Dear Rosie:

When I first read your short original post, it crossed my mind that someone is pretending to be me, telling my story. My mother (who is older than yours) also suffers from arthritis (Rheumatoid arthritis) since she was young, in her thirties, I think, and like yours, “she has to walk up stairs to get to her second floor apartment“. Like your mother, my mother had limited options in regard to work, one of which was working in a factory. She refused that option and chose house/ office cleaning instead.

Like you, I felt “weighed down by the problems” of my mother. She told me about her problems and suffering a whole lot and I was heavily weighed down, so much so that I was- as a teenager- exhausted much of the time, lying down a lot, resting from.. doing nothing but carrying the weight of her complaints and her suffering.

“The family that I am from is kind of chaotic“- living with my mother (my father was out of the apartment by the time I was 6, so it was my mother, myself and a much younger sister) was CHAOTIC. Oh, how I wished and longed for calm and quiet.. it feels like it’d be a dream come true, if I could (go back in time ) and have Calm instead of Chaos.

“In the past my ex thought that I would be better off if I separated myself from my family, but that is something that I am not willing to do. I love my family and I want the best for them“-I wanted to separate from my mother since I was a teenager, to be free from the heavy weight that robbed me of LIVING life. I felt too guilty, of course, Guilty with a capital G.

My love for my mother and Guilt kept me imprisoned in a state of .. not really living.

“I wish that I was successful enough to get her a house“- this was exactly my dream: to be able to buy her a house so that she no longer lived in the apartment (on the 2nd floor) which she complained about, and I tried, as an adult, to make this dream come true.

“My younger sister wants to move to Florida and has had this dream for the past three years…  I also wish I could help her get to Florida… and I’m worried that if I do help her she will start to talk to her ex again“- her ex lives in Florida?

“A part of me wants to help my mom get a car, but a part of me doesn’t want to because I feel like she needs to take care of her own problems. My younger sister…  I feel like she also needs to solve her own problems“- is there a history of your mother and your younger sister expressing to you that they expect you to solve their problems, or is it something that they didn’t express, but you feel to be your role in the family (their problems solver)?

In my case, all those years that I thought that my mother expected me to solve her problems,  I was mistaken. She didn’t value me enough to perceive me as a problem solver. I only imagined that she did.

anita

Dear Rosie:

I m looking forward to reply to you first thing Thurs morning, in about 17 hours from now.

anita

Dear Rosie:

I had too much to say on the topic you brought up that I might have not said the potentially helpful things, so I will try to do it this early Saturday morning:

“I feel weighed down by the problems of others. I am someone who cares a lot about family… I love my family and I want the best for them. My mother is in her 60s she suffers from arthritis. Her bones are weak and she has to walk up stairs to get to her second floor apartment every day. She works at a factory and doesn’t make much money… I worry about her (younger sister) because the last relationship she was in was abusive and sometimes I think maybe she’ll go back…”-

– I am not at all religious, but there is a prayer that I find very helpful, it’s called The Serenity Prayer, it says: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference“.

Here is how I see this prayer relevant to you: there is absolutely nothing you can do- and nothing you (or anyone) can ever do- to cure your mother’s arthritis, to strengthen her bones, or to make her be younger than her age. So these things you have to accept, to make peace with in your mind and heart, simply because there is nothing you can do to change them. If you make peace with these items, they’ll stop weighing you down.

You can’t do go back in time and change your mother’s childhood and younger adulthood so to see to it that she gets an education or training that will make it possible for her to have a better paying and easier job than factory work, and that she’d be retired by now. You were not born yet when she was a child and a younger adult. So, you have to accept and make peace with her working in a factory. Make peace with it, and it will stop weighing you down.

When I say make peace with it, I mean, however sad you feel that she has arthritis etc., there is nothing positive about you suffering over things you cannot change: it is of no help to her- or anyone- that you suffer over things you cannot change.

So, be Sad about these things, but do not Suffer.

There is very little, if anything, that you can do to prevent your younger sister from resuming her abusive relationship. Tell her what you think, offer her specific things that you are able and willing to do to help her, and then let it go: accept that there is nothing else that you can do and come to peace with it. With acceptance and peace, it will stop weighing you down.

