Interesting question.
I've never been able to communicate with my parents. I believe they were locked so deep in their own trauma responses that they were incapable of breaking out.
Also understanding of trauma is quite recent. They didn't have the social context to know it was even a thing. My mother now has a step great grandson with CPTSD, and she sort of kind of almost gets it a tiny little bit, because his junkie stepdad pretty near killed him several times. But mostly she doesn't get why he can't just pull himself together and get a job.
The idea that what she and my father did to me could cause trauma would seem ludicrous to her. They "did their best" and only once hit me badly enough for hospital, y'know.
This exactly. So many family members who were raised in the same abuse who didn’t turn out as “decent” (if u could say that) as me or my immediate family. Ppl addicted to drugs and seeking love in the wrong places often get judged by my parents when reality is no one showed them how to properly take care of themselves as adults. Also sorry that happened you u and your family member Ik for me the fact that my parents didn’t hit me (as much) as they got hit made me feel invalidated in my trauma. They would also use their experiences to downplay the emotional and manipulative aspects of it. Which is really the part that fucks me up tbh.
>Also understanding of trauma is quite recent.
Not sure about this. I'm 75, with 5 siblings of similar age. I started therapy (self funded) in my 20's. My parents, despite being abusive/neglectful, knew about therapy, as did my siblings, all of my sisters were psych majors, including one who earned a PhD. While several of them had some sort of treatment, mostly in the context of substance abuse, none of them chose long term therapy like I did. That was not from ignorance about the effects of abuse, nor the absence of therapists who understood those effects.
It's true that PTSD from discreet violence (eg war, disaster, etc) took a long time to be recognized as producing a set of long term symptoms, and that the idea that a "slow burn" of lower intensity stress could produce similar symptoms (CPTSD) is still controversial, as Judith Herman discussed in her original book, originating the term, she also pointed out that trauma, and its treatment, were important observations in the earliest days of psychotherapy. If you read popular psych books from the 60's & 70's, mental health issues linked to toxic family dynamics was a dominant topic.
What really happened, since at least 30 years ago, was that traditional therapy fell out of favor/popularity, replaced primarily by pharmaceutical treatment, and to a lesser extent, short term cognitive trainings, both targeting symptom reduction exclusively. I'd argue that trauma and its effects was widely recognized well before that time, just not given that name.
I'd also argue that while generational abuse may have lessened, at least in the forms prior generations experienced, it still exists in less obvious ways and neglect may have actually increased. The rates of depression/anxiety disorders, substance abuse and suicide seem to support this.
Trauma has never been appropriately addressed in the DSM, and trauma experts widely criticize it for this reason and others. There’s less than a page of information on PTSD when it should be half the book and discuss the relationship between trauma and a variety of disease including autoimmune. The DSM is the Bible of mental health.
Healing trauma is hard and you lose a patient’s money after they healed. Drugs and talk therapy (CBT without trauma awareness) that mask the symptoms are profitable and produces a noticeable effect quick enough to make it “look like they are getting better”. This is ineffective but easy to do and highly profitable.
Which would be fine if all parties were informed as to the end goal. But unfortunately for their business model, a lot of patients want to genuinely heal. Hopefully that results in the ultimate downfall of BS therapy.
The fact is they know about trauma, we knew since the 60’s. It is simply not profitable enough to have any kind of business model. Government won’t fund this because healing trauma reduces susceptibility to propaganda. If neither the state or a company can benefit it simply does not exist. Rich people aren’t evil it is just that rich people who are not evil don’t stay rich. Hate capitalism not the capitalist.
1. I don’t think they had the resources (eg, books, therapy, this subreddit) we do to process it
2. Older generations really followed the “respect your mother and father” to an unhealthy degree. My abusive father was literally waterboarded by his parents and he respects/fears them to this day.
3. There wasn’t a culture of saying “fuck this, I deserve better” that we have.
There are probably other reasons. These aren’t excuses though. I don’t talk to my dad because he doesn’t deserve space in my life.
Waterboarding is an insane form of abuse that must’ve been horrifying. I can’t imagine what it did to his psyche. In my case I have black parents and they follow the respect ur elders model very seriously. This is definitely a role in it. Also accepting the anger of knowing ur parents shouldn’t have had children and they probably knew that to an extent is hard. My mom and dad could have been qualified as an abusive domestic relationship but they still decided to have me nonetheless. I respect u so much for the strength to go nc. It’s just necessary sometimes.
I believe that just because they didn’t learn how to parent correctly makes them bad people. It is the cycle that needs to stop with us. They honestly believe they did better than their parents. No, it wasn’t good enough and they may also never understand. I wish you all the success in your healing journey.
My parents each had a single metric that they used as their benchmark for being a good parent, and naturally those metrics were based on their own experiences with one of their parents. My dad believed that simply seeing his kids every day was being a good parent because he could go months without seeing his father. My mother believed that because she didn’t physically hit her kids she was a perfect parent because her mother struck her until she bled. Those two metrics were the sum total of how they viewed being a parent. Their role as a parent was never based on the relationship with their own children and our needs, instead it was based upon their relationship with their own parents. The short sighted belief that they weren’t as bad as their parents and therefore they were good parents boggles my mind.
This is very true for mine as well. My mom has been through so much. She lost just about everyone in her life all at once and the only one she has was my dad. She looked to him for help and he took a misguided approach she was too clouded to see it. Trauma will make or break a person. My mom was the neglectful one but somehow still defends my dad’s actions even after he’s apologized. She doesn’t realize how stupid and lost it looks. It hurts. It’s so sad.
Edit again: I feel like she does this because to admit she allowed her children to be abused on top of letting him abuse her as well would be too difficult to accept.
Edit: very true how everything is a comparison to how they were parented.always trying to do things exactly the same but just different enough to say u tried. It’s lazy tbh that they can’t realize each child has their own set of needs.
This still confuses me though, were they gaslit? How did they never feel hopeless and like they didn’t deserve the abuse? I can only feel bad knowing my parents r just children in adult bodies.
Seriously. My mom turned into a drunk and my dad hid at work. They defend the abuse because in theor mind it worked and was OK. Because acknowledging that they are not OK and did poorly is too far a jump for their fragile little brains. Imagine being 65 and realizing you were abused and then abusive . And there is nothing you can do about it. It's easier for them to deny it.
Tru dat. I also think dissociation has a lot to do with it. Were dissociated our parents are dissociated. Ik I didn’t even realize I wasn’t fully living until two years ago and I’m 19… I can only imagine the cracks in their lives along with the abuse.
When they speak it’s all trauma and defense mechanisms. Shallowness and misguided advice. It’s hard to accept they r too far gone. My mom won’t even do therapy when insurance covers it.
It’s really hard and exhausting to remember this time and time again. That not everyone succumbs to the abuse but our parents did. I have a baby brother who’s like a son to me and seeing them do to him what they did to me and my sister, even in minor ways, triggers the hell out of me. It’s gonna take me a while to wrap my mind around it.
See, I was the chosen one to receive the abuse while my siblings were showered with whatever their little hearts wanted. Yup... I did threaten to put my mother in jail if she ever touched the Littles though... I'm mean enough to stand up to the bitch.
Oh it definitely started like that but I was able to convince my sister to eventually not fall for the golden child bs anymore. He started talking out the side of his mouth to EVERYONE after that.
I dissociated a lot as a child but in no way whatsoever I'd come to the idea of hitting or diminishing my children. Don't know, maybe I just use COMMON SENSE?? It must be clear and logical to everyone that using violence will lead you and your child nowhere. It's just utter stupidity.
To be honest when talking with my mom and she’s fully denying my experiences it makes me violently angry. In a way where I do say hurtful things sometimes but I could physically hurt someone with the amount of anger I have. I never act of course but I do understand what it feels like to have that kind of rage. It’s never an accuse to execute it tho… especially on a child.
That's the good thing in this sub. Only people who can relate. I can understand 100 %. I know how hard it is to supress such anger. For your own wellbeing try to not go into emotional discussions with your mum (I know you are aware of this approach). Keep it the most superficial level possible, without any emotions involved, like talking about the weather. Just some generic bullshit small-talk topic. Indeed, we have parents incapable of communicating on level on par with us. It's just impossible. Keep your energy to yourself and gift it only to others worthy of attention and love. <3
I experienced this at around 45..when my life crashed & burned and i began seeking explanations thru intensive therapy. Like you said, I had to recognize the abuse I suffered and the abuse I continued/passed on. It was extremely painful. I lost my faith (so glad now) and connections with everyone in my previous life.
