Emotional abuse and guilt

I was raised by my mother, my aunt, and my grandmother, and I think they all emotionally abused me. When I was 12, my grandmother got remarried and moved out, but still maintained control of the family. She is a very uphappy woman, and very controlling, viral, and mean. My mother and aunt never fully assumed roles of adulthood and had myriad emotionally issues and took it all out on me, as well as relied on me to fill the gaps in their lives.

My mother divorced my father almost immediately after I was born, and moved back home. She had only been away from home for a short time anyway, and this failed marriage consolidated her reliance on her mother and sister. She has problems with self-identity and constantly looks to others to find out what to think. As her child, I became her sole source of emotional fulfillment. As a child, I didn't mind sleeping with her / never seeing other children, because she was fun and childlike. Often she was sad and I would comfort her, and she saw my sympathy as the sole manifestation of love in her life - only setting me up to disappoint later. The "love" I had given her as a child was never replicated as I grew older, and she still searches for that love in me with such a longing that hopelessly disturbs me. I can never give her what she thinks she wants.

As I began to get older, I craved friendships with other children and started to get frustrated with my mother's neediness and mood swings. In fact, I experienced extreme needinesss and mood swings from all three of these women, though they had distinctly different personalities. They didn't like when I had friends and the very few times I was allowed to go over to friends' houses, they would call and demand that I come home. They would accuse me of liking my friends more than them, and my grandmother would continually rant that "family is all you have in life". My grandmother also had very bad impression of men, and would give me long lectures, almost daily, about the basic insidiousness of men's nature. They couldn't help it. She told me to stay away from them because all they wanted was sex and would describe the basic mechanics of sex in a very unflattering way. But she also instructed me that I needed to get married and that she wanted a brown-eyed great-grand son. Often she would threaten me that if I didn't clean my room I would never find a husband, or that he would leave me if I did find one. From her teachings about men, it didn't seem to me that I needed one to lose in the first place. These were very conflicting and unhealthy messages about men and marriage. She also told me that perverted women would try to romance me as well, and that the worse thing a woman could do was to be a lesbian. She also told me friends would always betray me, so it was better to not get too close. Her basic, daily message to me was that I would never find love or kindness from anyone, man or woman, besides the three women inside that house. She was constantly talking about how terrible other members of her family were, so it was only the four of us that she considered to be truly bound together through love, even though we all made each other miserable. I felt as if I born into some sort of small little cult, and I would dream of escaping someday. She consolidated this by berating me for talking on the phone with friends or wanting to spend time with them. They all took any interest I had in people outside their home as a direct insult to them and belittled me as much as possible for having friends. They listened into phone conversations. They also read my journals, and used material to have horrible, horrible fights with them, which often ended with me being forced to bend over and be spanked by one or all of them, even when I was 18. The most horrifying and phsyical fights would occur when they woudl read something I wrote that suggested I might be depressed. They would throw depression at me like a horrible accusation, like a terrible weakness that I needed to be punished for. My mother would shove me against a wall and scream in my face. My father, who I rarely saw, was once hospitalized for depression and my grandmother told me that only selfish, evil people become depressed and that strong, good people are able to avoid it. Also, when I cried the day after my father died my grandmother scolded me "don't you cry for that man." I didn't really know my father, and what I was crying for was a basic sense of loss, loss of his life, and the gap of my heart for never having a father. She basically sent me the message that it was wrong to feel, when she was usually telling me that I didn't feel enough.

I, of course, was very depressed throughout my childhood, and had limited access to anyone I could talk to about it. When I did talk to friends, I was embarrased about my situation and my depression, so I tried to avoid it. I used humour to mask my pain. I tried to be as entertaining as I could so people would like me and want to me around me, without getting too close. I was afraid of closeness, even though it was what I most craved. I often lost friends anyway because they always went away after I couldn't see them. Summer break was often the time when blosoming friendships I had tried to cultivate would whither from neglect. I buried my feelings, but would occasionally write in journals to ease the pain. I tried to hide them as best I could, but they were always found and later thrown in my face for hours of verbally abusive tirades. I would be shell-shocked for a while, but eventually start writing again to ease my fast-building pain. I should have destroyed these writings, but I was in denial that I would be betrayed again. But of course, I was.

