Finally realizing my parents aren't healthy. Help me

[Depression = 72% of members]

I am not sure where to start, I am in my mid 20's and have been dreaming of moving out of my parents house since I was 10. After a very stressful, isolating, unorganized childhood, I finally moved out of my parents house a few yrs ago. It was random and I did not tell my parents I was leaving until the day I left. However, I was not successful living on my own due to the fact that my parents basically manipulated me, my thoughts, my actions, and my emotions when I was younger. It got so bad that I was hiding who I really was from them to keep the peace. I was completely emotionally unprepared to live on my own. I cared too much about what my boyfriend/roommate thought about my decisions, i was financially unorganized, and I had yrs of pent up emotions to deal with. Recently I broke up with my boyfriend and lost my apartment, but I am blessed enough to be able to live with my parents while I get back on my feet.

The problem is that my parents are living a totally unhealthy delusional life and just like during my childhood use guilt and passive aggression to control me. I am almost 25 and my mom still says stuff like

"What do you know about real love, you're only 17"

My mother was very dependent upon me during my childhood because she suffered physically (illness) and mentally. My family is a blended family. My bro and sis are from my mothers previous marriage, so there was always a lot of tension in the house between my father and siblings. My parents had a lot of marital problems and we had a lot of financial problems growing up. Basically by the time I was a teenager my parents "checked out" of my life due to the stress. They were going through the motions, leaving a lot of burden on me and my sister. My sister was a teen mother so she moved on with her life and "got out" of my parents crazy household. We didn't communicate effectively at all in my house growing up.

But my parents still expected me to act like a "normal teenager". I worked 2 jobs during high school to help make ends meet, didn't have a lot of friends because my parents were strict and was still expected me to make good grades. All the while my parents would use me emotionally and financially then make me feel horrible when I wasn't in good spirits.

for example. As a teen I would go to school all day and be made fun of due to appearance (my mother never really taught me how to take care of myself), go to work, go to the grocery store, come home take care of my mother, cook dinner, do homework. And maybe I wouldn't laugh at one of my dad's corny jokes and he would be like oo what's wrong with you, you're acting like your sister (who my parents claim is a problem child). If I tried to bring up the reality of the life we were living neither of my parents acknowledged it.

As a child I always thought as long as my parents weren't physically beating me that it was okay. And i took that bible verse about "honoring thy parents" to the extreme, always putting their wants before mine.

I said all that to say, My parents never communicated with me, they pretended that since I was the youngest in the family that everything we went through didn't affect me, when in fact I think it affected me the most because I was too young to process everything by myself.

I moved out in the hopes that I could start living a healthy life. Now I am back at my parents house basically feeling hopeless. Nothing has changed. My parents seem so disappointed in me, but I am still taking care of my mother, who is even more dependent on me now.

Basically as I am typing this I am able to put my emotions into words, I feel like my parents genuinely feel bad about being so absent while I was growing up, but instead of acknowledging it they want to pick up right where they left off when I was 10 and not accept that I am an individual person with my own EMOTIONS who lived my life even during their emotional absence. How do I hold on to sanity and not get sucked into my parents unhealthy delusions like I did when I was younger? Living in the same small town where I have made so many mistakes in

I have a lot of cleaning up to do in my own life as an adult, but don't know how when I feel like I'm instantly 10 yrs old again here. I have no friends in this town, and was isolated from my extended family growing up so I have no one except myself. I just need to know I am not crazy... .

Sorry for the long post I just have not had a forum to talk about my own emotions before.

[tryingtogrow32]

I am not sure where to start, I am in my mid 20's and have been dreaming of moving out of my parents house since I was 10. After a very stressful, isolating, unorganized childhood, I finally moved out of my parents house a few yrs ago. It was random and I did not tell my parents I was leaving until the day I left. However, I was not successful living on my own due to the fact that my parents basically manipulated me, my thoughts, my actions, and my emotions when I was younger. It got so bad that I was hiding who I really was from them to keep the peace. I was completely emotionally unprepared to live on my own. I cared too much about what my boyfriend/roommate thought about my decisions, i was financially unorganized, and I had yrs of pent up emotions to deal with. Recently I broke up with my boyfriend and lost my apartment, but I am blessed enough to be able to live with my parents while I get back on my feet.

