Do you get angry about the life you've been given (things you cannot control?)

[Anonymous]

I get angry that I had a very difficult childhood, lost a parent to addiction and now have children with medical issues that cause daily worry. It feels like everything has been hard my whole life. But I also love my life and the good things I have. Therapy, exercise and a close inner circle are my saviors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:ACE score of 8 here. I am turning 59 this year and it feels like I am impacted by childhood neglect now even more than I was in my 20’s. Then, I was in a high of having “escaped”. Now, I am so much more aware of how debilitated I am by fear, avoidance, procrastination, self-hatred, PTSD. I have people who love me but no real friends who are actual companions in my day to day life. I am married to someone who turned to be an addict...and after 20 years of therapy, I married him in my 49’s and didn’t even recognize his addiction beforehand!

I am just so disappointed in myself that I am not healthier, emotionally. I eat compulsively. I read DCUM to numb out and ignore real pressing things. I have dreams from my 20’s that I haven’t even begun to pursue,

On the other hand:
I am a good mom to a late in life child
With said child, I am patient and reliable
I have a job
My brother died by suicide over a decade ago. I have survived
I have never been in trouble with the law or drugs
I don’t actively hurt anyone
I am not an alcoholic

It just seems like a small list of accomplishment compared to my “potential”. I got lots of scholarships. I used to be very smart. I am a good writer. I was going to do great things. Instead, I have a brain full of scattered ideas and I am drowning in regrets.

I get angry a lot, but it’s mostly at myself.

I too had the high of escape in my 20s. Made series of self sabotaging decisions. I am plagued by my past and regret having children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I get angry sometimes when I read the people with such cartoonish wealth and privilege on DCUM acting like they earned it all and that everyone else should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps yo the position of wealth that they were born into.

I get angry sometimes that so many people’s lives are genuinely far easier than mine.

I get angry sometimes that my brother is dead and his cruel, abusive wife is alive.

But it doesn’t take long for me to remember that I am luckier than just people. I just think..,I’m the history of humanity, my bed is one of the .001% most comfortable beds ever. That I sleep more comfortably than kings and queens just a few hundred years ago.

Awwww

[Anonymous]

Sometimes. But mostly I try not to be angry about it because being angry won't change it, and then I'm angry on top of trying to deal with it all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ACE score of 8 here. I am turning 59 this year and it feels like I am impacted by childhood neglect now even more than I was in my 20’s. Then, I was in a high of having “escaped”. Now, I am so much more aware of how debilitated I am by fear, avoidance, procrastination, self-hatred, PTSD. I have people who love me but no real friends who are actual companions in my day to day life. I am married to someone who turned to be an addict...and after 20 years of therapy, I married him in my 49’s and didn’t even recognize his addiction beforehand!

I am just so disappointed in myself that I am not healthier, emotionally. I eat compulsively. I read DCUM to numb out and ignore real pressing things. I have dreams from my 20’s that I haven’t even begun to pursue,

On the other hand:
I am a good mom to a late in life child
With said child, I am patient and reliable
I have a job
My brother died by suicide over a decade ago. I have survived
I have never been in trouble with the law or drugs
I don’t actively hurt anyone
I am not an alcoholic

It just seems like a small list of accomplishment compared to my “potential”. I got lots of scholarships. I used to be very smart. I am a good writer. I was going to do great things. Instead, I have a brain full of scattered ideas and I am drowning in regrets.

I get angry a lot, but it’s mostly at myself.

PP a lot of what you wrote resonates with me, particularly the fear, the high of escaping in my 20s. Actually, I escaped at 17, but the high lasted through my 20s. Only in my late 30s did I start to see how fear was governing many of my decisions, and the older I get the more I see I will never reach what I thought my potential was. I am bone tired of all of everything being my fault and being angry/disappointed with myself for the choices I've made. I've thought about therapy but not sure how to even start that. I had a rough childhood...and it still impacts my life? I guess I feel pathetic that this is true.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP I am so so sorry you dealt with all of that. My issues were different-some emotional and verbal abuse, parents with mild to moderate mental health issues depending on the stress, personality disordered sibling who targetted me, then series of unhealthy relationships until I decided I must break the pattern of my childhood. I married someone kind and loving who came from a similar household to mine and wanted to break the pattern. I was sexually harassed at work early on, but I fought back filing a complaint before I left.

For me buffers helped. I had a sense of humor and a support network of friends from verbally abusive households. We vented and made fun of our dysfunctional families. I got therapy. I use exercise to deal with anger and stress.

Some things re-trigger me like dealing with eldercare issues. My parents stopped the verbal abuse by the time I was in my 20s, but it came back as dementia set in and was 100 times more frightening. I found others in the same situation and a therapist again and it helped.

Are you me??? This was my story too. My parents were profoundly immature and mentally unwell and I was targeted by a sibling. I don’t feel angry although I had times in my life where I felt very sad or hopeless. But, I’ve been fortunate too. I was lucky to be good at school and a creative problem-Silver and persistent and used those strengths to create a safer future. I was helped by many people and have healed a lot of the worst wounds. There are times when I get triggered, but fewer every year and I find it easier to cope.

I also had emotionally immature parents who were dysfunctional, dad was an alcoholic and a mean drunk to boot. Kind of so caught up in their own problems that they weren't there for us at all. Lashed out about the smallest things, and life always felt very precarious. You never knew when you were going to be attacked or why.

For me, there's a sadness that accompanies even the best moments with my own husband and children. Over the past month, our daughter has been interviewing for her first real job, and we have role-played questions with her, helped her to research the companies where she had interviews, helped her pick out what to wear for her (zoom) interviews. My husband is so loving and concerned about her, her stress level, etc. I realize yet again that all of these are very normal things and yet no one ever helped me with job applications, or proofread a resume or helped me to think about how to answer questions. My parents pretty much sent us to college and were like "You're on your own. Good luck."

