Confronted Abuser And Now I Feel Guilty

[wolfkitty]

My mother was sexually abused by her biological father. She developed PTSD which was not even a term when she was a young person, then she almost bled to death as a young woman because a male doctor was not interested in hearing her and listening to her. She married my father who had developed PTSD from being brutally beaten by his father then being in Vietnam as a young man. After eleven years of marriage they had me. Then they turned from the victim(s) into the abuser(s).

It took me until I was in my early thirties before I could confront either one of them and they both reacted totally different than I expected. I expected denial, excuses all the classic text book responses from an abuser. What I got was tears and loads of them. My mother denied it at first but after both my sister and I confronted her separately about the same situation she finally admitted to it. My father never denied it even once he just broke down into tears and just cried and cried. Over the last five years I have been getting to know their history and what has happened to them.

However, this may sound weird but I feel sort of cheated. Like I wanted this triumphant over throw of the "bad" people and come out looking like a hero or something. I guess deep down inside I wanted them to be this evil that I destroy in the end of the movie or something. However, I also feel rather guilty about having such strong negative feelings and that I want to hurt them back. Doesn't that make me just like them?

They were hurt so they then turned around and hurt me and now I am disappointed because I wanted to make them suffer too?

Has anyone had an experience where the abuser admitted their "crimes" and felt like it was a big let down?

I don't know its like I expected a war and I would fight and win the day!

It seems like confronting them was the best thing to happen to them. They both seam on the path to healing but I seem stuck in revenge mode.

 

[gone]

Okay, I'm hardly an expert, but it seems to be that even their admissions of guilt and their remorse are not going to erase your pent-up years of hurt, pain, betrayal, and general pissed-offedness. Your fantasies of getting justice—and that's what they are for you, imo, not revenge—got kind of waylaid by them saying, Oops, sorry. I mean people go to prison for abusing others (or should). The courts don't accept "sorry" and your guts are telling you that's not enough for you either.

So I'm not surprised that you feel let down. The remorse they've displayed may help on your path to healing in the long run (and seems to be helping them), but in the now it's just denying you your justifiable, honest, and understandable feelings of (fill in the blank)—rage, disappointment, bewilderment, surprise, hatred, pain. So I'd say honor those feelings for now, they are your true response to their despicable, possibly (I don't know your circumstances) illegal, treatment of you.

Also remember, those of us with PTSD tend to be first apologizers, as a way to parry conflict that frightens us. Maybe you and your sister are now frightening to your parents, so they caved fast. At any rate, confronting them was heroic!

Please pardon me if I'm way off base here... Thinking of my own complicated story of forgivness and anger with my parents.

 

[DMerish]

Reconciling the past is a difficult path regardless if the abuser(s) apologize. I agree with Amne - very heroic in confronting your parents, and whether or not they apologized to assuage their own feelings of guilt it was heroic for them admit what happened.

The anger you still feel and glimpses of wanting revenge are "normal" - Normal in the sense that your parents abuse was passed to them, they passed it to you, and now you have it within you. Your parents were unconscious of it being part of them. That's the difference between you and them. You now are conscious of these things! That's a huge step, and can lead to peace by working on yourself so it doesn't continue in you and spill out on others. Repair the past by working to prepare the type of relationships and future you want to be involved in. That's the key to reconciliation within one's self.

 

[Deleted member 1860]

Yes, one (and a half) admitted. I don't count the half because it was an admittance with deflection of responsibility. I was just glad it was over. I was glad there was no war. Read other posts. Many would KILL
To be in your position!

 

[Annie B]

This isn't going to make me popular but I feel very strongly about this topic. My question for the cosmos: is it so wrong to forgive our abusers?

Not all will change and feel remorse but some do. Sounds like your parents feel remorse and you are so so lucky to have that. Forgiveness doesn't mean letting them continue to hurt you, but it does lighten the burden on you (and them). Trust me, I know.

My parents have some serious issues caused by the way they were parented. Abuse, violence, grief were all common themes. My grandma even kept my mom sick as a child so she'd feel needed. Bizarre and twisted stuff. These poor people suffered in ways I didn't, luckily. In turn, they did their very best to raise me with the knowledge they had, but some of that stuff still came through. My mother has BPD and she comes from an era that doesn't seek a lot of psychological help. They were taught that advertising their issues to the world isn't heroic, that those issues were best out of sight out of mind. Suck it up and get over it right? Obviously that's not healthy but they didn't think so.