The problem is that my parents are living a totally unhealthy delusional life and just like during my childhood use guilt and passive aggression to control me. I am almost 25 and my mom still says stuff like

"What do you know about real love, you're only 17"

My mother was very dependent upon me during my childhood because she suffered physically (illness) and mentally. My family is a blended family. My bro and sis are from my mothers previous marriage, so there was always a lot of tension in the house between my father and siblings. My parents had a lot of marital problems and we had a lot of financial problems growing up. Basically by the time I was a teenager my parents "checked out" of my life due to the stress. They were going through the motions, leaving a lot of burden on me and my sister. My sister was a teen mother so she moved on with her life and "got out" of my parents crazy household. We didn't communicate effectively at all in my house growing up.

But my parents still expected me to act like a "normal teenager". I worked 2 jobs during high school to help make ends meet, didn't have a lot of friends because my parents were strict and was still expected me to make good grades. All the while my parents would use me emotionally and financially then make me feel horrible when I wasn't in good spirits.

for example. As a teen I would go to school all day and be made fun of due to appearance (my mother never really taught me how to take care of myself), go to work, go to the grocery store, come home take care of my mother, cook dinner, do homework. And maybe I wouldn't laugh at one of my dad's corny jokes and he would be like oo what's wrong with you, you're acting like your sister (who my parents claim is a problem child). If I tried to bring up the reality of the life we were living neither of my parents acknowledged it.

As a child I always thought as long as my parents weren't physically beating me that it was okay. And i took that bible verse about "honoring thy parents" to the extreme, always putting their wants before mine.

I said all that to say, My parents never communicated with me, they pretended that since I was the youngest in the family that everything we went through didn't affect me, when in fact I think it affected me the most because I was too young to process everything by myself.

I moved out in the hopes that I could start living a healthy life. Now I am back at my parents house basically feeling hopeless. Nothing has changed. My parents seem so disappointed in me, but I am still taking care of my mother, who is even more dependent on me now.

Basically as I am typing this I am able to put my emotions into words, I feel like my parents genuinely feel bad about being so absent while I was growing up, but instead of acknowledging it they want to pick up right where they left off when I was 10 and not accept that I am an individual person with my own EMOTIONS who lived my life even during their emotional absence. How do I hold on to sanity and not get sucked into my parents unhealthy delusions like I did when I was younger? Living in the same small town where I have made so many mistakes in

I have a lot of cleaning up to do in my own life as an adult, but don't know how when I feel like I'm instantly 10 yrs old again here. I have no friends in this town, and was isolated from my extended family growing up so I have no one except myself. I just need to know I am not crazy... .

Sorry for the long post I just have not had a forum to talk about my own emotions before.

[losingconfidence]

I'm 27, and I went no-contact at 25.

Unfortunately, the misconception that a situation is only abusive if fists are flying and people are being physically hit is a VERY common one. I've survived both physical and emotional abuse, but the emotional abuse is what keeps me feeling confused and guilty all the time. I would say that it's just as dangerous as physical abuse personally.

It sounds like your parents are simultaneously trying to infantilize you by treating you like you're 10 and saying you're only 17 AND stunt your ability to mature. This wasn't my family's dynamic exactly, but I had a friend in high school who wanted her to be 40 when it came to working and making money while being 10 when it came to having relationships and socializing. It's a common problem, and it's what often gets us called "wise beyond our years" while we're struggling to hold our own in the world.

In my experience, unless people say "we feel really badly about how we treated you before; let us know how we can make it up to you" and then actively listen to you when you tell them how, they don't feel all that badly about how they treated you before. I remember times when I'd think "oh, they do feel badly; it's just hard for them to say so because it's such an emotional topic" or "oh, they get that what they did was wrong; they're just trying to move past it." Believing in those tiny signs that they wanted to change or cared or whatever was always a bad investment for me (and I wouldn't be surprised if it's also a bad one for you).

If you already have work experience, my personal suggestion would be to make that work for you and find a way to try being independent again. It's probably better to need section 8 or food stamps while you get on your feet than to be stuck living with people who keep you emotionally stunted.

[HappyChappy]

Hi Tryingtogrow32

Your post looks similar to the one I put out when I first came to this website. So your point about being teased at school, my BPD did her level best to get me picked on – ill fitting cloths, a dorky school bag, she really went to town, but at the time I thought we had no money (yet my BPD bought pearls and gold). It’s no shame to be blind to this, they really are the best con artists out there.

You’re absolutely right to acknowledge that the years of subtle BPD manipulation leave deep cuts the size of ravines at times and it does take an effort to correct. But it can be corrected. But what’s great is you have realised this at quiet a young age and your healing can begin. So well done on being so alert.

