If you had a mentally ill parent

[Anonymous]

This post really hits home for me. My mom is bipolar and I have an 8 and 9 year age difference between my brother and sister with me being the youngest, so once I turned around 10 and they left for college it was just me and I feel my childhood was completely miserable. So around 10 is when I realized something was very wrong with my mother. My mom was also extremely unpredictable as other posters experienced as well. She would totally freak out on me for the smallest things and for that I was always afraid of her. I never knew what would set her off. It felt very isolating when I would see my friends' normal mothers and wish I had their life. I learned to just keep my mouth shut when she yelled because if I responded in any way it always became much worse. As an adult now my mom does have some understanding of the damage he caused. She remembers some things she said and did and says it makes her feel very ashamed and sad.

We are definitely not close. I now have a child and another on the way and I could never imagine almond to them or treating them the way my mother did. I found that when I had my child I actually became more angry at my mother because I just can't understand how a parent can treat their child like that. I'm hoping at the very least it makes me a better parent myself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My mom had a mental breakdown when I was about 12. I know how bad it was because she went out to the Mayo clinic for treatment, and did ECT three times a week for a year.

I never had people over because I was ashamed. During the ECT, my mom forgot my name constantly and got me mixed up with my much thinner sister, and constantly told me (thinking I was my sister) that I had gotten fat and ugly.

My mom is fine now, and doesn't seem to realize that the years we spent with her when she wasn't fine aren't going to just go away, and that we will always remember them and that they greatly impacted us.

This is one of the things that pisses me off: my mom's mental illness made our childhood hellacious. Yet, we only ever hear that she's a victim. There has never been any acknowledgment that she said and did things that scarred us for life.

Same thing here. My dad was an alcoholic and my mom bipolar (though diagnosed only with depression when I was a kid...it wasn't till adulthood and learning about my brother's bipolar illness did I recognize her daily rages as a type of bipolar madness. Anyway, she was a professional victim of my dad's drinking...spent 4-5 nights/week at AL Anon telling tales of woe. All the while my dad was working full time plus doing all the housework and walking on eggshells with us trying to figure out how to prevent her next rage. In terms of damaging us, she was much worse than him. Yet she never apologizes. She's the only victim in her mind.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This post really hits home for me. My mom is bipolar and I have an 8 and 9 year age difference between my brother and sister with me being the youngest, so once I turned around 10 and they left for college it was just me and I feel my childhood was completely miserable. So around 10 is when I realized something was very wrong with my mother. My mom was also extremely unpredictable as other posters experienced as well. She would totally freak out on me for the smallest things and for that I was always afraid of her. I never knew what would set her off. It felt very isolating when I would see my friends' normal mothers and wish I had their life. I learned to just keep my mouth shut when she yelled because if I responded in any way it always became much worse. As an adult now my mom does have some understanding of the damage he caused. She remembers some things she said and did and says it makes her feel very ashamed and sad.

We are definitely not close. I now have a child and another on the way and I could never imagine almond to them or treating them the way my mother did. I found that when I had my child I actually became more angry at my mother because I just can't understand how a parent can treat their child like that. I'm hoping at the very least it makes me a better parent myself.

It's remarkable how many of us had scary, rageful bipolar mothers. I only wish I knew other kids like me existed.

[Anonymous]

My mother doesn't take medication, but she has been institutionalized on multiple occasions--once, for like 3 months while I was in elementary school. She doesn't take medication because she's functional in the sense that she doesn't run into traffic naked, and secondly she doesn't want to.

I grew up with a woman who would argue with inanimate objects, thought the federal government spied on her (classic, right?), thought that her actions controlled the weather, and was such an obsessive germophone she scrubbed her hands with Comet rather than regular soap, and caused horrible chapping. There's more, but that's some of it.

I started to think she was not normal only after I left home for college. I didn't fully realize that she was dysfunction junction until I got married and DH provided some dispassionate third-party insights.

Now, I realize she's as loony as a fruitcake, not just "eccentric" as I have thought. I'm in my 40's.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My mother doesn't take medication, but she has been institutionalized on multiple occasions--once, for like 3 months while I was in elementary school. She doesn't take medication because she's functional in the sense that she doesn't run into traffic naked, and secondly she doesn't want to.

I grew up with a woman who would argue with inanimate objects, thought the federal government spied on her (classic, right?), thought that her actions controlled the weather, and was such an obsessive germophone she scrubbed her hands with Comet rather than regular soap, and caused horrible chapping. There's more, but that's some of it.

I started to think she was not normal only after I left home for college. I didn't fully realize that she was dysfunction junction until I got married and DH provided some dispassionate third-party insights.

Now, I realize she's as loony as a fruitcake, not just "eccentric" as I have thought. I'm in my 40's.

I'm the PP of the above. *germaphobe* Also, she was physically abusive in a very bad way, although I don't have any permanent physical scars. Funny how that part's like an afterthought to me.