I talk to my daughters about what to look for in a spouse, and what sorts of compromises are worth making and which are not. My parents basically told me I was too ugly and weird to ever get married.

Our dog recently died and we were there for our children, helping them to process their emotions even though they are colleged-aged. When our family pet died, we all had to console my mother because, like always, it was all about
her.

As I parent, I realize how much I wasn't parented -- so even though I feel pretty good most of the time about the job I'm doing, I"m also aware that I had no role-models and that furthermore I wasn't parented all that well. I do wonder what I would have been like if I had had the kinds of parents that supported me. I think about all the job interviews that I blew, the impossibly awful relationships that I pursued, the bad career and academic decisions that I made, the bad financial
decisions I have made, and I wonder what it would have been like to have someone giving me advice and helping me to make those decisions. All the things that I never learned because no one ever taught me.

[Anonymous]

I have lost my while family, except my Dad. My Mom passed away in mybarms after me caring for her with pancreatic cancer. My only brother committed suicide. All aunt's, uncle's, and grandparents are dead. My Dad is not family friendly. Yeah, I get mad sometimes and sometimes I cry buckets until I cannot breathe. Covid has sucked ass. It really sucks when you are alone and have nobody left for it to kill. I pay a lot for a therapist and some mood stabilizers and sleeping pills.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have lost my while family, except my Dad. My Mom passed away in mybarms after me caring for her with pancreatic cancer. My only brother committed suicide. All aunt's, uncle's, and grandparents are dead. My Dad is not family friendly. Yeah, I get mad sometimes and sometimes I cry buckets until I cannot breathe. Covid has sucked ass. It really sucks when you are alone and have nobody left for it to kill. I pay a lot for a therapist and some mood stabilizers and sleeping pills.

+ 1 Yeah, that's how I roll. Add CBD.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Being betrayed in a long marriage. Yes. Furious.

Something similar here, but blindsided by spouses mental illness which runs in his family and they all lie and hide it. Now my kid has it too but generally my life feels ruined by my husbands disorder and trying to manage my young daughters symptoms as well.

[Anonymous]

I have a score of 5, I didn't know about this test. I grew up wealthy though, which feels like a pillow around all the trauma. I've never wanted for anything financially, which I think makes a really big difference in being able to recover? I'm not sure, I'm not sure I feel like I earned a score of 5. But I have had a lot of trauma, alcoholic parent who was frequently out of control and who eventually died, a sibling who died, mentally ill and emotionally abusive other parent, acrimonious divorce.

I feel like I deal with it by being grateful for what I did have that others didn't. The financial stability, the fact that I managed to marry someone really great who loves me a lot despite it all. Having healthy kids. I focus on all of that. I have also put very strong boundaries in place with my family to protect myself. They are still a source of stress and anxiety but it is more compartmentalized, I moved far away. And I have accepted that there is no shangri la of life. There will always be things that are hard that are happening, COVID, health issues, they are always going to be there, and they're happening to the happy well adjusted people too. They feel hard for me because it feels like there was never a time when life wasn't hard, but I have learned how to focus on what is good.

But I feel nothing but empathy reading the stories here about the hits that kept on coming. I think I would have had a very hard time dealing with a disabled child or a disability myself.

[Anonymous]

I definitely have in the past. I also had a very abusive and scary childhood where my parent tried to murder my other parent in front of me multiple times. One time I was in the car while he attemped vehicular manslaughter. It was rough.

I literally pray to god to take any anger and hatred out of my heart, and I give thanks to god for what I have. It doesn't help overnight, but over time its been tremendous.

I did 5 years of intensive CBT to be able EVEN capable of praying, because prior to that my PTSD was too severe to be able to be quiet and pray. I also take Prozac.

Sending all the PP's good wishes.

[Anonymous]

The post from 18:35 resonated with me, especially:

For me, there's a sadness that accompanies even the best moments with my own husband and children.

My ACE score is 8 (not that it's a competition). I'm in my 50s and most of the PTSD is gone (my DH doesn't have to softly call my name from the end of the hall if I've gone to bed before him but a still have fight/flight nightmares where I don't recognize that I'm dreaming). I've created the family that I never thought I'd have. We have challenges but we're healthy all the way around. I've got 2 kids with SN/LDs and every single time we have to do a family history, the care provider just looks at me and states "I would never have guess". One noted psychiatrist said she's heard everything but she'd never encountered someone with my baggage, eh, background. In this sense, I'm a unicorn.

Yet, like 18:35, I often experience a tinge of sadness even in the best moments of my family life. DH and the kids are aware of some of it - they know that I really don't like any occasion that is supposed to recognize me. Growing up, every single one of those occasions would be ruined and full of anguish, at least until I learned to numb myself to it. Birthdays? Either no cake or the cake would be thrown against the wall or we'd be forced to eat the entire cake or my father would take over blowing the candles out and deliberately spit all over it. Christmas? The tree would get knocked over and/or the decorations would be taken off and smashed and/or we'd be dragged out of bed sometime before the 25th and have to open all the presents (that's how I first learned there was no Santa, my older brothers were hoping it wouldn't happen to me like it did to them but no such luck). Thanksgiving? The turkey would be tossed to the dogs yet, when my father sobered up, we'd have to cook a whole nother meal to 'celebrate'. Oh, and we'd also have to thank my father after being made to open Christmas gifts.

So, even though in most every other area of my life I'm in a really good place, it's hard not to have that twinge of sadness, and anxiety, around events. I am grateful, though, that I'm able to help my kids in a way my parents never helped me. I'm so very proud of them, even when they fail because they've got support and they really will be okay. With one exception, my siblings weren't so lucky. Hugs to everyone.