As a child, my mother would confide in me things I should have never heard about her sexual experiences, and other adult topics that made me uncomfortable. I was always a very sober, logical child, and would listen to her and at times offer insight. This futher attached her to me and she considered me her confidante. But she could fly into a rage or tears very easily because she thought me cold, or because I broke some rule. There were always lots of rules, but they always changed. The only consistency was the punishment - yelling, screaming, potshots, doors slamming, and just blind rage, followed by tears and apologies. I quickly tired of this rollar-coaster, but still had to endure it. My feelings of love for a mother (or aunt or grandmother) cooled very quickly, but a stronger emotion, guilt, was alwasys deep in the core of me. I did not show enough love, I could never show enough love, or do exactly what my mother (and aunt, and grandmother) wanted me to do, so I was extremely guilty. Who I was wasn't enough, to them I was this cold, logical, foreign entity. They always told me that I didn't appreciate all they did for me, that I was cold, that I was selfish, hateful, mean, sinful. At other times they showered me with compliments to the point that it made me sick: I was beautiful, smart, kind, wonderful, etc. This dichotomy of identity confused me, and I soon became as unable to accept compliments. I associate them with insults. Many times their compiments were barbed: you have a good figure, and it will be better when you loose weight (I was 5'6' and 120lb at the time). You're so smart, but I don't know why you aren't valadictorian, you don't do better in school, you haven't accomplished more, etc. My mother was always very religious, though her denomination, and sometimes religion would change by the week. One time, when I was very young and already shaken from being very ill, she told me that she hoped the end of the world would happen soon. The excitement in her eyes scared me, it was like a death wish. My feelings for her are based on this terror this type of excitement in her eyes, this freefall of longing, and a constant disapointment that I don't give her the emotional feedback she thinks she needs. Emotional incest is exactly what is happening with her.

My aunt is a bit cleverer than my mom, and her insults were often more calculated and poisoned with wit. She also craved emotional fulfillment from me. She was extremely jealous of friends, more so than my mom. My mom was jealous, but she still kinda wanted me to have them. My aunt and my grandmother did not really want me to have any contact with friends, and did their best to thwart this. My aunt wanted to monopolized huge periods of my time, and she taught at my high school, so she new everyone I associated with. She would come up with insults for every single person I had ever spoken to, and if I defended them, then I would "get into trouble". She would call a meeting with my grandmother, and go over details, and like a trial, they would convict me. The punishment would be yelling, screaming, name-calling, and even spankings, which were very humiliating.

I was interested in books, and since I couldn't have friends, the next best thing was to spend time alone to escape the insanity of day-to-day activity at home. Even that I had to fight for, with the three of them even fighting over who got to spend the most time with me. They would tell me I was anti-social for wanting to spend time alone, some sort of deviant. I told them that I wanted to go out and spend time with friends, but they wouldn't let me. This made them get even angrier at me, and start with the whole family is the only thing, you are a child, so your opinion doesn't matter, what we say goes, don't talk back, type screaming-fest. Name-calling, the works.

My aunt would also insidiously pick on me, so I didn't like to share information about myself or my likes/dislikes because it would be turned back to hurt me. She demanded on spending huge amounts of time with me, so things would accidentally slip out - and immediately - or sometimes later, be used against me to lambaste my taste. It was extremely bad when she found out about crushes, so I tried to hide that information most of all, even if it was just a celebrity. I had a lot of celebrity crushes because I had fantasies about a father-figure I never had.

One thing kept, me going, and that was this intense desire within me to break free. It felt like a truly indulgent, evil, selfish desire, but I was obsessed with it. I decided I would rather live and be evil than to whither up and die as I was. I felt my entire childhood was merely biding my time.