[Anonymous]

My mother is mentally ill but has never been diagnosed because she has never sought treatment, despite the urging of all of us in the family. I first knew that she was mentally ill when I was about 7 years old -- she was raving about the neighbors and how they were spying on her. I remember thinking that this woman was bananas and that I wasn't going to listen to her anymore -- that is, if I didn't agree with what she told me to do, I just wasn't going to do it, period. I guess I basically just lost all respect for her at that point. She would have full-blown conversations with herself and she would fly into rages over little things. My dad would ignore her and work all the time, leaving me alone with her. At first I walked on eggshells around her, but when I got into my teens, I started fighting back -- when she got angry, I would get angrier. Today she is still erratic, but not nearly as bad as when I was young -- for example she still talks to herself but takes more care to hide it now. The effect on me: I was anxious and ashamed all throughout my childhood. I was angry and I had huge trust issues. I never brought friends home to play or to sleep over because I didn't want them to see what a crazy mother I had. I would go over to friends' houses to play and see their parents, and wonder what was wrong with my family. On the plus side, since I basically saw myself as alone in the world without emotional support from my parents, I was very independent and self-sufficient as a child and teenager, I excelled in school, I made close friends who are still close friends to me today, and basically just learned to look for family in other places.

The effect on me as an adult: I didn't have a good relationship at all with her while I was growing up, and I still have a terrible relationship with her to this day -- I barely speak with her, I left the country when I went to college to get away from her, and I rarely visit. I also had a very hard time becoming a parent. When I became a mother, all of the shame, anxiety, and anger that I'd spent years ignoring came rushing back. I doubted that I could ever be a good mother -- I thought that I was somehow deformed or infected with bad mothering genes because of my own terrible mother, and I also didn't know the first thing about being a mother because I'd never had a role model and so I felt insecure and scared about becoming a parent. It also was hard because I would look at my wonderful, vulnerable little baby and later this rambunctious, hilarious toddler and then kid, and think, "How could my mother have treated me so badly? I couldn't bring myself to do that to my child." I spent a lot of time being sad during the first few years of my kid's life. Therapy has helped, and continues to help, but it has been a difficult road. My spouse has also been incredibly understanding and supportive. And, honestly, seeing how happy and loved my kid is has helped a lot too -- though strangely it is bittersweet: I am so pleased that my kid is doing so well and is in a happy, secure family, and yet it brings me back to how lost and alone I felt as a kid. I guess it's basically going through a grieving process -- mourning one's childhood.

OP, the best thing you could do for your kid is what you have already done: get divorced or separated from your mentally ill husband. My dad always refused to leave my mother because he thought that divorce was shameful, and the end result was that I was raised by a crazy, violent woman. (By the way I assume that your husband was granted visitation rights because he is not physically abusive or so mentally ill to the point where he would be dangerous. If my assumption is wrong, then I'd suggest you contact a family lawyer and see about getting those visitation rights revoked or drastically reduced. I think that if he is yelling or exploding at her in rage in an unpredictable fashion, then this alone may be enough reason to consult a lawyer -- emotional abuse is devastating.) I agree with the PP who said that it's a good idea to consult a professional, such as a child therapist, about how to best approach this with your child. But your kid already probably knows or senses it even if she can't articulate it-- she just doesn't have the language or the experience to be able to put this into words yet. She's still so young but if there is a way to get her to a place of compassion for her father -- "Daddy's sick. He needs help. He's getting help.", then that would probably be better than her feeling ashamed of her dad or disgusted and angry with him (both things that I distinctly recall feeling about my mother when I was young). Good luck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This post really hits home for me. My mom is bipolar and I have an 8 and 9 year age difference between my brother and sister with me being the youngest, so once I turned around 10 and they left for college it was just me and I feel my childhood was completely miserable. So around 10 is when I realized something was very wrong with my mother. My mom was also extremely unpredictable as other posters experienced as well. She would totally freak out on me for the smallest things and for that I was always afraid of her. I never knew what would set her off. It felt very isolating when I would see my friends' normal mothers and wish I had their life. I learned to just keep my mouth shut when she yelled because if I responded in any way it always became much worse. As an adult now my mom does have some understanding of the damage he caused. She remembers some things she said and did and says it makes her feel very ashamed and sad.

We are definitely not close. I now have a child and another on the way and I could never imagine almond to them or treating them the way my mother did. I found that when I had my child I actually became more angry at my mother because I just can't understand how a parent can treat their child like that. I'm hoping at the very least it makes me a better parent myself.

It's remarkable how many of us had scary, rageful bipolar mothers. I only wish I knew other kids like me existed.

I know, right? If there had been a member of the Babysitters Club who had a horrible mother like mine, that would have made a world of difference to me, LOL.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have bipolar. I'm so very scared that I am doing (or will do) these sorts of things to my children and they are going to be scarred for life and in therapy for 30 years, unable to have any healthy relationships. Or, I have genetically passed it on to them.

