I am a long term depressive - anyone else with experience of neglectful/abusive mothers?

[Weegiemum]

I was first diagnosed with severe depression at 19 - the psych I saw then was sure I had been depressed since 14. My mother left our family when I was 12 and it has always been an issue - getting worse with each dc, till I had 3, which is what she had when she decided my Dad's best friend was more important to her than we were.

I struggled when dd1 reached 4, the age that my youngest sib was when mother left us. I struggled again when ds (dc2) was 4, as that was the age my little brother was when she left. Dd2 turning 4 was OK!

I dread the day that dd1 is the age I was (12y3m) when my mum left (she's 9 now). These are all bad occasions for me, no matter what.

By the time I was the age my dd1 is now she wa s already having an affair with her now husband, and y denying ti to my Dad.

After she left, my Dad was a fabby parent and brought us up brillliantly! I was so glad when he married my stepmum when I was almost 15 - he has been so happy!!

But ... I stil suffer from periodic major (in a clinical sense - needing psychiatric intervention, consultants, CPNs etc...) depression

I no longer speak to my mother due to her toxic influnce. But I do wonder is I will ever be well, and what I am passing on to my own dcs!

Its a bugger, isn't it!

[OrangeFish]

There are a few threads here that are about neglectful, abusive or toxic parents. However, I wouldn't recommend you to go there, it can make you focus in bad things that you had already forgiven or forgotten or are in the process to. I felt they were making my problems look bigger than they actually were.

[FluffyBunnyGoneBad]

I've found a new way of looking at my mum's failings. It's not her fault, she learnt it all from her mum. She's just a person and she did the best (even if she was nasty/abusive) she could/knew how to. I don't hate her any more because she didn't know and she'd learnt it all from her mother. I stopped blaming her for all the shite she put me through and I now feel soo much better for it. I'm not the same with my child because I can and have put a stop to generations who are toxic.

[HappyWoman]

it must be awful to have those constant reminders with dates ect, you are 'expecting' things to be bad and so there are iyswim.

The positive from all this is that you will not be anything like her, you have learned from her mistakes.

[flamingobingo]

I'm in a similar situation but with my dad, rather than my mum. I'm now having psychodynamic psychotherapy and I am sure I'm going to get through this now. I've recently realised how long I've been suffering from depression, and linked up all the episodes I've had. I can feel that I'm making progress, and even left my last session thinking about forgiveness and about how to move forward in my relationship with my father in a way that doesn't hurt me anymore.

I've been doing meditation too, recommended me by a friend and reading books like this one, which are helping me feel more present IYSWIM.

[HolyGuacamole]

Instead of the dates reminding you of bad times, could you maybe turn your focus around and use them to reinforce you stance that you will never be the same or do the same to your children?

I know that sounds easy and don't mean to sound trivial. You can't change the past but you can change the future and maybe find a way (that is right for you) to stop beating yourself up over things you can't change?

[ElenorRigby]

I like Holys advice look on those dates as landmarks of how you are a great parent like your dad was. Your mum was half of you genetically the other half is your dad. Focus on being like him and how you will never do to your children what your mum did to you.
My mum is/was a toxic parent, I know I will never treat DD like she treated me!

[toomanystuffedbears]

I might be wrong, but I think the calendar triggers might be called "leftover anxiety".

It is tricky to explain, but helped me get past a truck load of my childhood baggage.

The negative event happened with a huge impact and somehow part of your coping mechanism was to attach "age" to it (some use a calendar date).
The "leftover" is sort of like a phantom-you feel it but it isn't real. It is based on a pattern that doesn't have to be. But patterns and routines are what we know and there is some comfort in that. I digress.

But really, that was then, this is now. You have suffered it enough, you don't need to suffer it anymore. And you are not your mother (gald you are not in contact)...you have your own independent life and are not invisible-which your mother's dismissiveness probably made you feel-like you didn't exist.

Next time you see your counselor ask about the "leftover" idea.

