Please Help!! Conflicting Feelings About Parents

***VERY LONG***I APOLOGIZE***

My parents are in town for a visit, and I'm having an awful time trying to cope with the way different parts of me view my childhood and relationship with my mom and dad! My mind keeps going back and forth from one viewpoint to the other. Each viewpoint feels right at the time that part of me is active. No matter which side I take, the others feel like they are being invalidated and told that their experiences and memory of what happened in the past are wrong!

I've had a lot of very upsetting, traumatizing situations that have arisen in my family (mostly as a child, but sometimes also as an adult). I've been in therapy a long time trying to understand it, accept it, and cope with it. But along with the parts of me that hold intense feelings of rejection, sadness, shame, and anger, I have other parts of me that repeatedly tell me what happened wasn't that bad...that I've just made a big deal out of it. This has made it super hard to accept that the things that happened to me weren't my fault and/or aren't just my tendency to overreact and takes things too personally.

Whenever my parents come into town and I see them, a part of me takes over that thinks my mom and dad haven't mistreated me. I feel very guilty for thinking so, and for feeling so much pain and anger toward them (even though I never show it and always treat them well when we're together). I start believing that the parts who remember bad treatment and who feel so much deep pain must be remembering things wrong. I start doubting and discounting their pain and memories. If the visit with my parents goes well, the conflicting feelings are even worse! One part says, "How can you be so unkind toward your mom and dad? Look! They aren't doing anything to hurt you!"

After spending the day with my parents, I go to bed feeling like the day went well. I feel like we have a pretty good relationship, and I think I feel fine. But that night, I usually have horrible nightmares...the repetitive kind I get that center on being lost, separated from, or abandoned by my family. I dream that I can't remember how to get home, can't find the way, can't reach them because my cell phone doesn't work, or I dream I am in danger or I dream that I have dissociated and wake up somewhere not knowing what I've done, but just knowing that I did something terrible). After a night of these kind of dreams, I wake up exhausted and depressed. And I can kind of feel those other parts of me that hold the pain, the ones that are hurt, the ones that I'm trying to heal in therapy -- and it feels like they are crying because nobody believes them. At that point, I realize that the pain is real and that what happened had to have been very traumatic.

But the minute I go see my parents again, I switch back to thinking everything is good and fine and always has been. I think there must be something really wrong with me, and wrong with my mind, for thinking otherwise.

I feel like I am being torn apart and don't know who or what to believe. I know people are made up of both good and bad traits. But somehow, I need to see them one way or the other. Otherwise, somebody feels like they are being called a liar and told they are wrong for thinking/feeling the way they do. If I validate the parts that feel hurt, betrayed, and rejected, then I feel like a hypocrite going up to see my parents and acting like we're close and things are fine. If I validate the parts that think my parents are great and I am the wrong one, then I can't allow those hurt parts of me to voice their feelings and pain in therapy because it feels mean and wrong.

I don't know how to deal with this! I feel like this situation is tearing me apart. Talking things over with my parents about the past isn't an option. The few times I've tried to talk to them about what I experienced as a child, they have minimized or discounted what I've said or, at times, turned the tables back on me. (For example, once I reminded my mom about how hard it was for me as a little girl when she took business trips. She replied, "When I was home, you never seemed interested in talking to me or spending time with me anyway, so I didn't think it would make any difference.")

One other time, my mom said she can't remember anything about my childhood that would have caused me to have problems today, other than leaving me with babysitters alot. She told me her childhood was more unusual than mine. My sister also thinks my mom is great. She is their favorite and has a much closer relationship with them than I do. She would never back up my feelings or memories from childhood if it made my parents look bad or wrong at all.

Please help!!

Peaches

We're wired for attachment to our parents in order to survive. Your disorganised attachment and conflicting parts is common among adult's abused as children.

Often we latch onto the few "less bad" times however tiny the difference or "random kindnesses" they displayed because it gave us hope. Some proof of caring. It was random and therefore intermittent reinforcement which is addictive to our brains.

It's not unusual to experience this conflict when struggling with PTSD. Your adult mind can handle a lot more than the childhood part of you could too (this includes interacting with your parents better too). Have you worked on your childhood challenges in therapy?

Quietmind,

Thanks for reassuring me that what happens in my head isn't crazy but it common for people who had bad experiences as a child in my family. It's hard to trust my mind when I see things from so many different angles, depending on what part of me is presently active.

It makes sense what you said...that we latch onto any good times or small acts of kindness because it gives us hope (or supposed "proof") that we are loved.

I guess it's easier to tell myself that I just don't see my parents accurately, that they are and have been very good parents, and that my memories are distorted and wrong than to believe that my parents either didn't value me enough to give me the time, love, protection, nurturing, and help to become a healthy, confident adult or they couldn't provide it.

Openeyes,

Thanks for the reassurance. Yes, I've been working on these childhood challenges in therapy. It has been very slow going, though, because I have so much guilt and shame. I also have a part of myself that is strongly entrenched in seeing my mom as perfect and myself as defective.

