WRONG.
I recognized my own dysfunctional patterns and started attending Codependents Anonymous meetings over 18 months ago; they literally saved my life. I’m also seeing a therapist and taking antidepressants. But even with all of these efforts, I am self-aware enough to know having children would be a catastrophic mistake. I might be healthy someday to have relationships with other adults; that will be victory enough for me. The fact that my parents did not realize this of themselves is still a sore point with me. I do not blame them for my life now. However, I do blame their choices for how unhappy they remained their entire lives. Neither ever had therapy, or committed to any kind of recovery work. I was their doll, not their daughter. A lot of that changed once I moved out and the parents grew too old to be physically intimidating anymore. I’m proof that people CAN be self-aware and break the cycle.

I myself have a mother who is the equivalent of a 5 year old – quite literally. I could never figure out why she was so different and recently realized (after having children) that she was just like them… at 5. She obviously did not move on, but no fault of her own. I was lucky to have my father up to when I was 15 yrs. old and then he passed away. I missed out on advice, comfort, guidance and sense of security and protection after he died. It was a world being ripped out from under me.

However, now I have stumbled upon this page and know I’m not alone, although none of this is ‘normal’ I’m going to take heart everyone here knows how I feel. That is the first step on a journey… so thanks for posting.

Samuel Lopez De Victoria, Ph.D.
http://www.DrSam.tv

I thought I had handled all the trauma this caused me years ago, but recently I have not ever felt such anger as I feel lately. I have married and divorced one alcoholic husband, and am currently married to another alcoholic.

I am miserable at home, at work, and in every aspect of my life. I cannot forgive my mother for doing this to me, and I don’t know where to turn for any help. I feel like getting in my car and driving as far away as I can get from everyone and everything, and never coming back. Is there any hope when this had happened to someone and they are 42 and are still not over a childhood problem?

It may be a good idea to accept that free will may be limited in this regard, so as to set realistic expectations for therapeutic results that will not lead to compounded frustrations.

‘Know Thyself’

I am going through a very dark time in my life and i have been feeling doomed lately, i’m sorry to say.

I pretty much lost my adolescence and early adulthood to a very bizarre form of caregiving. It went on for so many years, i do not have any idea how to heal. I finally fled for seattle in 1995, at the age of 26, and it still took me another 3 years to get sort of a life going.

I had to push my father (he had MS) back and forth from work every day and up and down 3 flights of stairs, because my parents refused to move when he got ill. This went on from age 13 to way in the 20′s. My mother would go off on anger tantrums spontaneously and would up caring for her mood swings as well. There was no freedom in my upbringing, everything from her was “i don’t care, you’re going to do it anyway”.

They also emotionally abandoned me to a child molester from the church who was allowed to become a close part of our family.

I missed out on dating, dances, proms, you name it. I have no idea what it was to be a teenager and now i cannot even watch programs or movies with teenage situations without developing a serious migraine headache and other things.

There’s a lot more but it’s hard to put it all down here. I have a good adult life, but i can’t get past the horrific memories and my anger is incredibly strong. I am so burned out right now, it’s hard to do my business at times, and i am feeling very depressed these days. I’ve been to 8 counselors, 1 was a bit ok, 2 were incredibly bad and the others were just ineffective. The problem is that none of them seemed qualified for this particular disorder

There is no doubt that the mother has used my stepson, now 13, as a surrogate husband since my husband left. From the time he was 7, he has been making the decisions in her household. She is an alcoholic and suspected of having a personality disorder, according to the custody evaluator. The court ordered psychologist believes she is multiple personality.

My stepson is diagnosed learning disabled and possible having Aspergers. He is emotionally flat the better part of the time and avoids social situations. We don’t know what to attribute to what … the court order psychologist seems to believe that we want to blame her for his issues. That’s far from the case, we are trying to find the best way to help him.

On the bright side, we managed to get sole legal custody of him and his time with mom is limited.

Is the court ordered psychologist potentially doing more damage than good by implying that this child will have to take care of his mother in the future?