There is a term in modern psychotherapy called Radical Acceptance. It means to really, totally accept.. to accept all the way.

Instead of wasting your energy aka suffering over things you cannot change, direct your saved energy toward things that you can change. If I was you, I’d make a concrete list of the things that I can and should change at this time in your life for the benefit of all. If you would like to, you are welcome to make the list here or otherwise post again with your thoughts and feelings. I would like to communicate with you further and I wish you well!

anita

Dear Rosie: How are you? I would like to read more from you. Perhaps you would like to reply to Natalia who posted in your thread today?

* Dear Natalia:

I am glad you posted for the first time and I hope that you post again.

“Since a very young age I’ve felt like I had to look after my younger brother and my parents instead of them looking after us children“-

– This is role reversal/ parentification: the child taking on or given the role of a parent. There is an article in psychology today. com, called: “The Pain of Parent-Child Role Reversals: 4 Core Themes Many things can go wrong when children are ‘parentified’ and grow up too fast” that may interest you. I want to summarize and paraphrase the article, with some quotes, and in parentheses comment on how it applies to me, and how it may apply to you:

When a child finds herself- or himself- in the position of giving the parent practical and/ or emotional support that is inappropriate to the child’s age, it is called parentification.

Practical parentification involves, for example, taking care of younger siblings, cooking and cleaning, and Emotional parentification involves the parent using the child as a confidante, friend or even a spouse-type figure, seeking the child’s emotional support.

In a study of 19 women who experienced this role reversal as girls, both practically and emotionally, the analyses of the results identified the following reasons for parentification: the parent has been physically or mentally impaired, and/ or lonely and lacking social support.

All 19 women reported that they were pulled into their parents’ relationships as mediators, hearing one parent’s complaints about the other parent, as a confidante, and the majority of the women said that they were manipulated by one or both parents, via being shamed and made to feel guilty (very much applies to me).

A participant shared about her mother: “She was a terribly fragile, disappearing parent. Like, no intimacy, no emotional world. My mother went out of her room at seven in the evening, made us an omelet and salad, and went back to her room“- (I wonder if this partly applies to your mother about whom you wrote that she “wasn’t really ‘present’“?)

One participant remarked: “I was always very attentive to my mother, she could collapse, fall apart, get into bouts of hysteria with crying and shouting, anger, and sadness. I had to make sure she was stable.“- (it is as if I said these words about my mother).

One of the themes that the study uncovered is that of  “Merging and enmeshment” with the parent, not having a separate identity, or a separate emotional existence from the parent. “One woman in the study recounted: ‘It’s simple, the inner experience was not mine. I did not exist from age zero, totally, there was nothing.’”- (this very much applies to me!)

Another related theme: “Nothingness and nullification…  On the more extreme end, the women expressed feeling…  that they were nothing more than an object, and their ‘self’ had been obliterated“.

Another theme: “Endless intrusion and aggression: Given the lack of boundaries and seizing of psychological control, participants felt that their world was an aggressive one in which their parents ‘plundered and swallowed’ them. They described the parentified relationship as intrusive, attacking, and devastatingly painful“- (very true to me. I felt that my life was a stolen life, stolen by my mother, and indeed my decades-long relationship with my mother was intrusive, attacking and devastatingly painful, for me).

All 19 women growing up parentified lacked the feeling of safety: “all of the women lived in survival mode. They were hypervigilant about their own safety and that of their family. A participant recalled: ‘It’s an experience of survival. All the time, you’re surviving, you are alert. All the time. All the time. You can never rest for one moment because you don’t know what will happen the next moment.’“- (again, this very much applies to me).

Another theme: “Extreme emotional swings; a dialectical movement between poles of the self... As one participant put things: ‘I felt brilliant and mature and interesting and at the same time worthless.’” (I relate).

(Do you relate to the above?)

Back to your post: “I remember saving every penny in my piggy bank and getting a babysitting job at 12 just to help out and my dad was an alcoholic and my mom was busy studying for her pharmacist exam and wasn’t really ‘present’“- reads like practical parentification. but of course, emotions are involved, so no doubt there’s a significant element of emotional parentification.

