Frozen around communication with 'parents'

[eucatastrophe21]

My c-ptsd just came to light about a month ago. I'll leave the details out here, but I have discovered that processing the abuse and neglect I suffered was a very strange elephant in the room/oversight.  I am now stunned by the pseudo-relationship I've provided my father and his wife for so many years. I left that home in 1989 at which time I was told I was living * to live with and wasn't welcome back. Our semi-estrangement ended and we held congenial phone calls a few times a year with no emotional content. My father has never been to my house and he has seen my two beautiful daughters (ages 12 and 14) only a few times at weddings we all attended and at one other picnic at a family members house (a few hours). I am realizing I've given them this comfort of never having to address anything -- it's like nothing happened. There was so much emotional abuse and a good amount of trauma (will leave it at that here). And I now see that this is typical of those who experienced abuse -- it just didn't seem like a big deal -- never thought to call it abuse. But if anyone told me about these things happening to them, I would cry for them. Or if anyone ever did this to my daughters, I would protect my daughters with my life from that kind of treatment. But a lot of the times it is still hard for me to think of it as abuse when it comes to me.

So now the question...I recently reached out to a few people (who also know my father and step-mother) trying to remember some things and really (at the time) validating what really happened. And I 'm pretty sure someone told my dad and his wife because, even after years of not calling me, now they are trying to call.  And my step-mother has posted a bunch of martyr-type memes on FB.  They could never tolerate anything that suggested they weren't just good parents -- my father just shuts down but his wife attacks and is a master at making people second-guess themselves and she accuses you of being selfish and unloving. I think my dad just can't process the guilt -- he cheated on my mom when she was dying with the church secretary. And then we moved into a family with this family with a lot of mental illness -- across the country -- my dad was remarried four months after my mom died and we never spoke my mothers name. So many bad things happened.  So I don't expect that we'll just be able to make sense to eachother--my father and me (and his wife).

So now, talking to them seems impossible. I just freeze. And I know I don't have to, but I also don't want to hurt them or do say things that they can't process. My step-mother has some mental illness issues and my father just has too much blood on his hands to be able to hear anything.

I don't know if I ever want to go back to the every 6-month 15 minute conversation to restore the illusion of relationship to give them that peace so they can tell their friends about their grand-kids. But I think what I fear most is that I will turn on myself because I don't feel strong enough to keep my frame of mind and not just believe I'm making things up. I'm working with a therapist, but that still happens -- I lose my ground when I think about them.

I wanted to just put this off, but I can't because I dream about and can't sleep. And thinking about it seems to slippery.  If I don't reach out, then I am already creating some issue that I don't feel ready to address. Because I believe they can only relate on their terms. But it feels too painful not to give myself enough weight in this world to not just pretend anymore. But also don't want to hurt people who have their own fragile peace in older age (I'm 46, mad dad is 79).

I want to buy myself some time, but the only way I could do that is to talk to them. Which makes me queasy now.

I don't know how to begin to navigate this just yet. Posting in case someone has suggestions...And yes, I am working with a therapist who I see multiple times per week.

[Three Roses]

First off, if your "friends" did say something to your parents, that would be a boundary violation for me. You don't say if you asked them not to say anything, but that should have been understood without spelling it out.

Also, it occurs to me that maybe your stepmom is just posting martyr-ish things because mother's day is approaching and she's prepping her family to give her the attention she craves. Maybe it has nothing to do with your request for information. (I'm hoping.)

I repressed many memories, sacrificed them on the altar of family peace. They don't go away. Like the tiger cub thrown in the proverbial basement, they're howling for attention now and throwing themselves at the door of my conciousness - but now they're full grown. It would've been easier to deal with them years ago.

It's so confusing, trying to figure out what to do. I know you don't want to hurt anyone, but sometimes the truth hurts. After all the lies and all the silence you were forced to submit to, you owe it to yourself to speak the truth. That truth will allow you to bring more health into your life, and will help end the legacy of lies, secrets and shame before it's passed to the next generation.

Reading between the lines and drawing from my own experience, I would bet that you have been trained to think of other people's feelings before your own. "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." We learned saying things out loud and calling attention to the truth only brought us negative attention. We were indoctrinated in the ways of silence and codependency.

If you want to change your life, rattle that cage! Let your truth resound from every direction! It doesn't have to be anyone else's truth but yours. No one else has to validate the things your body is telling you it went through. No one else has to agree with your memories. And you're not responsible for how its received by anyone else!

And by the way, I'm sorry for the loss of your mom. It would have killed me to have lost mine, and not even be able to talk about it. Gigantic hugs to you! Stop being so strong for everyone else - this is your show now.

[eucatastrophe21]

Three Roses, thank you so much for your response. It really touched me -- everything you said. Rattling the cage...I may have to work on that for a while :-), but I will!

[Blueberry]

I feel frozen in communication with my parents too. I'm VLC at the moment. But even when not, I can't tell them what I really want, or think, for fear of repercussion, shaming, blaming, ridicule. Not always, but often enough. That's partly what's hard, they're not always abusive in their communication with me. That's how they excuse the past though, "We/B1 didn't always do xy, it didn't happen often..."

Another poster on here suggested that I'm wasting my loving heart on FOO. You may be offering your loving, forgiving, compassionate heart to people who take it and send abuse or neglect back.

Although I did not give my parents and sibs the comfort of not having to address anything, it hasn't really helped. They're either in denial (my parents) or they've got things the way they want in the family e.g. set the boundaries they need including towards me, and are not willing to allow me to set those I need (my sibs) combined with shaming and blaming (our daughter/sister has mental health issues, it's not our fault).  e.g. my younger brother said a number of years ago when I bravely mentioned sexual abuse "You can never tell M that! She might commit suicide!" I said it was pretty unlikely. It is: she'd deny and everybody would rally round supporting her and blaming me/denouncing me as crazy. The possibility that  I might have given up under the strain is not considered. If I had done away with myself, they would've said: Blueberry has mental health problems, she's always been unstable, no wonder this happened. It's nothing to do with us" at best.

