as if she was daring me to cry. I always felt emotionally 'not there' growing up and I really can't explain that. I just remember feeling trapped all the time. When I was 10 we moved from town, living across the street from my aunt (my dad's sister) out to the country, and things were pretty bad. My parent were stressed, my dad had recently lost his job. My mother had recently started going to community college and was doing well in her classes, but the house work was left up to us kids, mainly my older sister and I. R was 11 at the time, A was 7, and S wasn't born yet but came 2 years later. we all have very different personalities and growing up I realize we all were coping with our parenting in different ways. I was the middle child and I was very much rebellient to my mother, but I always felt bad when my father had to get involved. He was the only person who could make me feel genuinely sorry about anything I had done. I know he had a wall up to protect himself but he was a very sensitive person and I knew he loved me very much, I have a hard time holding anything against him even though some punishments were so harsh and painful even now. We got in trouble for small things, my sister R got in trouble for taking a spoonful of peanut butter and hiding in the bathroom to eat it. My dad hit her so hard she had bruises. I cried and yelled that that wasn't right, I got hit as well for talking back. There were a lot of times I got in trouble and it was mostly me who got the bad punishment. It felt like there was no one there who would defend us. I had ideas about turning my parents in to child protection and I knew I would never be able to do it. One day I got in trouble for not doing my chores, the dishes and kitchen, My father was so mad he threw me around the kitchen and I hit my head repeatedly on cabinets, he picked me up of the ground slammed me against a wall and screamed at me I peed on the wall I was so terrified. The next day at school I told a friend, she ran to the office and I was called in. I admitted that I had told my friend the truth, we are still very close after this incident. I had to take my shirt off so they could see the bruises on my back. I remember feeling like I had betrayed my dad and my family and I thought they were going to take me away. A counselor called me out of class and talked to me out side by the playground at my school, he asked me a lot of questions like did this happen often? and did my father drink? Did I want to move away from my parents? I lied and said it was the first time my father had lost his temper, lied that I felt in danger sometimes, and told him not to get my dad in trouble. He told me my father would be speaking to a counselor but, there wouldn't be any charges filed, he wouldn't be arrested. That is the last time my father went that far in his punishments. I knew and he knew what had happened, but I don't think anyone else did. I have never told another person.

 

My mother was hurtful to me growing up, I think she really didn't like me or my personality. She thought I was a jerk and thought I didn't care about anything but my self. There were times when she was nice to me, like when she and my father read my diary after my bicycle got run over (my younger sister left it out) and she called me outside to move my bike (after my aunt accidentally ran it over) and I cried because I hadn't even left it out. She bought me a new bicycle and I remember feeling so happy. There were times that she could be so evil though. I got in trouble for taking too long in the shower, she practically broke the door down she was screaming at me. we had neighbors at the time, who happened to be outside. She tried to rip my towel off and throw me outside, she told me to walk around the house or she would lock me outside, I was 13 at the time. I said no, that she was crazy and I would tell people about how she treated me. She was really pissed, but she didn't make me go outside. I realized then that she cared very much about what other people thought and used that against her up until I moved out when I was 18. My goal in life was to make sure that my younger sisters did not have the same childhood I had. when my mother got out of control, I faced her myself. It was up to my older sister and I to get my younger sisters ready for school in the morning, when my littlest sister S was pre-school aged I would wake her up and put her clothes up in her top bunk bed so she could get dressed, she was easy to deal with that way. I actually gad a deal with her about that, she didn't like to wake up and have light in her eyes, she was not a morning person. One day my mother (she usually screamed from her bed, expecting updates) got up and walked into my little sisters' room. She didn't see her getting dressed under the covers and just ripped her from bed and almost hurt her, S was crying (she was 4!) I was so mad I just screamed at her, telling her that S was getting dressed and what the heck was she doing? She shoved and punched me and went to call my father. I asked her how she was going to explain the bruises? I calmed down S, got her dressed and left early. We always tried to keep her in bed in the morning, A would bring her coffee, and talk with her and R and I would get S ready. R was always more obedient than me, I think she thought that if she did what she was told she would be ok. I think that is why she had it so hard years later when she was a grown woman, she really had a hard time coping with the abuse.

 

I realize now through therapy that my parents have definite mental disorders, my father's dad died of cancer when he was only 10, and beat him severely, trying to make him buck up and be responsible, he beat him to a pulp before going into the hospital and dying. His mother was seriously disabled;left side paralyzed by strokes due to a aneurism she had at 21, she had grad-mal seizures often. My dad had his older sister. My father believed he would die before he was 40. He told us about this a few times growing up. He was severely depressed.

 

My mother's parents were married in high school (unexpected pregnancy) They separated soon after, my mother didn't see her father often. She was an only child of that marriage. My grandmother was a serial-dater, very beautiful, she looked like elizabeth taylor. My mother was molested by one of her mother's husbands. She went to her father, and he was furious with her mother. Because of my mother's 'strange mood swings' she didn't stay with her father and stepmother very long. According to my grandparents (after my older sister had a nervous breakdown, we talked seriously about a lot of things.) According to my mother, she felt un-loved and my aunt H was the only daughter they really cared about. She lived with a friend from high school's family before moving out on her own, she dropped out of high school, she was a popular girl and I've seen her yearbook, she is in so many pictures. She met my father at a store where they both worked, after dating awhile she became pregnant at age 19, after a year they were married, when she was 6 months pregnant with me. She loves to tell me about ex-boyfriends and high school, and says very unkind things about my father taking so long to marry her. My therapist believes she has narcissistic personality disorder, which is fairly common.

