I'm not sure if this is just a result of becoming a parent, but over these past few months it's been occurring to me that I grew up in a really dysfunctional household with quite a bit of manipulation. If you ask my parents about my childhood and how they raised me and my siblings, they would insist that they were devoted, loving parents who sacrificed everything for their children, made sure their kids had good values and went to church. But lately, what I'm remembering more and more, is an unbelievable amount of yelling. Crazy, out of control, they should have been embarrassed of themselves, yelling. At least a few times a week, I or one of my siblings was yelled at, and I'm not talking a minute or two of reprimanding, get to your room or no TV tonight for you, I'm talking an hour or more of "get down here NOW!" drama over something said by my pre-teen sister that was turned into a big issue or drama over my not doing something I was told to do.
None of us were bad kids... just kids but decent kids who did well at school and stayed away from drugs and drinking and had friends who were just as boring and nerdy as we could be. We all went to college and made something of ourselves (but I cannot attribute that to my parents tough love psychotic yelling). We weren't perfect kids, but we were far from trouble. Strange thing was, I felt like we were treated like we were bad all the time because of all of the yelling and constant tension. I was the girl who usually sat in her room reading a book with a handful of brainy friends and had only one boyfriend in senior year yet based on the amount of times I was yelling at for things that in hindsight, I would never get my blood pressure up over as a parent nor spend hours on. Sometimes I wonder if they needed to yell so much, if it was the only way they knew how to feel power and control being that they had little control over their work lives and were too afraid to make changes and take risks. In some ways, I felt bullied.
What I remember most about the yelling is that it was always part of a weird cycle-- scream and yell and then, by 9-10 pm, being summoned downstairs to talk about what happened and then, the big, "we get mad like this because we love you!" It was sort of like one of those Family Ties episodes where the Meridith Baxter mom character yells at and slaps Alex only to make up after toward the end of the show but it took a LOT longer in my family to resolve an issue. That's always how it went in my family. Yelling and saying mean things and then, "but we love you and just want the best for you, and don't you see, we're good, god-loving people who take you to church because we care so much.
To this day, I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. They'd never categorize it as abuse, I guarantee you. It would be more like, well, we worked so hard and sacrificed so much, we just worried and you got us so upset. But we love you and it wasn't so bad, was it!
Anyone go through this? How do you reconcile it now as a parent? I've been to therapy before but lately, all I can say is, wow. I can't believe how f-Ked up it all wa. Recommend any good books on dealing with a household with so much yelling?