Should You Be Angry At Your Mother For Not Protecting You?

[Notsowild]

I know there was a similar thread. I think it was " mother - daughter relationships.

I love my mother. We have an okay relationship. She knows I'm on stress leave from work but we don't talk about it. She knows I have anxiety issues. She had them too when I was younger and also agoraphobia.

The thing is she always stayed with my father ( my abuser ). I guess I feel she was his victim too . She met him when she was 16. He was 28. He seduced her and she got pregnant and had my brother at 17. He cheated on her all the time, had many mistresses . She had a nervous breakdown and went to the psych ward for a year. I was 8.

Then my father groomed us to be his bed partners. She left him once when she first found out but after that she turned a blind eye.

She was also abused as a young girl. And I know in those days there wasn't a lot if help. Even CPS did nothing for us.

I know that she was the adult but she was his victim too. Oh btw only me and one other sister sees here. She has 7 daughters. Am I bring stupid ( I don't know if that's the right word )for loving her?

 

[onesie]

No. She is your mother. My mother is a horrible mother. I still love her. I just personally feel, for my own life, that I am better off without her. You will always love your mother. Whatever way you choose to look at your past, is up to you. Sounds like you went through so much. Understanding where your mother may be coming from, or not, you were not protected. She chose to stay. So please, don't deny your own right, to stand up for you.

 

[Deleted member 1860]

You seem to be able to accept the good and the bad, and I think that only you know if this is the right thing to do. I have tried to see the good and the bad, but with my mom, she plays the innocent victim so well while conducting purely evil acts (to this very day). I can no longer turn a blind eye to the bad and accept her faults and all when what she is attempting to do is destroy me and all that I have.

Know that whatever decision you make is the right decision because you made it. Also know that your decision can change at any moment. Mine literally changed yesterday and I cannot go back, not now, nor ever. I won't let someone try and destroy the core of who I am.

 

[ghotiff]

My mother/father didn't protect me ... but I know she had her own problems and she didn't 'deliberately' choose this path.

I'm very new to therapy and my feelings for my mother are very confused right now. I know I love her...but I know there are other feelings that I haven't yet acknowledged. The book Toxic Parents is good for exploring some of this. Maybe read it once while relating it to your father, and once again while relating it to your mother. Its a pretty heavy book.....you might want/need support to be able to work through it.

 

[NovemberStar]

I think it's a process - healing involves a lot of stages and a lot of differing emotions. I think it's perfectly fine and even very healthy for you to be very damn angry at her for not protecting you, for turning a blind eye. It's like you'e not sure though, that it is 'ok' to be angry at her? You don't need permission ;). Your feelings are your feelings; and they can be very mixed ones!

What would happen if you allowed yourself to be angry at her? If the young girl within you stamped her foot and yelled 'why didn't' you protect me???!!!!!'

My mother was my abuser. She was also sick - she was an alcoholic adduct, addicted to codeine (and cough medicine). Over the years I have felt many different things - love for her and all she did do for us (there ARE some happy memories there); anger at her for not getting help and getting sober; compassion because she was sick, she had an addiction, she didn't feel supported by my father, and motherhood was very hard for her to cope with (she was in over her head). But I have also felt incredible anger and rage and hatred at her.

She also died when I was 10 - some years on her anniversary I am filled with a deep ache and grieve so hard my heart feels like it will split into pieces. I cry and cry and cry and wonder if the tears will ever stop. Other years (namely the past 3 since my PTSD flared up again and new memories of the abuse have resurfaced) I spend the anniversary of her death hoping she is rotting in hell!! Last year I waned to go to her grave and smash the many ornaments I had put there so lovingly, over the years. I didn't the end, cos I knew I'd feel guilty after it, but I did imagine doing so instead.

