First time posting - i have a BPD parent - major rant, sorry

[parsleyj]

I have so much to say on this subject but yet do not know where to start.  I may have posted on this site a few years back.

I was raised by a man that has a lot of intense emotional issues. He is very self centered and everything is about him. As a child it was hard to notice I just always felt this feeling of shame - he taught all my siblings to criticize, judge and blame. Somebody always had to be wrong and the level of scorn and biting dagger eyes he could give you for the smallest thing was torture. I became so good at learning how to "match his mood". Not even realizing I was doing it. Judging and criticizing people with him to be accepted, turning on a sibling if it meant I was safe, learning to cower and feel shame. Learning was some kind of very shameful act. If you did not already know something and had to learn it - like... . it did not come natural to you - there was SO much judgment. It is only recently that I realize he has some type of learning difficulty - something NEVER talked about of course.

Can anyone relate to that? He is so critical and just seems to always contradict me - even now as a middle aged adult. I hate it. I can NOT have an intellectual discussion with him about ANYTHING. He just sees me as an extension of himself. If he doesn't know something - how could I possibly know it.  I can also see he struggles to think for himself. I rarely see him having the ability to apply or use knowledge. He has an attention span of about 5 seconds and I am NOT exaggerating. If I am talking to him he will always do something else. He will not give me his attention - even as a child it was so painful - no one ever listened to me or cared or respected my thoughts or feelings.

Television was the most important thing in our house growing up. If you talked OR got loud and the tv was on - he would yell at you to shut up. every. single. time. I couldn't practice piano if he was watching tv which was basically all the time. It would be blasting loudly into the night and sometimes I would cry because I couldn't sleep. The few road trips we went on - if you had to pee - you committed a mortal sin. I remember quietly whispering to my mom to help me and please tell him she had to go so I wouldnt be in trouble.

Im sorry I could go on and on. Im just so upset right now and really just ranting more than anything. EVERYONE in my family with the exception of my brother makes constant excuses for him.

[lucyhoneychurch]

Parsley when you come back to the page I want you to find a great big huge hug right here >>  

You realize how clearly you express your thoughts and how vividly your pain is coming across? I grew up with a mother who could process scientific stuff just fine, math, you name it, but PEOPLE SKILLS? she was more than handicapped in that area, she was abusive and hurtful and hateful and she also divided my siblings and me all the time over idiotic things. There was no "family." None. Just these people doomed to live in a house were one person (my mother) created chaos all the time, yes TV going, or taking a nap and you damned better tiptoe the entire weekend if you had to even though bedrooms were available with doors to shut.

You might adopt the word "sabotage" for your childhood. We were hijacked. We were sabotaged in the sense there was never going to be one single thing, not one, that we could do right EVER. We were sentenced without doing any crime. We were scathingly rebuked for doing nothing more than being children.  God, when you describe having to use the bathroom in the car... . I was on a long murderous trip one time with her and my sibs and something I ate made me ill like I needed a bathroom NOW and she kept driving even as I asked her to stop... . I will never forget her finally pullling over and I had to run behind this huge warehouse awful thing and my entire body cut loose on me. A girl of 15 having to be sick in the weeds because her mother wouldn't let her find a bathroom - sabotage. I am 51 and that image will always stick with me. When rape victims (I am so not comparing my experience(s) with theirs) or war vets have their traumas revisit them, I get it. Only because I live with complex PTSD and I bet you do too. Look it up if you haven't before.

Complex PTSD comes from repeated hurts, repeated wounds.  Years of trauma.

I hope you will keep posting and just rant and vent because I can hear the hollow deadly psychic pain in your words, and it makes things flash in front of my mind that happened to me too.

You are not alone on this board.

My mother has passed. Almost a year ago. But I am still to this day processing the insanity and the hurt sometimes my insides work at it in dreams and I wake up shaky and sad and upset. Sometimes it's in a good way like watching my birds come to the feeder (there is now a flock of 11 turkeys I am trying to coax in with corn to see closer - they are awesome creatures and very funny with one another - total pecking order and silliness) and knowing that the blue sky is perfection, the branches of my woods against it is perfection. There is perfection in this world - classical music. A baby's laugh. A crystal in my window breaking the morning sun into shards of the spectrum.

She can no longer hurt me and she tried the last 2 months of her life in a nursing home setting. But she is gone, I know that fact, but what she did to me will live forever - the way I can soften the blows that still hit is to seek perfection.

I loved every word of your "major rant" as you called it because you are finally saying to this man who tried to stuff you in his tiny little world (yes you were just an extension), "Hear me now?"

Don't apologize for ranting. You own your feelings, they are yours.

For what sounds like the first time in your life, just scream and scream and howl.  It's healthy, and keeps you safe from the magnitude of the injustices done to you.  Shove your voice out at the rest of us, we can take it.  

[strangerinparadise]

The all good or all bad thing with your siblings? My Mother taught me to do that with my Father. You know, the person she beds. Messed. Up. From the neck up.

