Feeling ashamed about my family

[eyebrows]

something i've always struggled with is feeling like my family reflects on me. to this day i still pretend to new people i meet (besides ones i can really trust) that they don't exist or that everything's fine. i would never want anyone to meet my family besides my older brother and one of my sisters.

i'm wondering is it just a symptom of how i've been brought up? i guess i still put on a front to some extent. i keep my house and self clean and well-presented because my parents and other siblings aren't at all, to the point where... its embarrassing being related, as harsh as that sounds. i feel as though if someone knew where i come from, they'd reject me or leave me (i know that parts obvious) or that they'd simply see me as bad stock. my sister (who's very much like my mum) comments on things on facebook and i delete it straight away because i'm ashamed of her and being related. its sad.

my brother is struggling with this now because he's pretending to his new partner that his family is great and happy and loving. she says things like "i bet your mum loves having you around" and "i hope your mum likes me". he feels the same as me, if he tells her the truth that she'll see him differently. i've been lucky enough to find a partner who has seen it, knows, and still seems to think i'm great! but even with that evidence i hate conversations about family with other people. i trust him a lot and i don't feel like everyone's going to be so understanding. when his mum asks isn't it time i visit my family, i bet they miss you... its awkward, i become visibly uncomfortable because part of me wants to be honest and then i just lie.

[finallyangry]

Forgive my being so bold eyebrows but is it possible that the reason youre so embarrassed or afraid of people finding out the truth about your family is because you are secretly afraid you have those qualities and they will see them in you? I feel like once you learn to truly love yourself and know you didnt turn out like they did, where you came from wont be so shameful... .  ?

[BiancaRose]

In some ways, it might be a symptom of your upbringing, but the same upbringing can bring about radically different responses in two different personalities. For example, my brother and I were both raised to put up a front about our family, but he seems to have gone the same way you did and is still keeping up appearances like we were raised, whereas I'm a lot more likely to rock the boat precisely because I was raised to never do so.

Then again, even as a kid I was rocking the boat way more than my family was comfortable with, so maybe I was just the black sheep of the family. (Kind of wishing for a black sheep icon now!)

I think it's normal to be uncomfortable talking about family with others when you know your story doesn't fit the standard narrative of how you're supposed to feel about your upbringing. There's a sense that there must be something wrong with us if we don't move past that teenage phase of hating your parents, and a pressure to recognize at some point that our parents really did know what was best and do right by us, even if we couldn't see it at the time. The problem is, when your parents were abusive, that goes right out the window - they didn't do right by us! Plus it's just awkward to discuss in a conversation. Even I hesitate before I tell the in-laws "Actually, right now my mother won't talk to me because I took her off my Facebook friends list" or "yes, I guess my relationship with my mom improved when I went away to school in the sense that she couldn't slap me over the phone".

If you don't feel good about the amount of things you feel uncomfortable disclosing, I would maybe recommend spending some time talking to the people you have told, the ones you really trust, about what effect your disclosure had on how they see you. Maybe they'll have some insights that can put your mind at ease. I also spend a lot of time reminding myself that I don't really want people in my life who would reject me if they knew what kind of family life I had. I'd rather keep them out of my life by being upfront than find out later that they only liked me because of the false front I projected . . . but then, maybe that's my individual personality coming through again.

[InaMinorRole]

There will be some people who look down on us for coming from a dysfunctional family. There will also be people who admire us when we lift ourselves out of that situation. People love a good rags to riches story, even if it involves something other than money.

So some of it is going to be the spin you put on it. Do you want your story to be "poor me, I'm a hopeless case because of my bad family?" Or do you want your story to be "I have overcome adversity?"

Most people don't need to know a thing, of course.

Don't you wish people would stop posting those insipid pictures on Facebook that say something like "My mother is my best friend!    Hit share if you love your mother!"

[BiancaRose]

Don't you wish people would stop posting those insipid pictures on Facebook that say something like "My mother is my best friend!    Hit share if you love your mother!"

Ugh, I know, right? Those bug the hell out of me! Also anything that suggests that anybody who's been a mother is automatically the most loving, self-sacrificing kind of person and is automatically so much better than anybody who's never procreated.

