recoveryfrommyself

[recoveryfrommyself]

Always sympathizing with your mother is so hard it’s like

I remember I used to love you, but I can’t remember why I ever did , I’m sorry you’re so lonely, please stop talking to me I can’t handle it anymore, you were supposed to be the most stable thing in my life, yet you’re the complete opposite, I want to feel safe with you, I want to run away from you, I want you to change, it’s too late to fix anything, I’m not good enough for you, but I’m not good enough for myself, i hate you for what you are, I’m sorry your life turned out this way , you’re the victim, you make it all worse, you tell me your problems, but I wish you didn’t, I wish we didn’t live together, you need me more than I need you , your life is a mess and it makes my bones sick and nauseous,I’m sorry your life is awful too, I hate the sound of your voice, but I always come when you call, I’m sorry I can’t help you, for the love of god why couldn’t you help me

[recoveryfrommyself]

It's such a strange and unique way of fucking up your kid when you at the same time a) treat them like a personal therapist giving them problems that are decades away from anything that they could handle, and expecting the kid to actually fix your grown up problems and to listen to your trauma.

And b) at the same time never give them any real outside world responsibility, making sure that they know as little as possible about how to actually survive in the real world, like paying bills, etc.

Meanwhile making sure but all of your child's self-worth is tied to their actions, and not who they are as a person.

It's a weird little vicious circle, that is so incredibly hard to outgrow, because like I know I'm not worthless just because there might be a time when I'm not productive, and I know I don't have to fix everyone's problems, and I know that I'm a capable adult who can do all the things I need to do to survive and thrive, but my basic training for life goes against all that!

[recoveryfrommyself]

"The guilt that people feel about what their parents may have gone through is a classic symptom of being an adult child of emotionally immature parents. They go over the boundary of what is their responsibility, worrying about the feelings and the needs and the life of other people because thats what emotionally immature parents teach their children to do. They teach their children to take care of them and to be worried about what other people need. The parent has not matured to the point where they can take care of themselves let alone a child. They're demanding that from their children, so its not surprising that the child would end up feeling guilty about any that distress the parent, and feel responsible for that because thats what their childhood would be set up to do."

Lindsay C. Gibson, PsyD

[recoveryfrommyself]

anger does not entitle you to the mistreatment of others. rage does not signify virtue, it does not grant you permission for cruelty. personal pain does not excuse harming others, and it does not make it righteous. do not attempt to poison poison, we will just have more poison

[recoveryfrommyself]

[recoveryfrommyself]

growing up with an angry father is terrifying but growing up a daughter with an angry mother is gut wrenching because you get it, you understand that she’s been worn down by the world and being treated as less and she’s been carrying the rage and traumas of her mother and her mother before her and her mother before her and when you see her you recognise that same rage in you

but her rage is not pointed at the world, it’s pointed at you because you’re 14 and not used to the harshness of it yet but she will make sure you get there and you don’t know what to do but cry and she hates seeing your tears because they make her nauseous

growing up with an angry mother feels like being ripped apart because you know she loves you, she’s your worst enemy, she makes you feel safe, she terrifies you, she’s your best friend, she’s the reason you can’t let people get close, you love her, you never cried over a boy or a girl as much as you cried over her words, she made you, you’re her puppet, you’re desperate to leave, you’ll never escape her blood or her judging gaze and even when you leave you can hear her voice in your head and it will haunt you until you’re dead

you understand her rage but you see it in yourself and that scares you more than anything else

[recoveryfrommyself]

another shitty thing about being the eldest daughter who based her worth on academics and how useful she can be to others is that it physically hurts to ask for help even when we desperately need it. it's an internalized belief that we should we able to figure out everything on our own and it sucks

[recoveryfrommyself]

Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents

Lindsay C. Gibson

[recoveryfrommyself]

Things to remember:

I’m not alone. I have my partner, my sister, my friends. For the last 2 years I’ve managed to create a network of people who are close to me in one way or another and we have been supporting each other.

I’m building a good life for myself, one day at a time. I worked really hard to achieve financial stability and I’m in a much better place financially than I expected even a couple of months ago. Saving for the future has been going well.

I have so many things I love to do now. I found activities that help me calm myself down and are just healthy and beneficial, like running. I’m slowly becoming more and more confident in my skills and I have people around me who are extremely supportive and believe in me.

If I don’t know something, I can just start learning.

Difficult moments will come, but they will also pass. I am able to stay in my emotions, feel them and let them go.

[recoveryfrommyself]

note to self:

you don’t need to do anything about your mother’s panic and hysteria. she doesn’t need to be “calmed down”, because she is capable of getting there on her own, she just refuses to.

for years she’s been using tantrums and violent outbursts as her method of getting other people to work her problems out for her. just a quick reminder, you had to coddle her and tell her repeatedly your house wouldn’t just randomly collapse when you were 10. you were beaten because she was anxious of her boss, then your father screamed at you for making her angry.

now you are adult. she is too and you don’t have to compose this elaborate, perfectly balanced instruction for healthy coping, because YOU HAVE ALREADY TRIED AND SHE NEVER LISTENS TO WHAT TOU HAVE TO SAY. every single time you tried, the only thing she picked up was that you were offending her. there is no point in trying to communicate with her or your father, because they are so emotionally immature they will always expect to be treated like a child. calmed down and given exactly what they want, now.

you are their daughter, not their parent. you are allowed to do nothing, say nothing, offer some practical advice if they request it, but that’s it. withdraw. it doesn’t make you a bad and selfish person - participating in your parents’ conflicts has been making you sick, both physically and mentally, and you should protect yourself. because they have never been there for you when you were in crisis and they probably never will. they are not someone you can rely on, but you have reliable people around. and keeping distance from your parents, who mentally drain you to the point of physical illness, will not make you alone forever. I promise.

