Posted by winter on June 20, 2002, at 13:39:22
In reply to great vent! » InsomniaMom, posted by terra miller on June 16, 2002, at 14:08:10
I can relate, though somewhat indirectly. Both of my parents were depressed. My father "clinically depressed", terrible rage anger problems and insomnia. The first two of which I have inherited. My mother was/is a narcissist and during my formative years was extremly depressed due to being around my Father and in her mindset that she could help him, fix him, solve his problems and make him happy.
Now they are still together happily married for a dysfunctional family, my father controls his rage and depression around my mother but never around me. My mother is still narcissitic and also seems to have ADD, or so everyone professional agrees that have spoken to. Thus I like everyone else had a lousy childhood and continue to have a lousy adulthood. In the past my father has contemplated suicide with me, robbing my mother and us running away together, etc... Both of them refuse to admit that there is anything wrong with themselves but are quick to point out the faults is each other.
Due to my parents ineptness and no support systems, I practically have negative self esteem and lack the nuturing that i needed growing up. I never learned how to exist and function. Almost three years ago I met a lovely man who by some miracle fell in love with me, which I have never been able to understand or fully truly belive. For the past 2 and a half years I have been treating him terribly. Trying to make him into the parents I never had whilst trying to make him into the love I never had.
Now our relationship is falling apart. He is bitter from all the unneccessary caretaking he has had to do, the parenting he has had to to, the stay up till six in the morning listening to me cry about some truly utter nonsense. ( I am not be self degrading here, I would stay up crying about how I was afaid that it was my destiny to die at age 27, and how I only have few years left to make my dreams come true. That is not worthy of an eight hour cry session)He is bitter of me calling him at work angry pissed off crying because something some inanimate object didn't function properly and then I got pissed off and threw a fit. So many more examples I think you get the point.
I have been using him. Sure I have been in therapy hell three times a week! Did I go all three times? Did I even go once a week? Maybe. I never made a true effort to get better. I had him to take care of me. He would clean up after me when the house was to messy. Why did I need a shrink if I could talk to him about anything and everything that was bothering me for hours nto just 50 minutes and for free! It's not for free.
Just because some one loves you doesn't give you the right to expect things of them. Even if they love you unconditionally as parents, or children often do. Love and abuse are such a fine line that one can abuse their love.
We are trying to work things out and now I am actually trying to get better, to fix my life, for me to do what my parents could not and not hope that someone else would.
When I was young I thought that if someone loved me truly was in love with me it would give me the power and make me ok, like some sort of magic. Then I could be thin,(I am very overweight I have been most of my life) beautiful, happy, successful, competent, and together. I was happy till I realised what I was doing to him. Now it hurts me what I have done. I don't regret anything in my life that I have done, execept this.
Insomnia Man Perhaps if your mother saw how she made you feel, felt how she make you feel she might not take advantage of your love for her. I know that my mother and yours are very different but for years I could not get my mother to hear or listen to me. She is too wrapped up in herself and in another world that functions according to god knows what. Eventually I figured out that she herself is in so many ways a child and talking to her trying to express how I feel and what I need in a calm rational adult manner just dosen't work.
I realised that if I channeled up all my acting skills and made her feel what I am feeling make her understand my pain, even a little crying is ok as long as it is for me and not for herself. Then it would him home. I can't say my life sucks. I have to describe every gory detail in full extent, and realte it to her a little so she can't black it out like a war in some far away country. She is like a child who can't learn by reading or listening she has to foremost do it and also read and listen.
Maybe make you mother realte in some way you know her life what a bum rap she has had realte something loust that has happend to her that is of course realtable to what she is doing to you.
Or stop helping her, she will never get better if she knows you are there for her to fall back on. Disconnect your self from her, if you are very worried hire her a nurse to come check on her. The cost probably wouldn't be much more that what you already spend taking care of her as well as the emotional cost.
I know this is long but one more thing. It also might be good to disassociate your self from you mother, perhaps not completly, but stop being her fallback be her adult son with a life. I say this beacuse realtionships have side effects and the side effects are more addicting then the realtionships themselves. You pick up habits and characteristics from people you are around the longer and more intensly you are around someone the more likely you are to aquire these attributes good or bad and the more likely you are to become addicted to them. This is a therory of mine probably many others, but this is most likely why we end up like our parents. Families, couples, etc they talk and act the same they become one and when they part they will never be who they were before those people came into their lives. If you don't want to treat your daughter this way and possibly your daughter to treat others this way stop the chain. Break it or make it a new chain. Sorry this is so long.
Do the suport group thing and or the therapy thing, but I know you are probably on some level addicted to the realtionship you have with your mother and you love her you want to help her. We so often love others more than we love our selves.
I don't know your mother my suggestion might not work, mind you I am not suggesting venting or anyting along those lines, more of a dramactic attempt at helping her see through someone elses eye, because she won't listen to ranting or venting.
poster:winter
thread:355
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20020516/msgs/398.html