Emotional problems in people whose parents divorced early

Hi, I have posted here before in another forum. I have never visited a psycologist or a social worker or anything in my adult life, I have just been investigating my own life, especially this year. I was not sure if I was an avoidant, or if I was depressed, or if I had social anxiety. Perhaps I have all 3 problems, but I just read something last night that seemed to add up alot of stuff for me.

I am a 23 year old white "only child" born to two parents who had a rocky relationship, and who seperated when I was only 6 months old. After their seperation, there was a constant fight for custody, up until I was a sophmore in high school, at 15 years of age. I read something about emotional problems with future relationships being caused by a lack of proper bonding with the primary caregiver for the first 6 years of the child's development. I fit into that PERFECTLY.

I love both of my parents. Both of my parents were good people, but they were too strong willed to be together, their own relatonship between eachother was bound to fail, even though they dated for 3 years before getting pregnant and then getting married quickly due to the pregnancy.

I remember always being pulled away from my mother, always feeling alone and sad, for weekend visitation with my father, or for half-summer visitation with my father. These were extremely traumatic to me as a young child, and it was always that way since I was 6 months old up until I was about 15 years old. Of course, it was not traumatic as time went by....but when I was really young, I can guarantee you that it was extremely traumatic to me.

There were times I would feel anger towards my father, and from what I read, that is perfectly normal because he was the one who was "thretening" my safety and security with my primary caregiver, which was my mother. It wasn't that I hated my father or anything, it was just normal because he was making my situation very uncomfortable. My father was hell-bent on telling the courts that my mother had severly brain-washed me. He is still convinced of the brain-washing to this day, and sometimes I will argue with him and try to get him to understand my point of view, but he still will not. I am 23 years old now and he still ceases to believe me and brushes it off as brain-washing. It is extremely frustrating, but you can imagine how frustrating it must have been when I was a small child who really couldn't express myself or stand up for myself as I can today.

I really never had any friends. Elementary school was hell, it seemed like 100% of the people there DID NOT LIKE ME AND DID NOT WANT TO BE MY FRIEND. I am not sure why. Perhaps they sensed something that I was projecting. I was made fun of on a daily basis, sometimes all day long. I had nobody to talk to or sit with at lunch. I can remember constantly switching tables to try and sit by people, only to have them immediately leave upon my arrival to go to another table because they did not want me to be around them.

And, as an only child, I was always lonely. My parents worked so most of the time I was with my grandparents. I had a healthy relationship with neighborhood kids while I lived with my mother, but really never developed any good friendships with them because I was always pulled away to go stay with my father on weekends and for half of the summer. It wasn't the weekends that were so bad, because that was only a few days, but for the summers, I was almost in complete isolation for the entire time. My father was an extreme hoarder and always had his home locked up tight and boarded up with no visitors because nobody could come around to see the mess - including the neighborhood friends from my mother's neighborhood.

I also remember one time, I was extremely young, maybe 5 years old. My mother had taken me to McDonalds with her friend, and there were some other children playing in the play-land from my school. I don't know why, but I began to hurt these children. Not severly, but I was pushing them and punching them and being really rude to them. I honestly have no clue why, perhaps I was taking my anger out about the current sitation. I knew that made my mom extremely sad and embarassed because she cried alot over that.

I seem to have severe problems with bonding to people and creating healthy relationships. It seems like all of the people I meet, I am not really interested in them at all, and sort of have to fake my interest to get through the every day "small talk" that you have to encounter. Nothing about my peers seems to interest me. I get along better with older people, but even then, it isn't anything that lasts more than 5-10 minutes. It seems extremely likely that my current relationship problems are rooted to my emotional scars that were created when I was a young child. I had some acquaintances in school but I seriously never hung out with anybody outside of school from like 4th grade up until sophmore year in high school. After high school, I had some really good friends, or so I thought. I had a really good connection with some people, but it never lasted more than a few years, it seemed like they moved on with their lives and left me behind. So perhaps I am not unable of forming good relationships, it is just my body trying to protect myself because I have had so many bad experiences in my past?

Now, my mother has passed away almost 2 months ago, and I have alot more time to think now. I am content with my current situation, I just feel like I have been cheated in a way, in life and what I SHOULD have experienced. Divorces cannot be avoided, but I am betting I would have been alot more emotionally stable if I had a sibling to share my troubles with. I honestly feel like my mother was one of the very few people who listened to me, understood me, and fought for me until the end, through all of the court sessions and custody fighting that went on for about 16 years. Some people actually stopped liking my mother because she stood up for me so much, she would have really done anything to stop me from being harmed, but now she is gone and will never come back.

