One nuclear family....

[nancylebov]

doesn't have to ruin your whole life, I hope.

My family was subtly off. I don't think a sociologist would find anything to complain about--physically and economically secure and stable, no overt abuse, or at least nothing that any adult within range seemed to notice, and nothing that my brother, sister, and I can put a finger on that explains the aftereffects. However, all three of us kids have serious problems with self-esteem/inertia/depression and have spent untold hours trying to figure out what was wrong. At least in my case, I think it was decades before that wasn't the primary topic every time I talked with my brother or sister.

Last night, my sister mentioned the reasonable idea that it isn't a solvable problem, and the best thing is to figure out how to move on. While I've made a large dent in some of the aftereffects of my upbringing, I can't say that a lot is solved.

I'm quite interested in what anyone who's reading this has done that's worked to get over the effects of an abusive upbringing. I'm interested in any stories about getting past overt abuse as well as the subtle stuff. And about finding out that you're more like your parents than you hoped, and dealing with *that*.

If anyone wants to comment anonymously, that's fine with me. (I'll be deleting anything I consider trolling, of course. If you think people should be over their issues with their parents by the time they're 25, it's your problem, not mine.) If you'd rather email me, I'm nancy netaxs com.

One more thing--if you take this to your own lj or blog, could you let me know? As you may gather, I'm interested in whatever further thoughts can be gathered.

Comments

[trinker.livejournal.com]

I've found that I'm still working on that. I keep thinking that "now I'm over it", and then a while later, something else pops up. I compared it recently to trying to deal with a well-rooted dandelion.

My most recent attempt involves reminding myself, out loud, "that was then, this is now. the things that worked then worked then, but now things are different and require different responses". It helps.

Feel free to e-mail me or discuss this further here.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

If you emailed me, it may have gotten lost--my isp migrated. I don't know what that involves, but it seems to be a big deal and it was kind of rough on my email. I *think* my email is ok now.

[daystreet.livejournal.com]

Wow. I think I will write more on this later... I'm heading out the door in a few minutes so I can't get into it now... but I just want to say how much the situation you describe w/r/t your family matches the experience of myself and my sibs. I even have the one brother/one sister combo.

I don't really have any answer or particles of wisdom to impart. No real "getting over the effects" to describe. I do know the one significant moment I can recall is someone once said to me... "You're how old now?" I told him. He said, "How long have you been waiting for your family to be the family you always wanted it to be?"

Which is not, I hope you understand, the attitude you reference by "people should be over their issues with their parents by the time they're 25". What it meant to me was this person had detected in me a longing for my family to be something other than what it is. He made the point that if my family was going to become that sort of family, it would have become that long ago. Coming face to face with this rather obvious (to everyone except me, apparently) truth had the effect of letting me, I dunno, let go of something that I had been clinging to. And it seemed to me that my clinging to that thing had had a tendency to stop me from accepting not only things about my family and my upbringing, but also about myself. I think slowly, gradually, I have become a slightly better person after that moment. I think I see a way to become better than I am now.

Again, I hope you see that I am not saying "get over it" or anything like that. I think all I'm saying is that, for me, I was clinging to some empty hope about the past, and my clinging to it had stopped up a lot of potential connections I had to the present, and maybe even the future.

For a long time I didn't want my past to be what it was, which kind of meant, I think, I didn't want to be myself, because at least to some degree we are our pasts. When that guy said that thing to me, it kind of gave me permission to let my past be what it was, it let my family be what it is, and so in a way I had never felt before, I kind of felt like I had permission to be the way I am. It was at that moment that I felt I more or less had landed at bedrock, at the foundation of who and what I am, and at that moment I had the feeling I could start to rebuild, at least within the confines of the geography and landscapes I'd been set down in. I think I have been doing some rebuilding. I feel like I have made some nice architectural adjustments. There is a lot of work yet to do. There will always be a lot of work left to do.

Heh. This is the "brief comment" I come up with as I'm heading out the door. Well, I hope it might be of some use, rambling and unbrief though it may be.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I don't see what you wrote as anything like "you should be over it already", though I can understand you wanting to be careful about my possibly seeing it that way.

The general principle I'm seeing is "have perceptive friends"--I wonder how long your friend had been thinking that before they found a good moment to say it. This may be more a reflection of how I tend to approach that sort of insight, than your friend's though.

