Abusive comments from parents

Started by Teena339, March 18, 2017, 04:16:46 AM

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Teena339

So I have been reading this board and the many stories of emotional abuse by parents. When I think back to the gems my parents said (I heard more from Mom than from Dad since Dad did not live with us), and I just wonder just such smart and nice people that I know today, could say such things to their child. I can recall a couple of specific things that I think were most scarring. My mother, like many angry divorced women, liked to tell me that my Dad's personality was awful and that I had his personality. She called both him and me "choleric" a lot which was followed by ridicule, and I grew up thinking it was a dirty word, turns out it's one of the four temperatments. He wasn't even called by his name at our house, he was called by the angry nickname my Mom and Grandma had for him. My father's gem was when I was 15 and on the first visit in several years, we were walking in the park and I was telling him about my classes and my friends and suddenly he goes "You know, none of that interests me in the slightest." I remember that my jaw dropped and I thought, is that something you even say to somebody? I remember my Grandma, when I was small, say "Your father used to abuse my child and I hate him for it." I remember on the very rare occasions that I saw him, parroting the stories told to me about him, which bewildered him because he did not know what I was talking about. One of my mother's gems was that I had my father's awful personality but was pretty, so when I grew up, once I found the first man who liked me for my looks I needed to hold on to him because that was all I had going for me. I think the most hurtful thing I heard from her was when I asked her why she and my father did not have any kids except me, she said "I wanted another child but not by him. I would not want to pass those genes on." Surprise, I never got married and never had kids. Both of my parents were college professors. They can talk. They are BRIGHT. They are (my mom), compassionate kind people. How is it possible to be so clueless when raising a child? I recently finished reading the book "Adult Children of Divorce Speak Out" which is filled with stories of parents messing up their children's heads as if on purpose. I don't get it.

sanmagic7

i don't get it, either.  i can almost understand the uneducated parents simply parroting how they were raised, not knowing anything else or any other way  (like my folks - altho my dad did try to break the cycle of alcoholism from his family by not drinking or having any alcohol in the house, and by not swearing or using foul language, i can give him credit for that - but otherwise, he and my mom, both from immigrant parents, pretty much only gave us the tangible essentials, and were clueless as to emotional support, tolerance, or validation completely), but i cannot understand the educated, well-read, parents who pour vitriol into their children's heads.  you'd think they'd have a clue.

Candid

Quote from: Teena339 on March 18, 2017, 04:16:46 AMI recently finished reading the book "Adult Children of Divorce Speak Out" which is filled with stories of parents messing up their children's heads as if on purpose. I don't get it.

I understand when there's an acrimonious divorce that one or both parents will try to turn children against the former partner. Perhaps it's a way of trying to win the child or children to themselves. "I was the one who cared for you" type of thing.

My parents didn't divorce but my covertly abusive mother, apart from scapegoating me, also did her best to turn us children against Dad. She succeeded for a long time, mistress of manipulation that she was. Only in my late 20s did I begin to think she was less than the perfect mother she'd have everyone believe she was.  I'd seen my first counsellor and I called mother out on the worst of her abuse/neglect up to that point. Big mistake. She flew into narcissistic rage that became gradually more overt and persisted until my siblings abandoned me as well.

What you report from your parents goes under the banner of contempt: your mother with name-calling and your father by making it clear he had no interest in your life. I got plenty of contempt, too. Mother was usually very controlled and subtle, especially if others were in the room. Dad had outbursts. His most damning line to me was when he snarled: "I hope you rot in *." He also told me when I was in my teens: "No one will ever love you."

Since he's now gone, I prefer to remember the time he ambushed me eight years after I'd last had contact with both of them. I was 43 and my hair was completely old-lady white from that Most Horrible Event. I was living in slum accommodation surrounded by shabby mismatched furniture, wearing secondhand clothes, when he knocked on my door. It was the only time I saw him cry, and he told me: "You deserve much better."

RIP Dad, if you can. It wasn't you, it was her.

Blueberry

#3
My parents are both highly educated and intellectually intelligent but their emotional intelligence is low, though they have been learning a bit over the years. Very slowly though. Intellectual intelligence and academic education don't prevent emotional abuse (or any other kind). I can't give my parents a diagnosis. M. has some NPD traits to an extreme degree, but some she's totally missing. I think she might have uCPTSD. F has long-term depression. I think M's M might have had NPD.

So why abusive? Very bad anger management skills and warped thinking. Easier to scapegoat than look at your own problems. That's the way M was brought up and she and F were so busy intellectualising and damning everybody (like me) who didn't or supposedly didn't have their intelligence level that there was no room for exploring any other options.  Also my parents were totally opposed to psychology, psychiatry, social work, feelings and all that kind of stuff for decades. They were immigrants too and didn't really trust the society they'd immigrated to and assumed any 'new' ideas were from this 'bad, inferior' society not that maybe the world was changing in general, even the society they'd grown up in...

Edit July 5th, 2017: I discovered a while ago over at OOTF that M probably has BPD, Witch variety. So that's why I couldn't really place her as NPD. Her M undoubtedly suffered medical trauma as a small child (there are family stories of the effects) so that would have been PTSD at least, but then some other stuff came up and compounded all that while my M was still a small child. I grew up with the myth that nobody in the extended family could have suffered as much emotional and physical pain as GM... GM may have had some PD as well, like NPD, or maybe she had BPD too? Who knows really. I still think it's quite likely that M has uCPTSD. Doesn't excuse abusive comments though.


clarity

One of the scorchers for me was at my wedding when my father ended an already embarrassing speech with the words 'if your children turn out no worse than you that will be alright with me'.... mortifying. My NS had a glowing testimony in hers from him just 6 months beforehand. Sounds trivial I know but it cut so deep.

sanmagic7

personally, clarity, i don't see any of this as trivial.  these words cause emotional wounds every bit as gruesome as anything physical we've endured.  often worse, because those triggers that come into our lives re-open those wounds time and time again.  what a crummy thing to have to hear at your wedding. 

clarity

Thanks SM... the old programming there... any hurting protests always labelled 'over sensitive'  by FOO. 







Blueberry

Same here, Clarity, I was constantly labelled "too sensitive" by FOO.

I think San is totally right here: it's not trivial. These wounds were so awful. They went so deep. Speaking for myself, they destroyed parts of me. You may feel that way too, but I don't want to force the feeling on you.