As the child of parents with mental illness (1 bipolar/1 PTSD), I would suggest building a strong and loving support system. Make sure their are people in your life who are willing to intervene if you appear to really be struggling. Have a plan in advance for your kids if things get really bad and you aren't able to make good/rational decisions. My parents are decent and loving people, and that made it even harder for family and friends when they really fell apart and were not able to parent effectively or provide a safe environment. In retrospect, family members/close family friends should have taken me in for an extended period. Some of them saw that there were problems but they were to ashamed or scared or mental illness, or to busy to intervene. I now have a good relationship with my parents. If you met them today, you probably wouldn't believe that I was lucky to get out of their house alive (and I mean that literally), but that is how bad it got.

You can have a wonderful and healthy relationship with your kids, but just have a worst case plan in place.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think I always knew my mom was bipolar. It didn't dawn on me just how bad it had been until I was away from her in college. It impacted me throughout my life. We walked on pins and needles around her. I have a hard trusting that people around me aren't privately seething at me, and going to have some huge outburst over a minor infraction. DH sometimes gets peeved because I slip into a pattern of constantly asking if he is mad at me. I feel like living with my mom made me an incredibly anxious person. I have spent years in therapy undoing the damage.

My mom has Borderline Personality Disorder. She was always unstable and I also ask my husband all the time if he's mad at me, or upset with me. I just find it hard to believe everything is okay. He's very patient with me.

I didn't realize full how abnormal my mom was until I left home. Being around normal people made it obvious. I did notice her drinking was bad around 3rd grade but lived in denial mostly. I would say it all affected me since infancy though I couldn't be completely cognizant of it. I remember some pretty violent times from my first memories. It's taken me a lot of grit and 15 years of therapy plus a few years of no contact to remedy some but not all of the damage.

[Anonymous]

To the extent that my parents' mental illnesses contributed to their abuse of me and my siblings, it affected my well-being from the beginning. I realized that they were not well when I was a teenager, and they were diagnosed with various things at various points in my 20s.

If you are not abusive to your children and you are getting help, mental illness does not have to scar them. Is their childhood going to be more challenging in some ways? Yes. But a person with a physical disability or chronic illness is going to have challenges as a parent, too, and those are not necessarily going to have negative outcomes.

You will drive yourself nuts worrying about passing illness along to your kids, just make your own health your highest priority. They will see that you are working hard and you will have a support system. Will they need therapy? Maybe. If you have been getting therapy, they will see it as a support for a challenging situation and be more likely to get it when needed without stigma.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My mother doesn't take medication, but she has been institutionalized on multiple occasions--once, for like 3 months while I was in elementary school. She doesn't take medication because she's functional in the sense that she doesn't run into traffic naked, and secondly she doesn't want to.

I grew up with a woman who would argue with inanimate objects, thought the federal government spied on her (classic, right?), thought that her actions controlled the weather, and was such an obsessive germophone she scrubbed her hands with Comet rather than regular soap, and caused horrible chapping. There's more, but that's some of it.

I started to think she was not normal only after I left home for college. I didn't fully realize that she was dysfunction junction until I got married and DH provided some dispassionate third-party insights.

Now, I realize she's as loony as a fruitcake, not just "eccentric" as I have thought. I'm in my 40's.

My mother thinks my husband is an Israeli spy, sent by the Israelis to destroy her life. Why Israel is after her in particular, I'm not sure. I think she adds a new twist to it. She has never had treatment or admitted that anything is wrong with her. I wish I knew other kids whose mothers were like this when I was little! It would have been some relief.

[Anonymous]

OP, thanks for this post. I'm one of the PP's with a bipolar mom and an alcoholic dad and I struggle with depression myself, and I had nearly given up on being a parent until I became pregnant unexpectedly last year. For years as I approached menopause, I told myself that it was probably a good thing that I remain childless - my genes have lots of mental illnesses in them and I never ever ever want to hurt a child the way I was hurt. Worse, my brother, who was an incredibly good person and the best father I know, died from bipolar disorder by suicide. I just thought it was safer for me to opt out of motherhood.

Really, truly, though, I desperately hoped to become a mother. And now that I have been blessed with a baby, I am even more determined and committed to staying healthy and to developing a plan to protect my child if my illness comes back. Like one of the PP's above, I found that motherhood has brought back a lot of pain and grief - looking at my helpless, trusting, sweet baby has made me so sad for the little child I was and how much I suffered.

But I have tools that my mother never had. and you have a lot of tools at your disposal. One of the themes I keep reading repeated here is that the parents did not acknowledge their illnesses and that the partners similarly kept heads in the sand. Naming the illness will help. Not ignoring the symptoms will help. Make sure that the child knows that the parent's symptoms are the parent's fault, not the child's.