As for the specific--I'm more the hanging on anger type rather than the wistful longing type, though I suppose they're both ways of getting stuck. It took me a very long time to see that emotional closeness to a family was conceivable or desirable.

If you're interested in an outside, totally different viewpoint...

[velvet-wood.livejournal.com]

I'll tell you that I am the _only_ person I know who does not come from an abusive family. I know that sounds extreme, but I'm serious; I don't know anyone who wasn't at one time or another physically or emotionally abused in ways that would horrify my own family. One friend, who has the closest thing to 'good' parents I've seen, had a mother with a serious drug problem (despite being a successful professional and a genius) who tried to get her hooked on them, too. Another had a very sweet mother who was unfortunately too weak-willed to protect her from her tyrannical father who would punish her for having a good time (her curfew was 11, but if she got home later than 10, he got pissed) by waking her at five in the morning to do his job...he was a ranch manager, so this meant the care of 500 cattle and about 50 horses, and he wouldn't let anyone help her. Then she had to make his breakfast. He was also the dispenser of such gems of compassion as 'the reason I divorced your mother was that she got fat, so you'd better stop eating like that if you want anyone to love you.' She was a size 1, btw. Another friend, with parents she loved and who honestly loved her, had only one gripe about her father; he was constantly threatening to kill her dog. Not because it barked, or dug in the yard, but because 'I just hate that beast.' If she made a bad grade, "Better shape up, or I'll shoot that dog." If she wore pants that were too tight, "You ever wear those pants again, and I'll run over that mutt." But in every other way, they were good parents, and no one would have even _dreamed_ of turning them in to CPS, and she would never have called herself 'abused'. Just because people don't see it...or choose not to see it...or don't act on it, doesn't mean it doesn't happen, and emotional abuse is far more subtle than physical, and far less likely to be taken seriously.

con't

Re: If you're interested in an outside, totally different viewpoint...

[velvet-wood.livejournal.com]

My husband was, in my opinion, seriously abused as a child, but the outside world would never see that. He was raised by parents who loved him, had two brothers who were divinely happy with their lives, never had to deal with poverty or disease, was never beaten or starved, never cursed at. But his father is a Southern Baptist minister, and religion is the most important thing in his life. Anything that doesn't fit with his view of what the world should be is evil. Shalon's always been an intellectual, and always been inclined towards paganism. He liked reading sci-fi, playing role-playing games, and thinking about the way things work. His father thought he ought to like sports, preaching, and watching football on TV. Because he wasn't good at sports, and what he was good at wasn't important, he grew up knowing that he was a disappointment to his parents. Instead of supporting his choices, and nurturing his talents, they made it plain that he should change his differences, and if he couldn't change them, he should at least have the grace to hide them. He grew up ashamed of everything he loved. They took books away from him that he'd paid for with money he earned, forced him to do things he hated, and ignored when he was sick and in pain because it wasn't 'acting like a man'. They once refused to take him to the doctor for an earache and sneered at him for crying from the pain until his eardrum burst and they blood started running down his neck. And everything they did to him, every little put-down, was because they 'wanted what was best' for him. And they _meant_ that. And as for having far reaching consequences...he still goes a little crazy if we're going to visit his parents, and they still don't know he's pagan. If they did, I can't even imagine the horrible fights that would take place, and the amount of pain they'd cause him. They give him enough pain without knowing, about everything else. They don't approve of me, of course. He should 'assert himself as head of the household' and make his wife behave (my own father laughed his ass off over that one); he should get a hair cut. He should get a real job...you know, one where you have to have a hair-cut, be clean shaven, wear a tie, and be bored and miserable your entire life as opposed to making $100K a year 'playing with those computer things'. He should be more like his brothers, who are both missionaries. He should go to church more...for the children's sake, of course...they wrote him a letter last year saying they knew _he_ was saved, but they worried that the kids and me were going to hell. He wouldn't let me send the letter I wrote in return.

con't

was it family?

[(Anonymous)]

It occurs to me that maybe your family was pretty much OK, and that the real root of what you perceive as "the problem" was school, or something else in your childhood.

I am posting anonymously, but I will identify myself to you offline at some point.

Re: was it family?