My mom was alcoholic/manic depressive (I think now known as bipolar). She was not emotionally available to me-so emotional deprivation was/is the cornerstone of my life. (Woah, that's a powerful statement .) My dad was a great guy, but lost his hearing in the war, so there wasn't much conversation; and that was back when the men were the providers and weren't expected to have much to do with minding the children. (Both my parents are now deceased.)

I accidentally helped myself through this by being an athlete before it was ok for girls to be athletes (known then as "tom boy"). I rode horses, trained in martial arts, and was an excellent swimmer. I also made excellent grades in school. All very psychologically theraputic activities. I validated myself.

You can guess that my dc get tons of attention!

[umchats]

Fluffy your post has made me think.

My mother has never been neglectful or abusive. On the face of it and to the local community she is a wonderful strong woman who bought up 3 wellrounded and successful children on her own after being widowed aged 40 with 3 children under 12.

My siblings and I are all very successful. I am a fat cat lawyer in the city with a wonderful DH and 2 beautiful children. I earn a fortune and have a marvellous lifestyle.

My mother hates me. Its evident in her manner towards me. Everytime I see or speak to her she crticises me , my weight ( its cuddly rather tha fat ) , my parenting skills ( i dont see my children enough and neglect them ), my DH ( scoffs at him doing DIY on our house as we can afford to pay others ), our house as it is too big and we cant cope with it . You name it its wrong.

I have cried buckets over the things she says to me. Most sentences begin with the words.' Its alright for you you have a husband '.

AND now I have had enough. Many years ago one Christmas she did something I can never forgive her for and its taken me years to come to terms with it.

I am heavily endowed in the nork department and she has for years suggested that I was a slut because of it. Not outright accusations but innuendos. My mother thinks that anyone who is overweight is in her words ' revolting '.When I was 17 and at the local girls private school my Christmas present was 2 bras ! Not nice lacy ones but of the Doreen vaiety. She bought them because she said that bras in my size were too expensive for me to buy out of my clothing allowance.

So I went back to school with a raft of girls who had TV's / stereos / designer clothes and ponies for Christmas and I have 2 bras. I wept buckets of embarrassment and shame.

Did she by my sister her glasses for Christmas beacuse her eyesight is bad ?

This is just one incident amongst many.

I understand how you all feel. My mother is jealous of me. Pure and simple. My DH has been telling me for years and I could never see it.

But last week I had a very important article published in the trade press and I sent her a copy over the email. She read it 24 hours ago and has not replied. Yet I have had at least 1o messages of congratulations from fellow professionals.

Purely and simply I do not need her in my life.

[umchats]

Thanks for listening...........

[smithfield]

umchats- I think you are to be congratulated for the life you have carved out for yourself inspite of your mother.
It's so unfair how in certain situations one or several children get singled out to be the container for all their parents anger and resentments. It's never really anything to do with the child themselves, but more to do with the parents own childhood issues.

[umchats]

Smithfield you have hit the nail on the head. My mother's father was a domineering manic depressive and my mother has told me that she was never allowed to do what she wanted and was completely crushed at home.She was the eldest too.Yet her sister could do no wrong and until the day my grandmother died my mother moaned that she was always put down and her sister was the golden child.

My sister can do no wrong. She is the perfect wife / mother / career woman in my mother's eyes and yet the reality is she is a precious arrogant selfish madam that treats my mother like dirt.Do you know that my mother drove a 160 mile round trip one saturday afternoon to babysit my sisters children so her and her husband could go to the garage and choose their brand new car without the children in tow ( how pathetic ! ) and yet when I asked her if she would have mine for a couple of hours on a Sunday because my DH and I needed to attend a work marketing event the answer was no because she had to much to do in her garden and by the way I shouldnt be going to work events on a sunday and leaving my children it was disgraceful...........yadda yadda yadda.

And then there was the time that my siser sold her buy to let flat which the tenant had trashed and despite a household income of £200k a year she was too tight to pay a contract cleaner and instead got my mother to drive to her house 60 miles away ; pick her up and drive another 60 miles and then at the age of 68 spend the day on her hands and knees cleaning the flat before driving home again ! and .

