utopia

This is my latest revelation of an effect of the past that im walking through.

As a child:

I needed my father as a child needs a parent. My father, due to alcoholism or whatever mental illness or motive took advantage of that need and abused me repeatedly. The abuse was not consistent. The violent abuse sometimes followed him telling me he loved me, being kind to me. Sometimes it was because I breathed the wrong way. Sometimes he didn’t abuse me. Issues are: Power. Abuse. Trust broken. Confusion. Fear....

In my present adult partnership I had to move house and was generally feeling fragile and this weekend gone he had another commitment so couldn’t be with me when I felt I needed him. I became angry, i felt abandoned, neglected. I realise now I didn’t feel i fully trusted him and felt he “should” have been there for me cos that is what partners “should” do.

Through talking to trusted friends I realised the fear. That i had lost the solid feelings of trust. Much how I need reminding of the STEPS and the HP i needed reassurance of my partners commitment and respect for me but was I just not trusting? Was I being unfair?

I realised the main fear was this>>> I feared (subconsciously mind you) that because I needed him that weekend and he wasn’t there immediately it was a precursor to being taken advantage of, of being used, abused, taken for granted and hurt really bad. THIS MADE ME ANGRY!!

Realising this fear and sharing it with my partner helped in some way. Still feeling fragile but also feeling the damages of my childhood 

I was kept alive by also remembering step 1. If im powerless over others aren’t they powerless over me? Hmmmm. Do i NEED? I feel like i do need people and i do need love sooooo???. Confused and fragile but getting there.

dolce7dolore

Your comment on my thread led me here and I think you are right about the posts being very similar. I can't tell how it makes me feel to know I'm not the only one to overact to present situations. I think it's great though that you did speak to your partner about this and at the very least, you clearly recognize why you're reacting in this way rather than just feeling plain old abandoned.

discontentmiser

I really gotta remember "if I'm powerless over others, then they're powerless over me"

technically I haven't been abused, I don't think, by/in any past events
but I still have oodles of fear, inferiority, frustration, broken trust, anger about my AF and abandonment issues with my mom

my therapist says I need to work on asserting myself, I agree, but I'm not sure how
I thought somewhere that sharing these fears would make them go away, but that's silly and ineffective

I'm still a teen and really thirst for love and care and affection that I can't seem to find
I'm very dependant on my parents but have nearly zero emotional support, it seems

confused and fragile too

also terrified (of nothing?)

aasharon90

I find it difficulty at times to take
my mom's inventory because what
right do I have to do so.

I am also a victim of child abuse.
Physical, verbal, emotional abuse
at the hands of my mom.

A parent whom we r suppose to trust.

My dad however always reassured me
that she did love me and didnt know
what she was doing to me at the time
because of alcohol and prescription
meds.

I know she was sick at the time and i
definitely felt she knew exactly what
pain she was infflicting on me.

Because of this abuse, it led me to
numbing my pain with alcohol for
a number of yrs. However thru
family intervention a 28 day stay
set me on the path of recovery
for the past number of yrs.

All my life i had been looking for
trust, love and affection in all
the wrong people places and things.

Today im still learning that there r
people in my life that do care about
me and love me with no strings attached.
A husband and 2 awesome adult kids
from my previous 25 yr marriage.


Today a new partner in life to travel and
share this road of recovery with, loving,
supportive and trusting.

A program of recovery guiding us every
step of the way.

I will never shut the door on the past
however I will not let it destroy me
because of fear.

utopia

discontent....i think its diff when your not an adult yet. as a child you are totally dependent on your parent for protection and surivival. its great ur in therapy now and in time it will get easier. keep searching and youll find what you need.

Prozac

I struggled with this for years, the concept of "I wasn't abused though!" My AF didn't physically abuse me (he tried a few times, but agile children beat men who are so drunk they can barely stand) or intentionally emotionally abuse me. Even as he made comments growing up that weren't appropriate/validating I recognized his ignorance and never took them to heart.

But as a person who has been abused by others sexually and physically, with therapists trying to dwell on those traumas, I found that they paled in comparison to the fact that I always had to play the role of "the Hero." I never got to be a kid, while I continue to watch my AF be a kid and never grow up wondering why I'm no longer willing to parent him. And while I'll never know for sure, I'm pretty darn sure that the other abuse would not have happened if I wasn't a walking target CoA as a kid.

discontentmiser

it's starting to get annoying;
out in the "real world" as soon as I open my mouth about being afraid of my dad I'm asked "does he come into your bed at night?"
no! but I'm still afraid of him

thanks everybody for writing, since it really helps to know we're not alone!

Iwanttoheal

Discontent and Prozac I am 44 and it was first put to me 11 years ago that I was abused. In my head, I ran screaming from that comment, no I was not abused, my AF did not sexually abuse me or physically abuse me.

