have you been pressured indirectly or covertly?

[Beware of Junk Psychology...]

i also posted this in the "parent with BPD" thread. i wanted to post it here too because it's about me dealing with the effects of my family in therapy and trying to continue clarifying my understanding as i keep healing. feedback is welcomed.

hi,

i'm rooster and i've been on this board for a while but haven't posted in a while either. overall, a lot of good things have been happening in my life. i'm less and less impeded in my doctoral work, and rest of my life, by issues i have coming from having grown up with an undiagnosed BPD mom and enabling dad. i had my most successful and enjoyable semester so far. i'm engaged to the loveliest, greatest guy ever. we moved in together at the beginning of the year and love our apartment and neighborhood. a friend is living with us for the summer and this has been really great. we also have two cute cats. life ain't bad.

in my last few years of therapy i've been exploring the effects my folks, especially my mom, had on me. and i've found something i find difficult to describe, so i'm curious to see if i'm not alone in this kind of experience and how you frame that experience.

i've never been overtly pressured by my parents. i was never told, "you better get an A or else." i was never criticized or insulted when my grades or performances weren't as good as they could be. the point was that "i tried my best" and my parents always trusted that i did. i was the one motivated to do well and upset at myself if i felt i didn't.

but what i've explored is that i was pressured or experienced pressure in a different way. my household had this stifling atmosphere where it was just implied that you were one of the most brilliant, cultivated people in the world, and your dedication to whatever subject you pursued would lead you to glory, unless some asss failed to appreciate you, which is how my parents thought of their own careers and lives. so i always felt anxious about wanting to do well enough but no one was pressuring me to do well besides me. has anyone experienced anything like this? i really hope i'm not alone.

[rooster1106]

i also posted this in the "parent with BPD" thread. i wanted to post it here too because it's about me dealing with the effects of my family in therapy and trying to continue clarifying my understanding as i keep healing. feedback is welcomed.

hi,

i'm rooster and i've been on this board for a while but haven't posted in a while either. overall, a lot of good things have been happening in my life. i'm less and less impeded in my doctoral work, and rest of my life, by issues i have coming from having grown up with an undiagnosed BPD mom and enabling dad. i had my most successful and enjoyable semester so far. i'm engaged to the loveliest, greatest guy ever. we moved in together at the beginning of the year and love our apartment and neighborhood. a friend is living with us for the summer and this has been really great. we also have two cute cats. life ain't bad.

in my last few years of therapy i've been exploring the effects my folks, especially my mom, had on me. and i've found something i find difficult to describe, so i'm curious to see if i'm not alone in this kind of experience and how you frame that experience.

i've never been overtly pressured by my parents. i was never told, "you better get an A or else." i was never criticized or insulted when my grades or performances weren't as good as they could be. the point was that "i tried my best" and my parents always trusted that i did. i was the one motivated to do well and upset at myself if i felt i didn't.

but what i've explored is that i was pressured or experienced pressure in a different way. my household had this stifling atmosphere where it was just implied that you were one of the most brilliant, cultivated people in the world, and your dedication to whatever subject you pursued would lead you to glory, unless some asss failed to appreciate you, which is how my parents thought of their own careers and lives. so i always felt anxious about wanting to do well enough but no one was pressuring me to do well besides me. has anyone experienced anything like this? i really hope i'm not alone.

[catsprt]

They are so many ways to feel pressured as a child... . What did the idea of "glory" mean to you back then? I cannot really relate to your situation but I find the question very interesting.

[goldylamont]

rooster1106 i can identify with what you are saying. in my case neither of my parents were BPD, but i grew up in much the same environment--i too was/am a 'self-starter' and my parents trusted my decisions and goals as long as i was healthy and well. and also there was an underlying expectation of achievement that i knew was expected of me. for me however, i see all of these as positives. when i grew into manhood i realized that i was in a position to do anything that i pleased if i worked hard enough for it, and this was a scary moment. i wanted to be an artist but had always been persuaded to do more of the sciences, and for a while i think i held some sort of chip on my shoulder about not being understood in this regard when i was a child. but, really, this wasn't my parent's fault. once i got out on my own and was paying my own bills, what could they say? ultimately they just want me to be happy, and overall once i took control of my life and how i wanted to live it they've been very supportive.

