Feeling my own pain

[Depression = 72% of members]

I've been grieving a great deal.  When I was growing up, my uBPD mother's pain and anger filled our home to such a degree that there really wasn't any room or avenue for me to express mine.  My father, physically ill through much of my childhood was a constant source of worry and concern, terror that he might die at any point.  So, my being supported in my pain or comforted was out of the question.  Neither parent had the capacity for doing that.

And so all of my pain was buried.  I was taught that I was too sensitive, that I didn't appreciate how good I had it.  And yet I had to cower in fear of my mother and in fear of my father dying.  I hid in myself and in spaces I could find in the home that were safe.  I would put the fan on in the bathroom to drown out the noise of my mother's screaming and cursing, her endless diatribes and verbal abuse.  I would escape from the house when I could. And yet I couldn't feel what I felt.  My mother would say that I had nothing to feel sad about, she was the one with the miserable life.  I became numb and depressed, not even feeling allowed to be angry at the person who gave birth to me or the father who abandoned me to abuse.  I didn't trust myself and learned to undermine my own autonomy and independence.

My sister has some ability now to understand what we went through, but if I start to grieve in her presence, she seeks to stop me from crying or to give me food or ask me if I want to see a movie, numb me with television.  There is nothing wrong with healthy diversion, but when it doesn't allow one to truly experience one's feelings, including the  pain of years of abuse, neglect, vilification, and injustice, the consequences are harmful.

I am finally allowing myself to grieve, and there is a backlog of grief from what was never allowed in a family which was devoted to denial.  When the denial is lifting, the experience of grief, I think is inevitable. And I think experiencing that grief with a trusted therapist and loving friends can be extremely healing and freeing. It has been for me. Anyone who was raised by a BPD parent has lots of legitimate grief inside. And it's much healthier to get it out than to hold it in where it wreaks havoc on the body and causes emotional and physical illness.

The Best,

Calsun

[Calsun]

I've been grieving a great deal.  When I was growing up, my uBPD mother's pain and anger filled our home to such a degree that there really wasn't any room or avenue for me to express mine.  My father, physically ill through much of my childhood was a constant source of worry and concern, terror that he might die at any point.  So, my being supported in my pain or comforted was out of the question.  Neither parent had the capacity for doing that.

And so all of my pain was buried.  I was taught that I was too sensitive, that I didn't appreciate how good I had it.  And yet I had to cower in fear of my mother and in fear of my father dying.  I hid in myself and in spaces I could find in the home that were safe.  I would put the fan on in the bathroom to drown out the noise of my mother's screaming and cursing, her endless diatribes and verbal abuse.  I would escape from the house when I could. And yet I couldn't feel what I felt.  My mother would say that I had nothing to feel sad about, she was the one with the miserable life.  I became numb and depressed, not even feeling allowed to be angry at the person who gave birth to me or the father who abandoned me to abuse.  I didn't trust myself and learned to undermine my own autonomy and independence.

My sister has some ability now to understand what we went through, but if I start to grieve in her presence, she seeks to stop me from crying or to give me food or ask me if I want to see a movie, numb me with television.  There is nothing wrong with healthy diversion, but when it doesn't allow one to truly experience one's feelings, including the  pain of years of abuse, neglect, vilification, and injustice, the consequences are harmful.

I am finally allowing myself to grieve, and there is a backlog of grief from what was never allowed in a family which was devoted to denial.  When the denial is lifting, the experience of grief, I think is inevitable. And I think experiencing that grief with a trusted therapist and loving friends can be extremely healing and freeing. It has been for me. Anyone who was raised by a BPD parent has lots of legitimate grief inside. And it's much healthier to get it out than to hold it in where it wreaks havoc on the body and causes emotional and physical illness.

The Best,

Calsun

[MammaMia]

Calsun

Welcome to BPDF.  We are so glad you have found this site.

The inability to discuss childhood abuse with your sister is hurtful to you, but I wonder if she is afraid to talk about it, because to do so is traumatic for her.  Perhaps she does not want to be reminded of her past. We all have ways of self-protection, and that may be hers.

If she is not in therapy or amenable to therapy, you may have to respect her desire not to talk about your parents.  I am glad to hear you have a therapist and friends with whom you can share your feelings as that is important and healing for you.  Your sister, on the other hand, may not be willing or able to do this.

Enjoy positive time with your sister.  If she brings the subject of abuse up, it would be a window of opportunity for discussion, but do not force the issue because you may be at risk for driving her away.

Try this and see if it helps to take the pressure off both of you.

[Calsun]

Thank you, Mammamia.  My sister is really a wonderful person, and she has been truly very good and loving to me.  I know that when I had been pushed to discuss things I was not ready to discuss or bring to light, it did not serve me well and injured me.  So, it is good to keep that in mind with my sister.  When I am in pain and look for family to validate the origins of the pain, I can sometimes forget how painful it was for them.   I can forget how painful my mother's abuse was for my sister.  If there is denial in her, there has certainly been and continues to be some for me, as well. That it was a defense that served a purpose for a time, however injurious it turned out to be in so many ways. They say in twelve step circles that they wish you a slow recovery, and in many ways the slow, more gradual, tortoise like way is the better.  It helps you to assimilate a new understanding in a way that is not jarring.  Nonetheless, from my own perspective, it would be far less lonely to have a sibling with whom I could really discuss these things, with whom we could each acknowledge the legitimacy of the pain we feel inside.  It is pain that is inside whether we discuss it or not.

