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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP, these things are unkind and absolutely had a negative impact on you. It's interesting how sometimes it takes us years to realize these things though. You just normalize because you were a child when it started so it can take time and exposure to lots of other people, or maybe even having your own kids, for it to finally dawn on you that your parents' behavior was dysfunctional, even abusive.

I have this story about an incident that happened with I was about 4 years old that resulted in a doctor's visit, that for years my family told as a joke about me. The joke was supposed to be that I was a liar, or alternatively that I was manipulative. For years I internalized that as a story about what a bad kid I was, and how patient my parents were.

It finally dawned on me like 10 years ago that it's actually a story about an extremely young child who was exhibiting anxiety or some other mental health issue, and instead of getting it treated, my parents downplayed it and rejected medical advice, and then created a story that was told by all family members for decades after about what a bad kid I was. It's a story about parental neglect. I was 4! I wasn't lying or manipulating anyone, I had zero context for what was happening and was being left to my own devices to solve a problem and then when I finally went to my parents asking for help, they made fun of me. It's actually are ally f**ked up story. But I didn't figure that out until I was like 32 and was telling it to someone else and instead of laughing they just had questions and a sort of upset look on their face. And now as a parent I can't believe that was my experience as a kid. The idea of doing that to one of my kids when they were 4... it's impossible to imagine, really.[/quote]

I had such a similar experience to your last paragraph. It was basically that my parents sucked and set us up to fail, we failed at this task, then my mom started wailing on us, but the logistics prevented her from landing any really painful blows so it was only a pseudo beating. Hahaha, this story is always hysterical in my family, why aren't you laughing friend? And my friend is sitting there looking at me with a combination of empathy and disbelief that I'd be expecting her to laugh. She repeated the story back to me without the flourishes and I really heard what I experienced for the first time and it hit me like a ton of bricks. I talked to my sister about it, and she felt the same way. We spent months after that basically telling and retelling each other stories to see how much what we remembered matched each other's perspective and trying to see if we could figure out what was normal and what was "normal" for our dysfunctional family. Like, don't most moms throw a shoe at you when you're too loud while she's on the phone and she can't yell at you? No? Hmmm, how do we process that? I think that was around the time I realized that I had no foundation in "normal" and healthy responses to situations. [/quote]

You and your sister are so lucky to have each other. I have several siblings and most of them won't even consider that our upbringing was dysfunctional. The 2 who occasionally admit this or that was messed up quickly excuse it, like a pp on here, "they had it rough as children...they did the best they could". I feel so alone sometimes and I have worked to break the cycle in my own little family.[/quote]

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