Childhood I Need To Talk About My Mother

[reddy4765]

an unfortunate cross between Faye Dunaway from mommie dearest and Mo'nique from Precious. can't tell if narcissistic, sociopathic, bipolar, borderline. definitely deeply troubled, self-absorbed, lacking in empathy, w/ psychotic features. not sure if the 'psychotic' outbursts were abt control or not.

it was so long ago that cannot remember well, but every now and again something will trigger a flashback and I'll think, "it was bad, wasn't it". I am the kind of adult who can deal well with these kinds of personalities: I am mature, empathetic, grounded. but as a kid it is all too much.

sometimes my mom showed that she cared. sometimes tried to make an effort. was a terrible parent tho. I blame a lot of stuff on her and rightfully so.

I've confided in others around the internet, and they seem to imagine that I'm holding a grudge, but am not. I just don't believe she has changed, that she can change, and I need to protect myself. 20 years was long enough, I get to live my own life now.

 

[illusionist]

Doesn't matter what others think...you have to do what you have to do...coming from a mother who doesn't understand where my daughter is coming from but respects that she had different perspectives from myself.........fook everyone else. Do what you need to do. I only care about my daughter's health and if that means I'm going to be the worst person on this planet, and my daughter stays sane...I will take that title.

 

[VioletButterfly]

Own your feelings and trust them. EOD!!!! If you feel that you didn't get what you needed for whatever reason, then you have cause to mourn, if nothing else, what you lost out on. If she was a true narcissist, then so be it. That doesn't negate your need to be nurtured. Try journaling and therapy without judgment - she was damaged and this is why she treated you as she did. This doesn't excuse her behavior, but it allows you to humanize her. Forgive her and get on with your life. Stop the anger. Work out your issues, unknit the sweater, and take care of yourself NOW, not then. You can't undo the past, but you can create your now and your future. I'm in the same boat and it is a struggle!!!! I get it, but I also can get beyond it. It isn't easy, and requires a lot of support and struggle from all available resources. You deserve it! Why give up more of your power and life to someone who was unable to love you in the way you needed? It isn't worth it for you. You are here to live your life. Make it the best you can be and the most you can have, filled with love and compassion. You deserve this!!! Not a Polly Anna, but one who is working the same program and taking the same steps. I don't know what else to do but to change the way I think about it because I can't change the way it was. I hope this helps, it has certainly helped me to write it to you! VB

 

[BF-DR]

Reddy,
I haven't seen either of those movies (I lived a life too close to that in childhood to need to see that kind of sh*t again), but get where you're coming from. I spent years being invalidated about my own mthr's abuse of me, when the truth is she was horrifically abusive, I really had no clue that that was the case for a very long time, until I found ways to allow myself to truly see (without blinders) what was going on.

Have you looked at any information re: how women commit abuse, as opposed to men? You might find some interesting perspectives there, that could help you figure some of this stuff out. Most things written about violence are mainly looking at it from the male offender perspective, so don't always fit quite right. For instance, Robert Hare's research on psychopathy, and its resultant PCL-R test, was developed entirely on violent male offenders incarcerated in a maximum security penitentiary. Hare never meant it to be used for diagnosis (only research), but it got used for violent men, and then extended to women without going back and re-examining the basic criteria - so it misses a lot of female psychopaths.

One of the things that really helped move me forward was a kind of out-of-the-box thinking exercise (sometimes used in business to diagnose and solve really thorny problems that are hard to identify root cause for): allow yourself to stand outside of the problem, and think of at least two different, and opposing, perspectives you could use to examine the problem from. More, if you can imagine them. This was a key for me, because I don't remember most of my childhood, and had to work from the few memories I did have. It turned out, that was enough to set me on the right path.

In my case, I kind of framed it as:
- Perspective 1: what if everyone else is right, and my mthr really is a decent, wonderful person, and I'm the one who's seeing it wrong? What is the evidence for, and against, that?
- Perspective 2: what if my feelings (and symptoms) are right, and she's really a horrible monster that no-one else recognizes? What is the evidence for, and against, that?