When I went to college the initial feeling was the most wonderful feeling I had ever felt. But the relief didn't last long. I still got constant phone calls, and although I could ignore most of them or pretend to be busy, I couldn't escape the feelings that it turns out I didn't really escape. I'm 25 now, and I battled depression and anxiety, and struggled with alcohol ever since I left home. I still have this intense drive to survive and even have a healthy life, so I've distanced myself. At one point I even told my mother, after an unusually upsetting bid for my attention, and demands for what I was obligated to do for herself, my aunt, and my grandmother, that she and the others made me extremely anxious and that I needed to separate myself from them for my own sanity. She tearfully said that she understood and that she knew that my childhood wasn't "quite" right, but then put the problem back on me, and said that she would do whatever she could to help me "get over" it. Day-to-day, lack of contact with them helps me get through the day, and I often forget my past and focus on living my life. I still have contact with my mom, though I usually don't answer her calls. She always gets the number to wherever I work and constantly calls my coworkers. It really upsets me, and they always think that she's wacky, but nice and don't understand why I don't seem to like her. Now I work at home, so there's no one for her to call. She's also remarried, which is a relief to me because even though I knew it was unhealthy, I always thought it was my duty to be her emotional "spouse". Thankfully, that burden is lifted, but no one will ever be able to lift the burden from me of my feeling of a daughter's obligation. She feels that there is no alternative but for me to "get over it" and go back to function in their games. She sees a future where we will all be back to the way things were. I can deal with her when she's with her husband, because he always jokes around and makes things light. He even told me "I don't blame you for not wanting to talk to that family, they're crazy". But my mother recently visited without him, and I felt as if I was 17 again. She acted the same way, played manipulative games with me, and broke down in tears about how I didn't love her enough. Her behavior was erratic and gave me the same out-of-control, sinking, black hole type of feeling that dominated my childhood. She made me feel extremely guilty, obligated, and like a terrible daughter. She tricked me into getting on the phone with my aunt and grandmother in a movie theater. Then she cried because she feared I was mad with her. After she left, the feelings of guilt almost engulfed me. I am lucky to have a very loving and stable husband and he reminded me that just a few years ago I was in the hospital with an arrhythmia due to extreme anxiety over talking and dealing with my aunt and grandmother.

I often feel that despite the emotional problems and health problems I experience when interacting with my family, I have some sort of profound ethical obligation to endure these problems and have a relationship with them anyway. These people fed me and provided me shelter, and I feel like I should sacrifice my own happiness, maybe even my life, for theirs. I know this is unhealthy, but I feel that my happy times with my husband when I do not associate with them are "bad" "evil" and "selfish". All the happiness in my life I have experienced has been separate from them, but I feel like I don't deserve it. At times I appear to act with confidance, but I really second-guess everything I do. I am a quick learner, and actually very good at a number of things, but I always feel like a failure, even when I get a compliment, a promotion, an award or anything else that is supposed to positively reinforce someone. If someone thinks I am good, I assume that their opinion is flawed and I sometimes loose repect for them, even though approval is what I want the most, and even though I know that I do have talents. I seems as if I am always fighting a battle between what I "know" through logic and empirical evidence and what I "know" through a lens of illogical beliefs about myself and my family. I may "know" that I am good at some things, and bad at overs, but I "feel" that I am bad at everything. I may know that I am smart but feel stupid because I can't acheive perfection. I currently dont drink anymore, but when I think about my family, that's all I want to do. It is the only thing that has helped me forget my obligation to them.

What I really want is to never speak to any of them again, but I am afraid of always being chained by this horrendous guilt. I want to be free of them, and be free of guilt, but I'm always afraid that the guilt is evidence of my sins against my family. I still believe that I deserve to suffer.

Thank you for sharing your story, and welcome to the forum Redbird.

I want to compliment your writing, but I don't want to say something that might cause you to believe that I'm at all insincere. I understand how it is to not be able to accept yourself as good no matter what you do. I hope you esteem yourself as important, loved, and valuable regardless of your relative status to anyone else by level of talent or otherwise.

It sounds as though your family is in a spiral that you're struggling to break free of. Your recurrent unwarranted guilt added to your difficulty with receiving compliments or with feeling accomplished seems to fit how someone who practices emotional incest might feel. I mean that if you never feel satisfied with the level of support you're given by friends, colleagues, or perhaps even your husband then you're likely to repeat the same mistakes your grandmother, aunt, and mother have made with you when you attempt to bond in a healthy way with your own children, (and husband). It's important to find lasting happiness without relying on others as it seems your mother tried to do without great success through religious experimentation and perhaps various other means. Consistent religious worship and faith are no doubt very difficult to exercise when one's faith in herself has been shattered by generations of emotional abuse, but I promise it is possible to do it.

I find your father's death and your grandmother's subsequent dispassion and reprimand as you cried heart-breaking. I'm sorry for you. I don't know if that's what you want to hear, but I do empathize, deeply.

I could go on and I will as time permits, but I'm curious more than anything else about what you hope to find at this forum. I hope that you do find whatever it is you're looking for and please be assured there are individuals here who want to help you. Is there anything else I can offer you other than a word of sympathy, advice, and eagerness to hear whatever you have to say?

