Dom Violence Living With A Mentally Ill Parent

[Nicolette]

In a way it makes it easier to forgive her.

I like everything you said @therapybankrupt aside from this. I forgave my mother earlier on but then when she didn't take off the rose coloured glasses and wanted me to dismiss things as she did I found it increasingly hard to live the falseness this created. It's not about blame but about the courage to accept what happened to them was wrong in order to have some compassion or empathy for our abuse.

 

[Hashi]

In the 1950's there was little tolerance for the mentally ill. They were either locked up in Asylums, given shock therapy or just ignored.

I could see that as a valid reason for not being able to get much appropriate help, if someone had tried to. I can't really accept it as a valid reason for not trying. I'm not sure from what you say whether your mother did try. Perhaps she did.

I'm from a later generation, when there were therapists, feminism, and a multitude of self help books. Did my mother try a single thing? Not that I'm aware of, and I'm pretty confident that means no, not a thing.

In a situation like this, I would always hesitate to attribute things to how society was in the past, because there have always been things in society that could help people. In the past, religion and talking to priests would have applied to more people than today. Doctors had more time to talk, and in general they knew their patients. Self help books of various kinds, and stress management/anxiety techniques, have been around since the early 1900s.

To me, the point is not what was assumed/expected about trying to get help, but whether they actually tried.

After all, I have had to go to therapy when feeling hopeless and despairing. I've had to look for and find a therapist while feeling like that. Why shouldn't the person who caused so much of my childhood misery have been expected to do the sane?

Your point about shock therapy sums it up for me... it was me who ended up having electro-convulsive therapy for my psychological problems, not my mother. Because I was actually trying to do something about my condition, unlike her.

 

[silkleaves]

You're not alone @Loloma, I wrote about my mother on here somewhere, I think I did anyway. She has never been diagnosed with anything, but from the way she treated my sister and I, there is just no way possible she is mentally healthy. I lived in constant fear growing up. She told me an angel instructed her to sacrifice me as a show of her faith. She's held a gun to my head, and has punched and kicked me for something like putting a fork in the sink. She'd say that she lets me live is proof how much she loves me.

But indeed, to the outside world, to everyone else, she was an amazing woman, people would tell me how lucky I was to have her for a mom. She was a social worker, working with pregnant teenagers and they would tell me they wish she was their mom. And I was expected to smile and be happy and show the world well..how darned happy I was to have the most amazing person as my mom.

It's super painful, to know what the truth was, but that I had to keep it all a secret or else who knows what else she would do to me when no one was looking. I wish I could say what is wrong with my mother, I really have no clue. But it affected me in so many ways.

 

[fly away home]

Yes. My father had psychotic episodes. He was involuntarily hospitalized for about six months at one stage. He was violent and irrational and at the same time a highly respected head pharmacist for a large city hospital.

No one believed me when I finally told the truth about him. Even the police report and court orders meant nothing to these people who simply said he was a good man and I was talking rubbish.

 

[silkleaves]

That is so frustrating @fly away home ... To know the truth, but no one will listen or believe you. This Christmas, my sister came to visit, and we were talking to my cousin. She could not understand why I had such an issue with my mom, and I told her just a little bit of what happened growing up, not too much, but she kept rationalizing everything. The family sees my mother as a "little off" but not as the violent and cold hearted person she really is.

My sister is 13 years older than me, and has told me that its useless to even try to talk to the family about it, that we really only have each other and its true. I mean, at this point it's useless anyway to get the truth out, we are both adults now and there's nothing we can do about her. And as far as she is concerned, she never did anything wrong. Whatever she did, she was "doing the best she could". It's frustrating, no one believes us. If it weren't for my sister, and she in turn says if it weren't for me to validate what we went through...we'd feel like it was in our head and didn't really happen. It just seems so unreal.

 

[Loloma]

One of my brothers told me that we were all loved by our mother. Until the next baby was born, which happened frequently. If we were lucky it was between one to one and a half years. I was given to my grandmother as I was a sickly baby, my mother didn't have time for me.

By the time I was twelve, I had eight younger siblings to care for. My mothers life was hell, she had become a raving lunatic.The situation was left the way it was, because it was easier to leave us with her. Having to place so many children in care, would have cost the authorities a lot of money. Besides that, not one of us complained.

As far as I was concerned, every few years they would knock on the door and ask my mother to pack a suitcase. The school nurse would inform that I was suffering from malnutrition ... again. Off to the health camp I would go, to be fattened up and sent back home. Only to be beaten for causing her embarrassment. :(:blackeye:

 

[didithappen]

My father has been against me since such an early age. He bought me my first computer when I was 9, but I very quickly left him behind in my dust trail, and his jealously turned against me.

By 15 he swore I was a drug addict, and by 19 he cut me off.

We didn't speak for 15 years, during my teen years he was physically abusive and a drunk.

When we did start to try to work things out, it lasted a few years, then he turned again. This time he demanded a dna test, he even sent my mother a letter accusing her of sleeping around and having an affair (while she was on her death bed from a terminal illness, she died a month later).

Once the results of the DNA test came through, with a 99.97% certainty that I was his son, he still cut me off, claiming I was a drug addict, alcoholic and a danger. I am none of those. He still will not believe I was molested by my grandfather, but he does believe my sister was. And he does not believe I was abused as a teenager. However he remembers the night I tried to take my life at 15.

I remember his words that night when I woke in hospital - "This never happened, we will never speak about it again, I am so disappointed"

I will never forget those words, and we never did speak of it again.

 

[Ellabella44]

know this is older post, but everything you said treehugger is my mother.... and when you were bad you got what you deserved until she was tired. talk back to her, got me slapped in the face till my lip bled every time I did it. but the woman was "having a hard time and being a good mother"

she has never been diagnosed with a mental illness, though i wouldnt be surprised. my father was similar to her, but he would verbally and physically , and emotionally abuse her constantly. would not be surprised to find someone diagnose him as having a mental illness as well. though we broke contact with him when i was about 12 i think.

 

[illusionist]

I have always believed as an adult that my foster parents were mentally ill. Helped me to understand their actions, and stopped me from becoming bitter. I am glad I believed that.