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

You've identified yourself and explained what you meant--that I always seemed more upset when I talked about school (I was teased for a lot of years) than when I talked about my family.

I'm not sure whether I just talked more about school with you, or you didn't notice how I was feeling, or there's something about my history that I'm missing, but I really think the problem was more in my family. Frex, when I'd complain about the teasing, my mother would say, "What did you do to them?" This happened more than once. My unspoken conclusion was that either she didn't like me much, or she'd been a bully herself.

It took me a very long time to realize that "I love you" doesn't mean "stay within range where I can keep hurting you", and I don't think I've fully grasped it yet. I really think I picked up this problem from my mother, combined with not having a nurturing relationship with *anyone* until I moved away to college.

Note that I don't think she meant to hurt me--I think she wanted to cause me pain sometimes when she was angry, but probably in the ordinary punishment range. She certainly didn't mean to cause longterm damage--but this doesn't mean I am currently able to forgive her or especially think forgiving is a good idea. (This could be viewed as skidding off into irrelevency, but so many people think that meaning well is sufficient grounds for forgiveness.)

Re: was it family?

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

I have no idea if this is relevent to Nancy's situation, or to Nancy's conversations with you, but many people adjust what they say is wrong according to what they feel is "safe" to criticize. There are some settings where it feels safer to say negative things about child-child bullying than about parenting mistakes. Some people don't just adjust what they say, they also focus their attention on what is (relatively) less distressing to think about. A person who really, really, wants to think of his or her parents as loving and reliable protectors is going to have a hard time might flinch from regarding them differently, and not think about it often (or try to think of it as relatively unimportant.) As I said, this may not be at all relevent to Nancy's situation, but I mention it in case it might be useful to someone.

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

Given how much of a problem depression is in your life, I wonder how much of your current issues are from family issues and how much is biochemical. The two go together, of course--my own family issues hit me harder, I think, because of biochemical depression, and depression (my own and that of others in my family) made for even more problematic family behavior.

For me, the key was to be willing to keep working on myself, but mostly to be determined to do the very best with what I have. This isn't the same as just saying you should be over the family issues. I guess for me, I acknowledged that I'd done a lot of work that way, but I couldn't count on ever figuring it all out and healing that way. So I just have to take what I have, make myself the best life with it that I can, and heal that way. I sometimes use the analogy that you can spend forever making yourself into a better tool, but at some point you have to put less emphasis on that and more on using that tool to do things in the world. The psych theory that backs me up is the finding that a lot of self-esteem has to do with perceive4d efficacy in the world and is built by doing.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

All reasonable points--I wouldn't be surprised if part of what I'm up against is physical/genetic, though my parents didn't seem to have anything like as much trouble with inertia.

You're also right that perfectionism about myself is part of what's going on.
I just(?) realized that I have an idea of how the right sort of person takes action--it isn't like me very often, and that just adds to my feeling dispirited. I'm going to try treating that feeling that I ought to feel different as something of an illusion.

Thanks for talking about getting better. It'd be great if you could tell me an example or two.

[jim-p.livejournal.com]

nellorat has a point, but depression is actually a one-two punch. First of all, a genetic propensity to depression means you are likely to get it too. In addition, though, parental depression can seriously affect their parenting style and the way they raise you. If they're not seeing the world clearly then they're not likely to see you clearly either, and so their parenting won't serve your needs very well...

As far as "getting over" childhood abuse, my experience has been that I don't think I'll ever get over it completely but I understand it better and better as time goes on. This knowledge then helps me deal with today's life situations and it helps me s-l-o-w-l-y modify my reactions and responses so they're less and less dysfunctional over time.

I've got some filtered posts in my journal here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/jim_p/2004/10/05/), here and here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/jim_p/2004/11/29/) that describe my own struggles with demons of the past. I just added you to the filter; you might want to check them out... (http://www.livejournal.com/users/jim_p/2004/10/10/)

Gotta say...

[velvet-wood.livejournal.com]

I agree totally with the first paragraph here, but wanted to add that it's not just depression. Chronic illness, even a relatively mild one, can affect parenting whether you want it to or not. I _know_ that I'm not as good of a mother as my own was, or as I want to be, or even as I know how to be, simply because of the lack of energy and the times when I just let the pain win. And having experienced a six month period of _serious_ depression (brought on by a bad reaction to a birth-control shot...wish they'd _told_ me about that side-effect before I accepted the shot!) I can testify to the fact that it totally changes your personality, and while you might _want_ to do something about it, it's pretty much impossible to do so while the depression is untreated.