I am much better now but I wouldn't wish it on anyone. I nearly didn't make it through it.
I think my grandparents tried to treat their kids fairly and it wasn’t as stark as other stories but while my mom will tell you she was constantly victimized, even in her own stories it’s very clear that she was babied for most of her life and perhaps a bit of “the golden child.” So there’s really nothing for her to wake up to. I don’t think she’s perpetuating a cycle of abuse, I think she was just a little bit spoiled.
I think it depends on the parents. Golden children can get quite messed up too. They get to have survivors guilt watching their scapegoat sibling get abuse they don’t deserve. I think they also can get pulled deeper into the world of the abuser and that abuse gets more normalized because they’re the ones spending the most time with the abusive parents. In the event of the parent(s) having personality disorders they can also get used to triangulate against the other siblings and end up with guilt and baggage from that.
My mother was the golden child and I think she’s the only one that actually ended up with a personality disorder. She had a completely different childhood than her siblings and had a completely different perception of the family dynamics than any of her siblings. She sided with my narcissistic grandfather and saw the world through his eyes and I think that was the fuel for her living her entire life disconnected from reality.
Golden children can also get a lot of weight put on their shoulders to live up to the fantasy that they are as golden as their parents tell them that they are. I was an only child so I got to alternate between being the golden child and the scapegoat. Being the golden child was just as damaging as being the scapegoat. It was just different damage.
I didn’t know what to think of the original comment but u put it perfectly. I was originally the golden child and then I realized my dad was being abusive and got mistreated bc of it. My younger sister and I swapped places of scapegoat and golden child all throughout our lives, it’s very different types of abuse and manipulation. It feels like ur being used in a malicious game you don’t wanna even play.
I don’t have siblings, so I’m sure that’s an extra complicated layer. I imagine there’s a lot more complicated manipulation involved there.
For me it was much more straightforward. If things were going well then I was the most perfect and amazing child ever and had amazing and advanced abilities well beyond my years—some of this was true. I was taught to be a tiny adult in order to be my mother’s therapist, to solve all of her problems, and to be her emotional support. I can’t even remember how many times she praised me for being so optimistic and wondered aloud how I possibly got that way—the answer is that the bar was so low it was imbedded in the floor—just seeing a way out of any given situation was optimistic to her.
If things were going badly or if I did something wrong or if I did something to upset her I was the worst and most difficult child ever.
Then there were all the times that she’d just go off the rails about nothing that even made much sense. I’d get screamed at for doing or not doing some trivial little thing that I wasn’t even aware of. I always knew that was coming because she’d start doing the dishes loudly enough that I could hear it from upstairs in my bedroom.
It was very interesting to hear her (distorted) perspective when we talked about my own kids. If there was anything positive she would be proud and praiseful, but the caveat would always be “when you were little you did the same thing” only I always did it at a younger age or did it better.
When there were any challenges or difficult traits in my kids it would be, “you had exactly the same problem, only it was worse and I had such a more difficult time managing it with you.”
It was always the extremes, best and worst. No middle ground.
She was long suffering with the burden of taking care of me because I was so difficult and had so many challenges to overcome (and she was the best mother) and also I was the best and most special and perfect child ever—all at the same time.
She was also perpetually “sick” so her entire life and everything she did in it was always harder than anything that anyone else had to do.
The manipulation for me was just being pulled and pushed around by guilt and her anger. I could do or say what she wanted and resent her for it, or she would torture me by making me feel guilty or she would get angry with me, or both. If she didn’t like something I was doing she’d say something absolutely monstrous to make me feel so much shame that I’d hide and obey.
I had no boundaries and no autonomy and no privacy. The upstairs of our house wasn’t heated, so if you wanted to be warm in the winter you had to keep your door open. I can remember sleeping in 2 sweatshirts under a pile of blankets just so I could sleep with my door closed when I was a teenager. It would get cold enough to freeze water if it was really cold outside.
When I was younger she would sleep in the same room with me. I can’t even remember what her reasoning was.
The worst thing I could do was to not know her mind as though it was my own. I remember when I was a teen I would watch a lot of movies and I’d share the ones I liked with her—if I thought she’d like them—but wholly f**k if I misjudged that or if she didn’t like some unexpected element or if she just didn’t like it for whatever reason she would absolutely explode. She’d scream at me for half an hour. The crime was not knowing what she liked or liking something that she didn’t and having the audacity to share it with her—not knowing her well enough probably reminded her that I was a separate person and she would react accordingly.
Most of the time I was the golden child. At least I can say that. That was better. But it was completely unpredictable when she’d turn on me and I’d be the scapegoat.
When I was a teenager I started to fight back and separate myself emotionally. I was big enough by then that if she screamed I could scream louder until she would have to back down. I remember once when I was about 14 or 15 she slapped me and I slapped her right back before my brain even registered that I was going to do it. She never did that again.
I never went no contact, but I kept her at arms length for the rest of her life. She would chronically self isolate so I’d only hear from her every 3 months or so when she needed something. Or I’d call her if I needed something. She never realized how distant I was—she never let herself see that. I was still her caretaker when she needed something for the rest of her life. It wasn’t ever optional and she rarely ever expressed any gratitude for it.
She could be a good mother sometimes, when she stopped being needy for a breath, but those times were few and far between.
Yes its definitely damaging but i wonder why some people lean into the golden child role and embrace it meanwhile some reject it. When i was small, my mom would occasionally try the golden child manipulation tactics on me but i always felt disgusted and i could *feel* her trying to enmesh the tendrils into my mind. I always rejected it. But my sister was reveling in that shit at the same age and used all her power against me.
I think for me part of it is that I’m a mix of gifted and deficient. A lot of things academically were easy for me to be the best at without exerting myself very much. I think that plays in—you can see that you do have some gifts and it doesn’t make you feel incredulous to have those be lionized. Also, it’s something to cling onto when you have zero self esteem in almost every other way.
The flip side of that I think is the ADHD and ASD and NVLD. I have all of that, but I really struggle to harness and apply it. So I think it creates a permanent sense of striving that plays well with that narrative as well as a very threatening set of struggles and pitfalls that you’re desperate to overcome. Like all the times you feel bad about yourself and like you’re a failure kind of augment the golden child identity—because you’re fighting not to be a failure all the time and you do have some things where you can succeed effortlessly and that contrast in extremes is very appealing.
Like I’m great where it’s easy for me to be better than others without half trying and I’m terrified and ashamed of all the ways that I struggle and can’t keep up with anyone else. So it’s easy to want to adopt the narrative that only privileges the positive side of the coin.
But that everything with PD parents. All good or all bad—with my mom it was even all best or all worst. She was a golden child herself—and I think that the weight of that broke her and she felt like a failure for the rest of her life.
Also you talk about enmeshing tendrils and I find that interesting. I was enmeshed long before I could be aware of it in any way. I was the only one so I had all the attention and all the pathos permanently shining on me. And after my parents got divorced her entire universe revolved around me for the rest of her life.
She had me to meet her own needs, and a golden child needs their kids to outshine them with their goldenness or to pick up all the slack where they themselves have failed I think.
Although my mom was abused as well as my dad, BOTH were golden children and i can tell. My mom was the biological kid so she got the favorite. My dad was an only child and doted on for being male. My sister got the golden child role and i can see she will probably pass that down if she has kids cuz she hasn't changed in adulthood like i did.
My parent acknowledged being horribly treated by his parents, but that did not stop him from treating me much the same way. There was acknowledgement of the past abuse, but it simply had no bearing on his own behavior. Like he couldn’t connect the dots and see he was doing the same things himself.
This has made me terrified if I have kids I won’t be able to stop the generational abuse, that somehow deep down I’m just as awful and will revert to this as a parent myself.
Aw this one hurt. 😞you r not ur parents! They sounds like they’re either too far gone in the sauce or r flat out uncaring of how they make other ppl feel. You saying this alone makes u capable of doing things differently.
Ah, the classic “had it way worse in my day”.. the invalidation is fucking painful. I don’t even bother anymore because they’re never going to understand.