I would also agree with the last post, in that the psychological abuse can be far worse than the physical in that it hangs around often deeply hidden. Also harder for others to appreciate how bad it was. But we do here. So feel free to get validation on just about any experience.

There is a plethora of tools available to help you heal from your upbringing. The good thing about BPSD is that their behaviour is predictable and hence so are our aliments. I had bad C-PTSD other often get eating disorders. Here again there are treatments available for these. But I found I had to go No Contact before I had a chance to heal. You might also want to look at F.O.G. because it sounds like you’re still under the BPD spell, and that’s a big part of it. You can also get rational views on this website, it’s no judgmental and the experience on here is very good, especially the moderators. Welcome to our family and I look forward to your other posts. You may also want to consider Therapy or counselling, or a cheaper option is one of the recommended books that you can pick up for not much.

But I’d start with feeling proud of yourself, for surviving a difficult childhood and cottoning on to what was going on so early in life. The isolation is purposeful on their behalf, they want you there to serve them, not anyone else, least of all yourself. So I would encourage you to make connections with people outside your parent’s sphere of control. Welcome to the board.  

[JQ]

Hello Trying!  

I want to welcome you to the group since this is your first post ... .here you'll find no one that will judge you because most if not all of us have been where you currently are with your BPD parent. WE can't tell you what to do because this is your journey ... .what we can do is to tell you what worked and what didn't work for us. WE can give you some guidance in a certain situation.  If you haven't already I would encourage you to read the references to the right on this page and at the top to help with understanding what your facing and what you might be going through. there are references that will help you teach yourself how to treat yourself better and learning ways to communicate with someone who has BPD or possibly go NC or NO Contact.  Along your journey you will stumble and fall ... .but come back here as often as you need to. Someone will be here to hold out a hand, pick you up dust you off. Then it'll be up to you to choose a different path you're walking ... .continue the path your on or in some cases it will be up to you to stay where you're at. You'll take a step backwards from time to time ... .we've all done it ... .but straighten yourself up ... .lean forward and take the next step forward on your journey ... .keep moving forward ... .baby steps!

I know you're going through a tough time right now dealing with a parent who is BPD and being very manipulative and wondering how to deal with the situation or move forward. Just yesterday my BPD mother called me yet again to complain about her recent injury and asked me to come home ... .1/2 way across the country for at the very least Christmas ... .and longer to "take care of her".  Just this morning my exBPDgf who she's great friends with my BPD mother reached out to me to tell me to come home for my mother.  Both of them are manipulative and I know I have to remain strong ... .NOT for them ... .BUT FOR ME!  I have to take care of myself first and foremost! Just like YOU have to take care of YOURSELF first and foremost!  Just like my mother's ... .YOUR mothers flying monkey's are HER flying monkey's!  IF she let them out of their cages to cause havoc & chaos it's up to her to put them back in their cages and lock them up ... .NOT YOU!

I personally know that you have this since of responsibility, this thing within you that says that they're your parent and you have this obligation to take care of them ... .to help them to be there for them. I know because I went through it myself ... .more then several times ... .the results ... .like always I was manipulated, I was emotionally, mentally and physically abused ... .and regardless of who it is or how strong you are mentally or physically it's not right.  I'm retired military ... .and a slap or a "hit" from my frail mother isn't really going to leave a mark ... .HOWEVER that does not excuse the fact that she rages and turns into Mrs. Hyde and physically abuses not only me but her significant other on a daily basis. And like you ... .when that doesn't do enough ... .they say some of the most nasty, horrible hurtful things ... .to cause emotional & mental abuse. Again ... .being a retired military guy ... .I've learned to keep certain things in check ... .I don't react to her rages as I once did ... .I don't let her see that she has any more control over me ... .and living 1/2 way across the country helps. Like you I wish things would of been ... .could be better ... .but BPD is a VERY SERIOUS mental & behavioral illness that will never get better as some studies indicate. Only years of treatment by trained professionals can they have a "semi-normal" life ... .if at all. My mother is at the age that even if she agreed to go to a therapist it's most likely never going to make much of a difference. One exBPDgf has been in & out of therapy with multiple therapist for 25 plus years.  You have to learn the 3 C's of BPD ... .write them down and put them somewhere that you'll see them a few times a day ... .the 3 C's ... ."YOU didn't Cause it!  YOU can't Control it!  YOU can't Cure it!   I tried for years and only recently did I learn just how much I was in over my head. If multiple professional educated therapist/doctors can't do much ... .there is no way that I will ever be able to make a difference.

