Untreated Mental Illness In A Parent - Emotional Neglect

[Nevermore]

Hello!
I am wondering if what has happened to me in life has happened to anyone else in this world! I have had a long history of accepting all forms of abuse from others, always with some feeling in me that I am somehow to blame for the abuse, and that I should help the person abusing me.
I know it sounds so crazy but I've only just kind of realised that this is what I've always done.
My mother had (untreated by her own choice) mental health issues when I was a child, but she was always very overly kind to my friends, to strangers, encouraged us to be kind to everyone and put ourselves second place. The emotional welfare of her own children was always last on the agenda, and our emotional needs were seen more as selfish or a failure within ourselves. It was always all about others. (She treated herself that way too)
She never sought help for her own problems and had two major psychotic breaks when we were children. It fell on us, her children, to help her. My father just tried to avoid the issue, or blamed the stress of having us, their children, for the problem - and more particularly me as I was the only female and the one who got emotional about it.
My siblings have also done the same as me in being drawn to abusers, accepting abuse, taking the blame for abuse etc etc
We are all in our 50's now and have all ended up on our own, battered and bruised emotionally.
When I look back I can see we were all neglected, but the neglect was not obvious to others because my mother was so kind to outsiders, and she was loved by all my childhood friends. They never understood that what she gave to them was not the same as what she gave to us.
She encouraged me to stay in abusive situations, she supported the abusers but not me. It was so confusing when I was young, just that continual message that you don't matter, that even your own mother holds no value in you.
She did not have that maternal instinct to want to protect her children. We all still suffer from a deep down feeling of worthlessness, and depression is an accepted.
I don't know why I've just thought this, or just realised this so late in my life, but I can see now that that is what propelled us all into the lives we have led.
Nothing can change the things that have happened, but I am typing this out here as a way of making it real, of actually saying it - the unsayable! The mask of kindness my mother wore covered something that was not kindness at all. It was fear of not being good enough, the desire to be seen as a good person by outsiders at the expense of her own children, the need to be liked and admired by everyone, to be seen to be doing "the right thing" or "the kind thing", the need to appear mentally and emotionally "well', the fear of anything to do with the world of mental health. We, her children, colluded in that need for her to be seen as "well". None of us ever really spoke out - and still don't.
I have seen so many counsellors etc etc to try to get better from the multiple traumas that led to my own CPTSD, but it feels right now that this is the thing that's stopping me getting better.
I'm not asking for sympathy, just looking for anyone else who understands what I'm saying!
Untreated mental illness is what has always drawn me to others, and I have colluded in covering up both the illness and my own abuse to save the sufferer. How have I kept doing this in my life for so long with no recognition of what I was doing? And why it's all so obvious now, I have no idea!
And where to from here?

 

[Biz]

@jojo88, I get this. I cannot relate any interactions I've had to my mother (esp. if they involve conflict) without her telling me that I offended the other person or should keep my mouth shut or just need to be more tolerant of others, etc. On the other end of this 'your needs bother other people' are also direct comments of how I am difficult, overly idealistic, or have too high demands.

It's a really big mind f**k to be an aware person and to hear these things but not be able to know context. Because I can be difficult and I do have high expectations, but I also try to speak my needs and navigate tough situations and my mom thinks that's not an okay thing to do.

Avoiding talking about anything with my mom works, although, it also disappoints me. Therapy sometimes helps but hasn't felt like it's touched my core. Body work (reiki) and getting it with someone who is accepting of me in a really complete way-- my uncertainties, my self doubt, my traumas, m need to avoid them and soothe them, my dislike of myself, and also my confidence and awareness and desire to heal-- has been amazing for me.

 

[Nevermore]

Thanks Biz! I'm really glad you've found some things that have helped! I can understand why the body work helped more than counselling because that's what I feel it's all about - that horrible feeling of never having been accepted "in a complete way". I've seen it in a few of my friends too who also had an emotionally neglected childhood, the intense need to be accepted, especially by your own parents, never really seems to go away, and the disappointment and inner ache seems ever present. I'm in my 50's and that ache is still there even if I can disguise it better these days.
I'm not sure if talking therapy really answers that need! You can come to understand it, which I have now, but that doesn't really take it away. And I can see now so clearly all of a sudden how much that aching feeling has contributed to some of the situations I got myself into! Any attention can be better than no attention if the ache is strong!

