Posted by Sara T on May 29, 2000, at 17:41:55
In reply to Mother relationship/therapy, posted by JennyR on May 28, 2000, at 23:56:25
> I'd like to know if others have shared this experience and how you've dealt with it.
> Being in therapy seems to have forever changed how I feel about my mother. She was a very vicious, angry woman when I was a kid. SHe had a lot of grudges against a lot of people, including two sisters of hers that she had no contact with at all (therefore I never knew two sets of aunts, uncles and cousins). She didn't interact much with me and I was mostly left to my own devices. She was very quick to anger and hit me a lot. She sometimes hit me with an electrical cord that left welts. We didn't do much mother-daughter stuff if any. My father and brother were fanatical baseball fans, but I was mostly left out of that as my brother was 6 years older. My father didn't interact much with me - I don't think he knew what to do with a girl.
> My therapist really emphasizes the past, so he is forever relating why I do certain things or feel certain ways to the past. As a result, I have a lot of very bad feelings toward my mother about how mean and unreasonable she was. How all those growing up years there was no closeness, and she had to be right at any cost. She could never admit she was wrong or apologize, just bully one way or another til she won out.
> Now, in her old age, my mother is more bitter and vicious than ever. She doesn't have a kind word about anybody, gets in angry confrontations with people. Because of remembering the past so much in therapy, I now have very little tolerance for her and want little to do with her. But because she is old, I do maintain as much contact as I can, particularly because she is always saying she misses my kids, even though when she sees them, she barely interacts with them. she is always bitching and complaining and trying to lay guilt on me about not calling enough, not seeing her enough. The times I confront her on the mean and inappropriate things she says/does, she lies, denies and attacks viciously. It tears me up. I want to back away for my own self-preservation. Then I'm a bad daughter for backing off. She never apologizes or admits the nasty stuff she says and does. It's supposed to just evaporate by the next time we speak, only I can't operate that way.
> I know I'm rambling, but what I need to figure out is this. If you realize in therapy that a parent was pretty shitty to you, and you are all shaken up about it, and can't shake those feelings, and they are still a lousy person and you're even more sensitive to it because you've dredged up the past so much, how do you deal with them in the present? Paricularly when they are old and there is not a prayer they will ever develop a shred of self awareness, and to them it's always everyone else who is the problem? How does all the awareness from therapy help when it just makes the present with that parent harder to bear? If you back off, you feel guilty. And if you keep subjecting yourself to their various forms of verbal and emotional abuse, you know you are harming yourself.
> ThanksI've had this kind of relationship with my father. It is difficult to keep up the role of "good daughter" when you'd rather not even see them. I have kept alot of physical distance between me and my parents. But I think the thing that helped me the most was realizing that I did not have to love my father just because he was my father. Actually, I don't feel much for him at times. And recognizing those feelings and accepting them helped me develop an emotional distance that enabled me to see him as he is, a person with alot of mental problems himself.
Sounds too, like you could draw some boundaries with your mother and how you expect her to treat you. You don't have to keep accepting her negativity and unkindness. You could tell her next time she is nasty that you don't want her to treat you that way and that while you won't abandon her, you will not let her be abusive to you or your children.
Sara T.
poster:Sara T
thread:35043
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000526/msgs/35144.html