 

 

I realize that this is more like a novel than a post. If anyone has a similar story I would be glad to hear it. As for me, I don't need sympathy I have a loving family and amazing friends, which is why I never thought I would need to relive these awful years, but it was for the best I feel I better understand my family now.

[Spark1111]

Your story is heartbreaking. I have spent many years in therapy trying to understand my childhood too.

 

I have learned you cannot change the past; while my parents were two fragile and damaged people, they did the best they could with what they had. Unfortunately, they both did not have a lot.

 

Once I truly understood them, I could forgive them and stop wishing they were different people, or that I had a different childhood than the one I did.

 

I have amazing resources of strength and compassion, because of the childhood I had. I love myself, and only entertain relationships that nurture me, though that was hard to learn to do. For awhile, pre-therapy, I attracted many unstable personalities, probably because it felt familiar.

 

I will not give up healing myself in this lifetime, going back for frequent "mental health tune-ups.";)

 

You are on the right road; the beginning of a long and arduous journey that will hopefully help you to find joy.

 

Good luck to you.

[elizabeth26]

I agree wholeheartedly! It's sad but I can see that my parents had good intentions, and they are actually very supportive of me in all I do. I am a strong person because of all the crap I have been through and know that parenting is difficult and emotional discipline is extremely unhealthy. Many people talk about how they do not want to end up like their parents but to actually be able to do that, I believe you must revisit your childhood objectively as is possible and try to understand your parents. All the heartbreak they went through was really disarming. I went through this mostly for my sister, who took good care of all of us growing up and now I feel like a whole person.

[carhill]

OP, kudos to you for walking the path and seeing it with clarity. Acceptance can heal. You're not alone.

 

That said, in my own M and in other marriages I've been privy to over the last 20 or so years, there seems to be a commonality of incompatibility which runs through them related to this aspect of family history. The most common statement I've heard, both from my stbx and other partners whom I've listened to, is 'you will never understand' because I didn't go through the hell of their childhoods. The behaviors exemplify this. I've come to believe, with much experience, that this aspect is a fundamental incompatibility at the most essential personality styles and emotional setpoints. We covered a lot of this in MC.

 

There is no right and wrong here, as our life experiences and our childhoods are part of who we are, but we must acknowledge our differences in order to accept them and find commonality and/or unity, or accept that we are incompatible. To be perfectly honest, now that I'm nearly divorced and dating again, when I get a whiff of the 'bad childhood' dynamic, whether in behavior or reference to family, specifically where recitation is couched as 'complaint' or 'venting' or 'frustration', I know it's time for me to go. Those are signs of someone who hasn't yet accepted and processed their history. At 50 (my age), I expect people to have worked through the imperfections of their past, as I have. No family is perfect. Mine was no different. It is what it is. We live with it and learn and grow from it and in spite of it.

 

Best wishes to you in your future. I hope life continues to bless you

Edited April 1, 2010 by carhill

[Spark1111]

Carhill, I agree. Venting about our childhood and actually processing it and coming to terms with it are two separate and distinct issues; one implies a person must be forgiven all their damaged interactions and bespeaks a continuing of the victim mentality. Poor me, I was abused.

 

There is no personal accountability in that mindset.

 

When you own and process it, forgive that it happened to you, it is freeing to no longer claim the victim card!

[Dooda]

Elizabeth, I can't totally relate, but I can relate on some levels.

My father was the one who beat me, punched me in the face, belittled me. He would give me the 'silent treatment', and this was after a long beating by him, or him getting angry at me and not controlling the way he acted.

My mom would swear at me, say things like : "I wish you were never born." They weren't as emotionally unbalanced as yours, but I think, through the way they grew up and the financial struggle they went through, they learnt to treat me like this. They thought that by being hard on me, they would make me a better person and make me not have to realise the struggle THEY went through.

I have been feeling very, very sorry for myself these days. Why the hell was I not born into a supportive family? But, reading some of these threads, it has made me realize that no family is perfect.

I have this deep hatred for my parents. I feel robbed, robbed of a proper childhood, robbed of a sense of self, of who I am, of the choices that I am making in life. I feel robbed in all senses. Abusive parents don't realise that they are being abusive. They wouldn't be abusive if they did.

Perhaps, being raised like this has caused me to gain a sort of awareness, of human relationships.

It takes a lot of heart to reveal what you did.

[elizabeth26]

Thank you very much for that post! My childhood experience has been hard to accept, it has affected me as a person in the way I treat others, but in a positive way. But once I was too acommodating I practically apologized for the way I was. I'm still the same person, I have the same likes and dislikes, but I am more open and upfront with people, especially those who try to bulldoze me. I used to be terrified of having a child of my own. Being able to help my sisters cope with our raising has been a real blessing. As long as you know in your heart that the treatment was wrong, that someone struck you out of their own bad inner feelings, you feel sorry for them and that it happened but not responsible.