I saw some horrific things that they still don't know that I saw. I'm not going to tell them everything. It would solve nothing, they are very different people now. They have worked hard to change and become better. They are already tormented by the memories and the guilt without me putting salt in the wound.

Now don't misunderstand, you did a great thing confronting them! This is how you can start taking care of yourself properly! That is so difficult and will really help you resolve the past. I am proud of you!

My concern (the reason for this unsolicited rant) is whether you'll cling to or chase that feeling that you were robbed of this big "destroy the bad guy" scenario. I understand your feelings and I truly empathize. I'm not trying to make you feel bad or invalidate your frustration. I've been where you are. I've tried being the hero and confronting my mom but it backfired in a big big way. I stopped talking to my family for years after that and all it did was hurt me and make my ptsd symptoms worse. The anger and hate I carried around with me ruined my life. It got in the way of my healing, it kept me stuck in the past. I am only now realizing that my mom is sick (I didn't know about BPD until a couple months ago) and no amount of reason is going to ever completely sink in. I'm not going to get the apology I want. The best I can do now is love her and try not to let her sometimes irrational behavior hurt me and my family.

You have an opportunity to show your parents a great deal of love by accepting their apologies and working toward building a really solid new relationship with them. Break the cycle for good and don't let that animosity build up in your heart and destroy you.

Ok I'm sorry, just had to get this off my chest. :-/

 

[wolfkitty]

Thank you all for your words. I have been in contact with my parents for five years and their remorse seems real enough. It is amazing watching them. First I watched them both regress. It was so weird seeing both my parents act the age their were when their abuse happened. My dad seems to be "growing" up faster than my mom. My mom seems stuck at five, she even wines like a five year old it is just so weird. They are both getting help now and my dad goes to a weekly support group so their desire to change seems like they are committed to it.

So the things that happened to me where mostly psychological and unfortunately do not leave out side bruises or marks. Both my parents are anti-social geniuses. For the first five years of my life I had a "Leave It to Beaver" type life, although way out in isolation. However, I didn't understand at the time but both my parents were self medicating with pot. When I was five I started having black outs after my father would come home. Some how even then I linked it to the pot and told my father that if he didn't quit I was leaving him.

He believed me (another story I will be brief here) and six months later they both quit, but that is when my perfect little life went to h*** real quick. My mother would become completely catatonic and sit still in her chair and stare off into space and I was left on my own to take care of myself. She was also suicidal and between the ages of 5 and 17 I prevented her killing herself many times. The worst was when she almost took me and my sister with her. That is what I am still dealing with all these years. We lived at the bottom of a canyon and it was a steep drive down into the canyon to get to our home, one day my sister and I were being kids in the back seat together. I was like six and my sister was three. I was tickling her until she started crying and then she reached out and hit me. I started crying and soon we were both letting out big crocodile tears. My mother triggered and snapped she took the car and pulled it right over the edge of the cliff. To this day I remember how the car felt balanced on the edge. The whole front end of the car was off the road she set the emergency break and looked back at us with these completely blank, lifeless eyes and said "Nobody loves me I would be better off dead."

It took some fancy talking to get her off the edge and I prayed to God so hard. I think I might have done okay even then had not something happened about three months later. I was riding home with my dad coming into the canyon and on the side of the road was well at the time I was so young it looked like a man covered in red paint. When we got close though we got out of the car. My dad expected me to see what "real life" looked like and never spared me these kinds of things. It was man but he was covered in blood, his clothing was ripped and he was moaning.

"Daddy I said what happened?" My dad scouted around and saw the man's car off the side of the cliff. "His car went over honey this is what happens when you drive off the cliff." The image of that bloody man still haunts me and my childhood mind connected it to the threat of my mom's almost suicide/homicide. The man ended up living we had to stay with him until the ambulance came, but his pregnant wife did not make it. I am still so afraid of that part of the road to this day.