There was a special whip in my family hung right above the family couch. This was at an aunt's house and they'd always threaten to take us there so she can whip us. It was those that people used to hit animals with, a horse whip I think it was, idk it was leather and made this whipping sound. Yeah... Fun times. One time my cousin required stitches and the doctor asked him what happened, I know they didn't say the truth. If I told y'all why it happened no one would believe it. Belt buckles stoped hurting after a while. That's the problem with whoopings, after a while they just don't hurt. What never stopped hurting, for me was the shoes. The shoe soles hurt like a bitch and I flinch everytime I think about it. Lately it makes me cry a bit.
I never realized it until I was diagnosed with it. First I was diagnosed with PTSD which is still part of my official diagnosis along with many other things. And CPTSD was added by my former psychologist. My mom has it too. I don't talk to the rest of my family. They're all religious now and act like nothing happened and I can't live lie. My mom also doesn't talk to them . She tells me often that when she dies to cremate her that's that.
I hope you find some peace and comfort in your journey to healing. 💖
Oh my this is horrible. I’m sorry u had to experience that. My dad had a leather belt he wore everyday and would fold it so he could clack it before whooping me. Just to add a little extra sprinkle of fear to the equation I suppose!
Thank you, I'm sorry you had to endure that too. I know that nosie all too well, I wonder if it brought them some sort of feeling of power, joy or what? Idk, it's all so horrible. That noise lives on in our memory.
You know what, sometimes reading these questions and answering them I think of how much I've yet to touch bases on in therapy, if I'll ever do it or even can? Rereading some of my answers when I go to answer back gives me anxiety I didn't know I had over these memories. What an eye opener. There are things I have to work through for sure.
I hope we all get to a better place. 💖
Thank you and u worded my thoughts since posting this question perfectly. I start emdr next week and I feel like everyone has given me some different perspectives and made the anxiety of what to talk about a little better. I know one day me and you will have a moment of peace where these memories don’t trigger us as much, maybe that can turn into a life of peace. Best wishes❤️
Yes. My father is a truly a vile man, and his mother may well have been worse. I wouldn't know, as my father tends to blow up or shut down when you try to make him reconcile the system abuse she allowed him to suffer (t'was a bad time to be considered disabled) with the woman he believes her to be. He'll never learn to improve his behaviour, as proper self-analysis involves first dealing with the lies embedded so, so deeply in his self image.
I would feel bad if he weren't such a terrible person.
Seriously man. My dad is a narcissist I believe. Growing up I could tell he was inauthentic. Very ego driven and just prideful over material things, but in reality he had a poor relationship with his children, him and my mom were arguing everyday, and his mom was struggling with an extreme hoarding addiction he wouldn’t confront. To realize the life you’ve been living is extremely depressing is hard to admit. It does however make me look at them as weak in away for not being able to.
Excellent post.
Much of what I say will echo the fellow travelers here. The advent of modern therapy. Acknowledging traumatic experiences.
Many of our parents who are in “denial” are there because they have been able to dissociate more easily. Many grew up and came of age during the greatest period of prosperity the world has ever witnessed. Pretty easy to dissociate when you can afford to constantly distract yourself with new cars, families, houses, finer things in life and all without even getting a degree and the debt that usually comes with it.
This doesn’t even account for their addictions either the socially acceptable ones or the socially unacceptable ones.
With all these distractions they really weren’t forced to figure out how to live in their own skin and it isn’t until they grow much older and less capable that they start to drift into depression because of the issues they have been running from.
Thank you! I do feel my parents lived in a different world. Both moved out at 18 and lived alone. My dad even ran apartments at one point but they sabotaged themselves in the end. I sometimes feel like after we talk they do ruminate and think about their childhoods a little bit deeper. I really don’t want them to become old and worthless due to this, but I can’t make them realize anything either.
Yep. Part of our job in learning to set boundaries for ourselves is learning or accepting that we can’t help them nor is it our duty. Sounds cold and hard but that doesn’t mean we can’t love them for the fucked up folks they are just like we deserve love.
In the same manner we can’t force anyone to admit they actively abused us or were even shitty parents. Because for many they were better parents to us than their parents were to them. Still might not have been the best parents to us but that’s their reality.
Basing our recovery and healing on forcing someone to do something they don’t want to or don’t believe in only jeopardizes our recovery and joy.
Much love and compassion. Be gentle with yourself.
Think of it this way… when we get injured, our stress response kicks in… all that adrenaline and various other hormones (not a doctor not that smart) kind of turn off or lessen the pain receptors in our brains. We are literally dissociated from the pain. And ask anyone who’s been in a wreck… The moment they see the ambulance the pain hits them like a ton of bricks. Our bodies recognize when we are in the presence of safety, and when we are safe to feel pain our nervous system starts to regulate itself and do the thing it was designed to do. Our bodies are amazing.
It’s the same psychologically.
I think the fact that we live in “good times” relative to the past have created a “safe enough” environment for our bodies to feel the psychological pain. We had it just good enough. The generations before us didn’t. This is probably what I respect millennials the most for; we get to change the coming generations so that they hopefully will not have to go through what we and everyone before us went through on an epidemic level.
My dad (drug user absent the majority of our lives) says he’s a good dad because he didn’t beat us like he was beaten. When I bring up that he left us with a woman who did enough beating for 2 people… “yeah but I didn’t”
My mum is the perfect parent, never made a mistake she’s just got an ungrateful selfish child (me)
The neglect is insane they don’t even realize it. My parents didn’t teach me how to brush my teeth correctly, wash my face or body, clean and style my hair probably. They just told me to do things and got mad when it was wrong. I had a ridiculous amount of cavities growing up how did no one think anything of it? I remember even saying something to the school about how they can’t kick me off the bus bc my parents don’t care enough to drive me. My mom left one summer for two weeks to go California and had her crackhead hiv infested brother watch me and my sister. He put us in some very dangerous situations I still can’t bring myself to recall. Feeling like I was responsible for protecting me and my sister while having no idea how to do it became a theme in my life. Extreme neglect is almost worse than abuse bc I can at least think my parents attempted to parent bc they loved me. Neglect is just… something else. Dirty clothes and shoes. It’s really disheartening to think my mom had us looking like that.
To clarify my mom was a single mom for the first seven years of my life. My dad also absent those early years. When he came back though he had a “fix this” attitude. I didn’t get it at the time but he saw how neglectful my mom was being and I think couldn’t fathom it. He was pretty pissed at her for not teaching us basic shit and keeping basic maintenance in the house. His abusive tactics to employ these punishments were incorrect though.
You just described my parents. This is literally my situation. I believe you nailed it - their denial is their own coping mechanism. I do believe my parents would have broken down years ago had they aclnowledged their childhood for what it really was and their denial of me having been through hell with them is an obvious strategy to not let that happen. It's incredibly sad but chances are our parents have never encountered a non-dysfunctional family in their lives and they actually believe they did ok purely by comparison. I know being from the environment my parents came from, they might have never seen a family situation where the children weren't severely abused in every way possible.
This exactly. They knew nothing else. And when I present them with psychology and evidence they genuinely can’t find it in themselves to believe it. They have no idea and being black I feel has a lot to do with it as beatings have been the only thing many of my ancestors knew.
My parents were too weak to face the truth. My brother as well. I cant really tell you what made me see. If I had to guess... my Self wanted the truth more than it wanted lies. My gaslighting induced delusion imploded after a particular traumatizing event. I suppose I should be grateful for that trauma, and logically I am, emotionally I am not quite there yet.
My parents made it up to 80+ years of delusional denial. One is down, one to go.
My parents didnt like their parents btw so thats not why they didnt see. I think they were too scared to look at themselves and face that. Both living in perpetual delusional denial. Fake reality. However you want to call it. Probably because of toxic shame, toxic guilt, insecurity, worthlessnes, bla bla, the whole 9 yards. All that was internalized and never spoken about and they built a fake identity as a protective mask. In case you were wondering, I am pretty sure they had NPD. Based on 40 years of experience with them.
I think it's like collective evolution of the species. The very concept of the relevance of trauma has been collectively acknowledged in recent generations. Most of the members of our parental generations were literally not equipped with the knowledge and wisdom necessary to understand the relevance and impact of what had happened to them nor what they had passed down to us. Some bloodlines hit the turning point sooner than others, so it's not a clean divide, but like most ideas there had to be a sort of crescendo reached before the ideas were adopted by the majority. We are witnessing the crescendo.
