If you grew up with violent or addicted parents and now have a happy family life, do you get angry?

[Anonymous]

I grew up with a violent alcoholic father, and a mother who put up with it. Both of my parents died before I got married and had kids. I had therapy for years and felt mostly healed from the early experiences. But now that I have kids, I see so much more clearly how truly awful it was for my father to be the way he was and for my mother to allow us to witness it. When I put my kids to bed at night and worry that something I do in the house may wake them, I think about waking to my drunken father screaming at my mother and realize on a deeper level how f'ed up it was for us kids to have to experience that. I don't think these realizations are impacting my relationship with the kids or DH, but I may go back to therapy to talk about it. Has anyone else experienced this?

[Anonymous]

I was way less critical of my parents before I had my own kids. Like you, my parents died before I had kids and, while I never put anyone on a pedastal, I never thought much about things like how uninvolved my parents were in our education or in other areas where my siblings and I could have used guidance growing up. For example, if it weren't for a friend's mom, I wouldn't have had any hope of decent clothes or shoes. She would tell my mom of some great item or sale and my mom would give her the money to buy it for me. As far as playing with us or taking us places, never happened. Again, I didn't think much about it until I had kids and find that I have no early experience to fall back on to guide me in parenting my kids. That being said, I don't think it has hampered my ability to be a parent. But, I sometimes find myself remembering being harrassed in school and being on my own to handle it. Or remembering how I never learned how to dress appropriately for the occasion until I was grown up and figured it out on my own. I guess it makes me kind of angry, but it also motivates me to do better by my kids.

[Anonymous]

Op I'm sorry you went through this! My parents were not violent but they were really uninvolved. Their 1st born died before a year and they were young so I'm sure that effected them. But yes, it makes me angry that they were so uninvolved and almost negligent, letting us spend the night wherever, whenever, not really knowing who was watching us.
It really had an effect on us, my brother had a horrible drug addiction and I was in a really abusive relationship at a young age.
Luckily, we all are ok now and my parents fawn all over DH and I about how great we are as parents.

[Anonymous]

My parents weren't violent or addicted but interestingly, I don't have a single memory of them asking me about homework, friends, school, etc. Just completely uninvolved and self-absorbed.

[Anonymous]

when I first read this thread title, I thought it was "do you have trouble getting angry properly". Because my parents yelled so much as kids (still do every day about everything and each other--it is horrible), I have a hard time knowing how to get reasonably angry, so I always go silent. Not good.

Now I realize you might have meant, "do you get angry at them", and the answer is also yes, because I wish they had been able to control themselves and their behavior better, and not made things so miserable for everyone.

In short, I should probably be in therapy, because it is not good to not be able to get angry publicly, even if you are.

[Anonymous]

My mom used to tell me that I'd "understand" once I had my own kids how hard it was and forgive her for some of the things that happened during my childhood. On the contrary, now that I have my own children it's even more beyond me how she could have raised us the way she did. She was highly verbally and mentally abusive, and mildly physically abusive. I do feel for her because she was a product of her own bad upbringing. She was married 4 times by the time I was 12, 2 of her husbands were physically abusive, 1 I don't remember, and the final stepfather (now divorced, but he was my "dad" for 15 years) was an alcoholic mess.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:when I first read this thread title, I thought it was "do you have trouble getting angry properly". Because my parents yelled so much as kids (still do every day about everything and each other--it is horrible), I have a hard time knowing how to get reasonably angry, so I always go silent. Not good.

Now I realize you might have meant, "do you get angry at them", and the answer is also yes, because I wish they had been able to control themselves and their behavior better, and not made things so miserable for everyone.

In short, I should probably be in therapy, because it is not good to not be able to get angry publicly, even if you are.

This is what I thought, too, although I don't go silent when that crazy anger wells up. I yell.

I hold my anger at my mom at a distance. It is there, but I set it to the side and try to move past it. She is still alive. Sometimes it comes back - like recently, when I yelled at my six year old and she was heartbroken. I asked my husband how my mom could have stood it, because as awful as that look was on her face, I can't imagine what my six year old face looked like after she had just beaten the shit out of me and slapped me across the face, too. She had an alcoholic and abusive father, too, so at least she wasn't a drunk, I guess.

Years and years and years of therapy. So now, every once in awhile, I wave a passing hello to that big box of anger that is off to the side, and then put it back behind the curtain where it stays. There is no real resolution for soemthing like that, I don't think. Instead, you can just choose to move on.

I absolutely hate that I yell, by the way, and I am working on it. But I am thrilled that I don't hit.

[Anonymous]

OP here. Thanks for all these replies. Sorry the heading wasn't clear. The character limit made it hard to get my point across. But maybe it was my subconscious talking, because I used to have a very hard time expressing anger about anything.
I have this feeling like I knew the crap my parents did was bad, but I didn't understand how truly bad it was until I had my own children.