The comment made by my then counsellor never went away. It has taken me 11 years to accept that yes I was abused. I was emotionally abused by my father, he was under the influence of alcohol but he still abused me. I was emotionally abused by my mother who excused my father by saying it wasn't him, it was the alcohol. I was neglected by both parents who did not provide a clean, hygenic house; sufficient food or adequate clothing.

Utopia

Trust - I have recently come to realise that I do not trust anyone 100% apart from myself. I trust different people to different degrees but over the years I have built up my resources both practical and emotional in order that I will be able to survive if, as, when people let me down.

I do not trust my family of origin at all and I do not trust myself with them.

Prozac

I didn't say it exactly, but these are my thoughts. I was another who was not sexually or physically abused by my family of orgin, yet emotinally abused (being an adult at 8, the expectations) to the extreme. Yet they still don't get it.

As for trust, what is that? I struggle daily with it, and all to often find if I don't do it it won't get done. And am working on stepping back from that, because if it doesn't directly hurt me, who cares? Yet... most of the time it does hurt me (and creates more work for me) and despite months of my hands-off approach, it still just doesn't get done and hurts me.

utopia

DICTIONARY MEANING (in relation to relationships)
trust  /trʌst/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [truhst] Show IPA ,
–noun 1. reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety, etc., of a person or thing; confidence.
2. confident expectation of something; hope.
4. a person on whom or thing on which one relies: God is my trust.
5. the condition of one to whom something has been entrusted.
6. the obligation or responsibility imposed on a person in whom confidence or authority is placed: a position of trust.

verb (used without object) 13. to rely upon or place confidence in someone or something (usually fol. by in or to): to trust in another's honesty; trusting to luck.
14. to have confidence; hope: Things work out if one only trusts.

–verb (used with object) 16. to have trust or confidence in; rely or depend on.
17. to believe.
18. to expect confidently; hope (usually fol. by a clause or infinitive as object): trusting the job would soon be finished; trusting to find oil on the land.
19. to commit or consign with trust or confidence.

21. to invest with a trust; entrust with something.
—Idiom24. in trust, in the position of being left in the care or guardianship of another: She left money to her uncle to keep in trust for her children.

utopia

well, this is sooo relevant because i had another of these angry reactions on this weekend so thankyou prozac for posting, timing was perfect!!! made me explore the dictionary meaning because my thoughts were saying "Great, now im never going to trust fully, im damaged forever"

but nowhere in the dictionary meaning of TRUST does it say to trust someone means you are without doubts or fears at times, trust is about HOPE, about RELIANCE....so there is always risk involved, there is never an absence of doubt. it seems that trust is just a CONFIDENT RELIANCE on someone.

i would laugh if it said "Trust: you expect that someone is going to never ever EVER let you down or hurt you. cos if they do!!!

jane_668

Iwanttoheal, how do you know it's not the alcohol? Alcoholics and addicts are insane when they are using just like a crazy person. They deatch from the real world. I am a recovering addict and a child of a schizophrenic mother and abusive father. It's similar to having an alcoholic parent exept with my mom I know she'll never be sane.

It's easy for us to blame our parents for not being whom we want them to be. It's funny that I used because I felt it was not fair to be an adult at 8 too. I used because "if you had my problems, you'd use too". I tried to commit suicide " because if you have my problems you dont wnat to live too". I was a codependent person looking for love and acceptance in the wrong places. I allowed people to mistreat me because I thought I didnot deserve to be loved. I was an extremely sensitive person .

Now at 26, I realized for the for the first time that I was the problem. So yeah, my mom and dad are not the best parents in the world but many dont even have parents. Many people are homeless, with out food or means to live. Many have cancer and other painful disease where as I dont. My sponsor in NA told me whenever I feel down to go to a poor area and live with them a day. Live their problems and eat what they eat.Go to mentally handicapped people, help them and live their problems...Yes ,there are much worse problems in the world than mine.

And yet, even if I assume that my growing up was so horrible then what? Do I choose to dwell on the past or try to make a better future for me through living today the best I can. The past is GONE. The doors are closed for ever. The memories still hurt but they are past. I cannot get on with my life before I accept my past and be ready to leave it in the past. I can either do that or sink in my pity-party and destroy today too. Each day is a gift for me to start again. Each day I can make it a new begining for me. I have to learn how to forgive and go on in my life. This is life, we all have our shares of problems but God will never give us more than we can handle. I should have a realistic view of life. Problems are PART of life and I have to accept my share.. Acceptance is the key to a happy living. I accept and move on. Acceptance doesnot mean I have to like what happened. It simply means I refuse to allow my past to effect me anymore. I choose to live happily no matter what my circumstances are. I have the power of choice.

utopia

I think it's relative and personal.

tromboneliness

For me, it's not that simple -- and that's why the ACA big book spends so much time on how we got where we are. If we don't look at that stuff -- in context, and in terms of ACA issues, rather than just our cr*ppy childhood with bad parents -- we can never really get past it.

