Denial

My parents have this amazing ability to deny everything, everything about all of the negativity they have (and still do) surrounded me with. I guess because they don't see what they do as being negative, which frustrates me to no end.

It seems that everytime I try to make something new for myself and want to go and take up a challenge, they feel the need to confront me about it and state all the ways in which I could fail. They bring up things that are so obvious about everything that could go wrong, as though they believe that I never think about such things of my own accord. It always feels like they're telling me I'll never make it by myself without their help. They try to place all of these doubts in me, that of course I think of naturally because they brought me up making me feel like I couldn't do anything and that I was stupid.

And they tell me it's because they care.
I know that in their own way, they do care, but in many other ways it just feels like they're constantly trying to bring me down and make me feel like I'm totally incapable at living my own life.

Whenever we get into discussions, they turn into heated fights. Everything always comes spilling out. I find that I am constantly drawn towards pushing onto them the experiences of my childhood, and they constantly deny that any of it ever happened. All of the abuse they inflicted, they deny again and again. If they do acknowlegde it, they always state it was because I deserved it and how all of it was because of my childish behaviour (as a child!) and how I was just a "BAD" child from very early on. Even the things that happened not too long ago - my father hasn't beaten me since I was 18, but wouldn't you say that this should still be very memorable to the both of them? I mean, it truly wasn't that long ago. But still they find ways to avoid any blame in the matter and choose to put it all on me. I don't know how to handle this.

It makes me feel like I'm going to go crazy! It hurts so much that they don't even see how they've made me feel this way for so long, as I want them to see. It's not that I'm trying to make them feel bad, I just want it acknowledged, so that they can understand that it hurts me and makes me so angry when they constantly make me feel like I should doubt myself at every turn. I want them to stop making me feel like a failure, I want their support.

I don't believe that I'll ever have a satisfying and healthy relationship with my parents, and that makes me feel incredibly sad and angry. I often avoid having any conversation with them precisley because it always boils over and becomes so emotionally charged.

I think choosing to avoid them has given me this false sense of forgiveness for what they have done and continue to do. But if I truly forgave them, would I still be pointing all of the mistreatment I believe that I went through? Would I still be fighting with them? God, it still makes me feel so guilty when we have these fights and they point out all the ways in which I have hurt them and disrespected them.

I want to be able to communicate things with them and not have it turn into huge fights and tantrums. But all of this anger that I have towards them, it taints my relationship with them, though it doesn't taint my love. I love them both so much. And in the end, all I'm left with is this horrible sadness, and the fear of having this unresolved anger between us for the rest of my life.

The above post was written in a very emotional and raw state, after I'd just had a negative enounter with my parents.

All day I have been trying to make sense of my feelings and come to terms with the reality of the situation.

In communications with my parents, I crave to be respected as an individual and to have my feelings acknowledged as being valid.

My parents seem to be emotionally and intellectually incapable of comprehending my perspective, because they have an unhealthy perspective about the nature of discipline. As long as they hold onto these perceptions, they will never be able to acknowledge my feelings of anger, sadness and sense of being wronged.

Ideally, I should not allow this to affect my perception of my own feelings as being valid. Ultimately, I must constantly look within myself and somehow learn to trust that my feelings are indeed genuine and not drawn from false premises, as my parents would have me believe.

Currently, I am struggling to do this, which results in feelings of confusion, guilt and anger, as I constantly question the validity of my own feelings.

I need to come to terms with the fact that I will most likely never have a truly satisfying and healthy relationship with my parents.
I have to accept that if I want my relationship with them to continue, it will always be on somewhat of a superficial level and will require me to have the strength to overlook and see past their false perspectives. I must accept that I may never hope to look to them for support for anything in my life, as my doing so will most likely only result in more rejection and negativity from them.

For a long time I have had hopes that one day they would change and miraculously "awaken", acknowledging my feelings of being wronged as valid, and then changing themselves to take on a more supportive and loving role in my life.

Because of this desire in me, my accepting that they are currently incapable of doing this (and very possibly never will), is going to continue to be very painful for me, because I feel that until they are able to, I will never feel truly loved and accepted by them.