Also wanted to apologize for my epic above. This time of year is very triggery for me. The hospital stay and things leading up to it were simply the most horrific time of my life, and every year when it starts getting hot, I start having nightmares and flashbacks and going off into rant mode at the drop of a shoe...sorry for invading your lj.

Velvet

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

In addition, though, parental depression can seriously affect their parenting style and the way they raise you. If they're not seeing the world clearly then they're not likely to see you clearly either, and so their parenting won't serve your needs very well...

I totally agree. In fact, I meant to imply that in the first paragraph of my comment. To make it worse, if the depression isn't identified, then it makes sense to try to locate the effects in people doing things wrong or being bad, leading often to a lot of self-blame. For instance, my mother would have these horrible blowups at us and then go to her room and not rspond to us while she recovered. Now I recognize that as mostly coming from her depression. But at the time I thought it was the fault of us children, later I thought of it as her fault-- Because the puzzle was missing a huge piece but I was trying to make the rest fit into a picture anyway. And before and after I identified her depression as a big part of the problem, I had to deal with the feelings and habits I'd developed in response, as aspects of me that had developed an existence of their own.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I've read Alice Miller, though not recently. I suspect there's a better formulation of similar ideas in Karen Horney's _The Neurotic Peronality of Our Times_. IIRC, she describes a similar process of forming a fake personality in response to abuse, neglect, or excessive interference in development. The driving force is a belief that just being a human being isn't good enough.

The thing is, I think unconditional love is another of those "don't wanna be a human being" standards. As a result of this discussion, I'm trying to figure out what reality-based parenting is--I'm working from my experience with some cats, but I'm hoping there are enough parallels.

I'm not sure that love has to be unconditional, but then I suspect that there are a lot of different definitions of love. My take is that good will/refusal to cause damage has to be unconditional, or at least moderated enough that damage is pretty rare and mild. Part of what's crucial isn't just good will, it's a commitment to have some idea of what one is doing, and a basic grasp that the child or cat or whatever has a separate existance.

This above may sound a bit chilly and philosophical, but part of acknowledging what's really going on is seeing that the need for affection and attention is pretty pervasive and quite appropriate to fulfill.

As for the idea that one does things for oneself rather than for hypothesized judgemental onlookers (or even for real judgemental onlookers), part of what made me crazy about dealing with my mother was my feeling that a lot of what she wanted me to do wasn't even what she wanted for herself--she wanted me to look right for the rest of the world.

[nosebeepbear.livejournal.com]

I don't know where to start. I didn't have an overtly abusive family either; in fact, in many many ways my family was loving and supportive. But in a bunch of subtle ways (and a handful not-so-subtle), they somehow taught me that I am a worthless person.

One of the seemingly little things was that my Dad had a habit of calling people "Dummy." It wasn't malicious, it was just his unfortunate way of saying "doh!" Turned on your windshield wipers instead of your lights? Dummy. Dropped your toast peanut butter side down? Dummy. Left your math book in your locker when you had homework? Dummy. I didn't realize how much this had affected me until I heard him say it to my daughter when she was very young. I scooped her up and took her home so fast his head was still spinning when I called to tell him he'd never see her again until that word was expunged from his vocabulary. He hasn't said it since. I'm a reasonably intelligent, articulate person. I have a decent IQ. My friends think I'm quick-witted and clever. But I moved out of my father's house 20 years ago and half the time I still think I'm a dummy.

Then there was, "If you don’t stop eating like that you’ll be just like your Aunt Becky." Now that I'm a grown-up, I realize that Aunt Becky was his favorite person in the world, and it saddened him to see that she was made miserable by her excessive weight. Every time I saw her she was sitting on a couch somewhere, and I often ran around fetching things for her (she’s one of my favorite people too). I never saw her walk with a cane, and it never occurred to me that moving was painful for her. Missing those very important clues, I repeatedly heard, "Fat people are worthless, and you’re turning into one of them. Loser." I think what he was trying to say was, "I love you, please stop hurting yourself."