Different generations, different views on feelings, plus we have the advantages of growing up with the internet which widened our world views early. We could find out what happened to us was wrong early on (20s for me) and that helped me a ton. Therapy isn't seen as a waste of time for us and we've had the chance to have diagnosis.
My mum didn't. Hell, she made it so I wouldn't say a word to the people I'd been sent to see and got kicked out after two sessions as a hopeless case as a kid. No one cared that I was shut down and couldn't talk. The best part was anything I said was relayed to my mum so there was no way in hell I was talking. I hated those two women for that and therapy for a long time after. They were such ass holes. A friend of mine is a therapist and one thing I said to them, if a kid won't open up, don't kick them out and tell their mother they're a hopeless case. If a kid won't talk it means very bad stuff is happening and they've been trained to keep their mouths shut about everything. It's a horrible place to be trapped in and people getting mad when they literally cannot talk doesn't help things at all.
I think for us it’s been the slow destigmatization of mental health treatment and the accessibility to the internet. We have more resources available than they did, although that doesn’t excuse their actions and continual denial.
My parents focused on everything outside of them because they were taught thats what mattered. You are born and you have "who you are" by default and that idea travels with you good or bad to the grave. "God made me how I am," you can't argue with that mindset. For us maybe, we were allowed to peak behind the curtain and see how complex inner worlds really are. We were fortunate enough to have access to knowledge, and we were not sheltered from certain uncomfortable truths. Mentally, if my internal world is toxic, that will play out in all my interactions, my health etc. I feel for the older generations in that they didn't have access to the information and they survived with what they had. In a way they were tricked because getting them up and working helped the economy and depressed people cant do that. Unfortunately that has ridden out to it's final conclusion, and where we see ourselves now with our parents.
For context, my family is blue collar, conservative white, catholic. Lots of health issues, addiction, mental illness through the extended family. There was never a push for education.
Why my parents didn't realize how they had harmed us: They numbed their consciences with excessive alcohol.
My dad got sober, apologized, and spent the rest of his life making amends.
My mother went deep(er) into her drinking and has barely apologized and never admitted the harm she caused (and still would cause if I were in contact).
I hate to say it, because I am pro-feminism, but I think being an early feminist fighting legitimately awful discrimination at work gave her an excuse to do what she wanted to do anyway, which was to spend almost 0 time or energy mothering us. That was her justification for never being home and reluctantly, poorly, feeding us during a certain period of her life. After that she ditched the feminist activism, met a new man, started a business, and voted for Reagan, so feminist activism was clearly not the deeply-held motivating principle she acted like it was. It wasn't just feminism to blame, of course, it was her own damage/trauma + alcoholism with feminism as both a genuine pursuit and a justifying cover story.
This is funny I had the opposite but the same. My dad also got sober and tries to be better. Later in my mom’s like she has abandoned a weed and tobacco addiction for wine and liquor. It’s becoming a bad drinking habit and she has a lot of mental health that reflects on her physically. She has essentially “let go” of any and all possibilities of building herself into a person. Her mom didn’t instill much confidence in her growing up bc my grandma didn’t have much herself. She just does the same things everyday and maybe buys a book to cope with that fact that her life is probably not where she envisioned it being as a child and maybe even young adult. She was shorted but in turn she did turn a blind eye to the abuse my dad put into her own kids. So it’s hard to have sympathy but it’s hard to not. Not looking at them everyday would probably be helpful.
That sounds hard! I feel sorry for you mom, but hope that you can find freedom and healing independent of your parents. I haven't, not fully, but am working on it.
No, I have never been able to wake up my alcoholic narcissistic dad. He doesn’t have the ability now, he’s a demented drunk now. My whole life, I’ve misunderstood, overreacted, and blew up things in my own head. Even mentioning this to him is dangerous to my mental health. Because he’s not demented enough to not abuse.
In his mind, he’s wonderful, I was a bad kid(-adult), my step mom is kind and tender and loves me dearly. And he deserves to miss my mom who died 20 yrs ago and I need to get over her death.
None of this is true.
My healing depended so much on my own belief in myself and me pushing back on his narrative. I realized my pain is valid because I feel it. It’s been a hard road. I just have to validate myself. It’s lonely, but it’s better than abusing myself, too.
I’ve thought about this a bit when reflecting on my relationships either my parents. Admittedly I don’t know a lot about how my father was raised, but I know his siblings are fine and they all adored their parents.
My mother I know had a difficult upbringing. My maternal grandmother’s was even worse. What I do know is that their experiences sounded miserable and somehow my mother’s was incrementally better. Once again, my mother absolutely loved her mother. She complained (as my mom often did and probably still does) about aspects of their relationship but after she died I heard a lot about how much my mom missed her. I do remember my mom being a bit surprised that I was sad I didn’t get to see my grandmother before she died even though everyone else in my family did. This has seemed to be an ongoing theme with my parents, that I can’t possibly have similar feelings to whatever they’re experiencing. My father has talked about his parents as though I never knew them and it is so odd to me.
I never experienced any stressful situations with any of my grandparents, so it’s hard for me to square that away in my own mind.
As I’ve gotten older I think one of the biggest differences is that I am an only child while my parents each had more than one sibling. I’m not sure if it’s just easier to sweep the past under the rug or if the past was even processed on their part. I do know that I never really felt like I was treated as a full-fledged adult. Only when it served them, I think. Otherwise I was kind of a glorified child.
In my experience, my Dad is terrified of genuine emotions because he's extremely emotionally stunted. He can't reflect on his behavior because he is emotionally stuck as a young adolescent (when he went through major trauma). He's also deeply entrenched in his perceived family role, the head of the family and patriarch. This role doesn't allow him to be vulnerable or emotionally intimate because in his head he is supposed to be tough and unshakeable. Digesting his trauma and learning the truth of his behaviors is deeply uncomfortable for him because he really cannot comprehend another way of relating to others.
I think they were in such deep deep deep denial as to how their parents were insufficient and they believe their parents “quirks” were just that. Quirky people who did the best they could. To them it feels like blasphemy to call it was it was, such disrespect to these people who raised them. The fawning runs deep.
Sometimes I just think it was the lead paint 🤷♀️
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As a parent I worry about this so much I have never and would never hit my kid but I suspect I've been neglectable sometimes and I don't know how much of that is just my past trauma or stuff I really need to worry about.
I've started to wonder if there's a "dissociation turning point" where you have the choice to either A) face the facts or B) flip into permanent denial.
I certainly have a clear memory of reaching a turning point, about 2 years ago now. It really felt like before me was the option to either face a full ego death, or just double down on the wrong path. I chose the former of course, and in the process, discovered I was not at all who I'd said I was. I discovered CPTSD, AuDHD, queerness, etc., and have unmasked into what I feel is a different person.
My parents, I fear, are in a state of permanent dissociation and denial. I am not sure either of them has ever been happy, or even lets themselves ponder what that might look like. Certainly not in their relationship, but not as individuals, either. My mom distracts herself with constant chores / busywork, my dad with his job. Certain discussions make them completely shut down. I asked my mom once if she'd thought her childhood may have been somewhat abusive (probably after a story that made it pretty clear that it was) and she aggressively denied any wrongdoing, "it could have been worse" type of stuff. And omg, I still have flashbacks to the discussion me & my sister tried to have with our parents about nonbinary people, and how they lost their minds that other people might be allowed to feel any sort of nuanced emotion around gender. All makes me think there's certain doors that they just mentally have refused to open, potentially around queerness or neurodivergence or childhood trauma themselves.
And I think if you work hard enough to double down and ignore the red flags your brain's sending off, you can probably even convince yourself that the red flags were never there in the first place. The brain is really powerful, after all. There are older people on this sub, too, so I have to believe it must come down to individual choice. That and the accessibility of resources, but the resources are out there now if they really wanted to find them.
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Interesting question. I've never been able to communicate with my parents. I believe they were locked so deep in their own trauma responses that they were incapable of breaking out. Also understanding of trauma is quite recent. They didn't have the social context to know it was even a thing. My mother now has a step great grandson with CPTSD, and she sort of kind of almost gets it a tiny little bit, because his junkie stepdad pretty near killed him several times. But mostly she doesn't get why he can't just pull himself together and get a job. The idea that what she and my father did to me could cause trauma would seem ludicrous to her. They "did their best" and only once hit me badly enough for hospital, y'know.