Maybe this is inscensitive of me, and I am currently intoxicated, (woot 10 dollars for 1.5 liters of some cabernet)

but maybe you need a lover. I have deep feelings for my lover, and I know that I would feel emotionally Lost without her... I know that finding a lover is difficult, but perhaps there are things you would like to discuss that have to do with your ability to ove and be loved? I really think that having a good lover is what you need.

btw, ive pn;y read part of this but...

lol

I just looked at the typos i just made and instead of deleting them im gonna leave them in hopes that youll laugh, that would make me feel nice lol

you know what i mean.

i always thought it would be fun to go to australia

lol me and my gf just named my new kitty cat vigil. feel honored if nothing else

lollolol

i just re-read my post and that was by far one of the funniest things ive ever written

Awakend,

I do not believe that having a lover is the answer to how I should deal with feeling unloved by my parents. I think that before I can accept love and reciprocate love in a healthy manner, I need to have a sense of love and acceptance from within myself.

I say this because I already experience what it is like to be with someone in hopes that they will give me the love and acceptance I need, because I cannot have love and acceptance for myself. Although having someone that loves me, does offer me some support in my times of weakness, it does not pacify the feelings of low self esteem, sadness, confusion and guilt that I am feeling at those times.

It often makes them feel helpless, sad and confused because they do not know how to make me feel better, when they believe that they should be able to. This is very bad because it isn't the truth according to how I see things.
I do not think that anyone can or should be held responsible for giving another person the basic feelings of self esteem and acceptance of oneself. I think that responsibility lays with parents and if they do not succeed in giving this to their child, that child must find ways to teach this to themselves.

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Ideally, I should not allow this to affect my perception of my own feelings as being valid. Ultimately, I must constantly look within myself and somehow learn to trust that my feelings are indeed genuine and not drawn from false premises, as my parents would have me believe.

Currently, I am struggling to do this, which results in feelings of confusion, guilt and anger, as I constantly question the validity of my own feelings.

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I have just had a conversation with someone, where I feel that I have been able to address my lack of validity in regards to feeling anger toward my parents. It has actually strengthened my belief that my feelings are indeed, valid to me, regardless of what anyone else believes them to be. I will now post some of it here, for my own clarification and benefit in understanding this as a whole.


Them:

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One time, through either courage or naivety, I decided to express the anger I had towards them. I realize now that although I think their whole concept and philosophy of life is a major reason for their unhappiness, I was still ungrateful for all the things they did for me throughout my life.

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You may have acted courageously or naively in expressing your anger towards them, however aren't your feelings real and need to be taken into consideration? Did you not do it out of a sense of being wronged and wanting them to know that you were hurting? I think that these are valid reasons to assert feelings, and should not be made to feel less important, or invalid. I hope that this has not been the case for you. (that you think your anger was wrong and unjustified)

I think if we understood, as children, the act of sacrificing ones personal needs and desires for the needs and desires of someone else, we would have been able to understand that our parents did this and would have been grateful to them if we were emotionally mature enough to realize this.

I do not think that most children have the emotional maturity to understand this sacrifice that parents make, so they should not be made to feel guilty about not appearing grateful, when they simply did not understand the concept for which they should be grateful.

With the understanding that I have gained over these past years, I certainly appreciate that my parents kept me physically well and alive, and have voiced this appreciation to them. But the fact of the matter is that parents have a responsibility to us, to make us feel loved and understand when we are young, that we have worth, as individual beings in our own right, which is just as important as keeping a child physically well. Children should be given emotional nourishment also.

Right now, I do think that I will find value in having a superficial relationship with my parents, because I believe that this is the only way I will be able to carry out my desire to show my love to them.


Them:

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I think my anger was unjustified in a way. If I was grateful for all the things they did for me (as well as all the lessons I learned that they didn't even know they were teaching) where then would be the anger?

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As I see it, these lessons that they teach us without even realizing, depends on our own perceptiveness and ability to learn from them. It is with no thanks to them, that we are able to pick up and understand the mistakes that they have made, especially when they themselves do not acknowledge it.

Personally, I feel the fact that as my parents have abused me, their mistreatment has only stunted and held me back from my growth into an emotionally secure human being. As far as I feel I have come now on my own, I do not appreciate the fact that I have to work so hard and go through so much effort in order to gain the self esteem that I believe should have been my right to begin with, as it should be any child's right. I believe it is natural for me to feel anger about not receiving this.

Though I appreciate that I am growing from my experiences, I do not appreciate the reasons for why I am having to do so, and do not feel it is necessary to give appreciation to it.

