Keeping It Hidden. Who Do You Protect From This Disorder?

[just me here]

I am struggling with wanting to confront my parents about aspects of my childhood. It would cause alienation and bring back alot of anger and stress for all three of us, so I don't.

I am still a newby, still coming to grips with this diagnosis after thinking I was just depressed but knowing my depression was deeper and different than others for a very long time. Now I am diagnosed PTSD and not sure how or why yet but learning and accepting the diagnosis slowly.

Right now I am thinking my Dad and step-mom are responsible for stripping me of all self respect and self confidence and setting me up for sensitivity to the traumas that came almost immediately after I left home at age 14.

After my mother died when I was 11, within 6 months I had almost nothing left of the life I had lived. New town, school, food, step mother and her fanatical religion, siblings, everything but even the slightest bit of counseling or support. I was actually punished for trying to talk to aunts and uncles and teachers about my greif. I was told that I should accept Jesus and take it to the lord in prayer, and given no other options.

At age 14 I was able to identify their particular form of religion as a cult and now 34 years later I still think they need deprogramming.

Ironically, they have come to me to help them in their elder years. Of four of us kids, I was the one that didn't go to church, I was out at 14, I lived my life entirely seperated from them and they lived their lives seperate from me.

Now, they find themselves with 3 daughters that are totally ungrounded and living lives devoid of any stability other than church every week and total reliance on their current husbands for survival. I am the one with 25 years on the job, 30 years in my marriage, kids that went to the same school district from k-12 and then college.

So they buy a house in my county and want me to be their caretaker. I was only in my stepmothers home for 2 1/2 years! My father has never offered me any advice, apology, anything beyond accept Jesus and be religious. Living away from them I slowly glossed over all of the anger, and now every time I am around them I lose a little of that gloss.

I know that having them back in my life has contributed to my current state and my recent diagnosis. They aren't the trauma that haunts me, but they prepared me to be a victim and let me walk out into the real world where the traumas started piling up on almost the first day out on my own, and having them back has just reminded me of that part of my life and all the emotions that come with it.

So I vent on an internet site, knowing good and well there is no answer but still needing to talk to someone about it and hoping for some feedback.

I am not going to confront them, I will be their caretaker and smile and hug and perform all of the act that they have decided we will all perform and let the 'elephant in the living room' live on in peace.

I apologize to anyone that is following a religion, I don't consider all religions bad, in fact outside of a select few, I think most religions are great for their followers and wish them well with no feelings of ill will. But like all things in this life, there are degrees and the religion of my parents is beyond what most of you would consider a mainstream religion and has entered cult status.

Does anyone else have a similar situation? It feels very odd to be around them and want to confront them but refraining because I know it would do no good and I would probably be worse off for it and they would be at most just energized in their beleif that they can help me with their religion.

 

[kers]

It sounds like you are being forced to confront a lot of things that never got resolved; you're facing the emotions that have been buried for so long.

Confrontations are not always necessary. It depends on the person and the situation. I have chosen not to confront my parents about the abuse they allowed, mostly because I think it would devastate our relationship which is okay now. However, this means that I do not have an honest, open relationship with them. I am hiding a major secret (the abuse's effects, the PTSD) and that means the real me is hidden, too. This is a trade-off I am willing to make, right now. To get to this place I had to recognize that my parents had disappointing limitations and they played a role in how I was traumatized.

I understand your frustration, wanting to confront and yet not wanting to. You are waking up a lot of buried emotions.

 

[PerfectEmpire]

I totally agree with what Kers said.

I noticed that you brought up religion more than once. I choose not to confront people like that because they are usually too far gone for it to do any good. I live in the bible belt so this means I don't talk to anybody I don't know well enough because 90% of people will bring up Jesus as a blanket, band-aid solution for every problem. Bad economy? Not enough Jesus. Fall off your bicycle? Jesus will make it okay. Lose your spouse? Jesus can replace his/her love. Get cancer? Jesus will heal you or meet you. Bad grades? Jesus will strengthen you. Good grades? It wasn't my effort it was the love of Jesus Christ! Win the lottery? Thank you Jesus. Nobody is actually responsible for anything around here! And there are no bad feelings allowed. Everything goes back to Jesus without any further question. I like to call this "mass scale religious dissociation from reality."

Have you seen the movie "Saved!"? It might be triggering but it might also make you laugh. Movies like "Saved!" "Jesus Camp" and "Palindromes" depict the kind of people I am surrounded by on a day-to-day basis. Ugh...