As I said - your feelings are your feelings - there is no 'should' - but I do hope you can allow yourself to be angry if need to be. As a little girl you wouldn't have been able to rationalize why she didn't' protect you as 'it's ok, Mum is a victim too' - maybe that part of you needs to be heard, and needs to know its ok to be angry

 

[ghotiff]

As a little girl you wouldn't have been able to rationalize why she didn't' protect you as 'it's ok, Mum is a victim too' - maybe that part of you needs to be heard, and needs to know its ok to be angry

Powerful, insightful stuff. This make so much sense to me. I think I'm not so much angry as an adult, but I may be angry as a child.

 

[shimmerz]

My father didn't protect me either. Who could with a person like my mother around? I like to put focus on the one who victimizes. By putting blame on the one who could not protect then if we cannot protect due to our issues do we not carry that shame and guilt all of our lives? It is like - he couldn't protect me and I couldn't protect him so if you are angry at him you must be angry at you.

Anger, in my opinion poisons only ourselves if we hold onto it. It you let it pass through it is okay - but my concern is when people assign anger and hold onto that anger. So many diseases are caused by holding onto anger. Release.....let it come and then release

 

[ghotiff]

Very wise @shimmerz......allow your anger to come when it does....but also allow it to go away again....

 

[WillyKat]

This is a central issue for me too. The day I was raped by an older boy next door, there was an obvious sign that something was very wrong. [I almost wrote something triggering here, but I edited that part out.] I believe my mother froze up, didn't want to go there, etc. For the next three years, the older boy maintained a reign of terror over me, and there were signs that something was terribly wrong with me. The teachers and my parents--nobody got the hints. And I believe its the not being understood or protected that gave me the PTSD.

After the repressed memory (I prefer the term dissociative amnesia) returned 15 years later, I wondered a lot about this. As someone highly educated, I understood that people aren't perfect, that sometimes they don't understand what kids are trying to say, they were busy with other stuff, it was the 1960s, at it was a rural backwater. As an savvy, well-informed adult, I didn't hold any ill will against them.

About a year ago, my psychologist said something the blew my s**t away. She asked if I was giving them a "bye" for not protecting me. I looked at her blankly for several seconds, not quite comprehending. Then I understood where all my anger came from. Sure, as an adult I can understand them not reacting, but when I was six, all I felt was abandonment to the twisted demon next door. The little kid inside me still feels that abandonment, and that gets translated into rage at the world and at them.

So I believe it's necessary to understand that your young self has a right to be angry. That doesn't mean you stop being understanding. It doesn't mean you can't forgive. It means you don't have to deny that there's a part of you that feels the hurt and the rage and that it is OK.

This is a good thread.

 

[shimmerz]

Agreed @WillyKat . Just because we were lost and angry at that age, when we had so few resources, does not define us as an adult. We are just recognizing the damage done to us at that time. Your T sounds good.

 

[Meadowsweet]

@Notsowild, I wrote the mother/female relationships thread and recently I wrote a thread about anger too.

Something I've gathered from both of those threads, is that there are people of the opinion that if we aren't angry with mothers in this situation, then it can only be because the anger is hidden. It seems to be an idea that is perpetuated by some therapists too.

My personal opinion, is that if it was women abusing, fewer people would expect us to be angry at the fathers. But then little more that 50/60 years ago, women were blamed for men having affairs, women were blamed for men raping them and for their husbands beating them or leaving them. I feel like this idea that we must be angry at mothers stems from that age old attitude of blaming women for what men do.

So no, you're not stupid for loving your mother, and you are showing understanding and compassion that is commendable. To have that compassion for your mum, I hope will enable you to be loving and compassionate towards yourself.

 

[WillyKat]

Something Judith Herman said in the first few pages of her book Trauma and Recovery (seen this elsewhere too) is relevant here. Sometimes bystanders, those that could have helped but didn't or couldn't, get more blame than the abusers themselves. It's not fair, but I think there's a lot of truth to that. Herman says that it's easier for bystanders to do nothing; it's a lot less risky for them. Taking the side of the victim takes more effort and exposes them to the abuser.