Anyone else deal with this growing up, the feeling that you were never good enough for the adults in your life, such as your parents? How on earth do you let that go?

Mostly it was my father I felt didn't care about me or think I was worth anything, even when I graduated valedictorian of my high school class. He hated my reading fiction books and writing papers for English and writing short stories in notebooks as a hobby, and I should be using my art skills to draw architecture, not portraits or still-lifes. He wanted me to be excited about math, physics, mechanics, electronics, which just isn't me.

When I was in 2nd grade, he was laid off from his job (think it was a company buy-out situation), and he decided he would start his own business. From home.

OMG. A few years down the road, he built a shop on the land my parents owned next to the house (and about double the size too). He repaired things - TVs, VCRS, cars, tractors (lots of local family farms there), etc.

He was never gone except the rare service call. He wanted me to spend all my free time working in his shop, and none of what he said about fixing things made a bit of sense to me. He is a person who talks AT you, not TO you. And of course there was no pay. He verbally abused me all the time and spanked way beyond appropriate age.

My mom just never stood up for me. Let my father have all the say. So I felt judged & worthless in her eyes too. Still often do. She sent me a nasty email after I wrote something to her about how my growing up was no cakewalk. Then, she's like why? And I mention my dad, and she gets upset with me.

I wanted to major in English in college, then maybe teach or adjunct teach if I got a Masters & I married & had a child; he didn't like that, so I majored in microbiology. It wasn't hard; I was smart, but it wasn't me. I regret I never stood up to him and majored in what I wanted to, but of course, my parents were footing the college bills too. Sigh.

I still don't have a relationship with my dad. I still feel like he doesn't approve of me. He has now found religion, in a huge, Bible-thumper, ultraconservative interpretation of the Bible. He says all H's & my financial problems are because we don't attend church regularly; we are Christian, but it is hard for us to find the time with the tons of stress in our lives. He says I do not have a strong enough relationship to God, obviously God is punishing me for this, and if I did have a strong tie to God and believed in God enough, I would have no mental health issues, and my daughter would have no sensory issues and our financial problems would be solved. And because I am not an ultra-conservative Republican, political viewpoints such as mine & my husband's (H is from California) are tearing apart the country. The last family/extended family gathering really angered H, basically everyone got on a tangent about how people from California are ruining Texas. H is from California. That is where he grew up. It is his home, and he has fond memories of it. It is not an awful place ruled by the Devil or something, the way they made it sound. My aunt complained about the price of a hamburger on a business trip she took out there...yeah, it turned out to be hotel room service, no shocker it was pricey. The cost of living is more out there, but there are good things to be said about it too, and it was extremely, extremely rude of everyone to basically say H should just pack his bags and go back to California even though he has lived in the Houston area since 1996.

Yeah.

That childhood trash just never goes away.

I can't imagine ever getting over this, and yet I hope one day I can.

Been in a crappy mood since this came up with my mom, and she seems to think I am the one trying not to have a relationship with my dad. Any normal person could talk to him (rather be talked to at him for 5 minutes, heck, maybe 10 seconds) and realize he is not normal, and you'd thank God this man was not your father, and how could you quickly escape his lecture, now going on 30, 40 minutes, unless it should be time to eat or something.

And that was supposed to be easier to grow up with than all the mental trauma and trash I'm dumping on my daughter? (taking some of my mom's words here from an email that started this). Offering AGAIN to take my daughter & raise with with my father AGAIN, and I'm like OMG, no.

So I finally have hope this T will get me there or towards there eventually, but it is going to take awhile. I've had nothing but more & more emotional garbage, added traumas, and even bizarre traumas like renting the wrong apartment and getting a bullet shot through my glass balcony door at night while I slept. I have had a ton of traumas in my life, other childhood stuff, but you can bet this situation with my father has been the longest on-going one of all. 40 years, and I still do not have his approval and am doing everything wrong. My mom just doesn't contradict him.

I do think if I stick with the T I've finally found, she will end up helping me a lot, more than any T I've ever had. I am fortunate to have finally found her though the thought of facing & deal with a bucket list of traumas is daunting in & of itself.

Has anyone been able to let go of a bad parental relationship? Did you make peace with it, get out of it, try to re-build a relationship? Sometimes, I'm not even sure I want to have a relationship with my father, and the fact that my daughter does not like being around him at all (never has, not since she was a baby), doesn't help things, then I get told I am coddling her, H and I are too easy on her, we're raising her all wrong. You just can't win.