[Anonymous]

When reading your post, I thought for a minute that I had written it - except my mother is still alive. I had a horrific upbringing and lost 2 of my brothers to suicide (they were significant self-medicators prior to that). I'm the only one of my sibling to have kids (2 are still alive) and when my youngest two were about 3 and 2, I had to go to counseling because they reminded me so much of me and my little brother (one of the dead ones). I always knew it was bad but like PPs, I didn't know how horrific until I saw the innocence and vulnerability in my own kids. I couldn't imagine anyone doing to them what and been done to my brothers and I. I told my DH that if he didn't anything remotely like what had been done to us I would kill him - and I have no doubt that I would.

I like what a PP said about it

So now, every once in awhile, I wave a passing hello to that big box of anger that is off to the side, and then put it back behind the curtain where it stays. There is no real resolution for soemthing like that, I don't think. Instead, you can just choose to move on.

I will never understand it and I've come to accept that there is no value in giving it the occasional glance. I do have a relationship with my mother but I am very distant emotionally. To outsiders, my mother is a saint, a real do-gooder. I'm sure they think her kids (me and my living 2 siblings) are ungrateful wrenches not to have a closer relationship with such a wonderful woman. They have no idea how lucky she is we're even speaking to her. What really, really gets me and causes me to speak up is when she makes judgmental comments about the quality of someone else's spouse. I say something like 'you're one to talk'. That shuts her up but I have to work on tamping the anger back down.

[Anonymous]

17:42- I really, really appreciate that you mentioned how children who dare mention their own parents serious shortcomings, abuses and so forth (the children) are demonized instead of the rotten parent/s! I faced this constantly growing up, as such parent had the audacity to seek sympathy from equally bad parent/s. Imagine how frustrating as a small child trying to tell anyone sane that it is them, not me. How horrible. We can make our minds up to not do what they did wrong, then we are light years ahead of them. If I feel like I am doing well in spite of them (I am) it helps. People who have generous parent/s have no idea, really!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Years and years and years of therapy. So now, every once in awhile, I wave a passing hello to that big box of anger that is off to the side, and then put it back behind the curtain where it stays. There is no real resolution for soemthing like that, I don't think. Instead, you can just choose to move on.

I feel exactly this way, too. My parents are alive. My abuse was at the hands of a stepfather, and my mom let it happen so she was complicit, although certainly a broken person herself. Her entire family was messed up, and I know at least one of my cousins (she's one of my best friends) was similarly abused. We talked about it once, how, as kids, it seemed normal to us, especially since so many other family members were also in really f-ed up situations.

My mom is still alive and I love her. However, we do not have a mother / daughter relationship. I know she is deeply sorry and filled with regret over what happened, and that makes it easier to move past it. But honestly, I haven't forgiven. For me, the person who did that to me as a little kid is dead to me, and the mother who let it happened is dead to me, also. It's as if the person my mom is now has risen from the ashes of the person I killed off in my mind / heart (the one who let that stuff happen to me). And as long as my mom doesn't push the boundaries I've set up, we can actually get along very well. But, my mom occasionally pushes and I get extremely angry because it makes me face the box of history I've got packed away.

I agree with PP. You don't really resolve it. You contain it and refuse to feed it, unpack it only as much as is necessary for your own mental health, and otherwise focus your energies on the present and on preventing the past from becoming prologue. I love who I am now, it took a looooong time to get there. But I do. And I don't flinch when people tell me I should be nicer to my mom because I know it is okay to handle this the way I need to handle it. It's not about punishing her, it's just self-preservation.

[Anonymous]

21:44 - I am the poster you quoted. I agree with, and also feel, everything you are saying. You put it so much better than I did. Peace to you.

[Anonymous]

I had a horrific upbringing as well. Welfare bum father, mother constantly living in "shame" and abused us as a result, etc.

I have a great family now.

I've forgiven my father for being merely lazy, but I cut my (now estranged) mother out of my life because the abuse (both psychological and physical) was too much to bear. I just could not get over my anger towards her. I felt like I couldn't devote myself to my family and my futures with memories of her abuse nagging at me every time my children said the word "grandma."

[Anonymous]

This is a topic I think about a lot. My childhood was rocky in a number of ways, not the least of which was that my mother died when I was in my early teens. I'm a psychologist and wrote my dissertation on how motherhood influences how you think about your own childhood (and vice-versa). I thought it was interesting that the women I interviewed found that becoming mothers themselves intensified their positive and negative feelings about their own upbringing. Sometimes it made them more understanding of the challenges their parents faced, but often (especially where their childhoods were more traumatic due to addiction, mental illness, family trauma and dysfunction) parenthood made them angry because they saw clearly the disconnect between their own current family experiences and what they endured when they were kids. Anyway, I think what I'm trying to say is that what they OP mentions is pretty normal for a lot of us. It's painful to realize what you didn't get. At the same time. I've been able to take some comfort in the fact that my kids are hopefully getting a better early start.

Peace and good wishes in 2012!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My parents weren't violent or addicted but interestingly, I don't have a single memory of them asking me about homework, friends, school, etc. Just completely uninvolved and self-absorbed.

I too, do not have one single memory of sitting down with my mother and talk about school, home works, friends, feelings, etc. Kind of hurts...whom am I kidding, it hurts a lot!