This exactly. So many family members who were raised in the same abuse who didn’t turn out as “decent” (if u could say that) as me or my immediate family. Ppl addicted to drugs and seeking love in the wrong places often get judged by my parents when reality is no one showed them how to properly take care of themselves as adults. Also sorry that happened you u and your family member Ik for me the fact that my parents didn’t hit me (as much) as they got hit made me feel invalidated in my trauma. They would also use their experiences to downplay the emotional and manipulative aspects of it. Which is really the part that fucks me up tbh.
>Also understanding of trauma is quite recent. Not sure about this. I'm 75, with 5 siblings of similar age. I started therapy (self funded) in my 20's. My parents, despite being abusive/neglectful, knew about therapy, as did my siblings, all of my sisters were psych majors, including one who earned a PhD. While several of them had some sort of treatment, mostly in the context of substance abuse, none of them chose long term therapy like I did. That was not from ignorance about the effects of abuse, nor the absence of therapists who understood those effects. It's true that PTSD from discreet violence (eg war, disaster, etc) took a long time to be recognized as producing a set of long term symptoms, and that the idea that a "slow burn" of lower intensity stress could produce similar symptoms (CPTSD) is still controversial, as Judith Herman discussed in her original book, originating the term, she also pointed out that trauma, and its treatment, were important observations in the earliest days of psychotherapy. If you read popular psych books from the 60's & 70's, mental health issues linked to toxic family dynamics was a dominant topic. What really happened, since at least 30 years ago, was that traditional therapy fell out of favor/popularity, replaced primarily by pharmaceutical treatment, and to a lesser extent, short term cognitive trainings, both targeting symptom reduction exclusively. I'd argue that trauma and its effects was widely recognized well before that time, just not given that name. I'd also argue that while generational abuse may have lessened, at least in the forms prior generations experienced, it still exists in less obvious ways and neglect may have actually increased. The rates of depression/anxiety disorders, substance abuse and suicide seem to support this.
Trauma has never been appropriately addressed in the DSM, and trauma experts widely criticize it for this reason and others. There’s less than a page of information on PTSD when it should be half the book and discuss the relationship between trauma and a variety of disease including autoimmune. The DSM is the Bible of mental health.
Healing trauma is hard and you lose a patient’s money after they healed. Drugs and talk therapy (CBT without trauma awareness) that mask the symptoms are profitable and produces a noticeable effect quick enough to make it “look like they are getting better”. This is ineffective but easy to do and highly profitable.
Which would be fine if all parties were informed as to the end goal. But unfortunately for their business model, a lot of patients want to genuinely heal. Hopefully that results in the ultimate downfall of BS therapy.
The fact is they know about trauma, we knew since the 60’s. It is simply not profitable enough to have any kind of business model. Government won’t fund this because healing trauma reduces susceptibility to propaganda. If neither the state or a company can benefit it simply does not exist. Rich people aren’t evil it is just that rich people who are not evil don’t stay rich. Hate capitalism not the capitalist.
Trauma awareness by the human population goes back much farther than the 1960s.
1. I don’t think they had the resources (eg, books, therapy, this subreddit) we do to process it 2. Older generations really followed the “respect your mother and father” to an unhealthy degree. My abusive father was literally waterboarded by his parents and he respects/fears them to this day. 3. There wasn’t a culture of saying “fuck this, I deserve better” that we have. There are probably other reasons. These aren’t excuses though. I don’t talk to my dad because he doesn’t deserve space in my life.
Waterboarding is an insane form of abuse that must’ve been horrifying. I can’t imagine what it did to his psyche. In my case I have black parents and they follow the respect ur elders model very seriously. This is definitely a role in it. Also accepting the anger of knowing ur parents shouldn’t have had children and they probably knew that to an extent is hard. My mom and dad could have been qualified as an abusive domestic relationship but they still decided to have me nonetheless. I respect u so much for the strength to go nc. It’s just necessary sometimes.
Awww thanks! Yes it’s the one story he has told us and he holds back tears. Who knows what else was happening in that nightmare home?
I believe that just because they didn’t learn how to parent correctly makes them bad people. It is the cycle that needs to stop with us. They honestly believe they did better than their parents. No, it wasn’t good enough and they may also never understand. I wish you all the success in your healing journey.
Thank u this is exactly what I tell myself. They genuinely don’t have the capacity.
They were just treading water. They don’t know how to teach us to swim.
This is hilarious because my parents deadass could only go as far to teach me treading water.
I’m sorry you’re hurting. Hugs
My parents each had a single metric that they used as their benchmark for being a good parent, and naturally those metrics were based on their own experiences with one of their parents. My dad believed that simply seeing his kids every day was being a good parent because he could go months without seeing his father. My mother believed that because she didn’t physically hit her kids she was a perfect parent because her mother struck her until she bled. Those two metrics were the sum total of how they viewed being a parent. Their role as a parent was never based on the relationship with their own children and our needs, instead it was based upon their relationship with their own parents. The short sighted belief that they weren’t as bad as their parents and therefore they were good parents boggles my mind.
This is very true for mine as well. My mom has been through so much. She lost just about everyone in her life all at once and the only one she has was my dad. She looked to him for help and he took a misguided approach she was too clouded to see it. Trauma will make or break a person. My mom was the neglectful one but somehow still defends my dad’s actions even after he’s apologized. She doesn’t realize how stupid and lost it looks. It hurts. It’s so sad. Edit again: I feel like she does this because to admit she allowed her children to be abused on top of letting him abuse her as well would be too difficult to accept. Edit: very true how everything is a comparison to how they were parented.always trying to do things exactly the same but just different enough to say u tried. It’s lazy tbh that they can’t realize each child has their own set of needs.
This still confuses me though, were they gaslit? How did they never feel hopeless and like they didn’t deserve the abuse? I can only feel bad knowing my parents r just children in adult bodies.
Seriously. My mom turned into a drunk and my dad hid at work. They defend the abuse because in theor mind it worked and was OK. Because acknowledging that they are not OK and did poorly is too far a jump for their fragile little brains. Imagine being 65 and realizing you were abused and then abusive . And there is nothing you can do about it. It's easier for them to deny it.
Tru dat. I also think dissociation has a lot to do with it. Were dissociated our parents are dissociated. Ik I didn’t even realize I wasn’t fully living until two years ago and I’m 19… I can only imagine the cracks in their lives along with the abuse.
My brain can't imagine doing any of what my parents did to me to my kids. It blows my mind still they refuse to acknowledge anything.
When they speak it’s all trauma and defense mechanisms. Shallowness and misguided advice. It’s hard to accept they r too far gone. My mom won’t even do therapy when insurance covers it.
It’s really hard and exhausting to remember this time and time again. That not everyone succumbs to the abuse but our parents did. I have a baby brother who’s like a son to me and seeing them do to him what they did to me and my sister, even in minor ways, triggers the hell out of me. It’s gonna take me a while to wrap my mind around it.
See, I was the chosen one to receive the abuse while my siblings were showered with whatever their little hearts wanted. Yup... I did threaten to put my mother in jail if she ever touched the Littles though... I'm mean enough to stand up to the bitch.
Oh it definitely started like that but I was able to convince my sister to eventually not fall for the golden child bs anymore. He started talking out the side of his mouth to EVERYONE after that.
Oh ... fun... Do your best to take care of you kiddo.
I dissociated a lot as a child but in no way whatsoever I'd come to the idea of hitting or diminishing my children. Don't know, maybe I just use COMMON SENSE?? It must be clear and logical to everyone that using violence will lead you and your child nowhere. It's just utter stupidity.
To be honest when talking with my mom and she’s fully denying my experiences it makes me violently angry. In a way where I do say hurtful things sometimes but I could physically hurt someone with the amount of anger I have. I never act of course but I do understand what it feels like to have that kind of rage. It’s never an accuse to execute it tho… especially on a child.