But I can tell you, the court system is AWFUL. I talked to so many "mediators", "child representatives", "psycologists" and other people when I was young. I do not believe any of them classified me as having any illness, but rarely did any of them listen to me. The judge seemed to favor my mother, perhaps because the judge was female too and knew about these bonds between mothers and their children, but the men, who were supposed to be my representation in the court and my guardian at-litem or whatever you called it, seemed to side with my father and say that I was also brain-washed by my mother. NOBODY EVER LISTENED TO ME. But perhaps that is my fault, as I said before, I was so young, it was difficult to express myself and stand up for myself. If this sort of thing went on TODAY with me being the adult I am, I am certain I would have had better representation.......

Here are two good articles that I read last night that seemed to connect the dots for me:

http://www.peterhaiman.com/articles/pro ... orce.shtml

http://teacher.scholastic.com/professio ... onding.htm

So, all in all, I am not really asking anything. I am just venting. If anyone else wants to add anything, feel free, I would love to discuss this topic. I am just a bit overwhelmed right now because I seriously feel like I have found the cause of most of my problems in life, and it really is not my fault at all, I am just the unfortunate product that had to endure all of it, and it shaped me negatively throughout my early childhood development and through my teen years.

Is this in the wrong forum? I posted it here because it had to do with the relationship and divorce between my mother and father, but also involves me and my relationships with my peers and other people. I am seeing alot of views but no comments.....

I would like to discuss this with others, if you have been in a similar situation OR NOT....I'd like to hear your thoughts and opinions.

Have I really found the root cause of my social problems in life?

I was thinking for awhile, that maybe I would come out of my shell in life and be like other people. But as time goes on, I am still the same person I always was. I love to be alone and I love to be on my own schedule, so being alone doesn't really bother me too much. But at the same time, I think, who really knows that I exist besides my family? Who would come to my funeral if I were to die tomorrow? And then it leaves me feeling lonely. I am also pretty distant from my family, of course the rest of the people in my family, including my cousins, are at least 9 years older or younger than me....

And time seems to be going extremely fast. Last week I told a guy that I thought time was flying, he was in his 60s.....his total attitute seemed to change and he told me that he thought that was sad, and he said he didn't start to think time was flying until he was in his 30s and 40s.

But I thought, if time is flying, you're having fun in life? His reaction to what I said made me very confused, because I never received that reaction before when I told people that I thought time flew by like nothing.

I read your account of your past, and really felt for you. I'm sorry to hear that you've been through this. Very often people don't appreciate the true impact that divorce can have on a young child's life, and the far reaching consequences of this that can extend into adulthood.

You had a real need here to pour your heart out and vent, and that can be very therapeutic. Knowing that someone has heard you, and has made an attempt to understand can be therapeutic too.

For no fault of your own, you were shunted between both your parents. It seems that they had the best intentions for you, and that they loved you, and it's good that you felt loved by your mother. I'm sorry to hear that she died. Very often, when a parent dies, old feelings and issues can spring to the surface, and I'm wondering if you really had a chance to grieve for her? Reading through the Seven Stages of Grief after the end of a Relationship at the top of the forum here can help you to see where you're at in the grieving process. Ruminating and pondering over the past can be a very essential part of this process.

I'm sorry to hear that your father accused your mother of brainwashing you. From the sound of it, he had his own unresolved issues with her, and probably a great deal of anger, which clouded his judgement and awareness. He really shouldn't have brought you into it in this way, although from the sound of it, he was so engrossed in his own pain that he was unable to have any empathy for you. He probably didn't even realise the effect this would have on you. Anger and pain can cloud a person's insight and people who are still feeling these emotions very often can't feel empathy.

It sounds as if the enforced isolation and the feelings of stigma attached to your father's hoarding have impacted upon your abilities to socialise and relate to people, hence the social anxiety and the feeling that you may have avoidant tendencies. Socialisation is a skill that is LEARNT in childhood, and if a child doesn't have the opportunity to learn this skill it can affect a person in adulthood. Because it is a SKILL, it can be learnt in adult life, and there may be support groups locally that you could attend. Asking your doctor for information about this could help, and you could also Google for information. Learning assertiveness techniques could also help you to develop confidence.

Sadly, none of us can rewrite the past, but we can, with help, learn how to change our attitudes to the past. We can learn to create our futures by our actions in the present moment, and we can also learn how to adapt, integrate our experiences and even change our attitudes to them, thereby moving forward and finding healing.

The fact that you've shared your very touching story with so much congruence shows that you have the capacity for growth. What struck me was your lack of bitterness. So many people become crippled with bitterness about their pasts, and the bitterness eats away at them, corroding them, and keeping them stuck in negative thought patterns with no obvious way forward. It sounds as if you're in touch with your feelings and emotions, and that you have a great deal of insight into yourself. It shows that you love yourself enough to know that you deserve to find healing. Perhaps the good relationship you had with your mother gave you a head start. So many people, sadly, don't even have that.

