(((((googly))))))

Obviously I don't know your therapist, but I think that she is not telling you that it is ok to be abused. I think that he/she is more than likely telling you that even though you may be receiving abuse your mother, in her own way may love you. Now I know that is hard to understand googly because your mother is obviously doing and saying things that are hurting you.

In my time here at PC I have learned a lot more than I had ever realized. I actually learned things without realizing it by talking to others, offering support and simply trying to understand myself and my own issues. However, what creeped in was a realization that many people struggle with many different issues and they are all trying to find some kind of resolve, even see if they can be happier, overcome, and live more productive lives.
And many members here have a constant displeasure about themselves, hense they are harder on themselves than anyone else could be on them.

We grow up very dependant on the messages and love given to us by our parents. And we all think that a parent is suppose to just know how to provide us with all the support we need psychologically to grow up to be independent thriving adults. However the reality is that our parents can only give us what they have received or learned themselves and there is no real true guidance for them to really know and understand how to actually provide all the true necessities to a growing thriving child.

And then there is another problem that we don't truely recognize, a parent can have their own psychological issues that they themselves do not truely recognize that may incompacitate them. We are what we know, and that is basically what parents are, only people who are what they know, and in most cases, they do not really know very much about raising children properly. And for the most part, most parents are self absorbed with their own issues, dealing with a relationship that in itself is challenging, as well as providing a home and the necessities we all need. There are so many variables that go into the two individuals that have raised you that your truely not recognizing, and most likely neither are they.

In todays world, even when your parents were growing up and forming their own relationships, there was really no REAL example of a working relationship or even a well funtioning healthy family example for them to learn and see how it truely works. So at best, they had to basically do a lot of guess work, and often they function poorly and deep inside they feel inadequate, and often that transcends into the way they parent. And many times children are in the way for them because they haven't really gotten past their own issues. I have been around countless families and I have learned so much by watching how parents interact with their children, things they do that are not really good, only they just don't see it.

So while a mother can love a child, it doesn't mean she actually truely knows how to properly raise that child. We often are given examples of what parents should be like, and yet we don't really recognize that what should be, is not really, what is. Often as we grow we develope from the messages that we have been given growing up and that doesn't always help us truely gain all that we really need to be content and happy with ourselves. So, we can very easily become adults that have to address our own issues that we have trouble understanding. Like you I have PTSD and I didn't have the ideal childhood. Now as I am addressing the debilitating effects of PTSD, it is even harder for me to understand how and why this manifested in me. So, like you I am looking back and I do see the issues that created stress in me and the feelings of insecurity. I had to not only look on the surface of my parents and their actions along with my sibling's actions, but I had to look even deeper. I thought about their personal limitations and habits and as I did that I recognized some things that they themselves didn't even know. My father had a lot of good things about him, but as I looked at what he didn't do, for reasons he didn't even understand I realized that he actually had Social Phobia. Now he did well in many ways but he didn't socialize normally, still doesn't til this day. And I also have a sister that is very much like him, neither of them know or have recognized why they struggled, they just worked around it. And even my mother was raised to feel inadequate about herself by her parents and her mother had trouble socializing normally.
So what I am saying here is look at PC differently, sit with the forums page in front of you with so many different disorders and you need to recognize that what you are looking at is relitively new information, information that our parents didn't have, nor did their parents. Even the knowledge you and I have, a diagnosis called PTSD is fairly new, God only knows what people did that had it before it became known and there was therapy for it.

When we look at our parents, even if we have somehow been abused in some way, we have to truely look beyond the abuse or lack of parenting and realize what was really there in that person. As a person myself who has struggled with PTSD for probably many years and managed to maintain, I had no idea what I really dealt with. It wasn't until I had a big event that made it really get so bad that I was presented with the various floods of anxiety and other issues that make it very hard to control myself or understand why I react to certain things the way I do. Now, I am a mother too and I did my best to raise my daughter, really tried to cross my t's and dot my i's but I was not perfect. I did have moments of rage and I did try very hard to deal with anxiety and I honestly didn't know that I had been battling and managing PTSD and that PTSD was being aggrivated by my husbands alcoholism and other situations in my life that happened that were very hard for me to understand and deal with and try to overcome.

I was really bad last year and I had one morning where I filled with so much rage that I lashed out at my daughter, as a result she moved out and I know she was very hurt. I didn't understand for a long time why I did that, and different people had different explainations, even one person told me an angel stepped into my body and took over because my daughter was not appreciating me. But, I knew that wasn't correct. After learning about PTSD I have been able to look back on the morning and I see all the triggers that took place that resulted in me completely losing control. And I had a hard time with that, because I really love my daughter and the last thing I would want to do is hurt her. I actually could not believe that with PTSD this can happen, I had not realized that button was there. And I am slowly trying to reach out to my daughter and try to tell her what happened. Well, it isn't easy because she has no idea what PTSD is or what it means, she only knows she was hurt and she doesnt really understand what I am dealing with and how difficult what I have is on me. I certainly don't want this, but I have it and it isn't pleasant and it can be mindboggling depending on how bad it is in us.

So Googly, I am not minimizing the fact that you most likey have been abused. But we cant just sit and say, Oh, thats a bad person. Because there is a reason why someone is a bad person, could be a disorder of somekind that they themselves do not recognize and they act out, and in so doing hurt those that they should really be loving. Googly this happens all the time, we often only see the abuse and not the reasons for the abuse. And part of your recovery should be about understanding that, because it can be a kind of closure for you. It doen't mean you have to accept the way your mother treats you, but it can help you understand why and learn how to not allow it to continue to hurt and disappoint you the way it does now.

Open Eyes