I do not constantly resent my parents for not making me feel loved and worthy of love, and I can empathize with the reasons that make them incapable of doing so. However, I will not make my feelings less important than theirs and convince myself that my anger is unjustified, simply because I should feel grateful for the lessons that they didn't know they were teaching me.

I find it to be true, that value can be found in any situation, but it does not follow that all wrongs can be put right because of this. Bad events that happen to us are valuable in that they can teach us things, but that does not make them any less Bad, in my opinion.

So though I am grateful for the fact that I have come far enough that I am learning how to begin to build upon my self worth, I am still saddened that it has come at the cost of realizing that my parents will not truly love me in the way that I have always desired them to.

As you say, it is definitely no easy task to forgive and feel grateful and it does feel contradictory to have anger and gratitude at the same time, but that is the contradiction that is made within us when people have acted in very contradicting ways. Providing us with physical nourishment but starving us of the emotional. There is love in both actions, but do you not think that one more or less stands out as more loving? No matter how much more slight that importance would be to you.

I am grateful to my parents for being responsible enough to provide me with the physical nourishment, but I am grateful to myself and forums like captain cynic for the fact that I am growing from my mistreatment.

If it seems that I want to stay angry at my parents, I cannot say how far this is from the truth. I wish I could let go of it right now, but I feel that until i do learn to cope with the fact that my parents are unchangeable and stubborn in their ways of thinking, I am not quite able to. Rest assured I am working on it.


I think letting go of my anger must come from accepting that they are who they are, and through my own achievement of giving to myself what they failed to give to me.

To be honest I think most people do not have really good relationships with their parents. I think if you go out there and started telling people about your situation you will find that many people are in the same situation with the same void.

If your parents abused you why would you want to bring yourself closer to those people? Blood relation is really over rated in that really they are just your DNA. What you do and choose in life is up to you. The argument of Nurture over Nature. In reality you should distance yourself from someone who hurts you. I understand that these people are your parents, but most people do not really get along with their parents. Even people who are over loved have bad relationships with their parents. They feel overprotected and pressured into situations that they don't like.

I guess my point is that once you are an adult the parent child relationship for many people becomes void. Many people are in the same situation as you. Nurture over Nature in that DNA is over rated.

Personally I have a very good relationship with my parents and other siblings. However, I have better relationship with my girlfriend and my other friends. This is the Battle of Nature over Nurture! The people I choose to be in my life have a greater role than the ones that were always in my life!

I was just wondering Vigil, if your parents have ever heard you say what you have written here on CC?

I know what its like when you try to communicate with someone who is on such a different level. No matter how much you talk, or yell, you just cannot see eye to eye.

And yet you voice your opinions and express your feelings on the matter so clearly in this thread.

I am wondering if it has ever gotten to the stage where you have been able to actually say all this to them in the clear and concise way you have in this thread?

I often find this the problem in cases like this. That with all the heat of the moment, all the bad feelings of the past rearing their head, and all the need to get ones own opinion across- the conversation never gets to the point of actual proper communication- where both parties are actually HEARING each other.

If this is the case and you feel conformable with it- you should show what you have written in this thread to them and tell them that this is how you feel inside.

And that you're not a child anymore who needs to be put in her place whenever she tries to express her feelings on the issue.

Of course the next question would be, even if they did read it, would they actually take it in? And are they intelligent enough to?

Because if they ARE smart enough to understand the viewpoints and concepts of parenthood, punishment , forgiveness etc, they may actually benefit from getting it in a way that cant end up in a shouting match.

And even if they do not agree with you. And even if they still hold to their opinions on the matter... because they are reading it without any emotion or heatedness, and because they cannot stop you halfway through with what you are trying to get across so as to defend themselves.. they may actually take it in allot better.

Think of it as planting seeds in their mind.

Their natural reaction will be to deny it or twist it so as not to feel guilty. But what you have written here is done well enough and clear enough that anyone who reads it can see your obvious pain and your obvious ability to see both points of view and come up with a very reasonable viewpoint of the whole issue. Which I think any parent who truly loves you, will find hard to ignore.

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If your parents abused you why would you want to bring yourself closer to those people? Blood relation is really over rated in that really they are just your DNA. What you do and choose in life is up to you.