Thanks for replying S3.

I know that I am in danger of repeating the behavior that traumatized me, and have repeated it in some ways. And about never being satisfied with the support of anyone, maybe that's not quite accurate. There are times, when I am in a spiral of depression or anxiety (which is usually directly or indirectly related to triggers from my family) when I do indeed feel this way. No matter what anyone says, I don't trust them, think they are lying . . .etc. I can get into a very unhealthy spiral of thinking. But there are other times where I react in a normal, healthy manner to people and situations. At these times, I can accept compliments as positive things that boost my self esteem and critical feedback as an opportunity to learn, reevaluate and adjust as needed. Ever since I've left home, I've found I've been able to have these "normal" times of thinking more and more often. But the horribly miserable sinkholes of thinking still return, with any critical feedback cutting to my core, making me feel completely worthless and positive feedback appearing to me like sweetly masked poison. I am in a constant struggle to fight against continuing this pattern of behavior, and what gives me hope is my desire to be self aware, to not sink into denial about what I am feeling, or how I am behaving - even if it is distasteful to me, because my goal is to take care of myself, lead a healthy life, and to damage others as little as possible. This process invovles a lot of pain, and a lot of change, which is painful in itself. I've already made a lot of progress because I was in a really bad condition when I left home 7 years ago. I'm so much better now, but still not healthy. I still have a lot to learn about how to understand and deal with my past, understand myself, irradicate my guilt (which is the most crippling things for me) and live in the context of all of this. Writing about it, and talking about this with my husband helps me see that this profound guilt I feel isn't based on any true obligation I have. Separation from my family is what gives me the most room to be healthy in my own life. It clears my head to self-assess and grow. But when I have any contact with them, it sets me back because they are still stuck in that horrible spiral of denial. And the more contact with them, the more guilt I feel, which is ironic because the guilt I feel is mostly about not having contact with them. And the guilt isn't just in my head, it is suggested to me over and over that I should be guilty, and if I say that I do, truthfully feel guilt, then I am told that it isn't enough. Over and over again I get the message of what I should do, and if I do a little in the direction that they want, it's not right, and I always "should" do more. I don't think there would ever be a point where they wouldn't ask me to feel guilty about them. In fact they constantly ask guilt of each other. Right now, at least, I don't think it's possible for me to interact with them and still continue to get better. I try to be extremely watchful of my self so that I don't demand guilt from others, rather directly or passive agressively.

I've been doing some research and recenlty read an article about childhood emotional abuse by Andrew Vachss, which really hit home for me. Here's a quote:

"The primary weapons of emotional abusers is the deliberate infliction of guilt. They use guilt the same way a loan shark uses money: They don't want the "debt" paid off, because they live quite happily on the "interest."

I find that most support and help on the internet, and in book form deals mostly with sexual abuse. I think, from experience, that emotional abuse, even though not the same as sexual, can be profoundly disturbing and disruptive to a child's adult life.

I think I came to this forum because I wanted to talk about myself and my story in a sort of anoynmous environment, outside of other contexts of myself. I also wanted to find other people who have had similar experiences with parental figures. Most people have some issues with their families, so they never quite understand why I don't want to talk to mine. This forum is a place where I can find other people whose problems with family is more fundamentally decayed. I've had some triggers lately that brought up some old feelings, and I've been trying to deal with them instead of burying them, and one of those ways to deal with it was just to write on this forum and read the posts of others.

Thank you, S3, for reading my really long post and showing concern for my situation. I really appreciate that, and I look forward to your future comments. Thank you also, for complimenting me on my writing. My writing is what I'm most proud of when I'm feeling well.

Hi, redbird! Welcome to the forum. You've been through a lot and I know that emotional abuse can be very damaging. The sick link your mother, aunt and grandmother want you to have to them is disturbing and you have every right to feel angry and betraied. Honestly, I think that your mother wanting you to be there for her emotionally like a partner is something that many survivours of abuse can relate to and any kind of abuse is important.
My mother used to scream at me like that and make me feel guilty too, when I was a kid, but I don't think it was as extreme as in your case. I too feel guilt at the thought of never speaking with my family again, even though I will have to distance myself from them if I want to be free.
You will grow even stronger in time and they won't affect you this much any more. If you feel the need, give them a little bit of attention so you won't feel bad. Try to get them out of your heart and don't depend on them any more. I think that when the need for these people as loving family members gets smaller, the guilt does too. It has for me. I hope you know that you can talk here any time and there will be someone to listen.