I find this dichotomy increasingly hard to swallow. With F or M or both, keeping the peace so as not to 'hurt' them, hurting inside like crazy, being blamed and shamed on top of it all about things like not having and never having had a romantic relationship, knowing that that is one way I've gone to protect myself from the repercussions of emotional, physical and sexual abuse.

Yeah my parents are older too, mid 70's and going on 80, and I'm in my 40's. But age isn't a reason to protect. It shouldn't be, especially when I think and remember that the abuse and neglect they did was to a defenseless child, even a baby some of it. I'm meant to care about an adult hurting because they can't face up to what they did to me??? It's not that I actually want to hurt my FOO any more, but if they feel hurt because I set a boundary, I can't help that. They need to go get help somewhere else, it's not my job.

Sometimes in group therapy I have come across parents who say they realise what they did to their children, they're trying to make amends, they can't reverse their behaviour (to adult children) but they have apologised. There was even one mother (senior citizen) who said she knew she'd hurt her then grown-up daughter so much that she didn't think the rift could be mended, her daughter was just too hurt, but the mother was no longer trying to get her needs met by the daughter.  And one mother (in her 70's) said she'd actually found it good to have her adult children give her back her own crxp. I think she even said something like empowering. I imagine it might be, even though hard. Because if everybody like your spouse and adult children run around protecting you from all your feelings and consequences of your actions, then they're intimating that you're weak, that you can't handle it, that you're not really an adult emotionally-speaking.  "This is yours, and I'm giving it back" is an imagination exercise I've done in therapy, but to be actually able to do it in person to a parent who then could accept it, WOW, that would be something! But it's not going to happen in my family.

What I am doing is allowing myself time. I was meant to give my parents some financial information a couple of months ago. I haven't. The world hasn't stopped spinning. I intended to write to my sibs in the fall and notified them of this in August. I haven't. Maybe I never will. I don't owe it to them.

I hope some of this helps, though I'm still in the process.

[Blackbird]

Well, you don't need to talk to them to ease your mind, actually. Your therapist is good enough for that, hopefully. You would only be putting yourself in another abusive situation, through denial of events, guilt trips, so forth.

My mother is actually in therapy, has admitted to some abuse, but "forgets" the important ones and says I make them up. I gave up on talking to her about it a long time ago.

I do live with her now, after years of indenpendence and a period of no contact, due to being disabled right now, mostly because of CPTSD and other mental issues.

What I do, though, is tell her directly I'm treating childhood trauma in therapy. Just that, she doesn't know what, how, etc. She only knows that I'm taking my life back.

She is in therapy herself, and like I said she admitted to some extent of abuse, but victimized herself and all guilt and blame were gone. I'm a forgiving person and I did forgive her back then, only for the anger to come back later on.

What I'm trying to say is, there is no actual need for you to talk to them about it. They, as abusers, will hardly admit to the abuse, or if they do, it won't solve anything.

I'm of the opinion you should deal with it in therapy and not by confrontation. It usually leads nowhere.

[eucatastrophe21]

First off, if your "friends" did say something to your parents, that would be a boundary violation for me. You don't say if you asked them not to say anything, but that should have been understood without spelling it out.

Also, it occurs to me that maybe your stepmom is just posting martyr-ish things because mother's day is approaching and she's prepping her family to give her the attention she craves. Maybe it has nothing to do with your request for information. (I'm hoping.)

I repressed many memories, sacrificed them on the altar of family peace. They don't go away. Like the tiger cub thrown in the proverbial basement, they're howling for attention now and throwing themselves at the door of my conciousness - but now they're full grown. It would've been easier to deal with them years ago.

It's so confusing, trying to figure out what to do. I know you don't want to hurt anyone, but sometimes the truth hurts. After all the lies and all the silence you were forced to submit to, you owe it to yourself to speak the truth. That truth will allow you to bring more health into your life, and will help end the legacy of lies, secrets and shame before it's passed to the next generation.

Reading between the lines and drawing from my own experience, I would bet that you have been trained to think of other people's feelings before your own. "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." We learned saying things out loud and calling attention to the truth only brought us negative attention. We were indoctrinated in the ways of silence and codependency.

If you want to change your life, rattle that cage! Let your truth resound from every direction! It doesn't have to be anyone else's truth but yours. No one else has to validate the things your body is telling you it went through. No one else has to agree with your memories. And you're not responsible for how its received by anyone else!

And by the way, I'm sorry for the loss of your mom. It would have killed me to have lost mine, and not even be able to talk about it. Gigantic hugs to you! Stop being so strong for everyone else - this is your show now.

I just have to say thank you again for writing this. Today was a hard day and I went through a huge conviction of self-doubt which is so confusing at times.  There is a real fear that there is something dishonest in me -- even though I can't SEE the dishonesty, I feel like I know it's there. The conviction is so strong, that I can't even believe or reason my way out of it at times. It's so uncomfortable at the time because I feel like some sort of monster who is capable of even deceiving myself.  Tonight, I read your post again and it helped so much. Thank you!

[eucatastrophe21]

When I signed up for this forum, I had no idea how deeply insightful posts would be. I am so grateful for your comments, Blackbird, Blueberry and Three Roses. It feels so much saner to hear people speaking a language I relate to.

I read these responses and it is so helpful and stimulating. I know I'll re-read tomorrow! 

Thank you again.

[Three Roses]