My background was that my Mom was really-bad bipolar for many years, before I was born and for my first several years of life -- basically until they discovered the benefits of lithium in the late '60s. It was a miracle drug for her, as it was for a lot of people, and turned her from an institutionalized mental patient into someone who got a Master's from Harvard. My Dad was (and, at 90, still is) a raging alcoholic control freak. That was a tough environment to grow up in, to put it mildly. It's still reverberating today -- saying "it's in the past, I'm accepting it and moving on" would be -- for me, at least -- like saying "La La La, I can't hear you" to our memories... and that will not make them go away. That's why I find ACA "the graduate program" -- after 14 years in Al-Anon (which helps tremendously, but is much more oriented to getting through the present, one day at a time), ACA sticks it in your face and says, "This is how you got where you are. If you want to get better, you have to deal with this sh*t." That doesn't make it a pity-party -- it just means working on understanding what happened, not just slamming the door and pretending it's not there. That's basically what I was doing during my childhood and adolescence -- and look where it got me!

T

dothi

Heya jane_668!

It hasn't been that simple for me either. If I could absolve my parents as being flawed and "just part of life's problems", I wouldn't be here either. Hate to dwell on the past, but it certainly rears its ugly head every time I'm in close contact with these toxic parents who I parented since I was a child too.

Looking back at the past doesn't mean you have to dwell on it. It's not black&white. In my own recovery, healing from the past of a traumatic childhood could not start without airing the drawers, so to speak, and figuring out how to re-pack all that stuff so it didn't feel so heavy anymore.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jane_668

how do you know it's not the alcohol?

We know it's not the alcohol when the behavior doesn't change after the alcoholic has gone sober. Definitely agree that alcohol can exacerbate mental illness - am watching this now in my own family. We (sister and brother too) are all watching our alcoholic parent choose to make his mental illness worse by choosing to drink.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jane_668

It's funny that I used because I felt it was not fair to be an adult at 8 too.

For the record, being an adult at 8 is not fair. Period. Just because it's less bad doesn't make it okay or good - it is still unfortunate. It does not reflect a system where children grow up emotionally balanced or confident. The fact that you wanted to commit suicide reflects this. And boy, was I there too - busy managing an alcoholic dad and a codependent mom (both having the emotional intelligence of 12-year olds). Felt "used up" by the time I was 16. Couldn't even see my future in 10 years, as I was sure I wouldn't be in it (suicide being the way out). I knew I couldn't go on the way I was, and leaving the past in the past wasn't helping because it still was having such a big effect on my day-to-day present.

Your intentions are good, jane_668. It's just that this forum is the place to rehash questions from our childhoods in hopes of finding wisdom that helps it make sense (helps us find acceptance and understanding, which are very effective at relieving the pain associated with our childhoods). It's not necessarily where we come to forgive our parents. Perhaps consider starting a thread and posting your story here.

dothi

Hey utopia, I've gone through life in terms of calculated trust. A silly ACOA pasttime, but it makes sense to me. I can trust one friend to pay back of loan, but not neccessarily another. It is my responsibility to recognize the level of trust I can give to other people.

A close friend of mine said it best: relationships are dialogues, not just a state of being. Trust is part of that dialogue, and not necessarily a fixed value throughout that dialogue.

jane_668

Thank you dothi. I dont know if I am posting in the wrong thread but i feel I relate to you folks
a lot.

I try not think about my past memories. They are so painful. I had to be a mom for my mom and take care of my dad and brothers. My dad is a public figure so i had to fulfill my mom's duty at the age of 8. I had to learn how to talk like a woman and act like a woman so early so that our guests wouldnot be so bored. I was always the good girl that every mother wants. I would clean the house, prepare dinner for dad's guest..I would cry myself to sleep at the age of 14. I was so shy, and insecure. I would take every thing sensitive. I blamed my mom for my addiction for years. I hated my HP for giving me a sick mom. I thought what did I do to deserve this?

