First of all, thank you to every member who has posted … I have been reading the message board for awhile before I decided to register and become a member myself. Your posts have been so helpful.
It’s hard to know where to start when giving my story.
I’m an only child. Growing up I was completely wrapped in cotton wool. Unlike some members who were abused, my mom was very very anxious (I remember her taking Valium and Librium back in the 60s, although she never has admitted she is anxious) and was the prototype for the “Blackhawk Mom.” Well, except for the part where Blackhawk Moms take their kids’ side with the school and stuff.
I could never put my finger on it before, but after reading the essays on this website, I realize that my parents never entered my world --- I was always expected to live in their world. Stuff like they loved to fish, so I was taken out to sit in a boat and do nothing all day while they fished. I hated fishing. They made friends only with older folks whose kids were grown (mom didn’t like other people’s kids coming over much because they were rough with the furniture). They would take me to visit their friends and I was expected to be quiet and well behaved all evening while they visited. That doesn’t sound too bad, except this was almost my whole childhood. My dad was a teacher, so we spent all summer every summer in my parent’s hometown where I didn’t know anybody but my grandparents. I had some fun times, but they were mostly alone fun times.
Other than being alone and expected to live in an adult’s world, I think the other part of my childhood story that has caused problems is that there were not acceptable psychological boundaries. Especially with my mother. I vividly remember a time when I was 14 when she noticed my slip had ridden up underneath my dress, and she flipped up my skirt and fixed it --- not only was it not her place to do that at my age, but we were standing on our front porch in full view of the neighbors at the time! Again, a one time incident doesn’t sound so bad but this was characteristic of the relationship between us. The worst problem from my childhood was I had terrible separation anxiety. I believe strongly this is because of the leaky boundaries between me and my mom. I was strongly indoctrinated from birth that I could not cope without her. I had school refusal my entire first grade year. I would cry and throw up almost every day. Most of my childhood was characterized by me being too afraid to sleep in my own room at night. I was scolded, punished, and made fun of for my anxieties, and it is only now that I see that my mother perpetuated this (no, I don’t think she did it on purpose, but it is distressing all the same). For example, about the nighttime fears, I was not allowed to keep lights on, play music, or sleep with my dog … all things I ended up allowing my own children to do to cope independently with any nighttime fears they had. (My mom has expressed amazement that none of my kids have had nighttime fears that lasted longer than a night or two --- she thinks this is pure dumb luck, I think).
My family tends to ridicule people as a way to control them. I remember being ridiculed for faults, failures, or just being different from my parents. Then I was blamed because I “couldn’t take teasing.” When I was little, my dad would play with me (which I loved), but it would always end up in him holding me down so I couldn’t move, and then I would get mad and aggressive. Then I was scolded and humiliated for getting mad. My mom would beg him not to play with me that way, but then she would jump on me for getting mad nonetheless.
Basically, my every move was monitored, I was trained (you could almost say “brainwashed”) to feel defective if I differed from the strict model my parents were trying to make me into, and I was trained to feel that I couldn’t run my own life. My dad would gripe that I was never made to do household chores, at the same time that my mother would go in and clean up my room on a regular basis while I was at school. She was unable to teach me to do anything, including sewing, which she was good at. She just had to do everything herself. She made it clear that I was too slow and that I couldn’t do chores right.
Looking at what I have said above, you may see why it was difficult for a long time to put my finger on what was wrong. My parents really did love me in their way, and how can you fault a parent for being “protective”? And, no kid wants to do chores, how many other people on this board have said they had to be little adults and do all the chores? And the way that my mother perpetuated my fears was subtle and not something I could be consciously aware of until I had children of my own. The problem was that my mother particularly saw me as an extension of themselves, not as a separate person in my own right. Well, no child can read their parent’s mind and perfectly do everything the way the parent is thinking of … and even if you could, why would you want to? God gave each person a mind of their own, right? But growing up, I was seen as a little echo of my parents, and when I deviated from the map, subtle ridicule, humiliation, parental disappointment, etc. made me feel defective.
I have struggled with chronic depression throughout my adult life. I think it really may have started long before my 20s (when I was first diagnosed), but detecting depression in children is tricky even nowadays.
My dad struggled with depression too, but that is from my own observation --- he never admitted it or sought any kind of help. He was raised with leaky boundaries with his own parents, and they wrapped him in cotton wool too. He resented this greatly, and this really caused problems between him and my grandpa, especially as he entered middle adulthood. He was always irritated with my grandfather, because my grandfather never could quit treating him like he was a little boy. My grandpa lived til he was 93 and my Dad was 51. Dad tried not to repeat those patterns but he pretty much didn’t know any other way of being. I had to keep my Dad at arm’s length after I came to realize what was going on --- couldn’t tell him too many of my problems or let him get too deeply involved in my life --- although I loved him dearly. The up side of this is that I was able to maintain a decent relationship with him and didn’t stay mad at him the way he had with his own father. He died in 2005 and I still miss him. I would sit down with him about every 6 weeks for a good talk --- this was kind of the rhythm I got into for keeping both the relationship and the boundaries --- and almost 4 years later, about every 6 weeks I have a little time of weepiness again.
The weird thing is, after my dad died, it seems that my mother has kind of ‘come out of the closet’ --- with some very narcissistic behaviors. Looking back, I can recall a lot of individual incidents throughout my whole life that pointed in that direction, but my dad seems to have kept her in check. After he died, it has become “whoa, there’s something seriously out of line with her.” It seems that especially when she is stressed, I am expected to read her mind and know what she needs or wants. She rips me a new one if I don’t supply it. And projection --- wow. Freud had a point with that. She gets stressed, then furious at me for not reading her mind, and then tells me I’M mad. And when she goads me into losing my temper, then I’ve “had one of my little fits.” Little of course because I’m a child or unimportant …
So now I am learning to deal with the relationship with my mom in a different way … I have clarity that the mixed messages she has sent, and the message that I need her to survive (mentally or otherwise), has been a big contributor to my ongoing battle with depression. So I can’t go on with “business as usual” because that would be tantamount to making myself sick. But she takes my distancing from her as a personal attack, and she doesn’t want to just let it be. She is confrontive and combative, not realizing that being accusatory just makes me more certain I need distance from her. What I’ve been doing is 1) putting more time between contacts 2) making contacts shorter and not about emotionally charged topics 3) converting some of the contacts to less-emotion-laden media like e mail, and (most importantly for me) 4) calmly noting to her when she says hurtful things to me. She can’t stand any of this. It is so weird to me. When she “zinged” me a few weeks ago (I thought we were just having a pleasant conversation, and out of the blue she said something wounding), I called her on it but did so calmly. This resulted in her coming to my house to “talk about what is wrong with you.” She could take me losing my temper because then I would look like a jerk, but calmly pointing out when my feelings are hurt doesn’t have the same effect.
Anyway, I don’t know that the size of the problem is always directly proportional to the size of the family dysfunction. I think it depends on how vulnerable you were to start with. But you don’t have to be actively abused to have your voice snatched away.