 

[Eleanor]

There is a link to the thread "We become what our parents want us to be C-Ptsd" below on my page here... It is on this too! And if you search for "Childhood emotional neglect" there are some threads on that too!

but the neglect was not obvious to others because my mother was so kind to outsiders, and she was loved by all my childhood friends.

I could have written those exact words. My mother was not overtly abusive, and I was luck to avoid the more serious kinds of physical abuse. So please consider that there are two levels here - the overt abusive behavior and the ... absences, the blank spaces where there should have been something but wasn't. For example: My daughter is eight and a half and is starting to not have a perfectly flat chest. This is something mothers are supposed to .... something. I think. But what? When? How? I have no experience to guide me here. None. zip. nada. A complete blank. Terror at even thinking about it ensues. I don't even know what the issues are. Books don't tell you this stuff. I got lucky this time. Lexi went to a friend's house and her mother had gotten her training bras. Apparently it is appropriate to get little girls something called "training bras" (They have them on Amazon! In bright cheery colors in soft fabrics!) Lexi tried one on and was charmed. It is a "thing" apparently. So...she came home with it on and showed me. I said, "Do you like this?" She said yes, and I asked if she wanted some, she said yes, we ordered them from amazon, she wears them. Practical problem solved. But... is there a conversation I'm supposed to have about this? Clueless. I have no maps here.

I've seen it in a few of my friends too who also had an emotionally neglected childhood, the intense need to be accepted, especially by your own parents, never really seems to go away, and the disappointment and inner ache seems ever presen

I've been working with my T for a LONG LONG time now, and have transferred some of this need to her which she meets. Mostly tho, she teaches me to and supports me in meeting this need for myself. I talk to the "inners" when they start to freak. It has been really really important to have external supports too - here has been a direct help for me in developing certain kinds of confidence, particularly in writing. HUGE stuff for me.

 

[Nevermore]

There is a link to the thread "We become what our parents want us to be C-Ptsd" below on my page here......

Thanks Eleanor, I actually did read that thread after I'd already posted - it was a bit of an aha moment! So I am not alone!
I do know what you mean about developing confidence with a counsellor, I found that too - the confidence to express myself and the amazing feeling of actually being listened to! I wasn't meaning to say therapy is of no use. It's incredibly useful!
When you write about your daughter I know I would have been the same, and I think that's what stops me from "blaming" my mother because I realise that she also was only copying what she herself experienced in childhood. And that intense need to be approved of - well, it's kind of the same thing only she never had any awareness around what she was doing.
Your daughter is lucky that you do have awareness around it! Even if you don't know about training bras (-: (who would have guessed?) you know about a whole lot of other stuff that is going to save your daughter from going through the same things as you did. Breaking the cycle is an amazing thing to do.
I read a really interesting book once whose name I cannot remember right now, but it was about generational pain and how families develop dysfunctional ways of treating each other, and how it can go back so many generations ago that nobody knows how it all started! Wish I could remember the name. Sorry! It rang true though.

 

[Lea3]

I know this thread is a few months old but I just wanted to chime in with my story. My mother had a psychotic episode when I was 4 and was diagnosed with bipolar. My parents were divorced and I went to live with my father and his parents. However, even though my mother was medicated and technically being treated, the care she received was extremely inadequate.

For some reason my dad decided that it was ok to let her "babysit" me unsupervised throughout my childhood. So I have many memories of being alone with my mother who was always acting weird in some way or another. I can tell you that being a child who is being "looked after" by a person with a severe mental illness, a person not capable of looking after themselves, never mind a child, is extremely traumatic.

Like you I grew up in silence. No one even told me she had a mental illness, I just gradually understood as I got older. My family never mentioned it, so neither did I. The mental health support worker who came to her house and who I regularly saw never asked if I was ok, and even complemented me on my "maturity". It sounds ridiculous but when I was a teenager I couldn't understand why I was so depressed, why I had panic attacks and social anxiety. Now it's obvious to me, but not to my dad who continues to act like nothing happened. It was only when I was 18 that I started to talk about it with people. I've found that outsiders tend to be shocked that I was surrounded by adults who let me take the responsibility of emotionally supporting my severely mentally ill mother without ever stepping in.