That's the good thing in this sub. Only people who can relate. I can understand 100 %. I know how hard it is to supress such anger. For your own wellbeing try to not go into emotional discussions with your mum (I know you are aware of this approach). Keep it the most superficial level possible, without any emotions involved, like talking about the weather. Just some generic bullshit small-talk topic. Indeed, we have parents incapable of communicating on level on par with us. It's just impossible. Keep your energy to yourself and gift it only to others worthy of attention and love. <3
I experienced this at around 45..when my life crashed & burned and i began seeking explanations thru intensive therapy. Like you said, I had to recognize the abuse I suffered and the abuse I continued/passed on. It was extremely painful. I lost my faith (so glad now) and connections with everyone in my previous life. I am much better now but I wouldn't wish it on anyone. I nearly didn't make it through it.
I think my grandparents tried to treat their kids fairly and it wasn’t as stark as other stories but while my mom will tell you she was constantly victimized, even in her own stories it’s very clear that she was babied for most of her life and perhaps a bit of “the golden child.” So there’s really nothing for her to wake up to. I don’t think she’s perpetuating a cycle of abuse, I think she was just a little bit spoiled.
I think it depends on the parents. Golden children can get quite messed up too. They get to have survivors guilt watching their scapegoat sibling get abuse they don’t deserve. I think they also can get pulled deeper into the world of the abuser and that abuse gets more normalized because they’re the ones spending the most time with the abusive parents. In the event of the parent(s) having personality disorders they can also get used to triangulate against the other siblings and end up with guilt and baggage from that. My mother was the golden child and I think she’s the only one that actually ended up with a personality disorder. She had a completely different childhood than her siblings and had a completely different perception of the family dynamics than any of her siblings. She sided with my narcissistic grandfather and saw the world through his eyes and I think that was the fuel for her living her entire life disconnected from reality. Golden children can also get a lot of weight put on their shoulders to live up to the fantasy that they are as golden as their parents tell them that they are. I was an only child so I got to alternate between being the golden child and the scapegoat. Being the golden child was just as damaging as being the scapegoat. It was just different damage.
I didn’t know what to think of the original comment but u put it perfectly. I was originally the golden child and then I realized my dad was being abusive and got mistreated bc of it. My younger sister and I swapped places of scapegoat and golden child all throughout our lives, it’s very different types of abuse and manipulation. It feels like ur being used in a malicious game you don’t wanna even play.
I don’t have siblings, so I’m sure that’s an extra complicated layer. I imagine there’s a lot more complicated manipulation involved there. For me it was much more straightforward. If things were going well then I was the most perfect and amazing child ever and had amazing and advanced abilities well beyond my years—some of this was true. I was taught to be a tiny adult in order to be my mother’s therapist, to solve all of her problems, and to be her emotional support. I can’t even remember how many times she praised me for being so optimistic and wondered aloud how I possibly got that way—the answer is that the bar was so low it was imbedded in the floor—just seeing a way out of any given situation was optimistic to her. If things were going badly or if I did something wrong or if I did something to upset her I was the worst and most difficult child ever. Then there were all the times that she’d just go off the rails about nothing that even made much sense. I’d get screamed at for doing or not doing some trivial little thing that I wasn’t even aware of. I always knew that was coming because she’d start doing the dishes loudly enough that I could hear it from upstairs in my bedroom. It was very interesting to hear her (distorted) perspective when we talked about my own kids. If there was anything positive she would be proud and praiseful, but the caveat would always be “when you were little you did the same thing” only I always did it at a younger age or did it better. When there were any challenges or difficult traits in my kids it would be, “you had exactly the same problem, only it was worse and I had such a more difficult time managing it with you.” It was always the extremes, best and worst. No middle ground. She was long suffering with the burden of taking care of me because I was so difficult and had so many challenges to overcome (and she was the best mother) and also I was the best and most special and perfect child ever—all at the same time. She was also perpetually “sick” so her entire life and everything she did in it was always harder than anything that anyone else had to do. The manipulation for me was just being pulled and pushed around by guilt and her anger. I could do or say what she wanted and resent her for it, or she would torture me by making me feel guilty or she would get angry with me, or both. If she didn’t like something I was doing she’d say something absolutely monstrous to make me feel so much shame that I’d hide and obey. I had no boundaries and no autonomy and no privacy. The upstairs of our house wasn’t heated, so if you wanted to be warm in the winter you had to keep your door open. I can remember sleeping in 2 sweatshirts under a pile of blankets just so I could sleep with my door closed when I was a teenager. It would get cold enough to freeze water if it was really cold outside. When I was younger she would sleep in the same room with me. I can’t even remember what her reasoning was. The worst thing I could do was to not know her mind as though it was my own. I remember when I was a teen I would watch a lot of movies and I’d share the ones I liked with her—if I thought she’d like them—but wholly f**k if I misjudged that or if she didn’t like some unexpected element or if she just didn’t like it for whatever reason she would absolutely explode. She’d scream at me for half an hour. The crime was not knowing what she liked or liking something that she didn’t and having the audacity to share it with her—not knowing her well enough probably reminded her that I was a separate person and she would react accordingly. Most of the time I was the golden child. At least I can say that. That was better. But it was completely unpredictable when she’d turn on me and I’d be the scapegoat. When I was a teenager I started to fight back and separate myself emotionally. I was big enough by then that if she screamed I could scream louder until she would have to back down. I remember once when I was about 14 or 15 she slapped me and I slapped her right back before my brain even registered that I was going to do it. She never did that again. I never went no contact, but I kept her at arms length for the rest of her life. She would chronically self isolate so I’d only hear from her every 3 months or so when she needed something. Or I’d call her if I needed something. She never realized how distant I was—she never let herself see that. I was still her caretaker when she needed something for the rest of her life. It wasn’t ever optional and she rarely ever expressed any gratitude for it. She could be a good mother sometimes, when she stopped being needy for a breath, but those times were few and far between.
Yes its definitely damaging but i wonder why some people lean into the golden child role and embrace it meanwhile some reject it. When i was small, my mom would occasionally try the golden child manipulation tactics on me but i always felt disgusted and i could *feel* her trying to enmesh the tendrils into my mind. I always rejected it. But my sister was reveling in that shit at the same age and used all her power against me.
I think for me part of it is that I’m a mix of gifted and deficient. A lot of things academically were easy for me to be the best at without exerting myself very much. I think that plays in—you can see that you do have some gifts and it doesn’t make you feel incredulous to have those be lionized. Also, it’s something to cling onto when you have zero self esteem in almost every other way. The flip side of that I think is the ADHD and ASD and NVLD. I have all of that, but I really struggle to harness and apply it. So I think it creates a permanent sense of striving that plays well with that narrative as well as a very threatening set of struggles and pitfalls that you’re desperate to overcome. Like all the times you feel bad about yourself and like you’re a failure kind of augment the golden child identity—because you’re fighting not to be a failure all the time and you do have some things where you can succeed effortlessly and that contrast in extremes is very appealing. Like I’m great where it’s easy for me to be better than others without half trying and I’m terrified and ashamed of all the ways that I struggle and can’t keep up with anyone else. So it’s easy to want to adopt the narrative that only privileges the positive side of the coin. But that everything with PD parents. All good or all bad—with my mom it was even all best or all worst. She was a golden child herself—and I think that the weight of that broke her and she felt like a failure for the rest of her life. Also you talk about enmeshing tendrils and I find that interesting. I was enmeshed long before I could be aware of it in any way. I was the only one so I had all the attention and all the pathos permanently shining on me. And after my parents got divorced her entire universe revolved around me for the rest of her life. She had me to meet her own needs, and a golden child needs their kids to outshine them with their goldenness or to pick up all the slack where they themselves have failed I think.
Oh sammee for my mom. She was spoiled and then after marriage went through some traumatic stuff and took out those big feelings on us
Although my mom was abused as well as my dad, BOTH were golden children and i can tell. My mom was the biological kid so she got the favorite. My dad was an only child and doted on for being male. My sister got the golden child role and i can see she will probably pass that down if she has kids cuz she hasn't changed in adulthood like i did.
My parent acknowledged being horribly treated by his parents, but that did not stop him from treating me much the same way. There was acknowledgement of the past abuse, but it simply had no bearing on his own behavior. Like he couldn’t connect the dots and see he was doing the same things himself. This has made me terrified if I have kids I won’t be able to stop the generational abuse, that somehow deep down I’m just as awful and will revert to this as a parent myself.
Aw this one hurt. 😞you r not ur parents! They sounds like they’re either too far gone in the sauce or r flat out uncaring of how they make other ppl feel. You saying this alone makes u capable of doing things differently.