Best,

Calsun

[Tayto]

Have you forgiving your mother for the pain she has caused you when you were a child ?

[Calsun]

Hi Tayto,

It's a tricky thing about forgiveness.  Every major religion sees forgiveness as integral to living a truly spiritual life and with good reason.  It is so important, more for the person who lives with bitterness than the person who might seek forgiveness.  To this day, my uBPD mother still believes and has stated such, that she did what we deserved.  She is not really seeking forgiveness because in her own words, she never sins. That kind of personality in a mother is brutal for children.  And yet I know her inability to have accountability is not the core of the issue of forgiveness for me.  It really lies in my own heart and in my own healing.

For so many survivors of terrible child abuse, forgiveness can be problematic because as children and even as adults so many of us become reflexively protective of and make excuses for the abusers when they are our parents.  Children are so protective of abusive parents, so ready to take the blame for their parent's abusive behavior.  If only I was better, Mom would love me.  If she doesn't love me and treat me with respect, it's because I'm not deserving of either.  This is the voice, tragically, that goes through the heart and soul of so many children who are abused by a parent. This voice still affects me in my adulthood. My sister who was terribly abused physically and emotionally by my uBPD mother hangs in there and still physically takes care of my mother to this day, often still taking her abuse.

Authentic forgiveness is wonderful.  It must come and is coming for me after truly acknowledging what was done, owning the reality of the cost not just in childhood, but throughout my life, to my sense of safety, my being able to trust in loving and intimate relationships, my confidence in self and my spiritual sense of a Higher Power who I have had to learn is not an abusive parent looking to strike me down for my transgressions.  In other words, to paraphrase Ingrid Bergman, in The Bells of St. Mary's, "Patsy, only after you've seen all these things, then can you truly say that you want to be a nun."  After I have seen all of these things, can I truly say from the inside, that I have forgiven.

I am not bitter towards my mother, and in fact can have a lot of compassion for her.  I understand that she has a disease, that she is damaged, that she has lived a horribly sad and lonely life.  This site and friends in my life, one in particular, who also had a BPD mother, have helped me to understand that my mother suffered from a disease. Research suggests that people with BPD have brain damage.  That does not surprise me that my mother's disease is not just emotional, but also physiological.

And yet, there is still a process of accepting that my mother abused me, abused her own child, that my non-BPD parent, my father, emotionally abandoned me; he did not protect me. He let it happen to me.  How does a loving father, and I always thought of my father as the loving one, allow his children day after day, to be subjected to such trauma and abuse?  How do you fit that in an understanding of a man who you always thought loved you. I needed to believe that one of my parents was safe.  But neither really was.  That is an awful lot of acceptance in adulthood after a childhood of denying and being taught to reflexively invalidate my own sense of reality so that I could hold onto certain illusions, too powerful and too scary to give up.  I was taught to put my mother's and father's needs for being thought well of in their child's eyes, above my need for love and safety.  Giving up my denial felt like making myself an emotional orphan. And I was terrified of being orphaned.  Bad parents were better than no parents.

What should have happened in my family of origin was that my father should have gone to whatever lengths necessary to seek to protect his children first, bring them to a place of safety and love and then teach them to understand that Mom had an illness which made her act the way she did, and that forgiving and praying for her was important.  But forgiveness from the place of safety, healthy self-love and owning of reality about my mother's abusiveness and her illness.  I'm learning now to do for myself around my mother's illness what my non-BPD father could not or chose not to do for me as a child, secure a healthy self-love and protection of the innocent child, first. My non-BPD father never modeled for me how to do that.

I hope at some point in my own recovery, I will be able to answer the question you posed with a simple, yes.  But I am in recovery, a wonderful, hopeful process. I am learning the compassion and love for that child inside me that I never learned to have as a child.  I am trying to heal and developing healthy habits of true self-care.  As important a question perhaps as whether one has forgiven an abusive parent is have you learned to truly love yourself, to forgive yourself, despite all the terrible, untrue things that you were taught about yourself by an abusive parent who suffered from BPD and the abandonment that you experienced from the non-BPD parent who simply did not value me enough to go to the lengths necessary to protect me?  I think the forgiveness of the child abuser will then follow from that place of emotional safety and self-love.

I also think never having had children, a regret in my life, truly, I don't have the thorny issue of seeking forgiveness from my children for ways I may have passed my mother and father's problems along inter-generationally.  Many people are not only seeking to forgive the abusive parent, but have to also seek forgiveness from their children for having passed along some of those issues.  As they ask the question about forgiving an abusive parent, they are also hoping to be understood and forgiven by their own children.

Thank you, Tayto again for your question.

Best,

Calsun