You know, human beings have so much capacity for growth, so much resilience and a great ability to find healing. I was emotionally and verbally abused as a child, and the abuse veered on the physical. My father was a narcissist and my mother was histrionic. I've told my story many times on the board. As a result I developed HPD due to being ignored and not being heard. My mother was also in and out of hospital all my life, because of the bipolar she also had, and a debilitating physical illness which left her virtually unable to do the usual mother and daughter things. I won't go into too much detail as this is your thread, but I want you to know that in spite of the odds I found a way forward. I went for therapy and it changed my life, my outlook, and even my personality. I can't rewrite my past, but I can write the script for my present and my future. It's in my hands, and that is empowering.

By feeling the need to vent and to tell your story, you're demonstrating a need to be heard, to be validated, and to find a sense of healing, acceptance and resolution. Sharing your history with a therapist can really be beneficial to you, and offer you a hope that you never dreamed of, and give you an opportunity to truly express yourself and be the person who was hidden for so long.

I am posting here over a month late. Sorry for that. There were a few times when I had intended to post earlier but thought about how much I really had to write...and never wanted to do it. But now I figure I may as well just post since I have the day off today.

After the death of my mother, I really wouldn't say there were any old feelings brought back into the open. After she passed I felt like I contained less stress and was just able to think about things. I know every part of my life and never forgot anything.

There were some other weird things in my earlier childhood life. Whe I was young, my parents enrolled me in extracurricular activities. My father signed me up for soccer when I was really young and baseball when I was older. I played in these activities through all practices and games (like ages 5-8 years old probably) but I really never cared much. I had no interest in what I was doing. When I was younger my mother put me in some dance/ballet classes and piano lessons. She would also apparently highlight my hair because she thought it looked cute. I just sometimes felt like she wanted me to look so cute so perhaps I would make my dad angry because my dad had black hair at the time, or because I would look more like a girl possibly. My dad complained about the activities and the hair highlighting. He said the piano was an un-sociable activity and the dancing was not normal for a young boy.

I got bullied in school alot as I mentioned before, but it was not about my extracurricular activities. I was apparently good in piano but I really never thought so, I had difficulty remembering key positions and once again I just really didn't put much effort into it as well. The dancing/ballet is the same. In my whole life, I really never put full effort into anything I have done. I am a good worker and I do stuff right but I never care about anything too much.

My father was an introvert, but he denied it. My mother said she was 50/50 introvert and extrovert.

So I really don't know....

I feel as if my anxiety is building back up though. It seems I am alot happier when I socialize with my friends but alot of the times it appears people only want to be your friend when they need a favor from you. And I really shouldn't say appear, I know what happens and it happens frequently. But then some people who I feel are a bit inferior than me in terms of intelligence want to hang out on a legitimate basis and I don't want to......man, I'm a strange person I guess.

Perhaps I am thinking how bad I am about socializing but then that just compounds and I worry too much about it. Honestly I feel like socially, I am many years behind myself, especially with dating. I'm a fun friend but women just seem like they want to take it so quick with dreams of big houses and children and marriage, I just can't deal with it. I honestly have no interest to hear about any of those things or even discuss them. I don't want to get married or have children or get married anything soon, that's for sure. People are genuinely interested in their jobs or careers, but once again, I just don't care too much. Work really does bore me, even though I do a good job, I hate work! Most people appear to be so interested in what they do. Occasionally you'll find someone who is not too happy with their company, but they still enjoy work. I cannot even have legitimate conversations with people because as soon as they find out the truth from me they think I am strange. But I am really telling the truth, I am not lying to them or trying to harm them or anything. If they respected me I would certainly respect them but I have difficulty respecting people who don't like you once they know more about you. How are you supposed to have good longterm friendships and relationships when people constantly thing you are weird or strange or odd?

I have my good days and bad. In the past when I had "healthy" friendships and would hang out with friends for hours and hours just about every day I was pretty good. But it seems like the less social interaction I have the worse I feel.

Today feels like one of my better days, but it seems like my worse days are happening more frequently.

It seems like I am stuck in a rut. The more I think about my social problems it puts me down even further. When I was younger I really never noticed my social inadequacies, but now I just see how far behind I am. It really doesn't seem like anyone is drawn to me. You know, there are some people - where when other people they know see them on the street, how excited the other people get to see them? All of the touching and greeting? That really makes me feel envious. It seems like my peers never wanted to touch me. Like there was always a barrier. I used to try in the past though and people still gave me the response I get today. I just don't understand.