So I know excatly what you are saying though my mom is not alcoholic but I think my dad is in ways and it really doesnot matter. I've tried to avoid pain by numbing my feelings and when this didnot work I tried suicide. It's just too painful for me to discuss my childhood because it was plain misery. i jsut prefere not dwell on it and remind myself that I am not a small scared girl anymore. I am an adult and with adulthood comes lots of choices I can make to build a better life for me. Ive already lost my childhood and my early 20's, I dont wnat to lose anymore time dwelling on a past that's gone. But that doesnot mean I want to runaway from me. Im still completely dysfunctional. I look for love and acceptance in the wrong places and have a seelf seeking behavior that I hate. I crave attention and when I dont get it I fall into pity party. I have so much issues to work on from being dysfunctional long before I was on drugs. I was looking for anything that would fix me. That's why i feel I have to work on my improving my skills and let go of the past. Again, if I offeded any one or didnot understand you I am so sorry. If you think Im posting on the wrong forum please tell me.

tromboneliness

No worries, jane_668 -- this is just a forum, after all. We just have different perspectives because our experiences have been different.

I think it's important to distinguish between "blaming our parents" for how we turned out, and just looking at where we are now in terms of how we got here. That's what ACA does -- at my regular meeting, we start off by reading a few pages of the ACA Big Book -- we're reading it cover-to-cover, and are most of the way through. It talks about "treating our parents as the agents of our existence," while our "real" parent -- this will come as no surprise to those who "parented" ourselves the first time around, like yours truly -- is... us, as we "re-parent" ourselves. That's a concept I haven't really gotten my head around, in terms of how to do it -- I don't do very well with this "Inner Child" stuff they talk about.

On the other hand, I guess I probably do blame my parents -- or at least my Dad -- at times; you guys undoubtedly can tell I'm pretty angry at him, a lot of the time. Part of it is that he's still living, so it's not entirely "past," although I live in a different state. I never had any addiction issues -- before I gave up drinking entirely, I hardly drank much; I used to have one beer a month, which was a source of amusement to some of my friends! But ya, I certainly do hold my parents responsible for a lot of what happened to me. That doesn't mean I'm dwelling on it -- just trying to own my personality and move on.

T

dothi

Hi jane_668, I know the forum says "children of alcoholics" but really what we learn here applies to anyone who grew up with dysfunctional parents. What you have described certainly fits the bill!

Check out the roles children play in dysfunctional homes. It sounds like you fit the Hero bill (as did I). It's common that the hero children feel overwhelmed, underconfident, and depressed (suicidal). It's how their emotions balance the overload of adult responsibility. Kids weren't made to handle adult responsibility - we know that, that's why kids are just kids. It's typical that people have the impression that a hero child is confident and full of ambition, even though the hero may feel insecure and unworthy inside.

One of the damaging things my parents did to reinforce my hero role was to not acknowledge me when I did "bad" (normal). As long as I was taking care of things, doing exceptionally well in school, and cleaning up the messes, I was part of their family. But if I made a mistake or something bad happened (e.g. bombed a test, broke up with boyfriend, etc.), there was no acknowledgement. No support. I could literally sit in the middle of my parents' house crying and no one would console me. They reinforced the message that my problems were mine to deal with, even though I spent so much time trying to help them with theirs.

The result: I used to have a very hard time accepting criticism because I was so scared that it was going to mean failure. It was going to mean that I was unworthy. It was going to mean that I would be alone and unloved. So I did everything I could to avoid it, worked extra hard in the way I understood to guarantee me love. Then life threw some insurmountable barriers at me and my crude coping system was overwhelmed. I lost the control I had been working so hard at, and subsequently burned out. It was my wake-up call to change.

My parents never taught me that it's okay to make mistakes sometimes, and that "bad" things occassionally happen, and it's not always a reflection of us but rather how the cookie crumbles. I wish someone had told me that years ago, and saved me the trouble of learning the hard way.

Do I blame my parents? Sometimes, but once I can work through the anger, I can accept that's how it went and I don't have to be that way anymore. I did eventually learn, and I was lucky enough to learn while still in my twenties rather than long after having kids of my own.

I still go through the occassional perfectionist crisis. But now I have one more tool in my toolbox (it's okay to be human, mistakes are part of being human) instead of that useless old tool (because I f**ked up, the people who love me are going to abandon me unless I fix it somehow). As tromboneliness said, I can now take ownership of my personality, instead of being "stuck because of my parents".

That there, I think, is the difference between dwelling on the past, and just looking at it in terms of how I got here.

utopia

RE my original thread, the same feelings came up again with my partner, but we made some major progress, it wasnt easy but we came to this agreement,,,when i start feeling really tense, reactive, angry i have got my partner to ask me "RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW, YOU ARE SAFE" and then to ask me "WHAT DO YOU NEED?"...ive found that when he said that, the inner child or as a friend of mine once well phrased it, ""THE Tyranny of the Broken Child" feels heard and somewhat soothed,,,then i am calmer and can ask my partner "HOW ARE YOU FEELING?" because he shared that he feels scared and hurt when i become a swirling tempest and that seems to be helping us mend the damages.....

being asked "what do you need" has usually resulted in me just needing a hug but mostly no longer <<needing>> its been phenomenal shift for me