Here’s another Angry Dad Survivor checking in to say that counseling is a very good thing, especially for this exact issue. We derive so much of our identity through our parents perceptions of us that it’s particularly difficult to stand back and rationally assess how our relationships with our parents are affecting us on a daily basis. We need a parallax view, and a therapist has the necessary distance to be able to give us the perspective we need. Many people make the mistake of thinking that just because they talk issues out within the family that they’re dealing adequately with their feelings, but it isn’t possible because the WHOLE FAMILY shares in the skewed worldview that crazy parents create around themselves beginning long before the kids are even born.
My dad is emotionally and physically abusive, a drunk and is also a born salesperson, always friendly and gladhanding to everyone outside the family–never know when they might have something he wants, dont’cha know. He mostly confines his rage to the family, but occasionally indulges in random beatings of total strangers who offend him in some way. It took me years to figure out how his influence still motivated me in myriad ways, and I discovered most of it while seeing a counselor for an unrelated issue. Everything kept coming back to my dad–how I had abandonment issues and how I was trained to feel guilty and be apologetic whenever someone was angry at me and even how the block I’d had against being able to do math was pretty directly correlated to getting my head bounced off the desk when I didn’t understand my homework after the first explanation. All these things kept coming out and I learned a tremendous amount about how NOT to continue these patterns with my own children.
To this day, my SO thinks my father is the stupidest man alive, because he had three girls who could have thought their daddy hung the moon and painted the stars, but all he actually has is a doormat trophy second wife, a really good wine collection to swill down and kids who seldom see him, grandchildren who barely know him and a great grandchild who at ten understands that Great Grandpa is a bastard who likes bullying people. Great legacy, isn’t it?
On the plus side, the family is distant from Dad because they’re all pretty healthy. I don’t like him, or respect him, but I don’t feel any need to deal with him because I figure he chose to keep on with his life as he has and I don’t have any room in my life for a destructive self absorbed person, even if he is my sperm donor!
So yeah, therapy good–go for someone you feel comfortable talking to and who is results-oriented. You don’t necessarily need to dive into your own navel and understand every single thing in your life–what you DO need are coping skills and the ability to decide what behaviors you’ve acquired as a result of abuse are holding you back and how to ameliorate the effects. It’s a lot like neosporin and a bandaid on a cut–it would probably heal just fine without it, but it would take longer and you could get gangrene and die–so better safe than sorry!
You described my father to the T. There were 10 of us (5 boys and 5 girls). Only one of us to date is happily married. Many of us have been divorced more than once. Some have never married and one of us was jailed for beating her husband.
My father ruled our household with an iron fist literally. He beat anyone who remotely argued or did anything that went against one of his many rules. The boys were his chief punching bag, almost like he wanted to show the girls how dominating he could be of men like him - except that we were not men then - we were boys. My mom came next. Often he would invite her into their bedroom and after about an hour she would come out all black and blue while we remained outside helpless. No one dared move. Ultimately she started to take it out on us when he would go away on business trips. She became the bully of the household.
Most of grew up scared of people and relationships. Many of us became afraid to try anything new that did not fall into the parameters as designed by dad. About 17, I decided to head to a Catholic Seminary where I was a problem child for quite sometime until Sister Ann Kathleen called me in one day and told me that I was one more report away from being dismissed. Then it dawned on me that I would have to go home if they expelled me back to a father who would definitely kill me. I straightened out. I had to - I was never going back there. There was home. I have since then never returned back home. I am now 49. I have been thru quite a bit of therapy but I know that the only therapy there is for me is to go back home and face my dad straight up, yet I’m believe it or not still afraid of him.
The only time I can recall standing up against him was when he was beating mom one day and I could not take it anymore - I was 15 then - I grabbed a large knife and broke down the door and darn nearly killed him. He needed 25 stitches and I went to reform school cos my mom would not tell the police why I stabbed him.
The last time I saw my father was when he waved me goodbye at the airport and I left. He never shook my hand or hugged me. Mom hugged me but I knew that I was never returning. He has never visited me even when I got married and had my son. My son is 20 years old now. 2 months from now, he will be 21 and he has never seen his grandfather but he will this Christmas and I have been having sleepless nights since I paid for 2 round trip tickets to go back home to visit.
I wonder about these things too (re myself!) My parents are unpleasant people who IMO should never have married [each other], nor had children … I was [and still am] bullied incessantly by my Mother, and subsequently have been bullied everywhere I’ve gone (including the Internet), 9 times out of 10 I’m not initially aware that I’m being bullied because I’m so used to being treated like that at home.
My father treats me with anything from casual indifference to outright contempt.
My two older brothers don’t treat me much better but I don’t know how to stand up for myself and have no one else who will back me up when I’m in the firing line. My Mother allows my brothers to verbally abuse me while she smiles smugly, if I dare open my mouth (or on one occasion went to slap) she screams the place down at me.
I am trapped in a situation where I was living at home after damaging my back rendering me crippled for 2 years (something that never happened according to my mother - I’m just lazy), and when I had recovered sufficiently to leave home and never look back my father had the first in his latest series of heart attacks. It was heavily implied that it was up to me as the single-no-kids-no-life looser to stay at home and take care of the parents…
Having lived in close proximity to them for the last 8 years I still gawp in amazement that they every got married (they were both in their 30s when they did) much less that they had children. My father’s attitude towards me is softening somewhat - but only because he’s now in a wheelchair and “at my mercy” so to speak… my mother continues to belittle, demean and berate me on a daily basis for whatever reason she sees fit - she goes through phases of refusing to eat anything I cook…
And you can be assured that should I decide to pack it all in and leave never to return - I’d never be able to return because my mother would poison everyone in a 50 mile radius against me… she’s already cost me several friends.