I can understand your tendency to accept abuse from others. When you grow up around people who treat you badly, you don't know that there is any other way to be treated. You think you deserve it and that it's just your role in life to be other people's punching bag. Especially when you are the only witness to your abuse and the people surrounding you either had no idea or turned a blind eye. You have to fight hard to accept your own truth as THE truth. I still have this mental ping pong between the lie of "everything's fine, I'm fine" and the truth of the sheer terror and immense stress that I know I felt being "cared for" by a psychotic person.

Somatic experiencing has helped me because now I know how much tension I have been storing in my body all these years. I know how I felt back then because I feel it being released and so I am gradually strengthening my side of the story, the undeniable truth of my feelings.

 

[Nevermore]

Lea3, so happy you chimed in!
It's horrible that feeling of emptiness and nothingness where something big used to be - something invisible but important, the trust of your own mother )-:
You're right about accepting your own truth - anything else is crazy making, and you were probably similar to me in accepting what adults told you rather than what you saw with your eyes and felt with your own feelings. Nothing made any sense.
And still, when I'm around my mother I feel those old crazy making feelings. Anger comes out of the blue, grief too - none of which I can show.
To look on the positive side, it has made me an incredibly honest person. I'm not interested in putting on a face or living any kind of lie. I know the invisible damage that does to others! It still makes me feel crazy when people lie to me, or try to convince me of a lie - that old feeling of falling down a very deep and dark well.
The biggest challenge to come from this kind of background, for me anyway, is to learn to believe in my own self, trust my own feelings and intuitions. If I'd always done that I would have avoided so much that was not good in my life. And I do think there's a kind of silver lining because I know I understand things that others don't.
But it's been a long and winding, and often very confusing path.
Really glad you've found something that helps. It's hard to let go of that tension and anxiety when you needed to be on alert all the time as a child, and for you it started so very young! Ugh! I was around 12 when my mother had her first major psychotic break.

 

[Chava]

Yes, my mom has CSA history, maybe borderline features, raging and threw things and hit and broke things and broke a door against my back and left welts. But was the model citizen. Holy shit, that is hard to work around in ones head. I love my mom, honestly. I sometimes feel like I am feeling some of her pain because she couldn't. That's not fair, and f*ck her for that. But that's how it goes. She tried. Maybe badly. But she was sick and refused to see it. So, I live it for her and am recovering for myself and my life.

 

[Nevermore]

Yes, my mom has CSA history, maybe borderline features, raging and threw things and hit and broke things a...

Yes, my mom has CSA history, maybe borderline features, raging and threw things and hit and broke things a...

Yes, Chava! I feel too that I kind of wore my mothers pain, felt all the things that she was desperately trying not to feel. I feel like I became the shadow side of my mother when I was young.
It was almost like together we made a perfect portrait of bipolar disease - she was manic, I was depressed.
when she got really sick I always felt more sane - because I could see it and knew what was happening. When she was playing the stepson wife role I was always depressed. It was all disconnection and confusion.
I think it made me fear intimacy in a way. And really ingrained in me the importance of honesty!
I'm really sorry this happened to you too. It's a complicated way to grow up.....

 

[Bluemoonwillow]

Hello!
I am wondering if what has happened to me in life has happened to anyone else in this world! I ha...

• I so totally get this. I'm my life I have been abused, made excuses for the abusers, and more than once even encouraged the abusers. In many cases I felt like I deserved it or at least deserves no better. I am 38 now and have isolated myself a lot to protect myself and my family from me allowing people like that on my life. My mother I think suffered from depression and my father from Problems from time served in Vietnam. I thought abuse was love. I get how it feels and how confusing it is.

 

[Nevermore]

sigh yes, Bluemoonwillow, it's awful to get to that point where you realise you can't really trust your own self in that way! It's great that you think to protect your family in that way, but sad to have to isolate )-:
I'm learning more and more about trusting my own intuitions, which have always been there, just buried under layers of self criticism and judgment. It's hard to break old patterns, but I do believe it's possible to live freely eventually, or I hope to anyway.
It's a bummer that our internal guiding system got so railroaded so young - but it really does make me feel hopeful to hear of someone breaking the pattern for their own children, even if it's isolating. They are lucky to have you as their mother!

 

[Flip flop]

Hello!
I am wondering if what has happened to me in life has happened to anyone else in this world! I ha...

I hear you loud and clear. That might not help much, but please know that you are not alone in this.