You can keep on adding perspectives to examine the problem from, and even try to step into someone else's shoes to answer the questions. I found that doing that allowed me to step out of the 'you'll be in danger if you tell anybody' reflex reaction I had always grown up with (but couldn't recognize), because this was clearly just a game - not reality. It helps to really exaggerate the perspectives (in IT there's something called a boundary test where you test something at its limits to see if it still holds true or handles the situation properly without giving false results). When pushing the different logical perspectives to their limits things quickly show themselves as far-fetched, or 'Wow, that's still true! even then!' You really start to get a feeling for not only whether or not things are true, but also HOW true.

Of course, you may start to find out information you don't really want to know. In my case this came from:
- Perspective 3: what if my feelings and symptoms are right, and everyone else sees it too, so is only PRETENDING that my mthr is a decent, wonderful person? That turned out to be too much truth for me to handle, and I stepped away from that pretty quickly.

 

[reddy4765]

what if my feelings and symptoms are right, and everyone else sees it too, so is only PRETENDING that my mthr is a decent, wonderful person? That turned out to be too much truth for me to handle, and I stepped away from that pretty quickly.

I think this is the right one, and it's other people who don't want to see the truth. the trauma is there tho; comparable images to what I knew throw me into a numb, traumatized funk. my mind and body won't let me forget.

 

[Deleted member 12723]

Both of my parents were abusive but my mother was cruel and my dad was sadistact;

You are trusting your gut instincts and I say go with those feelings they never lie.

I had to cut off contact with my family because I had two children who I wanted to protect. I felt awful for a long time, but son died in mototcycle accident and I have my only daughter telling me that I am her hero for breaking the cycles of abuse.

I wish you well.

 

[fogshots]

Wow.
I am new to PTSD. It took a long time for me to admit or face that my mother, who did not hit me, emotionallly abused me to the point of PTSD. And she did. Ten years after disowning me from the grave and all the years before that of making tapes that play in my head: I call the songs CRAP (a play on Rap) I finally get why I've always been nervous, depressed and distrustful of my siblings who claim Mother was "nice" and it was my fault.

My Crap song selection includes such blockbuster hist, at least to me, such as "You're Stupid" "You Don't Try and are Lazy," "You're SELFISH!" "When I first held you in my arms as I baby, I felt nothing, absolutely nothing" "The Mocking, Humiliating Tune"...and the like. It is hard to fight these "songs" in my head, but I did manage to marry a good man and make my own functional family. It was simple. Do the op postie of what she did.

When I saw "Mommie Dearest" I was hypnotized by the "no wire hangers" scene. My mother didn't hit me or make me do abusive chores, but she used to wake me out of a peaceful sleep, scaring me by yelling, a nd start telling me all about something I did that I thought had been resolved three weeks earlier. She looks a bit like Joan Crawford...very pretty.

And, dang it, I'd better be pretty too because:
"Girls don't have to be smart. They just have to be beautiful."

The day I cut my hair she followed me around yelling about how ugly I looked and how boys won't like me beacuse they like long hair. And, God forbid, boys not like me. There were failure notices from my school lying on the kitchen table that she never addressed to me (I either had learning problems or was too nervous to learn). She didn't care if I fail school. But I'd better not flunk "Boys."

She did not do this to my siblings. My brother was God to her.

I also got picked on badly at school. There was nobody.

So now I guess, after all these years, I have to clean up my mess from the past, even though I have a good family. But my childhood still affects me...and the horror of being disowned. Nothing says hate like not even allowing your daughter to be mentioned in your obituary. Mom was clever. She left a few nuggets of hate from the grave.

 

[reddy4765]

@fogshots, the entirety of mommie dearest had me mesmerized.
my mom never cared abt my intellectual or emotional development although as a child I showed signs of intellectual giftedness. of course the child abuse has taken care of most of that, but that which remains seems to exist just to torture me. like your own "the point" of my existence was whether or not I could please men and snare myself a hubbie. what an enormous disservice she did me.
for example I sometimes engage in hobbies or intellectual pursuits which involve my talents and it depresses me to the point of tears to know that I have these gifts but never got to learn abt them til too late it seems.
for example a few years back I walked into an analysis exam without studying and understood the material. I didn't do well, but managed to win a few points for bullshitting. I cried for 2 hours afterwards.
I know this sounds like bragging or self-absorption but it was the worst feeling in the world.
I imagine my professor thought I was lazy and arrogant. didn't realize that was dodging blows and frequenting hospitals. what a waste.