Honey, you and your parents don’t just have issues. You folks have subscriptions, and your parents not touching you isn’t going to give any of you peace because the touching isn’t the real issue; if they keep their hands to themselves, you’ll just find some other symptom of that issue to fight about. If you don’t do something to address these root issues, you’re going to keep fighting about this same damn issue over and over and over and over until someone dies or disowns someone. That’s why you absolutely do have something to gain by getting some therapy–you’ll either gain the ability to take your parents and their incompatible expressions of love with more equanimity, or you’ll gain the confidence to decide that even though you love them you can’t deal with them and cut them out of your life. Either way you’ll be a lot more at peace.
Shoot, you might even learn to show the love you say you have for your parents in a way that they can take to heart, so to speak. Because whatever you’re doing, it’s not getting through to them if they think you hate them and wouldn’t spend time with them if they didn’t give you money.
And you know, in a fucked up sort of way, I can kind of see your mom’s point about telling you not to talk to her. They see you moving out and cutting your hair and wearing “butch” clothes as rejection. You tolerating, even liking, other people to touch you while having severe distress when they do it…that’s an even bigger rejection. So she decided to turn the tables and reject you and let you see how it feels for a change. Sauce for the goose is, after all, a totally normal human reaction; the fact that it’s fucked up to see your child’s hairstyle as a personal emotional rejection doesn’t change that.
Ignoring the deeper issues, could you find something to say or do that your parents will accept as ‘proof’ that you love them without physical contact? What I’m thinking of is some action/phrase that has a ‘secret’ meaning that you have agreed on between your and them.
Two examples of what I mean – for years Carol Burnett would tug on her ear lobe when she was saying goodbye at the end of her TV show. This was a ‘secret’ signal saying “I love you” to her watching daughter.
In my own family, one of my brothers went through a stretch when he was supremely embarrassed if my parents hugged him or said anything along the lines of ‘I love you.’ I mean, the horrors of the idea that one of his friends might witness this, you know? But then for Mother’s Day he gave mom a card that said something like “If they graded mothers, you’d always get a gold star.” And she promptly turned it around and said he was a gold star son. And that became how they’d expressed love/pride/affection to each other. Just the two words, “Gold star,” carried all that for them.
Anyway…it wouldn’t solve the deeper conflict, but if you could find something like that, you could say or do it frequently with your parents, and maybe if they got regular assurance of your affection, they wouldn’t need to go after physical contact.
A better way to address an abnormal aversion to being touched is to seek help regarding the aversion. Expecting people to interact with you on your abnormal terms does not correct the aversion but rather feeds it. It becomes an obsession of perceived control where no such social interaction/control exists in the first place. A person can create a million of these situations by insisting that others say or do things as a precondition of interaction.
The end result will be an alienation of normal interactions and a gravitation toward people with equally limited social skills and/or personal problems.
We are American, my parents aren’t immigrants or anything. My folks don’t have advanced education like I do. So, there may be some cultural values clashing right there. I don’t think they understand the need for adult children to be independent, especially women…like the typical middle class college educated America.
My folks are quite religious, Baptist, but not Pentecostal…but I believed they attended pentecostal chrurches as children.
Yes therapy is a good idea, but I have no health insurance…even if I did, I have several irons in the fire, I have other issues I want to work out before this one.
Yes, I’m so lesbian that I shit rainbows. I have not told my parents this, but they are highly suspecting it. Plus, I’m a fan of interracial dating, but they know about that. So yeah, they might just die if I bring home someone a different race AND the same gender.
I don’t have time to read through all this, just a few past the OP, but I wanted to mention my daughter and several students I worked with in Sp’Ed classes had sensory processing issues which made touch uncomfortable. My daughter can’t tolerate light touch, but she loves some deep pressure massage. She’d rather be punched than tickled. It’s a real issue we deal with every day. She doesn’t like other children touching her but she’s not so distressed by adults. She likes petting the cats but having them nuzzle her creeps her out. She also has lots of auditory processing issues. With occupational therapy and lots of at-home work she’s getting better. Sometimes kids grow out of it…some don’t. Maybe you’re one of them.
Sorry if I’m way off, if you reveal something else after the first page. I just thought I’d throw it out there.
While it should be restated that the SDMB is no substitute for therapy, I think that just expressing yourself here may have a small healing effect for you. I sure hope so.
I agree that you’ve formed some uncommon reactions to the way your parents act, but it sounds like they’ve got more issues than you do. Unfortunately, while you seem to recognize this, it doesn’t seem as if your parents are aware. And they probably aren’t going to hear it if you tell them.
