Dear Dazed,
I'm just finally emerging from a lifetime of this crap...I rarely tell my mother or father or certain siblings anything. I have had to pay a lot of money to therapist to have them tell me "You are more then fine, you are incredibly grounded, you never have a wrong take on any situation, you handle yourself with grace and style, you are an admirable person." My family does the opposite. When someone behaves badly they say it is my fault. If someone rages it is because I should have anticipated that person's needs better. When I tell certain family members a story, they tell me why I'm wrong. One brother said I make certain family members feel badly because other people like me, I have good social skills and I look OK (this is while I'm in the middle of a divorce from a nasty N and dealing with major issues with teenage children). He thought I should tone down who I am.
Bascially, the reality of who I was was never reflected back to me by my family. I truly thought I was stupid, uncoordinated, ugly and annoying. Truth was I was very likeable, social astute,smart, a pretty good athelte, not bad looking and far from annoying. But those voices are always hard to get out of your head....and for many years I continued to attract people "N's". I could provide the supply they needed for a while...but we all know the downside.
The subtle deragatory comments from my mother have been amazing. My house was going to be on a house walk and she asked if someone was going to come and redecorate it before the walk. She called me and said that now that I was divorced I should quit having Christmas dinner at my house and start acting like a divorced woman (I've always had a big party for Christmas). She really doesn't get me, doesn't get why people like me, or like my style and taste. She use to drop me off a block from the train when I was going downtown when I was young because she didn't like my clothes. When I was gettting married years ago and told her over dinner that the man I was choicing to marry was divorced, no kids and the marriage was annulled she started crying and said I had ruined her moment.
I now walk away from people that say subtle things to undermine my confidence. I actually feel sorry for them because it is their insecurity speaking, it is their way of feeling superior. The minute I recognize the behavior, I disengage. When someone says black when you say white on a consistent basis that is abuse....it is incredibly passive agressive behavior. Nine times out of ten when a friend tells me a story where someone has treated them inappropriately I'll point out to them why it wasn't about them but rather was the person with the bad behavior insecurites creeping out.
My therapist calls me the black sheep that just won't play the role of failure. I'm just different from most of the family and they certainly wouldn't have picked me. My therapist wants to use my story in a book...he says his opening line will be, she came from the perfect family, if you could ignore the alchoholism, judgemental behavior and abuse. Although I've never confronted my parents, they know I've been to therapy and they know they have no control over me.
Good idea starting a thread on this topic.
Gap