My Mom didn’t respect herself enough to believe she deserved to ask for what she wanted, have any say in the direction her life went, or to say no when people asked her for things she didn’t want to give. She quietly accepted her society-imposed role as silent-until-spoken-to wife, cooking and cleaning for a man she didn’t want to be with because she didn’t have the right to want anything else. But she openly resented her children when they added to this burden by asking for things. Being the perceptive child I was, I quickly picked up on both "expressing wants and needs makes people angry," and "Mom is unhappy because I exist." As a bonus, she had an untreated panic disorder, and was terrified of letting me go anywhere she couldn’t see me; which meant the times I was able to do something that didn’t involve playing in my own yard, she was scared and angry by the time I got back.

Sorry. I didn’t start out trying to turn this into my own personal therapy session… :)

Anyhoo, I guess my point is that having figured out the source of some of those negative messages, I’ve started being able to say, "Wow, my parents were fucked-up people just like everyone else." I can’t say I’ve "gotten over" the damage to my self-esteem, but I can accept that their issues have nothing to do with me. It’s a start.

[solri.livejournal.com]

Anyhoo, I guess my point is that having figured out the source of some of those negative messages, I’ve started being able to say, "Wow, my parents were fucked-up people just like everyone else."

Wise words. Why should we expect our parents to be any less fucked-up than anyone else?

I can’t say I’ve "gotten over" the damage to my self-esteem, but I can accept that their issues have nothing to do with me.

Another good point, except that I think the main problem with self-esteem is the idea of self-esteem.

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

As someone who does a lot of work with societal views about weight, I can't help but be interested in the story about Aunt Becky. Did it hurt her to walk just because she was fat, or did she have another, more serious medical problem like artritis, lupus, etc.? I ask because for decades, our culture has tended to balme a lot on weight that isn't really due to weight alone. Often, in fact, other problems impair movement and then the lack of movement (also sometimes the medication) causes weight gain.

I ask partly because working out this kind of thing in my own history--that is, food and weight related comments by family; and I've had plenty of 'em--has mostly been a twofold process. The first is what you identify here, working out the emotional side--seeing that the person, however mistakenly, thought he or she was helping me instead of harming. The second part of the process has been to work out the factual side--to critically examine the views they worked from and achieve a better understanding of my body and how it really works.

For example, I've concluded my family put far too much stress on limiting what one eats and far too little stress on staying active. Also, the huma body naturally has a much wider range of healthy weight than is thought; as a result, first, trying to raise or lower that too much causes problems, and second, numbers on a scale by themselves are only rough indicators of health and potential health or illness.

[suecochran.livejournal.com]

Nancy - I'm so glad to see that you are posting about this very deeply felt issue. I hope that you garner some feedback here that will prove helpful to you in exploring these feelings you and your siblings have about your birth family. Have any of you three been in therapy for any length of time? If so, has it helped? Do you find it difficult to remember specific instances where you felt belittled or undercut or disappointed by your parents? I have had many friends who've told me they have had issues with their parents, but I think that I'm correct in remembering that they had specific instances that they could point to as examples of abuse or neglect or just plain "messing up" that their parents did. With you, I've always had this nebulous feeling about your experience with your parents - I don't think you've ever given me a specific example of a problem - and if you can't remember, that indicates a really puzzling situation. I really am not sure what to say.

I think that it might be worth looking into seeing a therapist who works with hypnotism. I don't know if you have some emotional blocks, or if it would even be useful to even try to get through/to them if they exist. It may be as your sister says - it might just be so subtle as to be unsolvable. Maybe your parents simply didn't "get" what your needs were, or were unable to provide enough love and support to make you feel the kind of self-esteem that you would like to have developed at an earlier age.

I do think that the most important thing is to figure out, take stock of where you are now, and where you'd like to be, and how to get there. You could probably do that in a variety of ways. Therapy would be one. A therapist might be able to ask questions that you haven't asked yourself, or to ask in a different way that would make things clearer to you. There are any number of psychological self-help books. I read a LOT of those in the 1970's and 1980's, in addition to being in therapy for many years starting when I was 14. The most useful thing my therapist did for me at that age was to validate my experiences. "Yes, you are right in this instance, and your parents are wrong" "Yes, what your parent did in this situation was hurtful"

One of the first realizations that made a difference to me was the incredible thought that my mother wasn't TRYING to hurt me. It never occurred to me that someone who hurt my feelings so precisely and so often was honestly not doing so intentionally. I don't believe this is an absolute, however. I think that as I got older, we did both deliberately used words to hurt each other, but I don't think it started out that way, and I think it was a matter of defending by taking the offense.