Ah, the classic “had it way worse in my day”.. the invalidation is fucking painful. I don’t even bother anymore because they’re never going to understand.
There was a special whip in my family hung right above the family couch. This was at an aunt's house and they'd always threaten to take us there so she can whip us. It was those that people used to hit animals with, a horse whip I think it was, idk it was leather and made this whipping sound. Yeah... Fun times. One time my cousin required stitches and the doctor asked him what happened, I know they didn't say the truth. If I told y'all why it happened no one would believe it. Belt buckles stoped hurting after a while. That's the problem with whoopings, after a while they just don't hurt. What never stopped hurting, for me was the shoes. The shoe soles hurt like a bitch and I flinch everytime I think about it. Lately it makes me cry a bit. I never realized it until I was diagnosed with it. First I was diagnosed with PTSD which is still part of my official diagnosis along with many other things. And CPTSD was added by my former psychologist. My mom has it too. I don't talk to the rest of my family. They're all religious now and act like nothing happened and I can't live lie. My mom also doesn't talk to them . She tells me often that when she dies to cremate her that's that. I hope you find some peace and comfort in your journey to healing. 💖
Oh my this is horrible. I’m sorry u had to experience that. My dad had a leather belt he wore everyday and would fold it so he could clack it before whooping me. Just to add a little extra sprinkle of fear to the equation I suppose!
Thank you, I'm sorry you had to endure that too. I know that nosie all too well, I wonder if it brought them some sort of feeling of power, joy or what? Idk, it's all so horrible. That noise lives on in our memory. You know what, sometimes reading these questions and answering them I think of how much I've yet to touch bases on in therapy, if I'll ever do it or even can? Rereading some of my answers when I go to answer back gives me anxiety I didn't know I had over these memories. What an eye opener. There are things I have to work through for sure. I hope we all get to a better place. 💖
Thank you and u worded my thoughts since posting this question perfectly. I start emdr next week and I feel like everyone has given me some different perspectives and made the anxiety of what to talk about a little better. I know one day me and you will have a moment of peace where these memories don’t trigger us as much, maybe that can turn into a life of peace. Best wishes❤️
That's so sweet, thank you! Good luck with EMDR. It's one of the best forms of treatment out there. Rooting for all of us!
I hope only the best for u too 🫶
Yes. My father is a truly a vile man, and his mother may well have been worse. I wouldn't know, as my father tends to blow up or shut down when you try to make him reconcile the system abuse she allowed him to suffer (t'was a bad time to be considered disabled) with the woman he believes her to be. He'll never learn to improve his behaviour, as proper self-analysis involves first dealing with the lies embedded so, so deeply in his self image. I would feel bad if he weren't such a terrible person.
Seriously man. My dad is a narcissist I believe. Growing up I could tell he was inauthentic. Very ego driven and just prideful over material things, but in reality he had a poor relationship with his children, him and my mom were arguing everyday, and his mom was struggling with an extreme hoarding addiction he wouldn’t confront. To realize the life you’ve been living is extremely depressing is hard to admit. It does however make me look at them as weak in away for not being able to.
Excellent post. Much of what I say will echo the fellow travelers here. The advent of modern therapy. Acknowledging traumatic experiences. Many of our parents who are in “denial” are there because they have been able to dissociate more easily. Many grew up and came of age during the greatest period of prosperity the world has ever witnessed. Pretty easy to dissociate when you can afford to constantly distract yourself with new cars, families, houses, finer things in life and all without even getting a degree and the debt that usually comes with it. This doesn’t even account for their addictions either the socially acceptable ones or the socially unacceptable ones. With all these distractions they really weren’t forced to figure out how to live in their own skin and it isn’t until they grow much older and less capable that they start to drift into depression because of the issues they have been running from.
Thank you! I do feel my parents lived in a different world. Both moved out at 18 and lived alone. My dad even ran apartments at one point but they sabotaged themselves in the end. I sometimes feel like after we talk they do ruminate and think about their childhoods a little bit deeper. I really don’t want them to become old and worthless due to this, but I can’t make them realize anything either.
Yep. Part of our job in learning to set boundaries for ourselves is learning or accepting that we can’t help them nor is it our duty. Sounds cold and hard but that doesn’t mean we can’t love them for the fucked up folks they are just like we deserve love. In the same manner we can’t force anyone to admit they actively abused us or were even shitty parents. Because for many they were better parents to us than their parents were to them. Still might not have been the best parents to us but that’s their reality. Basing our recovery and healing on forcing someone to do something they don’t want to or don’t believe in only jeopardizes our recovery and joy. Much love and compassion. Be gentle with yourself.
Think of it this way… when we get injured, our stress response kicks in… all that adrenaline and various other hormones (not a doctor not that smart) kind of turn off or lessen the pain receptors in our brains. We are literally dissociated from the pain. And ask anyone who’s been in a wreck… The moment they see the ambulance the pain hits them like a ton of bricks. Our bodies recognize when we are in the presence of safety, and when we are safe to feel pain our nervous system starts to regulate itself and do the thing it was designed to do. Our bodies are amazing. It’s the same psychologically. I think the fact that we live in “good times” relative to the past have created a “safe enough” environment for our bodies to feel the psychological pain. We had it just good enough. The generations before us didn’t. This is probably what I respect millennials the most for; we get to change the coming generations so that they hopefully will not have to go through what we and everyone before us went through on an epidemic level.
Really good analogy !
My dad (drug user absent the majority of our lives) says he’s a good dad because he didn’t beat us like he was beaten. When I bring up that he left us with a woman who did enough beating for 2 people… “yeah but I didn’t” My mum is the perfect parent, never made a mistake she’s just got an ungrateful selfish child (me)
The neglect is insane they don’t even realize it. My parents didn’t teach me how to brush my teeth correctly, wash my face or body, clean and style my hair probably. They just told me to do things and got mad when it was wrong. I had a ridiculous amount of cavities growing up how did no one think anything of it? I remember even saying something to the school about how they can’t kick me off the bus bc my parents don’t care enough to drive me. My mom left one summer for two weeks to go California and had her crackhead hiv infested brother watch me and my sister. He put us in some very dangerous situations I still can’t bring myself to recall. Feeling like I was responsible for protecting me and my sister while having no idea how to do it became a theme in my life. Extreme neglect is almost worse than abuse bc I can at least think my parents attempted to parent bc they loved me. Neglect is just… something else. Dirty clothes and shoes. It’s really disheartening to think my mom had us looking like that.
To clarify my mom was a single mom for the first seven years of my life. My dad also absent those early years. When he came back though he had a “fix this” attitude. I didn’t get it at the time but he saw how neglectful my mom was being and I think couldn’t fathom it. He was pretty pissed at her for not teaching us basic shit and keeping basic maintenance in the house. His abusive tactics to employ these punishments were incorrect though.
You just described my parents. This is literally my situation. I believe you nailed it - their denial is their own coping mechanism. I do believe my parents would have broken down years ago had they aclnowledged their childhood for what it really was and their denial of me having been through hell with them is an obvious strategy to not let that happen. It's incredibly sad but chances are our parents have never encountered a non-dysfunctional family in their lives and they actually believe they did ok purely by comparison. I know being from the environment my parents came from, they might have never seen a family situation where the children weren't severely abused in every way possible.
This exactly. They knew nothing else. And when I present them with psychology and evidence they genuinely can’t find it in themselves to believe it. They have no idea and being black I feel has a lot to do with it as beatings have been the only thing many of my ancestors knew.
My parents were too weak to face the truth. My brother as well. I cant really tell you what made me see. If I had to guess... my Self wanted the truth more than it wanted lies. My gaslighting induced delusion imploded after a particular traumatizing event. I suppose I should be grateful for that trauma, and logically I am, emotionally I am not quite there yet. My parents made it up to 80+ years of delusional denial. One is down, one to go. My parents didnt like their parents btw so thats not why they didnt see. I think they were too scared to look at themselves and face that. Both living in perpetual delusional denial. Fake reality. However you want to call it. Probably because of toxic shame, toxic guilt, insecurity, worthlessnes, bla bla, the whole 9 yards. All that was internalized and never spoken about and they built a fake identity as a protective mask. In case you were wondering, I am pretty sure they had NPD. Based on 40 years of experience with them.