My mother’s back has hurt her pretty much continuously since she was 15. She was diagnosed with arthrosis at 31. Mornings she moves like Robocop but less spry. I’ve always heard Grandma grumble that Mom was just lazy and faking it.
Three years ago, Grandma’s right knee started hurting her in the mornings. Her daughters used that to get her to see a doctor (doctor asks “when did you have a blood test last?” “Oh… last century” 1989, actually). Arthrosis.
When Grandma says “my knee hurts!”, Mom says “uh, Mo-oooom”, and Grandma goes “oh my, and to think you’ve hurt like this all these years, and more of your body!”
Starting in 6th grade, one of the reasons I hated Phys Ed was that the shoes hurt my feet. Of course, I was just being lazy. One day (summer after 10th grade) we were in the public pool and a dermatologist who was a friend of my parents said “ohmyGod, what’s that? Let me see that…” Turns out I’d had ingrown warts in my soles and on the line where athletic shoes end for years. The doc threw Mom a book titled Take Your Own Children Seriously (figuratively speaking).
I’m too afraid of ending up like those two to have kids… but if I ever find myself having them, or with my nephews, and about to say “you’re just lazy”, I sure hope I remember these stories and have the brains to get the kid checked!
It’s interesting (and a little sad) how people tend to rewrite history in their minds to fit their ideal of what they wished had been. My mother once remarked about “how much quality time I used to spend with my father as a child”. I spent my whole childhood almost completely isolated and barely even spoke to my father. On a couple of occasions we played catch or went bowling, but I was always very uncomfortable being alone with him and kept those times to an absolute minimum.
Until the pain happens to them, the pain is all in your head. This is not at all an uncommon phenonomon Been there & Done That for 20+ years with migraines. Yay me!
You know, I don’t know if I should be encouraged to know that this is prevalent or depressed!
It wasn’t my father (my dad was so emotionally distant that I could get more warmth from a rock) but my father in law. He is a combination of Ralph Kramden, Fred Flintstone and Archie Bunker with the worst qualities of all of them. He is emotionally abusive to his entire family, constantly belittling and demeaning them. He was also physically abusive to his kids and once put a gun to his wife’s head when he thought she was flirting with a man at a party.
My wife caught the brunt of it. My father in law (we affectionately call him RB, for Rat Bastard) beat her almost daily, turned his sons against her, told her how worthless she was. Since she wasn’t the boy he wanted for a first born child, she should have at least been a demure, condescending, feminie girl. Instead she was tough, tom-boy, didn’t take crap from anyone. In other words, a female version of himself.
He had (and has) a lot of money and would hold it over your head. He would give money to help you out but then remind you about it later. He fired his younger brother-in law, gave his nephew a pay cut and got his brother dismissed from the country club where he (RB) was on the board of governors.
His sister moved 2000 miles away and has nothing to do with him. His older brother went one better by moving to Ireland! The younger brother would go away for a while but then crawls back when he needs something.
My MIL has turned into Edith Bunker because she has been told for so long that she is useless and an idiot. Now she has become absentminded, constantly apologizing for her mistakes. And she stays with him because of the money.
One of my wife’s brothers bought into the bull completely and has become RB: The Next Generation. Nasty, racist, horrid. The other brother we thought would go the same way but is trying, with a lot of help from his wonderful wife, to change.
My wife has suffered from depression and rage issues, low self-esteem because of her treatment at the hands of this man. When he had kidney cancer, she stayed by his side and listened to him and his fears. When he had a massive heart attack that literally blew a hole between the ventricles, she went every day to the cardiac ICU to sit with him. She hoped at some level that he would change and repent.
Instead, he ripped into her for her being overweight (he was 350+ at the time), slammed her for still grieving over multiple miscarriages, told her how she wouldn’t have the house she lived in without him.
I’ve tried to help my wife realize what a massive prick he is and how she should cut him out completely. When we got married he said he would pay only if we had it at his country club. I said we’d pay for it ourselves, and we did. While our house was being built, we attempted to live at my in-laws just to save a little money since they were supposed to be staying in their summer house. We stayed for 2 weeks because he changed his mind and came back after one week. I got us the ugliest, dirtiest rental house for the remaining two months of construction. As I packed our stuff up and we walked out the door, I turned to him and said, “Thank you for letting us stay here. I really appreciate your hospitality.” And I turned and walked away.
My wife has been going to a therapist for a few years now and it has helped her deal with RB. Everything is on her terms, not his. He calls occasionally and, when he inevitably starts some crap, she just tells him goodby and hangs up. We do not go to see him. My MIL is welcome but he can only come if he follows the rules of our house. If I catch him starting his racist crap or being nasty, I tell him to cut the shit or get out.
The first time I said that to him, I thought he was going to have another coronary. He started screaming at me that I was an ungrateful shit for all he had done to help us over the years. I told him that I did appreciate it and had told him that in the past. But a gift given with strings is not a gift, it is bait. I told him if he wanted his money back I’d go get my checkbook. But as long as he was a guest in my house he had to put up with what I said, the same way I put up with his crap when I was a guest in his house. You could hear his jaw slam shut. He stomped off to his Caddy and tore off.
Therapy helps. Mostly telling yourself that, if you decide to have a relationship, it is to be on your terms, not theirs.