From "Mad About You" - Jamie asks Paul why her parents are so easily able to push her buttons. He says to her "Because they're the ones who installed them." You've probably heard the "tape" analogy. There are tapes that play in all of our heads - things that we say to ourselves all the time, that are either hurtful or helpful. You can't change the tapes until you can hear them clearly and distinctly as being NOT YOUR VOICE. This is analogous to the "fish don't see water" aphorism that they used in the est training. The hardest part is to make what is background material in your mind apparent to yourself. It isn't _who you are_. It's a tape. You can choose to listen to it, or you can reprogram it. It isn't easy, but it is doable.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I think that both the fact that I'm writing more, and writing about this in particular, means that I'm in somewhat better shape. I'm still doing the anti-depressant chi gung, and I'm finding that I feel it more and want to do it for longer periods.

I don't remember much of the specific hurtful stuff my mother said, but I do remember that she'd tell me off for crying, and keep going after I'd stopped crying--my nose was still running, and she didn't notice the difference.


I'd trip over my own feet and fall down, and she'd snap at me for it. Admittedly, I don't think I ever hurt myself (maybe skinned kness), but an non-frantic "Are you ok?" would have been nice.

And she didn't like it if I'd take off my coat when we were shopping. It's something that she didn't actually forbid it (I overheat easily), but it just seemed so crazy. (I csn't find it now, but I think someone mentioned the possibility of Asperger's spectrum at my end. I think I do have much less tendency to imitate than most, and it was an area where my mother (who was very afraid of looking wrong) and I weren't cutting each other any slack.)

Part of what's unusual about my history is I seem to have given up on wanting to please my mother very early on--so far back that I can't remember anything different.

Money's a problem with therapy. Are there any books you recommend?

I do work on getting some distance from the noise in my head, but I also need to tone down my habit of constant self-evaluation--it's part of the problem.

[cathyr19355.livejournal.com]

Have you considered the possibility that the effects on you and your siblings that you describe are not caused by your parents' behavior or your upbringing at all, but are genetic? An inherited biochemical imbalance perhaps? Do either of your parents seem to have suffered from the same kind of self-esteem/inertia/depression problems you report?

Depression -- genetic and induced.

[mouseworks.livejournal.com]

My biological depressed parent is a good enough though sometimes exasperating parent who has, by and large, done a lot for his children. My mother was an orphan by 8, lost her grandmother by 12 in a car accident where my mom had been a passenger, too.

As far as I can tell, my mother couldn't believe that just being alive after we were babies wasn't enough. She slept most afternoons -- and this was when she had a maid to take care of the heavy lifting and us.

Most of the people in my father's lineage were depressed, but that didn't make them terrible parents necessarily, and my grandmother, who was hospitalized a couple of times in her life for depression, didn't spend most of the afternoons of her life napping or send a two year old child away for six weeks because the family was moving and she couldn't cope with the child and a new baby.

I've suggested to Nancy that she go to the Center for Cognitive Therapy. And I know also that depression can keep people from trying to get help (and some therapies for depression do appear to work reasonably well). But I don't think biochemistry is sufficient -- there are even some schizophrenics who've been okay parents. Asking parents to do everything right all the time is a demand that nobody should have placed on them.

And yeah, nothing is ever going to give people the families they wanted and didn't have. But I think understanding that requires being allowed to mourn the loss for a decent interval. No amount of being angry at people who did us wrong will ever reverse the wrong.

But the kinds of parents who can tell a six year old child (my baby sister) that she was an accident are something beyond merely being depressed.

My mom had to die before we could come out from under the various rocks we'd been hiding under. I found that I actually had a better relationship with her than my baby sister did. The sister in California had a romanticized view of Mom, but also found other people to spend time with when she was a child, and has taken over Mom's role as family putter-down and stuff. One sib simply doesn't have anything much to do with the sister in California.