It's hard to turn that around, especially when my mom has so many talents and receives so much admiration and so many compliments for her successes, while my talents, contributions, and good qualities have always gone unnoticed, overlooked, or minimized...not just in my family, but pretty much everywhere.

When you feel neglected, ignored, or minimized so many different times in different places by different people throughout your life, it becomes almost impossible NOT to believe that I'm the one who is at fault, I must be boring, unimportant, or have no redeeming qualities that would make anybody else have any interest in knowing, befriending, or loving me.etc.

I hear you. Truly. I spent three years in therapy struggling with the same dilemma.

Abuse was so normal. I had no concept of healthy parenting behaviours. Until I dug deep into psychological research and modern parenting approaches.

Until I realised I'd call it abuse for any other child but my own younger selves. We often have more compassion for others than ourselves.

Believe your hurting parts. They will keep crying because they're hurting.

Your parents can BOTH have good parts and bad parts. As a whole, as a net result, they let you down, traumatised you, abused you, neglected you. That's why those parts are in so much pain. The other parts desperately idealize your parents and dismiss the pain because perhaps they're afraid accepting the truth will bring profound pain.

No abuser is cruel 100%, 24/7 and we cling on to those random "mercies".

I still struggle with accepting my parents abused me. Immensely. I go back and forth still, but lesser and lesser.

Your heart knows on a deep level that you weren't loved, cherished, nurtured, guided, protected.

But that is an agonizing truth one struggles to accept. The abused child blames themselves to survive. To preserve attachment to traumatising parents. Anything else meant annihilationm

But you're not a helpless child now, even if you were beaten until your mid twenties like me or faced a lot worse than me.

If your parents were "good enough" parents, you wouldn't have these hurting parts afraid of them, saying they're traumatised by the parents. You wouldn't feel you're silencing their pain.

If they were truly good enough parents, you would not need to idealize them and push aside the other feelings.

I think the term "abused" can be confusing in itself tbh. Truth is a lot of parents don't "intentionally" abuse and neglect their children. A talented successful parent can unknowingly neglect their own child, leave their own child feeling that if they are not as talented like their parent then they are unworthy. Actually, a lot of very famous stars/celebrities ended up having some very confused challenged children who lived in the shadows only of their parent's great successes and achievements and adoration's.

I think it's easier for me now since my parents are dead. I don't have to keep proving myself to my dad (and failing). I don't have to take my mother's side on their arguments (they fought until my mother was terminally ill) just so I can get a crumb of attention.

I have all these crying parts and only my last therapist understood. That's why he suggested reparenting--and that's what we did. I still have them but they're not as loud because they're being loved by me.

What stands out to me in your story is that your parents opinions and needs seem to overshadow your own. I’ve had a similar experience and did the same as you, questioned myself constantly. What helped me the most was when I finally respected my own feelings and broke away from the fear, guilt and shame. After that I was able to start sorting through issues without the confusion of all those conflicting emotions.

Your feelings are completely natural Peaches100.

I felt the same way when there was still contact with my parents. My mother has now passed away and I have cut contact with my father.

I don't think either one set out to abuse me, most likely the same with a lot of parents. I came to the conclusion after reading John Bradshaws work, that they were both still children themselves when they had me. Ok they were in the adult years from their birth age but mentally they were not properly emotionally parented themselves. They did not recognise who they were and the damage they were doing.

My father was a controlling baby man and my mother never felt loved by her parents (they were loving, its just she was one of three and both her sisters were a favourite to each parent, leaving my mum feeling no special connection and she naturally acted up for attention. Then got a naughty child reputation, leaving her with CPTSD which wasn't recognised then.) had her own need to be loved.

My father was violent when stressed and so my mother worked hard to keep him as calm as she could.

I cried a lot as a baby, she complained a lot when I was a child and adult always reminding me how awful I was. I have been diagnosed with low stomach acid and it is likely that as a baby I was in pain. She force fed me, leaving me with a strong gag reflex. Too her, I was the problem.

My brother was born almost three years later and she lavished him with love and he was always her favourite child. He would say she was a great mum and to him she was.

Sure she was not hateful to me all the time but I don't remember the good times because they are drowned out by painful memories.

All the time I had contact it was hard as my relationship felt Jekyll and Hyde. Now I have space, I can see them clearly as a mixture of good and bad parents. I accept that they did harm even if they did not intend too. I also attempted to talk to them about small issues but they were not receptive. the pain is still there but I don't have to listen to my mother complaining about me anymore and my father has no access to control and bully me. That said he does try to use third party family members. I have to a degree isolated myself from them, always careful what I say to them. I know it sounds horrible but he is dead to me now and will feel no sorrow when he dies. I have already grieved his loss.

You have a right to be you and love and respected. If they don't offer unconditional compassionate love, it is them at fault, you are not to blame at all.