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I've heard people say the DNA point to me before, and I've thought about it myself as well. But even considering this, it's not easy for me to simply see the relationship as overrated and unimportant, based on simple sharing of DNA. There is an abundance of memories connected to these people, your entire childhood and teen years, early adulthood. There's an entire history there, and the person that you are now has in part, however large or small, been shaped and influenced by these people who have been with you since your brain first sparked into existence.

I suppose it just hasn't been a simple task to distance myself from my parents emotionally, because I don't see things in black and white. Even though my parents have abused me, I don't see them as evil or bad people at all. It's hard for me to just see people as simply "bad", and so it's hard for me to really hate someone enough to disown them emotionally, when I believe I can see how they too are in pain and are confused about how to deal with these things.

Even though my parents and I are not emotionally close at all, I've seen them go through a lot of struggle and hardship through raising our family. Hearing them fight with each other, a lot of their own issues come out and I can see how scared and similar they are to me, but also how trapped within their own fear and pain they actually are. More so than me it would seem.

I believe it has been far more beneficial to me to let the love that I feel for my parents simply exist, instead of trying to divorce myself from those feelings in order to distance myself from them, and instead coming towards an acceptance of the fact that they are who they are, they will not change, and I cannot make them change.

In the end I have concluded pretty much what you have jacker. In that for my own benefit, I should distance myself from my parents and keep the relationship very superficial. And also surround myself with people who I do have positive relationships with.


And Chained, I do believe that no matter what I say or how I say these things to my parents right now, they are far too rigid in their own beliefs to give mine any validation. I do not believe my parents are open minded enough, or maybe even emotionally mature enough, to actually give the things I say any real and deep thought. I believe that they themselves have a lot of personal issues that they are obviously not dealing with, and so I think it would be almost impossible for them to deal with our child/parent issues, before they've come to the understanding that they actually need to deal with their own.

That is how I see things anyway.

If your parents won't listen to you then they won't listen. In other words they won't change to hear what you say. Your words won't matter. If they can't accept these things why should you accept them? I honestly do not understand how memories are more important than the fact they seriously abused you.

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If they can't accept these things why should you accept them?

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It's not a matter of should, it is that I do honestly have love for them, depsite what they have done in the past. I think when I realize that someone who has hurt me is in pain, it is natural for me to empathize & have love for them as fellow humans. This doesn't mean that I look completely past what they have done to me, it simply opens another door of understanding as to why they have done what they have.

I used to react unhealthily (when I saw my parents in pain), because I would rate my own pain as less in comparrison to theirs, and think that I would need to change and suppress my own behaviours and feelings, in order to make them happy. I am not doing this anymore.

I think once you have that understanding about what drives someone to do the things that they have done, it does not come naturally to hate them. At least not for me. That "hate the action not the person" saying is pretty much the conclusion that I come to.

Hate the action don't hate the person is really flawed. You should hate the person. This is because they did it. Should we just bypass the whole idea of responsibility? Are the Nazi's responsible for the holocaust? Dam strait

But the way I see it, that sentence isn't about avoiding responsibility. Yes, everyone is responsible for their actions, but I think it means you can always seek some kind of understanding as to why that person did what they did, the "why?" behind their actions, so that you aren't blinded to their humanity by hate.

Edit: I'd also like to add that I think it's important to seek that understanding about where someone else is coming from, as it can provide more awareness and learning about the world and people in general. You learn more about life.

I'd like to know what you think hatefulness achieves?

I really don't think anything good can ever come out of hating another person. All that negativity does is drain you emotionally, like holding a grudge.

Hitler is a fine example of someone who was blinded by hate.

Hate is a clear and concise emotion. It is necessary. When someone does wrong to you it is perfectly normal to not like them. Hate has accomplished many things, its a statement that you will not put up with peoples actions and that consequences and responsibility are important. Had the russians not hated hitler perhaps hitler would rule the world. If you do not hate people and fight back you are weak.

A grudge is perfectly natural. You should not try and involve people in your life that hurt you. People who do hurt you should see that you do not like them and then have to make up the actions with good actions. Then they are an active productive person in your life and you should let them back in.

If someone does something wrong the why aspect of their action is really flawed. Does evil actions bring good? Generally not. Or at least the evil action can only bring good to themselves. For instance I steal the money from your wallet. I now have more money therefore it is better for me, but at the same time it is worse off for you. You shouldn't involve people in your life that steal from you because it is not a mutual benefit relationship. The same holds true if someone abuses you. It is not a mutually beneficial relationship.