[Blueberrybook]

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.

[luvyrself]

Anyone can see that you are extremely intelligent and work very hard to fulfill your roles. You have internalized the negative messages that you are doing everything wrong, as you said. THE MESSAGES ARE NOT TRUE. Hopefully your t will have concrete ideas about stopping this. They are bullies. You could use your creative writing to imagine yourself dealing w them in various bold ways. One of them could be to drop them . Or imagine a protective shield around yr family with the nastiness bouncing off. Could be fun.
Luckily my dysfunctional family members were far away! I really couldn’t take it.

[Sunflower123]

The day of my father’s funeral, my uncle said my father had always been surly, aggressive and looking for a fight. I replied that I thought he just didn’t like me. Not love (that was far out of the equation) but like. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get (in my mind) him to love or like me. He just wasn’t capable. My chance at reconciliation ended with his passing. I had a hard time until I got a great therapist who helped me work through my issues.

You are not alone in not feeling you are living up to your parent’s standards and in having a mom who never protected you.

I hope your new therapist will help you work through this issue because I promise you that you are more then good enough. Your situation says something about him not about you. Good for you for not making your daughter spend time with him when she doesn’t want to. You are a good mom and a good person.

[Victoria'smom]

My parents tried their best. Just like I am. We were physically/mentally abused. They tried though. One worked nights and the other worked days, so there were no babysitter. They kicked me out when I was 16. Mostly because the fighting was too much. It's hard raising a MI kid and they had three MI kids. They have their own issues and I was not the best kid.

I've forgave them, understanding parenting is hard. I hope Miguel forgives me someday too. I'm making different mistakes. I hope he doesn't go into the major I want him to just for approval.

I've Texted my mom that she raised a smart, capable....woman and now it's time to watch me raise my son. It's her time to enjoy watching him grow. We had an unspoken rule that my family wasn't to be around him unsupervised. However my sister threw it in their face that my in laws get him 2x a year. So we let them have him for the week. Well that week though they had fun he was slapped (we've never raised our hand to him) and he was in time out for way to long. Nothing was said to them he's just never alone with them again. My sisters were never allowed to be alone with him.

[Polibeth]

I was never good enough for my mother. If I didn't get straight A's on the report card I was grounded until the next one. Best decision I made 22 years ago was to let it go and move on with my life.

I haven't talked to her since 1996 - I'm much better for it.

Now that you have a T you can talk to her about it - and maybe work on increase your coping skills and not being so reactive to everything. I hope you feel better.

[Blueberrybook]

Originally Posted by Polibeth

I was never good enough for my mother. If I didn't get straight A's on the report card I was grounded until the next one. Best decision I made 22 years ago was to let it go and move on with my life.

I haven't talked to her since 1996 - I'm much better for it.

Now that you have a T you can talk to her about it - and maybe work on increase your coping skills and not being so reactive to everything. I hope you feel better.

It's hard to let go though, especially considering my 2 sisters are 2 of my 3 only friends, and I don't want things awkward with them.

But I do hope to talk to the T about it tomorrow.

[SorryShaped]

I'm to this day still not good enough, for anyone, except me. I accept the mess I am and know that this is ok to be. I can and do get better, and I will and do fallback. But, the one person I matter to really is me and I'm ok with it mostly. That has made all the difference in my life, more than anyone else's opinion ever could.

[magicalprince]

I relate. Eventually I just realized that my parents were adding nothing and only making my life a thousand times harder. I have moved away and minimized contact and it has been extremely good for me so that I have been able to heal to at least a point where I no longer feel like I am suffering every single day and I feel hopeful about the future.

Like you said, it’s the biggest trauma one can face. Being raised in an environment with hostile parenting is like being beaten when you’re down and at your absolute most vulnerable. It takes a long time and so much hard work to recover from that after it has been so deeply ingrained in your own body physically and emotionally. It is truly an uphill battle so it’s no wonder you would come out of that with some side effects. Please be gentle with yourself, you absolutely are not worthless. You just internalized the messages of a toxic environment that did not recognize your worth.

What has kept me going so many times was just the frustration I felt in knowing that it shouldn’t have been this way and that I wanted to find a better way to live than the hand I was dealt.

Finding a good therapist is hard, so I really hope that that works out for you!!

I can;t wade through the whole thread but wanted to add that I too know how it feels to not be good enough

[wiretwister]

my mother was a perfectionist and there was no emotional support expressed in our house at all ... a psychologist I saw a while back said I was emotionally deprived as a child and suffered ptsd ... though I had never really thought that way I had to agree he was right ... some of my current actions and feelings about my self and my life are colored by this history ... but I am who I am ... at 61 I am just too old to change ... so I feel your pain ... I just wish I had some good advice for you ...

[Fuzzybear]

[MsSchadenfreude]

I have had some rocky family situations in my past, but I don't want to take my mind there and type details. I'm sorry you always have the thoughts you aren't good enough.

You are enough.

The quote below is so perfect. We all need to love ourselves, and forgive ourselves for not always being so great at it.

That's what you needed as a kid.