As adults, we've compared notes and try to be supportive of each other, get beyond obscessing with the past. Baby sister even suggested that Mother may have been jealous of us for having a mother.

Having some compassion for the parents who simply weren't functioning as good enough parents might be useful. As a child, I didn't understand why being an orphan who was sent to Catholic boarding schools (her father had married Catholic women without allowing their children to be raised as Catholics, so that meant her mother's people thought their sister went to at least Purgatory as an ex-communicated Catholic) and emotionally neglected by her aunts and uncles (her brother paid some friends to attend her high school graduation).

I can see why she might have wanted to use a behavior baby raising method that promised to make people emotionally independant and uninvolved (the premise behind feeding babies on a strict schedule and not cuddling them or comforting them, much less feeding them, when they cried.

Sure she was probably depressed, but a lot of people are good enough parents, even while dealing with depression.

And it's entirely possible to both have compassion for people and decide that they need not to be part of your life ever again.

[nosebeepbear.livejournal.com]

One more thing--if you take this to your own lj or blog, could you let me know?

I took that (and the fact that this is a public post) as an invitation :).

[firecat]

My inertia/depression/anxiety is biochemical / genetic partly, and exacerbated by habits of mind I learned from my parents, who had similar tendencies. I don't think my parents were abusive systematically, although there were incidents in my childhood where I believe they treated me inappropriately. I did get some abuse from other children.

The best thing I found for addressing the abuse was Bourne's "The Anxiety & Phobia Workbook."

I have done a lot of therapy over the years, and I've also done spiritual work, and I take antidepressants. All of those things helped me be more accepting of myself. The antidepressants help mainly with the anxiety, but the inertia is still there. The drugs only help the parts of the inertia that come from anxiety, and they tend to make the inertia worse in other ways.

This is how I am, and I'm contributing and relating and trying to take care of myself and trying to be creative with the energy and motivation that's available to me.

As for being like my parents, if I start feeling unhappy about that, I think about all the ways I'm different from them.

When I act mean or abusive, I try to do better.

I'm never "over" anything. Everything I've experienced is part of me, and I can stir it around and look at it in different ways and add new experiences, but I can't erase stuff, nor do I particularly want to.

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

I think people can get "over" emotional problems the way we say we've gotten over a cold or the flu: I had it, it cost me time, pain, fever, whatever, and I'll always have spent that tiume f*ck*d up, but I'm not that f*ck*d up now. Some of the lessons I've learned might even be like having antibodies! And indeed, it seems most of the people I know may or may not get into another bad place, but not in exactly the same way.

[laughingrat.livejournal.com]

I saw your comment about this post over in nellorat's blog, and was curious, so stopped by.

Last night, my sister mentioned the reasonable idea that it isn't a solvable problem, and the best thing is to figure out how to move on.

I think I'm beginning to agree with that...I'm not sure what the answer is, if any. Mind you I just got hollered at by someone for still worrying about what my mom did to me back when I was a kid etc., as if we magically shut our childhood off when we reach a certain age and no longer have the right to be hurt (or nourished?) by stuff from back then, much less to speak about it. It was a pretty upsetting conversation, so if nothing else, seeing that other folks are also still working through their upbringing is kinda comforting.

Maybe one answer is to feed ourselves as much nourishment as possible, whether that's company, decent food, making things, or whatever makes us feel good and healthy. There might always be times where we feel horrible, hopeless, and undeserving, but maybe if, in the interim, we give ourselves as much love as we know how, we can gradually raise our baseline mood and our sense of self-worth until we have some cushion for those times we do hit bottom.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

I am working on reinforcing in myself that it's okay to be angry about what happened *then*, especially if I find that I didn't really deal with it then at all. But what's also important is to realize that that *was* *then*, and is not now, and what was right then may very well not only be "not right" now but actively wrong and bad for me.

[folkmew.livejournal.com]

It's late and I'm very tired but I'm afraid if I don't respond it won't get done.

After thinking my family life was pretty ideal I found out that there was a history of sexual abuse with my father. Not with me. For a while I decided that my whole life was shattered. Fortunately for me - my father, while he was still alive, immediately admitted this and went into family therapy. I just wish we'd done it sooner.

