I think I know what you mean Russ. It happens to me when I remember my mom right before she died and how frail and helpless she was and then I remember when she cooked something we really liked at kids and how she fussed over how we looked or when she did something small but nice. It gets confusing for those who have suffered abuse in childhood because most abusers are not 100% bad. There is a smattering of good stuff mixed in there and that makes it harder to focus our anger on them for what they have done. I think of the horrible childhood my mom had and it makes me feel that she couldn't help how she treated me and then I feel sort of guilty for the anger I feel towards her. But then I think that I had hard times too and I don't perpetuate the behavior with my child. I want better for him.

But sometimes those poignant feelings just sort of sneak up on me and make me wistful or sad and it just makes things seem so much more complicated.

TN

Sadness yes poignancy nostalgia lots of things yes. Lately these kind of small things ambush me a lot - but it’s less little flashes of connecting to the people in my memories than places or things - a vase of roses on the table, cold feet and a hot water bottle, curtains billowing in a breeze from an open window - suddenly I’m back there for a second or two and it’s so infinitely sad - like everything really was good and safe and ok back then and somehow something f***ed in me has disconnected me from being able to remember all the good things about the people. I think I’m too scared to remember the good nice little things about the people because that invalidates all the bad I’ve experienced. It almost has to be all or nothing for me to take any kind of stand on my own behalf. I think that’s partly what TN might be saying?

At the least it’s confusing because the smatterings of good stuff not only makes it hard to focus it but almost negates the anger - I have this underground need to reclaim seeing my family as good and well-intentioned and maintain me as the bad one just to have the experience of someone somewhere once having wanted and cared about me. The need to see and be seen as good seems to hugely outweigh the need to stand up for myself (after all, standing up for myself means I'm totally on my own and that's a really terrifying place to be.)

I know it needn't be like, eventually maybe it will be possible to see both the bad AND the good - but right now that's a very long way off.

LL

russ, i hear what you are saying, and not that it is the same feelings as you are having, but i know the subtlety and mixed emotional messages i got non-verbally from both parents leaves an angst of unfinished business. i didn't recognize the abuse until this year through counseling, as mine was so covered up in the niceties of piano lessons and lots of clothes and toys, etc. it was a scary and bewildering recollection for me, and not that you have that, i pray you don't, but i suppose all parents, even me, do some things that are damaging to a child's psyche.

that wistful sense...sad, unfinished, incomplete, yearning for more, never quenched.

i could go on.

but i have found that although i am not resolved on this, knowing and accepting truth is easier than my fervent desire to 'not feel' and escape those painful memories...or to think that i could wish them away and really believe the house of cards i was living.

i presume you are discussing this with your T, mine was very eye-opening...

i am not trying to lead you, but, i guess, to say that is somewhat a normal pain maybe all people feel to a certain extent with the recognition that our entire childhood wish of a magically perfect mommy doesn't exist in reality...childhood fantasy vs. real adult reality. the book 'necessary losses' (voirst) is EXCELLENT on this topic, both in viewing OUR childhood, and in viewing our own children.

what you say about wanting it to be better for them is...admirable and NOBLE! we all learn some things of what NOT to do from our own childhood, and surely my children will have a few things as well...but i assure you, they will not have the same issues i have carried for so long.

letting go of heaven on earth...santa is not real...all those things bring a sense of childhood angst to me in varying degrees...the magic of childhood wonder just CAN'T be replicated in adult life, no matter how hard i WISH it to be so.

i know i am still struggling to let go of the child.

hope this helps!! ((russ))

quote:

Originally posted by True North:
It gets confusing for those who have suffered abuse in childhood because most abusers are not 100% bad. There is a smattering of good stuff mixed in there and that makes it harder to focus our anger on them for what they have done. I think of the horrible childhood my mom had and it makes me feel that she couldn't help how she treated me and then I feel sort of guilty for the anger I feel towards her.
TN

TN, this is so true for me, too. And I wasn't physically or sexually abused. I was rejected by my father, and I had a very incomplete attachment to my mother (for various reasons) which left my development totally stunted, thus leaving me where I'm at today with my anxiety symptoms. I feel like I was born, then set down in a corner where I was fed, clothed and talked to occasionally. And even though my feelings for my mother are conflicted between intense longing and anger - and that I have an almost murderous rage toward my father - I still have trouble seeing my childhood as flawed or abusive.

quote:

Originally posted by Lamplighter:
I think I’m too scared to remember the good nice little things about the people because that invalidates all the bad I’ve experienced. It almost has to be all or nothing for me to take any kind of stand on my own behalf...

At the least it’s confusing because the smatterings of good stuff not only makes it hard to focus it but almost negates the anger - I have this underground need to reclaim seeing my family as good and well-intentioned and maintain me as the bad one just to have the experience of someone somewhere once having wanted and cared about me.
LL

Yes, me too, LL!! That whole thing with GOOD INTENTIONS makes it all that much more confusing. It's like the good intentions completely overshadow that actual truth of the matter.

I'm going to be talking to my mother again today about exactly what my parent's relationship was like before and after I was born (she told me just last week that the reason they split up for 4 years before I was born was that my dad had an affair). I HATE having to talk about this stuff with my parents, and I think my mom is getting angry with me asking her, but my T says, "you can't get out of what you're in until you know what it is you're in, and you've been in this thing since before you were born. The situation you were born into set you up for your troubles today, and the only way out is through all of it, but you have to know what it is you're going through." He says I have to "become a researcher." This of course makes me totally angry with my T, and I told him, "I HATE doing this, and if I do it, it better work." He just replies, "you can hate me all you want, and your hatred of me about this says a lot about how you're holding your parents up and defending them, but you need this information."

But all this makes me feel very guilty, like I'm being disrespectful to my parents and causing them pain in their old age (they're 78).

quote:

Originally posted by jill:
...but i know the subtlety and mixed emotional messages i got non-verbally from both parents leaves an angst of unfinished business. i didn't recognize the abuse until this year through counseling, as mine was so covered up in the niceties of piano lessons and lots of clothes and toys, etc.

jill, perfectly put. Unfinished business.

Thanks so much, everyone. You're all the best.

Russ

Hey Russ I love that quote from your T

quote:

but my T says, "you can't get out of what you're in until you know what it is you're in, and you've been in this thing since before you were born. The situation you were born into set you up for your troubles today, and the only way out is through all of it, but you have to know what it is you're going through."

I so understand that automatic sense of having to defend parents and family, the original 'good' guys (even if they subsequently turn out not to be). Your T sounds like he's knows what's what as far as knowing and understanding the family set up goes (and I do like his comment about your hating him - even though it would make me hate him even more ).

I guess a way to look at it is - you have to do this for yourself, take a stand to be on your own side - and if that means doing things that are really painful well maybe that's all to the good too. It's actually good that you have the oppportunity to do this sort of 'research' stuff (amongst other things it's going to give you an adult insight into who your parents were, what made them tick, as people - not just as parents). There's so much of value you can get from discussing these sorts of things openly with your family and ALL of it's going to help you in healing.

I do hope your mother keeps talking to you about the things you need to know - that she's getting angry about it says to me you're touching on important things. I also wonder how easily you and she will slip into the old mother/son dynamic? Never mind her age I bet both of you still relate at times like it was 60 plus years ago? That's certainly fodder for therapy too. Good luck with seeing her later today.

LL

LL,

Last week my T said:

"The first day you came to see me, you told me that you came from 'a wonderful, very solid family. There's nothing wrong with my family.'"