I’d say your best option right now is to stay away from them for a while. Don’t cut off contact–phone or e-mail them regularly and let them know that you aren’t out of their life for good. But if you have your own place, stay there for a few weeks.
I know you’re having trouble getting work, but I think that’s more about the economy than your lack of experience. You’ve got a graduate degree, and that is worth something. Any day now, you’ll find something and be fully able to run your own life. Then you’ll be able to think about getting some therapy. You’ll also be on a much more even footing with your folks, which should allow you to feel more comfortable around them even without the therapy. If you no longer need them for direct support, you won’t feel they’re controlling you, even if they continue to try.
It’s so not a big deal when you don’t like most people to touch you. I maintain personal space and people respect that. Sometimes they hug me a few times before they know me well, and then they pick up that I am a bit uncomfortable with it and it just stops. It hardly affects my life. I don’t touch people, they don’t touch me.
The only people that my dislike of being touched have caused problems with have been creepy weirdos with no boundaries (my dad, various perverts who often grab women without their permission, a female friend in high school who must have been in love with me or something).
Sounds like your deeper issue is that your fear that they will reject you for the lesbianism and the interracial dating thing. Your fear appears to be founded on their religious point of view, and your view that they lack the education to understand such enlightened points of view. Although you suspect they may have some inkling of your lesbianism. This whole touching thing you have with them appears to be an outward symptom of this underlying conflict, that the three of you don’t want to talk about or acknowledge.
You are 28. Time to be respectful enough to your parents to be honest with them. Lay it all out there. Rip the band-aid off, and get it all out in the open. At least then you can all be honest with each other. They might surprise you, and then again they might confirm your fears…but at least the truth will be better than speculating.
**These threads/postings, such as the OP’s, should be met with, “We don’t give psychological advice on the SDMB, so please contact a professional”, just as we do when people ask about spots on their skin or other medical conditions.
Seriously… I think this thread should spin off a new policy. There are professional psychiatrists, psychologists and therapists, and OP’s like this one should spur us to prompt them to get help from those professionals.
I would be highly disappointed if we didn’t take that sort of approach. It happens regularly in GQ. It needs to happen for these kinds of threads, too.**
Enough is enough.
Would a mod just do something along those lines and then close this thread?
Better shut down all of the IMHO threads about relationship advice.
When a doper comes back and sues the Host for incorrect psychological counseling, please let us know. That’s the whole point of the caveat over legal advice, medical advice, etc. It’s so that the Host is not potentially liable.
You don’t know for sure if you were sexually abused or not unless you can remember every moment of your existence, which you can not.
But besides this (and IMHO), not wanting to be touched is a normal response to some violation, it is building walls that separate you from others to establish a safe place, and a sense of identity. Unfortunately this form of separation is holding back the love that your parents/others which to give you, which is hurting them and you (I believe equally).
Desiring the touch of a opposite sex partner does not change the above, and the pleasurable but non-sexual feeling you get from that can come from anyone who loves you, and you are missing out on, which also heightens the feeling of love that does come from a sexual partner.
When something bothers us, I believe most of the time even if it seems like it is all the other person’s fault, there is something in ourselves that we can change that can stop others from bothering us.
My son doesn’t like it either so I just hug him goodbye now. He doesn’t have children yet and I know that changes how we see our parents. We are very close except for the hugging.
I didn’t come from a huggy type family and probably would fall over if either of my parents hugged me. I used to think they didn’t love me. I know that is untrue today.
Parents do the best they can with what they bring to the table. You got huggers, I didn’t.
It makes sense to me, inasmuch as he sounds somewhat-similar to my grandfather (which I avoid like the plague but will put up with if it’s to be able to deflect his attention from the nephews).
Re-joining the party a little late here … (I saw this thread when it was a wee little thread-ette, go to check back in and, woah, 6 pages!?)
… but I had to chime in with a couple reactions:
Anaamika, you say what I’m thinking, but better. Way better. Sounds like my upbringing was a lot like yours, and you have a gift of phrasing. So thank you for your input.
And a ginormous :rolleyes: to the folks who want mods to close the thread. What, are you that uncomfortable with the subject matter? You don’t even want to read it; some of us LIVE it.
It’s more helpful than you can possible know to have the input of others. The perspective of an anonymous and impartial witness is SO important to people lost in the dysfunction of their own problems.
Best of luck to ya, Diamonds02. Let us know how things go. (I’m siding with the folks who think the OP’s parents are controlling, toxic, and dysfunctional, for those of you keeping score.)