It's my pleasure to read. I'm only sorry I haven't gotten to respond sooner.

It fits that your journaling seemed to always be one of the main ways you've made sense of things and ease the pain. I've felt the same way about writing often, and these forums have been a good place to test my thoughts not only on paper or text-editor, so to speak, but on others who can sympathize. There's something very relieving about letting thoughts out especially when someone else listens patiently. The way your family invaded your privacy and berated you for what you wrote is terrible and cruel, and the way your aunt picked at every unhidden part of your life and interests is just as bad.

My mother made the mistake of rejecting certain parts of me in the worst possible way, treating me with the same mistrust she felt toward others who had hurt her. I know the impact that even a few instances of that kind of emotional abuse can cause. Being told, or worse, treated like you're unacceptable as a person and unlovable because of the way you feel is every bit as devastating as having a limb ripped off emotionally. You still have the choice between staying a victim to the life-ruining guilt that your family or their poorer judgment tries to inflict on you, or fighting to be free of what they seem to have fallen captive to their entire lives so far. In some ways it's far easier to lie down and accept defeat. You've chosen not to take the easy way. You can build a better life against the odds.

I have read a about the guilt associated with divers kinds of abuse. That quote you gave is a great way to look at it. The guilt your family asks of you only serves them, not you, and that selfishness is reprehensible coming from your own family. It's true that guilt is often used with sexual abuse. For me, the guilt was attached to my own sexuality. I was forced to accept that anything to do with my own sexual desire was bad while I was very young, and I fell early on into an addiction that made me feel even worse about myself that way. Cold turkey never worked for me, but I did eventually get control of the addiction to some degree. Writing here helps me keep my mind off of it. As for my relationship with my mother, I'm fortunate enough that she sought psychiatric help and became much more stable as I grew older. Today we're very close and get along like best friends, but it took some rather painful confrontation and compromise on both our parts. It's now my wife who struggles more with the verbal abuse she suffered by her father, somewhat directly, but also vicariously through her siblings who were yelled at and refused affection especially while they were young. We're working toward helping each other to get past our difficulties in order to raise a family some day.

I hope analyzing how you feel when you're triggered or in any kind of sink-hole from guilt and exploring the effect your past has on you helps you find some resolution and give you more hope while you continue to move on. There's nothing bad about admitting you suffer from depression. I hope that you don't feel inhibited here about expressing yourself. If you think you could benefit by talking to a professional I hope that you do. My psychologist has given me some incredibly useful tools for insight into myself, the ability to look at my frustration, pain, joy, sorrow, or anxiety and simply accept those feelings for what they are without believing that they're all that's important.

hi redbird, you seem to be heading in the right direction to healing yourself from the incredible dysfunctional childhood that was forced up on you. I'd like to say that you have recognised and acknowledged so much and your positive outlook is commendable. I'm glad that you have stopped the drinking, and I'm really pleased that you can see the need to distance yourself from those people for your own emotional health.

You even recognise that you harbour intense guilt which has been put in you since you were a little girl. Guilt has been the tool your grandmother, aunt and mother used on you all the time to get what they want. They had no right to do those things.

The fact that you are reading stuff and learning is fantastic too. I can see that you are really working towards a better future for yourself, which is great. I suspect it'll be a long journey too.

The best thing you can do is maintain that distance, physically and emotionally, and then when you are stronger (which may be even a number of years) re-instate the contact but with strong boundaries. That is very important.

I'd also suggest that seeking help from a good counsellor to help you deal with your own internal feelings of guilt and shame. A good counsellor should be able to alleviate the intensity as you begin to really appreciate that what your mother & co did was wrong and that they are to blame for it, not you.

Keeping a positive outlook, reading positive stuff, an awareness that you may be prone to use alcohol to dull the pains, even perhaps seeking some medication to help you deal with depression, and speaking with a counsellor/therapist that you can relate to are all good positive steps in the right direction towards a more healthy you.

I know, coz I've been there and done that too (although my childhood not as extreme as yours) and I've found that going ahead and grabbing at your own dreams and ignoring the negative comments from those who don't have your best interests at heart worked wonders, as did independent living and loving.

Take care, I think you are mature enough to live a good life, regardless.