I am so glad that you have found your voice to so eloquently speak about your experience it. Speaking it, or writing it, and sharing is a powerful act to help you (also I really like your writing style).

Also, with BPD control is such a huge issue. Sometimes I felt like a puppet just waiting to do what she wants. In the home, the reality is their own, no room for anyone else.

[StarStruck]

Hi parsleyj -

Welcome to the group or should say welcome back!

Sounds like you certainly have been through the mill. Pleased that your brother is with you on this. My brother has been very slow to come to this realization - not quite where I am though with it. Sounds like you have a good understanding of him, have done some research and no doubt have seen him action the theories in real life. It's crazy to think it's true isn't it?

Most importantly would like to say; you can heal. Once you start the journey of seeking the truths and finding what YOU need, it will come even more. Don't stop posting as you go on this knowledge journey, there's a lot of people here with a wealth of experience. It's really helped me along. 

[Moonbeam77]

Can anyone relate to that? He is so critical and just seems to always contradict me - even now as a middle aged adult. I hate it. I can NOT have an intellectual discussion with him about ANYTHING. He just sees me as an extension of himself. If he doesn't know something - how could I possibly know it.  I can also see he struggles to think for himself. I rarely see him having the ability to apply or use knowledge. He has an attention span of about 5 seconds and I am NOT exaggerating. If I am talking to him he will always do something else. He will not give me his attention - even as a child it was so painful - no one ever listened to me or cared or respected my thoughts or feelings.

Thanks so much for sharing.  What you described is very close to my experience growing up.  What is your relationship like now with your siblings?  I am 36 and only in the last several years have I developed a relationship with my brother and sister.  Many times my father would tell me bad things about my brother and sister and I would just politely listen.  My Father was so angry that my sister bought a house and right away put new carpet in it because he felt it was a terrible mistake because she couldn't afford it.  He got me thinking also that she was making a grave mistake.  He called her up and verbally assaulted her many times over that.  It is crazy to be called F bombs by your father over buying new carpet.  She bought the house 4 years ago and paid the mortgage in full last month.

What is your relationship like now with your Father?  I have gone VLC with my Father.  I also used to "match his mood" or "match his thought process".  Doing that was not true to myself but it was a way to cope/survive the situation.  Now that I have started stating my own truth and no longer mirroring him he has rejected me.  This is painful but I felt he never listened to me or cared or respected my thoughts or feelings anyway so the true loss was that I never had a loving caring Father in the first place. 

My Father likely also has some learning disabilities, he reads and writes at a low level.  He is very much into living off the land and making money being self employed.  Although he is not educated he has made a lot of money as a slum lord.  My husband and I both went to college and have white collar jobs.  When I was around my Father, part of me would feel ashamed of our occupations.

My Father also has a very short attention span.  When I would go to visit, attention would be on everything else except my family.   Sometimes we would take a 2 1/2 hour drive to visit him and he wouldn't show up to his own house for several hours.   My parents were divorced when I was 7 and when I would go visit during the summer it was the same thing.  He would be very focused on work that needed to be done and what his kids could do for him not the other way around.

My Father also used to beat my Mom and one time put her head threw a window.  He has attacked my brother when he was 16 by throwing a TV at him.  He has attacked my step brother when he was 16 and the police were called.  Many many times my father retold the story about how angry he was that his wife at the time called the cops and how they were going to have to go to court  until he talked her out of pressing charges.  Looking back it is so weird that he was so angry at his wife and step son even though he took no accountability for his own inappropriate violence.  Looking back it is so weird that I politely listened to the same story about him being angry over the police coming.  I never once told him it is wrong to physically hurt someone and that having the police come to your house is a natural consequence of that inappropriate behavior.   

[Sitara]

Welcome parsleyj, you are not alone.

I just always felt this feeling of shame - he taught all my siblings to criticize, judge and blame.

My uBPD mom did the same.  She did an excellent job of teaching my sister and I to do this against each other, successfuly destroying whatever chance of a loving relationship we had.  For a long time I internalized my mom's thoughts about my sister, thinking she was stupid and a loser.  I realize now her life is just a result of growing up with my parents and now her situation is just sad, and that she's not what my mom said she was.  It was so wrong of my mom to tell me these things about my sister and her daughter.

He is so critical and just seems to always contradict me - even now as a middle aged adult. I hate it. I can NOT have an intellectual discussion with him about ANYTHING.

Harsh criticism disguised as "constructive criticism."  She'd claim she was just helping me, but nothing was ever good enough to not be criticized. Even when I excelled, I could "always do better."  And I also can not talk to her about anything intellectual.  She is very sensitive about feeling dumb, and if I try to talk to her (for example, about my job) she would claim I was either "talking down to her because I thought she was stupid," or "rubbing it in her face that I did better than her."  Of course on the flip side, if I didn't talk to her, I would get condemned for not sharing things about my life or being too shut-off.

It's hard, but we're here to listen.