Strange Childhood

LegacyUser

When i was younger i never really got on with my parents. We would fight constantly. My Mother was very critical and hard to speak to. You had to walk on eggshell around. My father was a good person although argumentative. When i was a kid i had a lot of problems. I was getting bullied and found it very hard to mix with people. My father didnt realise this at all and would have been annoyed if he had known i was keeping it from him. My mother on the other hand sort of guessed but either didnt seem that bothered about it. if i had problems sometime she would use them against me so i learned to secretive around her. When i was about 15 i became sucidal. i kept a rope in my room but never done anything about it. i tried to act in ways that they would see as a cry for help

Ok basically as i got older i just diverted myself into different things although depressed i wasnt really suicidal anymore. although i tried to get counselling i always seemed to throw up smokescreens

now the reasons i am posting is
a) because i regret not getting help from my parents. i wish had got tried to signal to them i had problems. i thought about suicide for years i wish i had either put up or shut up so to speak. would i mean was i wish i had done something instead of living in my head. i keep thinking 'what if had done this or said that'. I keep imaging how different my life would have turned out. Where i would be now etc

b) i am still living at home. in some wierd way i feel as if i am still emotionally a teenager(i am a lot older than that) Its as if i want to parented. Recently i told my parents everything that happened when i was younger. IT was as if i expected it to have the same effect as if i told them when i was younger. i feel as if there is unresolved business or something

LegacyUser

Maybe your parents felt that you were able to deal with the situation at the time. They might have given you credit for being

You couldn't trust your mother with telling her things - I saw that happen to my brother and so I kept info I would tell her to a minimum. Lots of teenagers do that.

Parents basically act with the info they have - they are the product of their parents... my gran was extremely critical and that was passed onto my mother.

What age are you now?

1. Stop thinking what might have been - there's nothing you can do to change the past. You can only change the present. When you start living inside your head, actively stop yourself.... look around you and take in what you see, hear, smell, feel. Then say "there's nothing I can do about what has happened in the past". That'll shake you out of it.

2. Move out of home. Get space from your parents beacause until you do, you will always act like that teenager and that's not helpful... when I crash in my folks place for more than a day, I revert to my old self. You are in their house living by their rules and that is not so healthy as an adult, especially if you have some unresolved issues with them.

Babooshka

Hello

In relation to your two points..

1) Your first point is all related to the past. You won't change it. Even if you had asked your parents to help you they may not have been able to relate or solve it. I had my own family stuff to deal with and I didn't get a lot of help either I just muddled through as best I could so in my opinion, you are wasting valuable energy and emotion on "what if". You could be using that energy today to start shifting your perspective to acting now, no? This is what brings you to point number two and unresolved business.

2) You could move out? You admit yourself that it's like unresolved issues but re-living it constantly or trying to change the situation into what you wish it might have been is again (sorry for repeating myself) a waste of time. Would you look into talking to a counsellor? Seriously your folks are just people at the end of the day and they are the way they are, you can't change them, just try working on yourself. You remind me a little of myself insofar as living in the past (from what you say) goes I am only realising with age that nothing goes on until you look to your future, and coming out of harrowed family pasts can make some of us a bit like "late starters" when it comes to living our lives, but if you start looking forward things will change (ok slowly) but they will, believe me. Your past won't change but your present can change your future...start living for yourself cos I'm sure your folks just want you to be happy, regardless of their grumps and grunts in the past!

LegacyUser

i had a similar youth to you, but as a young man whenever i tried to talk to them about it i ran into a brick wall, it's just something they were never able to open up to.

So i did this exercise where i wrote a letter to each one of them, telling them everything i wished i could tell them, good & Bad! Anger, frustration, admiration, love, whatever came out. It was a very cathartic exercise & afterwards i burnt the letters. I realised i was never going to be able to go back in time & relive my childhood to make things right. And similarly i wasnt going to get from them what i wished i'd got as a child.

After that moment i took responsibility for myself & found new relationships where i could share & deal with my childhood issues. My relationship with them also improved as i was no longer asking for something which they just couldn't face(products of old-catholic ireland!).

just a suggestion for you!

Cormb

Hi OP

I am empathise with your situation. While I can understand your perspective in relation to asking for help at an earlier age, you probably need to overcome this since there is little that can be done about it now.

All you can do is try to deal with what you have going on at the moment and take it each day at a time.

If you feel that you may have some issues with your Mother's critical nature, perhaps now is the time to address them.

All the best.
Regards
C

Dudess

The letter-writing idea is a very good one - it could be an extremely cathartic exercise.

OP, I used to feel like you in some respects - I had a difficult relationship with my dad when I was a child/teenager and for a while I used to get angry looking back, wishing I had done this, that and the other. And I felt I had an "abnormal" childhood etc because of it. The title of your thread makes me think you feel the same. What I eventually realised though was that my childhood wasn't that abnormal at all - that plenty of people grow up with that kind of stuff going on... and far, far worse.
I think your problem isn't what happened in your past, it's the difficulty you have dealing with it. I also think you seem very sensitive and you're possibly thinking too much about it. I was the same. Other people who go through family strifes like these (and they're fairly unremarkable in the great scheme of things) just don't think about them and learn to let them go and move on. I'm not saying you should bottle things up, I'm saying you should lay the past to rest. It's pointless - absolutely pointless - dwelling on the past and regretting. What purpose does it serve? Wallowing in regrets ironically leads to more regrets which leads to more regrets... and so on.

If you have difficulties doing this though, then you may need someone to help you out - I'd recommend going for a few sessions of counselling.

LegacyUser

Hi Op,

It sounds like you got no emotional support from your parents growing up, this is common because many parents didnt get it themselves and dont know how to give it to themselves and subsequently to their children- doesnt make it any less hurtful though.

I think you are a product of this environment and this has caused you to feel trapped inside and suicidal, in my opinion it is very important to go back to the past and express these feelings you never got a chance to when you were younger,

Adults carry all kinds of baggage with them into their future lives, you seem to have a good instinct here that your needs needed to be met and you only ever wanted to discuss this with your parents but you have ben forced to live their way in an unexpressive world.


Using this same instinct is what will get you out of this situation, now you are an adult you have to trust yourself and you have many skills that can create the perfect life for you and the one you deserve, they may want to continue the way they live but you dont have to, question is are you prepared to create your destiny.

In my own case my parents were so abusive i had to find a way to live away from them and create a new life for me, i was sucidal too and my family were very unsupportive and seemed to try drag me down any chance they could, all my depression and suicidal tendency left when i got away from the negativity i was surrounded in, sometimes we are met with a make or break decision and do or die decision, its them or you, i knew i wouldn't survive if i carried on letting them control me....

flahers

I'm dealing with terrible anger towards my elderly mother at the moment. I'm an only child and my mother only ever put her needs first, ok I went to Boarding school but never got shown love by her. She flipped at the slightest thing and drove me mad, called me names, told me I would amount to nothing so in the end I retaliated and have never had a relationship with her.

My dad, on the other hand was a kind, caring wonderful gentleman and did everything she wanted right to the end. She didnt let him visit his relatives towards the end of his life and this really turned me against her. Even if I offered to bring him somewhere it wasnt allowed and unfortunately he just wanted a quiet live. I had a blazing row with her three days before he died and now she b lames me for his death, he was 87. I wish I could turn back the clock, I would have left home long before I married. She's now 90 and in same ways she is worse.