I think by not letting you have any other way to deal with your grief than prayer, they were depriving you of an education on how to actually deal with your problems. The implications could be that the child will grow up to believe that nobody can be held responsible for hurting them (because we are all imperfect, innocent lost sheep and children of the Lord); that they are not allowed to express let alone feel negative emotions because that would offend God and all that he has created; that we all must "Let go and let god" and thus quit grappling with our problems, push them away instead, and never really deal with anything.

I have many friends who were raised like that and as a result they are lost as adults. They have no feeling of entitlement to negative emotions. They refuse to accept negative facts about the world. As a result of refusal to accept the existence of obstacles they rarely actually overcome any.

All that being said, religion can be a positive thing if taken in balance with reality! I myself am an agnostic monotheist. But it is mainly because I enjoy these traditions and find studying the religion of my ancestors interesting. I don't attempt to fill a void in my life with religion. I don't try to use it as a way to understand things except for sociology. It's a fun way of adding to my life. I would never restrict my child's understanding of and education about the world to religion. In my view, and the view of a growing number of people, that is detrimental and in some situations is child abuse/neglect in and of itself. By not truly acknowledging your grief or letting you get real help, they were being neglectful. If you had diabetes and needed insulin but they made you pray instead they would be ridiculed by society and possible go to jail and have you removed from their care. See what I'm saying?

It's amazing that you made it out of that atmosphere and are actually able to see how it could be unhealthy.

 

[just me here]

Yes, religion can be a positive thing if taken in balance with reality. Well said.

I think of what my parents did to my sisters, keeping them in private schools and protected from all temptations, teaching them to let the church do their thinking for them and relying on a weeekly organized scolding to make it from one weekend to the next without becoming axe murderers or bank robbers.

Basically, they raised them to live in a jungle withour ever letting them know what a snake looked like or telling them to watch for Tigers, and they got gobbled up because of it. 3 sisters have racked up a total of 7 divorces, so the current marriages make 10 total! And I'm the one thats going to hell!

But I will continue to be the false front me for them, even if the biggest things I am hiding from them are my incredibly strong feelings of anger for not helping me when I needed it so much and my strong desire to help them get a clearer view of the world than their religion will allow them now, while they are still able to live a little bit of whats left in the real world with the rest of us.

thanks

 

[anni]

What PE said about a certain type of 'Christian' is absolutely spot on-plus, they SMILE all the time while they're doing and saying these things. Creepy!!

It's extremely lovely of you to have taken this caretaker role on. Some just have the ability to do that, regardless of the past. I don't know if I could,with the history you described, so have an awful lot of respect for those who can.

I don't know, though. There has to be a way to do what you feel you need to do for them without it chewing you up like this, you know? The anger has to be just plain not good for you, besides the resentment of being asked to do this despite their treatment of you.Without confronting exactly, perhaps just being able to set some clear boundaried with them would be helpful to you? I haven't the vaguest as to what this would be, or how achieved, but to just expect yourself to not only gloss over the past but also to take on the role of caretaker is an awful lot. Perhaps a good therapist could suggest something? It does just sound to me like the dynamics here are all one sided with you doing 100 percent of the effort. That's dreadful for any relationship no matter what it is.

It all just seems an awful lot to expect of you, and you to expect of yourself. At least you can be as kind to YOU as is deserved. There just should be something in all this which will make the dynamics less harsh for you.

Take care,

Anni

 

[just me here]

my therapist suggests mindfulness- parents aren't right just because they are parents, be aware that they are in the end just people and they only have the control over me that I grant them.

It bothers me that the elephant in the living room is in my livingroom now. Somehow it just feels like an invasion of privacy to come to my home and watch the show I have to put on for them. They have to know that I am not being myself. Dad worked in a male dominated industry, just like me, and he knows that guys like me talk in a kind of "factory talk" language that he knows I can't use in front of him or mom, he knows there is beer in the garage fridge and that it never comes out when he's around, even tho there are empties on the back porch. He hears the phone calls we get and hears us tell people we will call them back later, he has to know why.

He could let us of the hook, she could apologize for her differances from mainstream society, they could both just lighten up a little, but they just keep everyone on their best behaviour and accept all the false fronts we put up for them like it's expected of us. Real people would be disgusted by it, I am disgusted by it.

But I don't know what else to do. I wish I could tell them I have PTSD and I wish they could be part of my support, but based on wanting to talk about my greif when my mom died 37 years ago and getting 2 1/2 years of punishment and torment, they should be the last persons I should be looking to for support and I should be the last person they would come to for help in their old age.

I choose to either get anger from this or find humor in it. So far, anger has been winning, but mindfulness will lead to humor, I know it will. This is just too ridiculous a situation to be in without finding something to laugh about.

So I laugh, give them what they deserve because they are in the end my parents, and hide my PTSD from them because it is the right thing to do and telling them about it would do no one any good.