Complex Trauma From Parents

[sarahvee]

holy crap! I thought I was alone in this - my Dad would also routinely fly off the handle and seems like a totally different person now. There are still glimpses of the old him, but he's definitely changed as he's gotten older. I have a much better relationship with him now than I used to. Still, the history's still there, and he still has a lot of limitations. Bittersweet, I guess.

 

[BlueKitty]

I am surprised at how many of the primary abusers have 'mellowed'. Did it help with anyone with the healing process?

Mine is no longer physically beating the living h*ll out of me, probably because now I am way above her physically. On rare occasions that I 'talk' with her, I usually say and do whatever is in her textbook of conversation, to avoid even the slightest measure of open conflict. BUT. In truth, I still can't help seeing and feeling the humiliating looks and the out-of-control woman with a weapon, regardless of what's being displayed before my eyes.

 

[just me here]

I was lulled into beleiving that my step mother had mellowed, or at least come to terms with her need for a caretaker after my father became infirm and was willing to compromise her cult like religious views to be at least acceptable as a functioning human being again.

I allowed her back in after maintaining distance for 30 plus years. After just 6 months of being here, the judgemental religious views started to come to the surface, then the passive aggressive traits, then she decided that I was too much of a threat to her hold on my father through her religion and his complacency and started looking for reasons to cut ties. When I didn't give her any, she invented them.

This is the way I remember her as an eleven year old, enforcing strict adherance to her religious beleifs and my father punishing me for my shortcomings without question. She has invented a reason to keep us apart (me and my father) and is willing to lie, change conversations including time and place, create events that never happened at all- whatever it takes to maintain her view that I am evil and my fathers willingness to follow her lead rather than think on his own. She has gotten far better at the manipulation game, he is mentally unable to think clearly due to parkinsons.

I was fooled into beleiving that she was tired of having no one to call a friend, no children to call her a parent. Reality is that she has just gotten worse and worse, better at the passive aggressive traits, better at the manipulation and better at leading my father like a cow on a rope.

One good thing is that it has allowed me to see her as she really is, without the self doubt and guilt associated with all of the criticisms she laid on me as an eleven year old.

once again, as always, these religious cults are like a death without a funeral. they go in, but they don't come out. My parents are basically a four legged mental illness and I get a front row seat for the show they will be puting on until their deaths. I should have maintained the distance, I should have been aware that they just don't get better.

 

[Sethe]

You know, I just read through this again and I think part of me is afraid to distance myself from my parents. Shit, maybe I do have some form of Stockholm's.

 

[Bob from New Jersey]

If our parents were going to change, they would have already, long ago, and their children would not be reading about children who have (C)PTSD as a result of their childhoods (if that is what it was :) ).

<Edited by Anthony: cut quote down - please do not quote entire posts, just the part you want to respond, otherwise just open with the respondents name>

I read you post, which I I'm trying to find about denial, and being 'guilty by proxy,' which was excellently written. I'm just beginning my jurney from realising I was a victim--survivor and working through the anger I have at my family brother and father. ANyw ay your 'proxy' post, along with the comment that followed, prompted me to join this forum. TY

 

[shell]

Yes parents can change, however as much as my mother admits what she did was wrong, and that she realized she was destroying me, it doesn't make her take full responsibility for what she did. She still excuses what she did by saying I was extremely strong willed, and that I had no boundaries. She was even willing to tell me everything she did to me when I mentioned how little I remembered, that much of it is fragmented, but she is the last person I want to discuss it with.
She is much more mellow, she goes out of her way to be nice, but for me it just seems like shes performing, projecting an image of how she wants to be seen. Every now and then the denial slips out, and she says something really mean, that shows me she totally blames me for what happened, and that while she is trying really hard, the emotional abuse is so ingrained she doesn't even realize I see what she is doing.