i had a couple "rules" for myself--things i felt i did indeed *owe* to my parents--to finish my college degree (since they helped tremendously with tuition), and to not ask them for money; to be self-sufficient. and, ya, stay out of jail!  as long as i did this i decided i could do whatever i wanted. i used to hear friends complaining about their parents being overbearing, only to find out that they either still lived with their parents or were still financially supported by them--in this case i'm like, then you owe them at least *something* for the immense time and $$ that they have invested in you! but if you're independent, and you're living a healthy lifestyle and don't need to ask them for anything then do whatever it is you want, and hopefully they'll fall in line if they don't, then you will continue to teach them about a kind of brilliance they themselves couldn't produce or understand... . such are children.

on the subject of 'glory'--i still have high ambitions, read all kinds of self help books and such. i do want to accomplish a lot of things, but also especially in the last couple of years i've been working to equally appreciate every moment i have NOW, not waiting to be happy in the future when i "make it". i've already made it! i'm making it! i highly recommend reading some of the eastern philosophies on meditation, living in the moment and being in the now, if sometimes you feel as if there is a lot of pressure for you to become something and you feel unsure. there's people that are happy to just sit and breath and do nothing!  i'm not really one of them most of the time, but whenever i can i stop; stop thinking and remind myself to be, stop incessant dreaming and allow myself to exist in the beautiful moment happening in the now. there's glory *now*, no need to fret about the future so much.

hope this helps!

[rooster1106]

i shouldn't have used the word 'glory' -- it just threw everybody off track. i was just trying to show the exaggeration inherent in my family myth -- we're the smartest and ought to be praised for it, and if these conditions do not come true every moment, life isn't worth living. none of them would admit to this being our underlying belief, but i'm the one who's done therapy and i know it's there. one of my cousins that i like a lot is also very aware of our situation, but she has different parents (our mothers are sisters) and is quite a bit older than me, so i feel like she'd have a different assessment. nonetheless, she understands this hit better than any other relative. i keep meaning to call her... . last time she called me i was distracted by work... .

goldy, maybe i didn't make it clear, but i am NOT talking about anything positive here. there is a difference between encouraging parents and families that oscillate between grandiosity (i'm the best ever) and depression (oh great i suck). i don't know what your family is because i don't know you.

[goldylamont]

rooster, i can't relate to the oscillating between my family pressuring me in two directions of "i am so great" and then "i am worthless"--please excuse my crude language, just shooting from the hip here trying to paraphrase   i think from my perspective most of what i got as a child was just "you are great, you are a king, you can do anything!"--but then perhaps behind this support there was the underlying subtext "you better do something!". hah. and i had to figure out what that something was, for me, not for them. the lows that you mention though sound very hard to bear and my feelings go out to you if you had to endure any of this rooster. although it's easy for me to think of my parents as eccentric, i'm sure they weren't BPD so dealing with this would be a whole different ballgame for me. jeezus i just had maybe 5 yrs dealing with an SO with uBPD and this has changed me drastically. don't know if this is overreaching, but i'm wondering how you yourself would define success or happiness and if you feel this is independent from what your immediate family would feel? thanks for sharing rooster1106.

i guess what i'm wondering then is what would define happiness for you now? if you share i promise to do the same!

[rooster1106]

i don't feel you understand what i'm talking about.

[goldylamont]

i agree

[VeryFree]

I wasn't pressured by my parents, on the contrary!

But looking back that was a lot of pressure for me as a child.

I figured this out, after splitting from my stbxBPDw. Thanks to her for that!

As a child I was quiet, didn't make trouble, just did my thing, things at school were okay.

As youngest child, that managed good by himself, my parents never pressured me about anything: not my grades, not my other achievements. They just let me be.

Because of that I very early in my life became a very responsible person: always solving problems by myself, never really felt stimulated, never really knew my own worth. During my childhood my self-esteem lowered, never really knew how to behave in groups and never really felt appreciated. That feeling comes and goes, even now.