“Fast forward about 30 years and my parents are now long divorced , my dad lives on bare minimum, has numerous health issues and can barely afford rent in his tiny apartment…  He’s been renting the same place over 30 years now and it’s going downhill , the landlord is a slumlord who doesn’t turn on heat in winter and there are bugs in the building . It makes me so sad that my dad is so stubborn and wants to live that way… I wish he would just wake up one day and realize it makes no sense what he’s doing. He could live so much better“-

– this makes me think of the reason for parentification identified by the article, which is a parent’s physical and/ or mental impairment. I wonder if your father displayed mental/ emotional impairments since you were a child, and if he lacked social support, including support by his wife, when you were growing up..?

You mentioned that your mother was not “present“. I wonder if your father was present for you in comparison to your mother, and if you were therefore very present for him, very focused on his well-being early on.. and still?

I don’t know if you will answer my questions. I know that this is a painful topic, but maybe talking about it here will make it less painful…?

anita

Ps. I also feel hyper vigilant and worried all the time , like I’m just trying to survive and any comforts that I enjoy now could be taken away from me at any moment if I don’t do the right things .

Dear Natalia:

You are welcome. “I’ve actually disassociated or blocked out a lot of the memories from my childhood“- we have a lot in common: I too dissociated as a child, a whole lot, I have very few memories, extremely few.

“I’ve also felt like I don’t matter a lot, like when my parents used to fight ( usually caused by my dad’s drinking and coming home late ), I used to fantasize about running away from home or meeting a rich prince to sweep me off my feet“- more in common: my parents fought too, late at night when my father came home late. I too fantasized, I day dreamed a whole lot about being taken away by a prince to a wonderful life elsewhere. I too wanted to run away.

“We grew up in an Eastern European country during communism“- my father grew up in an Eastern European country and immigrated to the country I was born in when he was about 20.

“My mom who went through some kind of personal hell with the whole immigration process.. She talked about being in a refugee camp and not having enough food and seeing people get murdered“- my mother’s family immigrated to the country I was born in when she was about 10, and she lived in a refuge camp, in a tent, with not enough food and with violence. She told me the stories about her personal hell there.

“My mom disappeared for two years while I was growing up , so that’s how I ended up taking care of my brother and I guess my dad in a way. We grew up in an Eastern European country during communism and I later learned my mom defected. For 2 years I had almost no contact with her and believed she abandoned everything and everyone“- We don’t have this in common (good thing: we are not the same person after all.. lol). I don’t mean to minimize your experience with my lol, it’s just that we do have a lot in common.

My mother never left me but she sure threatened to leave me, and repeatedly. Often when she told me about her personal hell growing up in the refuge camp and later in an orphanage and later, getting married to a man (my father) who cheated on her.. and later, giving birth to me, a disappointment to her.. often she’d threaten to either leave or kill herself. I remember being very anxious about her dying at any time. I also remember- later on- wanting her to go away.

“Then we were reunited in Canada… she seemed detached and indifferent about me… I felt really bad for her that she had to make such ‘sacrifices’ just to bring us to Canada. And so I always feel like I’m not enough… I always just thought I was a bad apple of the family and that’s why she’s so distant and sad all the time or else bursting out with anger at me over everything. Like walking on eggshells“- I too felt very badly for my mother’s, and I felt that I didn’t deserve the sacrifices she did for me, such as working hard cleaning people’s homes so to buy me new clothes and toys and such (she told me those were sacrifices for me). I too felt that I was a BAD daughter/ bad person. I felt that I deserved her frequents bursts of anger at me. And I too walked on eggshells.

“In all honesty I feel like I’m still 10 years old and trying to make sense of everything“- I feel like I am about 10, but finally, making sense of things.

“I was never close to my dad, growing up he scared me, he was an abusive drunk . Now I just feel sorry for him and feel the need to help him somehow“- I was never close to my father either. They got divorced when I was about 6. I only have one memory of him living with my mother and me and that memory is of a fight they had. He did visit me after the divorce though.