Several other times our mother would snap while driving and pull over to the side of the road get out of the car and walk away into the woods. I would have to run after her and bring her back so we could get home. I became the parent in our family, at the tender age of eight I took care of my sister and tried to become the "Perfect" child so mommy wouldn't snap and kill us all. It was a horrible way to grow up. Although may be not as horrible as those of you that were beaten or locked in rooms, wow!!!

My father was the rager, but he never hit us or beat of or touched us in anyway but his anger was loud and explosive and would trigger my mom every time. I hated him for it because then I had to then deal with a suicidal mother. However, his abuse to me was much more subtle more controlled. My father did not want a girl, he wanted a boy. So he treated me like a "son" and refused to acknowledge that I was a girl. He would make me do boy activities, and bought me boy toys and If I complained he would get real cold and sarcastic and verbally cruel with me. They even gave me a boys name and he made sure I knew it. I was dressed in boy clothes and expected to fight, sit, spit like a boy. Actually I am grateful to him it has helped me stand up for myself in many occasions where others would have abused me. However, I was not a boy and to this day I feel unloved for who I am and struggle with feeling so self-worth and my body image. My sister was different though he treated her as his delicate little princess and she could do not wrong. The worst of it though was when I was thirteen and started my menses. It became apparent then that his fantasy son was not a son after all no matter how hard he tried to pretend other wise. On my thirteenth birthday my father looked at me and said "well congratulations you have now become another air headed woman." Like it was some how my fault. He ignored me and avoided me that whole year, wouldn't speak to me or have anything to do with me.

He tried treating me like he did my mother after that but I was too much my father's "son" LOL. I didn't buy his crap and would confront him to his face every time. He seemed afraid of me and would back down but it made for a very confrontational time in my teen years.

Now he is proud of me his "daughter" he really seems to be making up for the way he treated me as a child. He even buys me very girly clothes now. He actually has good taste.

The other thing I am angry at him about though is he turned a blind eye to my mothers suicide attempts and pretended that they didn't happen. When I would try to tell him about them he would simply deny them and refused to believe me.

Well thanks for listening and your support I know that it seems pale next to some of your stories but it has deeply affected me my entire life.

 

[wolfkitty]

[DLMURL="https://www.myptsd.com/c/members/annie-b.14798/"]Annie B[/DLMURL]: I agree with you I want to forgive them and let go of this anger and hurt. That is why I feel so guilty to feel this way. But it is how I feel right now. I am trying so hard to let go but then I go to sleep and the nightmares come and I wake up angry all over again. I am really glad I only wake up angry once or twice a week now, it used to be every day. So maybe soon I can completely let it go and finally forgive completely but not there yet =( Just wanted to see if anybody else has had a similar experience.

 

[Annie B]

I never said forgiving was easy. ;)

You are taking all of the right steps and you're doing great! We can't force these things, even if we want to. My post was simply a word of warning from one who understands, not an attack of any kind.

You've been through a lot. You're an incredibly strong person. You can do this!

 

[wolfkitty]

[DLMURL="https://www.myptsd.com/c/members/annie-b.14798/"]Annie B[/DLMURL]
Thank you, first I wanted to say I did not take your words as an attack of any kind. I was just wanting to reply to what you said.

Thank you for sharing, sometimes when I read what others have been through I think, dang girl you didn't have it that bad.

I wasn't raped, or beaten or brutalized in my home growing up, however getting death threats from your mother several times a year when you are growing up...well it makes it very hard to feel safe in the world. It is hard to trust anybody when that one person who you are supposed to turn to above all else, when you are a child, is scary and threatening and unavailable.

Thank you for your words of support as well, even though I don't feel strong at times I realize to have been through all I have been through I must be strong.

I wasn't sexually molested in my home but I was in school all the time. Ironically even though my dad insisted I was a boy, I wasn't even close. People used to describe me as angelic even with short hair. I had these beautiful big ice blue eyes, pale blond hair (you know the kind that it seems every woman dyes her hair to try and emulate?) and this pale china doll skin. I was so beautiful. I looked ethereal like a fairy or something. I didn't believe I was beautiful back then my father would tell me over and over that I was never going to be beautiful and I believed him. It made the sexual abuse even harder to handle because I couldn't understand why all the boys wanted to be with "dog face".

However, when I go back and look at the pictures of myself I don't' have a clue as to what my father was talking about.