Yet I am always the one to be criticised despite the fact she has joined us on 5 family holidays abroad in the last 7 years including my 40th birthday trip to the Maldives when she spent the whole time crticising me to my DH at the dinner table every evening and then had the cheek to say that my DSister wouldnt ever go on holiday with others be it friends or family because she is utterly devoted to her children and only has time for them !!!!!!!!!!In otherwords yet again a crticisism of me.

I sound like I am making it up but truly this is a fraction of thestory.

Must go as the tears are clogging up the keyboard and\i need to get a grip.

[FluffyBunnyGoneBad]

No one gets a choice of whom they are born to. Sadly, some people don't see the damage they do to their children. There's nothing wrong with how you are feeling. The relationships we have with our mothers are a compex one, even boys and their mothers have complicated relationships. It's a positive thing to look at the mistakes of our own mothers and never repeat them. Everyone can change things but it's a generation thing so it will take a while and as mothers who want to change the mistakes of our own mothers, we may never see. You've overcome so much inspite of your mother, be proud of this. Your children will never get to experience a childhood like yours.

[BottySpottom]

Umchats - that's horrible ...

[umchats]

Bs I could go on and actually on here its very theraputic but it wont solve the situation Im in.

One more. Age 21 ( 1990 ) and home from uni for the holidays I am told that I am to accompany her and my younger siblings on a family camping trip to Cornwall. If I refuse to go not only am I an ungrateful cow for refusing a free holiday ( ' what would your father say etc etc ' ) but I wll have to find somewhere else to stay for the two weeks as no way would she trust me to stay at home on my own.

I go. It is dire. Stately homes every day and a thimble full of wine every evening in the tent. No nightclubs or people my age. Crammed in the back of the car with my siblings one of whom is only 13. Not suprisingly I am now told that my behaviour on the holiday was vile and how appallingly I treated her and hoe ungrateful I was................all this recounted to my DH in front of an entire restaurant in the 4 seasons in Dubai that I was paying for ( age 37 )..........

No wonder Im screwed up. My issue........how to break the cycle so my daughter is not an she never feels the hurt that I do.

[onegiantleap]

Hi weegie and others,
At last !

I am 43 and a long term depressive. Like others, like you I experienced rejection and neglect. I was the youngest of four aged 5 when my mother left the family home. It was violent, she returned several times to smash windows and try to burn the house down. She left not only myself and two siblings from the marriage but her son from a previous relationship.

aged 9 I went to live with an aunt and after two years to boarding school with my siblings.

I had virtually no contact with my mother [who had had a breakdown and was hospitalised] until I was a teenager.

Guess what? I am a single parent of one boy, we have no contact with his father, and I am unemployed,reclusive and depressed.

I could go on..
Regards reliving dates, I agree with other poster. I can hardly bear birthdays or christmas as I cant stand the attention. I allowed my son contact with her until he was seven when she confessed to hospital that she was concerned she was going to harm him on an overnight stay.
This was the age my brother was when she left, and also the age she herself was sent to board.

[onegiantleap]

Having said that I still feel that I have achieved a great deal with him considering I have had hardly any experience of parenting myself. My ds is doing well and has just got into a great school on his own merits.

It is one of my greatest sadnesses that I cannot demonstrate to him how to interact positively with others. He has little experience himself of seeing me with other people. So even though I know he has had loads of attention and priviledges from me as a parent, I may not have broken the cycle of inadequent parenting that has been going on for at least three generations;My maternal grandmother had three children with three fathers. The first was brought up as her brother, the second was acknowledged as hers but abandoned when granny married and set up home with my grandfather. Even though The third [my mother] was the child of that stable home, she was sent away to school at a young age.

I am going to bed now hope to recheck this thread tomorrow.

[umchats]

ogl have faith in yourself. You are doing amazingly well. MY mother has never been violent or abusive and as I have said on the outside is the perfect one.

She is a bully .

I too have suffered from depression for years.

I have kicked the antidepressants into touch and now self medicate with food and alcohol which is a disaster.

The common theme here is that we are al petrified about what this will do to our own relationships with our children which hang in the balance based on our upbringings.