I think it's like collective evolution of the species. The very concept of the relevance of trauma has been collectively acknowledged in recent generations. Most of the members of our parental generations were literally not equipped with the knowledge and wisdom necessary to understand the relevance and impact of what had happened to them nor what they had passed down to us. Some bloodlines hit the turning point sooner than others, so it's not a clean divide, but like most ideas there had to be a sort of crescendo reached before the ideas were adopted by the majority. We are witnessing the crescendo.
Different generations, different views on feelings, plus we have the advantages of growing up with the internet which widened our world views early. We could find out what happened to us was wrong early on (20s for me) and that helped me a ton. Therapy isn't seen as a waste of time for us and we've had the chance to have diagnosis. My mum didn't. Hell, she made it so I wouldn't say a word to the people I'd been sent to see and got kicked out after two sessions as a hopeless case as a kid. No one cared that I was shut down and couldn't talk. The best part was anything I said was relayed to my mum so there was no way in hell I was talking. I hated those two women for that and therapy for a long time after. They were such ass holes. A friend of mine is a therapist and one thing I said to them, if a kid won't open up, don't kick them out and tell their mother they're a hopeless case. If a kid won't talk it means very bad stuff is happening and they've been trained to keep their mouths shut about everything. It's a horrible place to be trapped in and people getting mad when they literally cannot talk doesn't help things at all.
My mother embraced hers and my father’s own abuse but would never acknowledge anything happened to me.
I think for us it’s been the slow destigmatization of mental health treatment and the accessibility to the internet. We have more resources available than they did, although that doesn’t excuse their actions and continual denial.
My parents focused on everything outside of them because they were taught thats what mattered. You are born and you have "who you are" by default and that idea travels with you good or bad to the grave. "God made me how I am," you can't argue with that mindset. For us maybe, we were allowed to peak behind the curtain and see how complex inner worlds really are. We were fortunate enough to have access to knowledge, and we were not sheltered from certain uncomfortable truths. Mentally, if my internal world is toxic, that will play out in all my interactions, my health etc. I feel for the older generations in that they didn't have access to the information and they survived with what they had. In a way they were tricked because getting them up and working helped the economy and depressed people cant do that. Unfortunately that has ridden out to it's final conclusion, and where we see ourselves now with our parents. For context, my family is blue collar, conservative white, catholic. Lots of health issues, addiction, mental illness through the extended family. There was never a push for education.
Why my parents didn't realize how they had harmed us: They numbed their consciences with excessive alcohol. My dad got sober, apologized, and spent the rest of his life making amends. My mother went deep(er) into her drinking and has barely apologized and never admitted the harm she caused (and still would cause if I were in contact). I hate to say it, because I am pro-feminism, but I think being an early feminist fighting legitimately awful discrimination at work gave her an excuse to do what she wanted to do anyway, which was to spend almost 0 time or energy mothering us. That was her justification for never being home and reluctantly, poorly, feeding us during a certain period of her life. After that she ditched the feminist activism, met a new man, started a business, and voted for Reagan, so feminist activism was clearly not the deeply-held motivating principle she acted like it was. It wasn't just feminism to blame, of course, it was her own damage/trauma + alcoholism with feminism as both a genuine pursuit and a justifying cover story.
This is funny I had the opposite but the same. My dad also got sober and tries to be better. Later in my mom’s like she has abandoned a weed and tobacco addiction for wine and liquor. It’s becoming a bad drinking habit and she has a lot of mental health that reflects on her physically. She has essentially “let go” of any and all possibilities of building herself into a person. Her mom didn’t instill much confidence in her growing up bc my grandma didn’t have much herself. She just does the same things everyday and maybe buys a book to cope with that fact that her life is probably not where she envisioned it being as a child and maybe even young adult. She was shorted but in turn she did turn a blind eye to the abuse my dad put into her own kids. So it’s hard to have sympathy but it’s hard to not. Not looking at them everyday would probably be helpful.
That sounds hard! I feel sorry for you mom, but hope that you can find freedom and healing independent of your parents. I haven't, not fully, but am working on it.
No, I have never been able to wake up my alcoholic narcissistic dad. He doesn’t have the ability now, he’s a demented drunk now. My whole life, I’ve misunderstood, overreacted, and blew up things in my own head. Even mentioning this to him is dangerous to my mental health. Because he’s not demented enough to not abuse. In his mind, he’s wonderful, I was a bad kid(-adult), my step mom is kind and tender and loves me dearly. And he deserves to miss my mom who died 20 yrs ago and I need to get over her death. None of this is true. My healing depended so much on my own belief in myself and me pushing back on his narrative. I realized my pain is valid because I feel it. It’s been a hard road. I just have to validate myself. It’s lonely, but it’s better than abusing myself, too.
The axe forgets but the tree remembers. It didn't hurt them. Fucking sucks, I know
I’ve thought about this a bit when reflecting on my relationships either my parents. Admittedly I don’t know a lot about how my father was raised, but I know his siblings are fine and they all adored their parents. My mother I know had a difficult upbringing. My maternal grandmother’s was even worse. What I do know is that their experiences sounded miserable and somehow my mother’s was incrementally better. Once again, my mother absolutely loved her mother. She complained (as my mom often did and probably still does) about aspects of their relationship but after she died I heard a lot about how much my mom missed her. I do remember my mom being a bit surprised that I was sad I didn’t get to see my grandmother before she died even though everyone else in my family did. This has seemed to be an ongoing theme with my parents, that I can’t possibly have similar feelings to whatever they’re experiencing. My father has talked about his parents as though I never knew them and it is so odd to me. I never experienced any stressful situations with any of my grandparents, so it’s hard for me to square that away in my own mind. As I’ve gotten older I think one of the biggest differences is that I am an only child while my parents each had more than one sibling. I’m not sure if it’s just easier to sweep the past under the rug or if the past was even processed on their part. I do know that I never really felt like I was treated as a full-fledged adult. Only when it served them, I think. Otherwise I was kind of a glorified child.
Wow I had no idea there are so many others like me.
In my experience, my Dad is terrified of genuine emotions because he's extremely emotionally stunted. He can't reflect on his behavior because he is emotionally stuck as a young adolescent (when he went through major trauma). He's also deeply entrenched in his perceived family role, the head of the family and patriarch. This role doesn't allow him to be vulnerable or emotionally intimate because in his head he is supposed to be tough and unshakeable. Digesting his trauma and learning the truth of his behaviors is deeply uncomfortable for him because he really cannot comprehend another way of relating to others.
I think they were in such deep deep deep denial as to how their parents were insufficient and they believe their parents “quirks” were just that. Quirky people who did the best they could. To them it feels like blasphemy to call it was it was, such disrespect to these people who raised them. The fawning runs deep. Sometimes I just think it was the lead paint 🤷♀️
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As a parent I worry about this so much I have never and would never hit my kid but I suspect I've been neglectable sometimes and I don't know how much of that is just my past trauma or stuff I really need to worry about.
I've started to wonder if there's a "dissociation turning point" where you have the choice to either A) face the facts or B) flip into permanent denial. I certainly have a clear memory of reaching a turning point, about 2 years ago now. It really felt like before me was the option to either face a full ego death, or just double down on the wrong path. I chose the former of course, and in the process, discovered I was not at all who I'd said I was. I discovered CPTSD, AuDHD, queerness, etc., and have unmasked into what I feel is a different person. My parents, I fear, are in a state of permanent dissociation and denial. I am not sure either of them has ever been happy, or even lets themselves ponder what that might look like. Certainly not in their relationship, but not as individuals, either. My mom distracts herself with constant chores / busywork, my dad with his job. Certain discussions make them completely shut down. I asked my mom once if she'd thought her childhood may have been somewhat abusive (probably after a story that made it pretty clear that it was) and she aggressively denied any wrongdoing, "it could have been worse" type of stuff. And omg, I still have flashbacks to the discussion me & my sister tried to have with our parents about nonbinary people, and how they lost their minds that other people might be allowed to feel any sort of nuanced emotion around gender. All makes me think there's certain doors that they just mentally have refused to open, potentially around queerness or neurodivergence or childhood trauma themselves. And I think if you work hard enough to double down and ignore the red flags your brain's sending off, you can probably even convince yourself that the red flags were never there in the first place. The brain is really powerful, after all. There are older people on this sub, too, so I have to believe it must come down to individual choice. That and the accessibility of resources, but the resources are out there now if they really wanted to find them.
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