My situation involved so many issues, being bounced around from the time I was born with different primary care givers, changing schools about 20 times from K-12th grades. My mother uprooted our lives when I was 6 to live in a Volkswagen van so that she could keep her musician boyfriend happy. We left my dad, grandparents, toys, basically everything behind. We were left in the van in the parking lot in downtown Denver Co. in the winter so she could hang out and work in the bar all night (from 8pm-2am). We lived in a RV for 2 years, one year I changed schools 5 times.

For many of those years I was supposed to be the protector of my little sister (2 years younger). We had to walk the dog at the park alone, there were often pedophiles and flashers at the park who would find us because we were the only unsupervised kids there.

When we did live in a house we were responsible for most of the cleaning – because as she put it “they made the money so we would have a place to live, we needed to do our fair share” but that included doing all dishes, laundry, cleaning bathrooms, yard work, cleaning up their messes in the common areas, etc. We regularly had to talk 5 blocks to the store and carry multiple bags of groceries home, especially when my mom ran out of Tab (her favorite diet drink). I remember the bags being so heavy and us sitting down and crying while we were on our home because we were frustrated that we were only halfway there.

When ever my mom was home she was usually “sick” (she is psychosomatic about EVERYTHING!!!!). She would stay in bed reading a book, we often had to wait on her hand and foot “could you get me a drink of water” “could you make/bring me some food”. I have very few memories of her being well.

I honestly was happier when they were working all night, because at least when they were gone I could relax and do what I wanted. Otherwise we would be punished/scolded for being to loud or just behaving like regular children.

We watched them have terrible fights (yelling, screaming, things being thrown, walls and windows breaking), and eventually were called upon to mediate, and how scary that was because we knew that one wrong word and we could accidentally make it worse.

My step dad started detaching from my mom and started using me as an emotional surrogate. He would often talk to me about his sex life with my mom, which totally mortified me. He would ask me to keep him company while he took a hot bath (no bubbles either to hide anything), he would give me full body sensual massages (which I hated!) but to protest only caused problems because he would get all sulky and sullen. To keep the peace I had to hug him and let him be affectionate. Now I know (from my classes) that there was sexual abuse going on, it is true that my step-dad didn’t actually molest me or have sex with me, but he admitted to my mother while I was a teen that one of his sexual fantasies was that he could have a 3-way with me, my mom and himself. I always hated his neediness, how he had to hug me by pressing his whole body against me (particularly his groin area).

Those are just a few things that happened.

The thing that bothers me most now is the way all of those things happened and none of our other family members knew about that, it was our family “secret”. My mom reinvents the past and puts a positive spin on everything by at times completely forgetting certain details (“I was just doing my best, sorry my best wasnt good enough for you”). The rest of her family is sure good about pointing out how something is wrong with me, and at the same time they defend my mom, because anything angry I say about her they protest “that’s my sister you are talking about” – ya! and that’s my MOTHER I am talking about!

Right now I only have contact with my mom and my sister. I refuse to be a part of a family system that scapegoats or judges me. Yes it is true that I have problems, but that they refuse to acknowledge my moms part in that really pisses me off.

I have been counseling many times and many years since I was 18 years old. I often paid for my counseling expenses without the aid of insurance, paying for it all out of pocket. I have come so far and have overcome so much. They know none of that, one uncle in particular thinks he knows more about me than I know about myself and because he’s a doctor thinks he can “diagnose” me.

I don’t even know why I am writing all of this. Perhaps is it just to get it out, get some of it on the record. My family (actually on both mothers and fathers side) often wonders what is wrong with me, and I just can’t take that anymore. I don’t want anything to do with any of them. I’ve been diagnosed with P.T.S.D., attachment disorder, A.D.D., depression and more I’m sure, I can’t even remember it all. I’m just mad that the family judgments come to me when in fact they know very very little about what really happened. It hurts me, and honestly I don’t feel like allowing them to hurt me anymore.