The place I eventually got to was the realization that the reality I experienced is true and so is the reality my sister experienced. The good things about our family were really good, the dysfunctional things were dysfunctional.

Life is too short to hang on to it. It's useful to let yourself mourn, it's useful to think about why certain patterns formed and how you might change them, it's ok to let yourself feel what you feel but after a certain point I think it is good to let go of the past and focus on the present and create the future you want.

R. Buckminster Fuller: "We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims." Perhaps you could also look at it as architects of the future, not victims of the past.

Hugs. Feel free to email me if you want to talk more about this. Sorry I was so tired and possibly incoherent entry. I really really have to sleep now and then rehearse all day tomorrow so may not see any response other than email until Tuesday. Hugs.

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

The place I eventually got to was the realization that the reality I experienced is true and so is the reality my sister experienced. The good things about our family were really good, the dysfunctional things were dysfunctional.

I think this is really, really true and really, really important. When I first went into therapy, I could see the good side of something (a family member, an experience, my family as a whole) but not the bad side, or the reverse, but it's like they were different realities. After a lot of work, I see both, but it's like that optical illusion of the faces and the vase--I can't seem to really focus on both at the same time. At least seeing both of them at all, and always at least knowing that both sides are there, is a step forward. It's a goal for me to see both at the very same time, somehow integrated, but I'm OK with the idea that I might not ever reach that goal--or even that it might not be a possible or good goal to reach, though I think it is to strive for.

[aiglet.livejournal.com]

I hadn't really planned on commenting on this, because my experience with both my families has been pretty good, but I realized that I experienced something which doesn't seem to have been mentioned yet -- I call it "situational abuse."

My stepfather was (and is) a pretty good parent. Given that he'd never dealt with a toddler or kid before, I think he was a great parent. (Aside from instilling that whole "math and science make you smart, english and history are easy and therefore being good at them doesn't matter," for which I had a shining counter-example in my mother, who he admitted was much smarter than he was.)

When my mom got sick, he refused to acknowledge that her illness meant that we were going to have problems running the household in the ways he was used to without help. I wound up being not only the kid, but also the nurse, the housekeeper, the cook... (He did eventually get someone in during the day, because my mother couldn't walk and I managed to convince him that leaving her on the couch all day with no way to get a glass of water or go to the bathroom was cruel.) He didn't do it for any reasons having anything to do with me, but rather because getting those people in would have meant acknowledging that she wasn't going to get better, and that there was enough of a problem that we needed help.

I don't think that any child (especially not a pre-adolescent one) should ever wind up being responsible for their parents' bodily functions. I was also expected to maintain the standards of my schoolwork, and to go to bed on time. I think that was probably abusive, it was certainly formative in a way that I don't think anything else would have been, but it wasn't abuse in the normal sense of "people doing fucked up things to their children." It was a specific byproduct of the situation and had nothing to do with me.

I don't know if anything you experienced was similar to that -- perhaps the result of a parent's illness or some other external factor that made them behave in a way that they otherwise wouldn't have -- but I thought it was worth mentioning, just as a datapoint.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Thanks for telling me about this.

I don't think there's anything like that in my history--I suspect my family was unusually fortunate in terms of health. My mother had occasional migraines. My brother broke a bone once (his arm, I think). We had a house fire, but no one was hurt and the damage was mostly limited to the kitchen and covered by insurance. I had appendicitis. The last great-grandparent died when I was a kid, but all my grandparents were alive and at least reasonably healthy till I was 25 or so.

If you've had aftereffects, have you found anything that's helped you tone them down or get rid of them?

You know, I've never seen a self-help book about how to stay conscious when it's urgent to do so. I'm talking about situations like your dad's--they aren't especially rare, and they're exactly when it's both crucial to be able to ask "is what I'm doing making sense?" and incredibly difficult to do so. And then look around enough so that you have a chance of finding out whether what you're doing is making sense and taking appropriate action. There's the advice to get professional help, but not everyone can afford it, and not everyone who can afford it happens to have competent professional help when they need it.

The nearest thing I can think of is a book called _Deep Survival_--it's an overview of what people do (for good and ill) in wilderness/emergency situations, and quite fascinating--but not quite the same topic.

The other thing that comes to mind is that I can't think of anything in art about an ordinary low status person (not a court jester) pointing out something important and obvious and getting heard.