Dealing with and healing from difficult parents

Hi I’m a new member here and I’m writing because I have a lot of anger and resentment towards my parents. I’ve just turned 23 and am a recent college graduate. After leaving for college I did a lot of soul searching into where my issues with myself such as depression and low self-esteem stemmed from and had to confront a lot of unhappy memories from my childhood. With my father it was easy because he was fairly classically abusive. He had an explosive temper, I was backhanded, punched, choked, thrown across the room, and told on a regular basis how much of a stupid, ungrateful, worthless, *itch I was. I’m still working through my issues with my father but on the whole I’m having an easier time.

My mother is a whole different story because I've realized that as a child I idolized my mother and demonized my father as a coping mechanism. I looked to her to protect me from my father and I think I saw her as some kind of savior. But now that I'm older and am in the process of applying to grad school and trying to become financially independent and move into my own apartment I'm living at home again. This has forced me back into a situation that was having a hugely negative impact on my mental health. I started overeating again, sleeping too much and isolating myself. I realized that I still hadn't worked through my issues and am now in the process of trying to heal and move on while avoiding the negativity in my house.

I say this because looking back over the years I've realized my mother is not the saint that she likes to portray herself as and that she has had just as much of a negative impact on my life as my father.Having talked to my next oldest sister we've realized that we've both been dealing with a lot of the same things from my mother but that we never talked about it. My mother appears to be narcissistic in the fact that she views her children primarily as extensions of herself and not as separate individuals with their own valid way of going about accomplishing things and with their own separate viewpoints on life. She can become extremely unpleasant, cruel and manipulative when we choose to deviate from what she wants and views as the correct way of going about things. She regularly mocks my siblings and I in our interests and aptitudes especially when they differ from her own. The only child that she has any semblance of a functioning/healthy relationship with is the three year old and even that one is starting to become strained and volatile with my mother making nasty sarcastic comments, screaming at her, and telling her that she doesn't like her.

Furthermore, my mother doesn’t hesitate to say extremely cruel things if she feels at all threatened or challenged. She justifies these statements after the fact by saying that they are deserved and truthful, by qualifying them to the situation, or by claiming that she didn’t actually say what the listener thinks they heard. The things she says are needlessly cruel, intended to cause harm, and are things that most people would never dream as acceptable to say to anybody else let alone their children. Most of my friends are incredulous when I describe the interactions that I had with my mother as a child and accepted as normal. The other day she told me that I was a loser despite having a double bachelors degree from one of the top schools in the country, currently applying for a duel graduate degree, working a minimum wage job to pay off student loans and helping to take care of my younger siblings. When I confronted her about what she had said she first told me that she had never called me a loser and then, when I refused to let her out of it she told me that I had misunderstood and that she meant I was only being a loser in that specific situation.

My mother’s public persona and private persona are completely different. To her friends she is ingratiating, cheerful, and helpful. Yet in the house she routinely makes disparaging remarks about them, their families, where they live, and how they choose to spend their time. If my mother is given the option she chooses to look good to the outside world rather than do right by or spend time with her own children. If a friend calls she will always choose to talk to her friend even if one of her children needs help and when my father almost broke my sister’s finger she told my sister to lie about how it had happened at the hospital rather then have anybody know about what was going on in the house.

My mother is the master of instilling guilt into her children and playing the martyred saint who sacrifices all. As a child my mother routinely pointed out to me that she took the fall for me from my father in situations that I supposedly instigated and was at fault for despite being 7 and 8 years old at the time. As a child my mother accused me of driving a wedge between her and my father when, as a young child I couldn’t possibly be held responsible for she and my father’s issues. Issues, which obviously have stemmed from even before my birth. (My father walked out on my mother when she found out she was pregnant with me and didn't reappear until I was four and he had completed his schooling) As a teenager my mother routinely bemoaned the fact that it was due to her children that she hadn’t lived the life she wanted and that her children forced her to give up all the things she enjoyed doing and to sacrifice who she truly is as a person. My mother accuses my siblings and I of never helping her with anything despite the fact that when we do help we are often accused of not having done something right or up to her standards. cannot ever remember receiving unconditional approval or support for any of my achievements. If I have done something my mother is likely to tell me what I have done wrong rather than offer praise for anything I have done right. She often insinuates to my siblings and I that we owe her for all that she does despite it being her choice to take on the responsibility of having children and doing nothing more than what any parent is expected to.

Finally, her moods are predictable but easily changeable and abnormal to the situation. If my mother has been completely horrible and screamed all kinds of abuse at either my siblings or I, literally minutes later she will change tactics and act as though nothing is wrong and that the fight never happened. If you point out that you are still upset about what has been said and don’t want to talk with her my mother will grow angry and impatient and act as though you are the abnormal one for not moving on. As an example, the other day my mother verbally attacked me literally minutes after I had gotten out of bed to run an errand for her. She said that I had deliberately chosen to sleep in and run late despite the fact that the night before she had given me a different time to complete the errand than the one she was claiming she had given me that morning. When I told her that she was mistaken in the time she had given me she verbally attacked me again. She told me that I was wrong and that all I ever do is accuse her of making mistakes. I disagreed albeit more angrily than I should have and went back to what I was doing. Minutes later she started acting completely friendly, trying to hold a conversation like the fight had never happened. When I explained to her that I didn’t really want to talk to her at the moment because I was still angry she lashed out at me again, accusing me of holding grudges and not being able to move on. The reverse is also true. My mother can be acting nice at one minute and switch to screaming insults and losing her temper the next. After particularly nasty losses of temper my mother will go to the other extreme and act extremely nice, peppy, upbeat and patient. She will go out of her way to be positive in her interactions. However this is false because as soon as something doesn’t go her way she will return to screaming again.

I haven't figured out if my mother suffers from some kind of personality disorder. But I guess I'm really just wondering for people out their in situations like this how do you cope with these negative, toxic people? I'm doing my best to move on and to understand why my parents are the way they are. I'm trying to stop engaging with the negative behaviors and to not respond when my parents try to instigate but it's really difficult. How have other people handled it and how do you deal with the resentment, anger, and deep sense of betrayal? I'm beginning to feel better about myself, but I'm also feeling really lost and overwhelmed right now. Thanks in advance for any advice =)

Wow. You described my mom completely. I never had to deal with an abusive father because he left before I was born but my brother and sister did. I had a really difficult time because she always triggered my depression for things that were really small or insignificant.

You can't change her or help her. She needs to do that herself. The best thing that worked for me was to let go. I was always so worried about her opinion. Tried so hard to please her but it was never enough. She knew all my weak points and knew exactly how to hurt me. So I stopped caring about her negativity. Stopped doubting myself when she started screaming about insignificant things. I started saying things in my head like "I can still get better" when ever she tried to ridicule me. Not only did it block her negativity but it also encouraged me more.

I'm sure you're a really special person in your own unique way. Always trust that you're making the right decision. Even if something goes wrong in your life that means you're the one that's in control of it.