Keep posting if it helps

[onegiantleap]

morning umchats
Your mum sounds unpleasant to be around, can I ask what kind of support if any you get from your siblings? Have you ever tried to discuss with them how it makes you feel?

Im on Ad's and have been off and on for years, I do reluctantly agree they are better than choc and booze even though I love both.

[GettingaGrip]

Yep another one here.

My mother is one of these. As was my father and my sibling too.

I think when I look back on my childhood I was probably depressed from about age 5 or 6.

Every photo from my childhood (not that there are many) I can look at and remember the emptyness and misery I was feeling.

I have gone on to marry into another family with exactly the same disorder as my birth family, and it has taken me until I was 50 to see what has happened to me.

I hope I have done better for my own children.

[onegiantleap]

Getting,
I just glanced briefly at your link, and like you have associated with people I believe have NPD notably my last disasterous relationship, who spent his time undermining me and my relationship with my fantastic so. Where I have found strength is in protecting him even though I will suffer emotional abuse myself he gives me the strenght to fight back. Ex still sends me postcards, yesterday I got 2 telling me how posionous and deceitful I was around his relationship with ds! This is two years since I kicked him out.
I dont think I know enough about my mother but I dont think she is this type.

[umchats]

Hi all. OGL I have cut my one sister out of my life as she is as toxic as my mother.

She once told me that she had made a decsision only to surround herself with friends and family that treat her with the respect she deserved !!!

You would be shocked if I told you how she behaved at my wedding. Caused a fuss and completely upsatged me.

I have a fantastic relationsip with my other sister who does not see our other sister and has a cool relationsip with mother although she freely admits she does not have the nastiness from her that I do.

[onegiantleap]

I wondered if they felt pain albeit a different kind of neglect as a result of your mother's widowhood[?]. I am assuming the reason she has treated you as she has is to do with her anger at being left with the children. This is based on my own, I see that my elder sis has a different relationship with my mother, much closer, but she also bore the brunt of coping with two younger siblings and may feel resentment about that. She has conflicting feelings about my blanking my mother after she deliberately destroyed her relationship with my son. she wants to see us both, and is affected differently.
My brother cut us all out of his life and i think thought that my sis and I were somehow being disloyal to him and his pain for talking to her and somehow tolerating her. When I persuaded him to come to our fathers funeral, I explained we were all hurt in different ways.
Hi ho!

[umchats]

MY mother is a martyr of the worst type.

She loves the fuss. Hence the ' its ok for you speech '.

She has never said this to my sister. I bear the brunt of it all.

When my eldest was 6 months old we went away for 2 nights for our wedding anniversary. We took our daughter and it was a disaster. She was ill the whole time with an ear infection and we cam home early.

My mothers comment was not oh dear or what a shame or anything like that but ' well what do you expect.....its ridiculous...........you just have to accept that when you have a small baby you cant do these things...........I never did such luxury things when you were small yadda yadda yadda '

When my sister had her children 4 years later my mother has them for a weekend for her for every wedding anniversary and indeed had the eldest who was only 9 months at the time whilst they were on a short honeymoon !!!!

The laugh is I never asked because I feel my mother has had a hard life and she is not my unpaid babysitter. My sister on the otherhand couldnt give a toss. She does nothingfor my mother. Once my mother caught a really bad dose of the flu from my sisters household as she had been babysitting her children whislt her and hubby were away on a work piss up. Mum was in bed for 2 weeks and I was the one who visited am and pm round work. My sister never came at all ( she is an hour away ) yet she works part time and has a full time nanny ! My mother cried buckets over this but still my sister can do no wrong.

My sister even came and stayed for a week over half term with her children who are 3 and 6 because the decoratoer was doing the landing and stairs and she couldnt cope with the mess and the children. so my mother had to put them up for free and cook and clean for them.

FFS I have completely gutted a house whilst living in it around 2 very busy careers and my youngest was only 8 months when we started and we have done the bulk of the work ourselves yet my mother never volunteered to have my children for an afternoon because she is jealous of the gorgeous house I live in .

nuff now. Its like therapy on here !!!

ho hum