The one that bugs me the most is the one that goes like this:

AT 6 YEARS: "Mommy I love you."

AT 10 YEARS: "Mom, whatever."

AT 16 YEARS: "My mom is SO annoying."

AT 18 YEARS: "I wanna leave this house."

AT 25 YEARS: "Mom, you were right."

AT 30 YEARS: "I wanna go to Mom's house."

. . . etc., followed by "share if you love and appreciate your mom", with that 'appreciate' in there to apply that you're ungrateful if you don't agree with the sentiment of the post.

The stupid thing bugs me so much, I think, because it implies that anybody who can't recognize the value and wonderfulness of their mother and how everything she did was right and good is stuck in this ugly immature phase, can't get past being a bratty teen. Trouble is, when I was supposed to be learning "Mom, you were right", I was in therapy discovering that the word for how Mom raised me is 'abuse'. And even before then, from really early on in my childhood (when I was afraid to say "Mom, whatever" because I felt like it was too dangerous not to put on a pleasing face for her) I knew she was not treating me in a way that was okay with me.

I hate the assumption that everybody who becomes a parent automatically becomes a good one, and we owe them gratitude no matter how they treated us.

[WrongWoman]

There will be some people who look down on us for coming from a dysfunctional family. There will also be people who admire us when we lift ourselves out of that situation. People love a good rags to riches story, even if it involves something other than money.

So some of it is going to be the spin you put on it. Do you want your story to be "poor me, I'm a hopeless case because of my bad family?" Or do you want your story to be "I have overcome adversity?"

Most people don't need to know a thing, of course.

Don't you wish people would stop posting those insipid pictures on Facebook that say something like "My mother is my best friend!    Hit share if you love your mother!"

All of this!  I don't talk much about my family of origin, and don't feel compelled to whatsoever.  People do not "deserve" an explanation about who or where my family of origin is.  They just don't.  But my friends who know from where I've come seem to have nothing but love and respect for me.  They don't believe that my family of origin is a reflection of me, but that my life now, the one I've created, is the only true and fair reflection of me.  Anybody who did not believe that would not have a place in my life.

[DogDancer]

Eyebrows,

I'm 46, new here, healing from dxBPD mother. Agree completely with... .  all that's been said, but especially, I am now at that point that WrongWoman is: FOO issues are really no one's business if we don't know them well, and they are not close friends! It's not that I don't sometimes feel what you are expressing -- boy, I do! -- BUT, but... the older I get, the more I stand on my own two feet, my own hard work, my own identify as an individual, and that feels GOOD! It feels *far* less like I am hiding something, and much more like the FOO dysfunction is in the past, the distant past that does not often need to be discussed.

Of course I still discuss this with people as we become close and it appropriately comes up, but... .  I am *me*. The rest is past history. The older I get, the more I accomplish, and importantly, the more I *heal* the less any of the past dysfunction matters. I think this is the good news!

Peace and continuing healing to you and all here,

DogDancer

[Diligence]

Dear eyebrows,

Growing up as an only child with an undiagnosed BPDM and a raging alcoholic father was traumatizing!  I rarely invited anyone over to my house because the atmosphere was so unpredictably .  I became an isolationist at a young age.

As an adult, I find it difficult to talk about my parents with others because my mom and dad project false facades of being well-adjusted, lovely people.  (And they can be lovely, for a time.  The problem is they cannot sustain the image of who they want to be known as.)  I never know when they might snap into critical, harsh people.  I believe I am correct in assuming that people who know both my parents and me would never believe my history.

I am familiar with feeling inappropriate shame about myself instead of recognizing the dysfunction in my parents as their problem.  It is not my responsibility to bear shame about them.

Warm regards,

Diligence

[waverider]

There are a lot of families that are nothing but fronts. There are those that are highly functioning, proper and good achievers. But dig under and there are all sorts of issues.

I guess you have to work out precisely what it is about your family you dont like, and make sure you dont base it on an outward image they portray to others. If it is because they dont put on a good "front" to outsiders than you have to look at your own insecurity issues.