But then, although I felt a whole lot of empathy for my mother, feeling so painfully sorry for her, I was never close with her either. I don’t have a single memory of closeness with her. Closeness would have required empathy by her for me.. If she had 50% or even 25% of the empathy I had for her, it’d would have been a lot!

About your father, in your first post you shared how he’s been living in the same tiny apartment for 30 years, one with bugs and rats in the building, and no heat in winter, and that you asked him to move and live with you in the big house you share with your husband, but he refused. You wrote: “it makes me so sad that my dad is so stubborn and wants to live that way. I’m in another province but still I would pay for his plane tickets to at least come visit and stay in a nice clean house for a while… I wish he would just wake up one day and realize it makes no sense what he’s doing. He could live so much better“-

– I am guessing that he doesn’t want to visit or live with you and your husband in a big, clean house because he doesn’t want to be watched/  seen and negatively judged by you, or your husband, or by anyone visiting your house. I am guessing that him imagining being seen drinking or looking unkept makes him feel more uncomfortable than bugs, rats and no heat. In his tiny apartment he feels comfortable to just be, is what I figure, so in his mind, living all alone in his tiny apartment is… so much better than living elsewhere. Do you think that it’s true for him?

“Ps. I also feel hyper vigilant and worried all the time , like I’m just trying to survive and any comforts that I enjoy now could be taken away from me at any moment if I don’t do the right things“- we keep re-experiencing our emotional experience of childhood. Our brains get in the habit of feeling the same no matter changed circumstances and the passing of years and decades. But there is a way to change those habits of the brain, only it’s far from being easy or fast. Did you ever attend psychotherapy.. listen to guided meditations.. Are you familiar with Mindfulness?

anita

Dear Natalia:

“Most of my friends’ parents are still married, and my friends still live with their parents even past their 30s, I moved out as soon as I could , I think I was 18 when I did. I couldn’t wait to live away from my parents“-

– no wonder you couldn’t wait to live away from always feeling that you are not enough (“I always feel like I’m not enough“), away from always feeling that you are a bad person (“I always just thought I was a bad apple of the family“), away from long, long stretches of distance and sadness (“she’s so distant and sad all the time“), and away from bursts of anger directed t you;  away from walking on eggshells (“or else bursting out with anger at me over everything. Like walking on eggshells“).

This has been my experience living with my mother. No wonder I couldn’t wait to live away from her.

“They told me I have PTSD and to keep taking my meds“-

– I found out about 10 years ago that there is a term and a diagnosis that applies to me, and that is Complex Post Traumatic Disorder (CPTSD). Unlike PTSD that is about a single-event trauma, such as a soldier experiencing on the battlefield, or a woman experiencing when raped, CPTSD happens “in response to complex trauma, i.e., commonly prolonged or repetitive exposure to a series of traumatic events, within which individuals perceive little or no chance to escape” (Wikipedia/ CPTSD), which is what you and I experienced as children at home: being repeatedly exposed to bursts of anger, made to feel like we are bad people, and so on, for the duration of years and years, and as children, we wanted to escape the home but.. had no chance to escape, being that we were only children.

The ICD-11 (the International Classification of Diseases) published by the WHO, lists CPTSD as a category of PTSD.

There are books and workbooks on the topic of CPTSD. I read only one, it’s called: Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving, A Guide and Map for Recovering from Childhood Trauma, by Peter Walker. There might be better books out there.<sup id=”cite_ref-ICD11_3-0″ class=”reference”></sup>

Back to your recent post: “I just wish that some day I could feel ‘normal’ again or worthy of something. I wish I could feel hopeful and safe and to be able to relax at night“- this is the emotional experience of a CPTSD survivor such as you and I. And there is a way to feel better, to heal and recover as much as it is possible for any one of us.

“What do you do when all you feel is depression, especially around Christmas time?“- how about buying yourself a Christmas gift: one of the books and workbooks on healing and recovering from CPTSD…?

And I would very much like to continue to communicate with you throughout the Christmas season (and beyond). It may help both of us long-term.

anita