Those who have BPD are emotionally stunted ... .they behave very much like a 3 year old toddler and react like one when they don't get their way. And you have to treat them like a 3 year old out of control toddler.  You have to learn to keep your composure ... .you have to learn to say no in an even voice without emotion. You have to learn to talk to them directly and honestly. And like a toddler when they throw a temper tantrum ... .you just have to walk away and ignore them until they can talk to you in a normal adult manner.  It's tough no question, but I've used a lot of the techniques I've learned here, and in therapy and it helps more then you would think.  I feel good about NOT surrendering to their rages/tantrums ... .and keeping sense of self ... .it doesn't mean its not stress free ... .but at the end of the day I'm in a much better place.

What this site, a few books, therapy, review of my life, self reflection and introspection has done is that I've learned to say no ... .and most of the time its completely without guilt. I imagine when you get off the phone with your mother it's like when I get off the phone with my mother ... .I can't help but hum the song from Oz with the flying monkey's start to fly and think in my head ... ."I'll get you and your little dog Toto too!".      I've learned to keep my since of humor that some just don't get too.    And you'll need to keep a sense of humor too ... .it helps!

Like you I have a blended family ... .I'm was the oldest of 5 ... .one past alway a few years ago. That leaves 3 that live only minutes from her that can be there to help her out.  She has a younger son then I who can be there to help around the house if needed ... .remove snow or mow the grass ... .he doesn't really do that though as he's very selfish. She has 2 daughters who have s/o who can do that though in addition my to sisters can be there to help her with other things around the house or take her to the doctor.  You said you have brothers and sisters who can do the same thing for her ... .you have to take care of yourself first and foremost.  "Use the force TTG24" ... .do not let the forces of evil suck you down that rabbit hole again.  Ok ... .that was a little Alice in Wonderland and StarWars ... .LOL.      O NOT FEEL GUILTY FOR TAKING CARE OF YOURSELF!  

You have to take care of yourself ... .not only emotionally and mentally but physically as well.  Get out of the house as much as you need too ... .get together with a friend and go have a burger & a beer ... .a salad & a glass of wine ... .or some Chinese & a glass of water.  Go to a coffee house and listen to some good music while you drink your favorite beverage with or without a friend.  Go for a walk ... .exercise ... .move ... .get off the couch!  A mile at a slow pace will only take 15-20 minutes ... .and you can do it before you go to work in the morning to get the blood out of your butt and get all the endorphins though out your body!  Sleep !  Get some sleep!  Your body needs and craves 7-9 hrs of sleep! It's so important not only for the repair of your body physically but it also helps in the repair of your emotions and mental repair.  If you can't get that kinda sleep at home, find a friend to stay with at least a couple of nights a week. And be sure your eating right and drinking enough water. The water will help flush out the bad toxins in your body from stressing you do all day and eating right will help give you the fuel your body & mind will need to deal with the things you're dealing with. It's ok from time to time to eat that piece of chocolate cake ... .but be sure  you go for a walk afterwards to walk it off. Do all these things everyday as much as you can ... .they say 30 days makes a habit ... .so in just a short 30 days you'll feel much better!

You like a lot of us are probably a perfectionist ... .the sheriff riding into town with the white hat to protect your siblings, you're the Knight in Amor to protect them from the crazy behavior your mom or Mrs. Hyde like I did with my mother. You like a lot of us here are most likely a codependent / care giver ... .always sacrificing yourself for others. People say your the nicest person they've ever met ... .that you'll give the shirt off your back to a stranger ... .it's the learned behavior you learned to survive growing up in the household you did ... .The good news is that you can with a little assistance from therapy, reading, self reflection can adjust your behavior to better help yourself ... .to learn to say NO!  Learn to not get dragged into the flying monkey circus ... .her drama is HER drama ... .her crisis is HER crises ... .NOT YOURS!   

Take a deep breath TTG32!  Things will get better ... .THEY ALWAYS GET BETTER!  You're among friends and among people who want nothing from you but to assist you along your journey of self discovery and healing. WE can't walk this life journey for you ... .but we can be there to dust you off when you stumble with a hand up. It's going to be tough but the journey is so very much worth it!  You're learning things at a very young age that some haven't learned yet or did learn at twice your age or older.  Come back as often as you need to or want to ... .if nothing else to post ... .it's somewhat therapeutic too. And come for the cyber hugs too  

YOU ARE GOING TO BE OK!  THINGS ARE GOING TO BE OK!  You're among friends!

JQ