[recoveryfrommyself]

[recoveryfrommyself]

"The more I read, the more every aspect of my personhood is reduced to deep diagnostic flaws. I hadn’t understood how far the disease had spread. How complete its takeover of my identity was. The things I want. The things I love. The way I speak. My passions, my fears, my zits, my eating habits, the amount of whiskey I drink, the way I listen, and the things I see. Everything—everything, all of it—is infected. My trauma is literally pumping through my blood, driving every decision in my brain."

What My Bones Know

Stephanie Foo

[recoveryfrommyself]

I told myself that everything was fine, that my life was incredible and I wasn’t sad and I’d just send more emails and swig whiskey in order to fall asleep at two a.m. every night, empty bottles lining the foot of my bed. I wrung my body out like a towel, twisting both ends with red fists and sinking my teeth into it, gritting out, “It’s fine it’s fine it’s fine,” until one day, I woke up and there would be a new accolade on my shelf, a new accomplishment I could never have dreamed of, and then—finally—it would be fine. It’d be perfect. For that day. Or an hour. And then tendrils of the dread started peeking into the corners of my vision. And I had to start all over again.

What My Bones Know - Stephanie Foo

[recoveryfrommyself]

One of the issues you run into when you're not allowed to express anger as a child, is that you're no longer able to get angry. When you're in a situation that should evoke rage, you instead feel fear, anxiety, panic, or grief, emotional hurt and helplessness. You end up operating a body that cannot feel or express anger. The only times you do feel angry is when you're directing it at yourself, it comes as a form of self hatred, and desire to cause pain and injury to yourself. Because this is the only way you would have been allowed to be angry, only way it was safe, to direct it at yourself, same as everyone else is doing constantly, teaching you that it's normal and expected.

Growing up like this means that all of the anger from your childhood keeps getting stored into your body instead of externalized, and you still cannot get angry when the situation demands it. Instead, when you're being disrespected and injustice is served in your face, you can either feel helpless and lost, or the frustration you feel irritates you so much you cannot stand it. Your body is not used to feeling anger and doesn't know how to process it. Instead it feels like you're going to explode, restless, endlessly irritated and at a complete loss on how to handle it. Because you never learned how to handle anger, except to take it out on yourself, and you might be driven to just keep doing that, forever.

Taking a stand for yourself and confronting whoever deserved your anger might still feel terrifying and all of the insane things that happened to you as a result of childhood anger might get triggered. You might feel too frightened to confront them because you can imagine all sorts of ways it could come back to hurt you - this person could try to get you fired, for example. They might smear campaign you and get you evicted, they could threaten you with something or blackmail you, they could destroy something of yours, spread rumors, hold a grudge and do thousand times worse to you. Those are thoughts evoked by memories of childhood, where abusive parents threatened and did any or all of these things, including torture, in order to keep you from expressing anger.

However this person is hurting you right now, unprovoked, and getting no resistance. From that, they're learning that they can keep doing it, with zero consequences, because you've already been broken and cannot fight back. That is a dangerous situation to be in too, even if it is impossible to predict whether this person is insane like your parents and will try to get revenge for any bit of resistance for their abuse.

I had situations where I would be pushed over the edge and allowed my anger to come out at someone - and people would sometimes complain about it, but they would usually back off, and I would regain my peace of mind because I created a consequence for disturbing it. Anger, however, doesn't feel good. My body is not used to it so it makes me incredibly tense, stressed, frustrated and upset, and it doesn't go away for several days, even weeks sometimes. Because scratching the surface of it evokes the repressed childhood anger which is almost unbearable with how giant it is.

Human body can learn to process anger, it can feel better, more powerful and more in control because of it. It can protect you without inflicting damage to others. It doesn't make you anything like your abusers, who let their anger out at someone who wasn't their equal, had no way to fight back, and did not deserve any of it. Your anger creates boundaries that keep you safe, it doesn't exist to torture others for existing.

It's easy to fall back into the place where you don't want to be angry, and try to be accommodating and allowing of injustice, just so you don't have to feel frustrated and afraid. I often fall back on it too, just wanting to live and have peace. But life around other people often doesn't allow it, and sometimes anger is necessary to send a message of what boundaries will not be crossed without a consequence. Anger is not a bad feeling, it is an act of self love. It comes out to let you know that you've been treated unfairly and it's there because it's telling you that you matter. That treating you unfairly is something to get mad about.

[recoveryfrommyself]

Stephanie Foo, What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma

[recoveryfrommyself]

[recoveryfrommyself]

In a perversely ironic way, my parents' physical abuse of me was a blessing, for it was so blatant that my attempts to suppress, rationalize, make light of and laugh it off lost their power in adolescence and I was able to see my father for the bully that he was.

This is so relatable. It's weird to be, in a way, thankful you were physically abused. But it's the most clear cut, most recognised form of abuse in our society, and it did make it easier for me to understand what was happening to me was wrong. Which in turn helped me not internalise as much of the emotional abuse and verbal abuse, even though those always felt more painful than the physical stuff.

If you were physically abused and you feel like this too, please know it's natural and understandable. There's nothing wrong with it.

If you weren't physically abused and your abuse was primarily emotional and verbal, please know there's nothing wrong with you if you find yourself ever wishing you were physically abused too, so things felt more clear cut and obvious. That's natural and understandable too. What you went through was bad enough though, it counts, and it was just as wrong.