Don't Blame Your Parents?

[ajvander86]

I've never understood this one.  You know, the whole don't blame your parents thing.  Or rather, I think it's probably the opposite.  I don't think people who say this type of thing really understand what it's like to have lived with and been raised by abusive and unavailable parents. 

For me whenever I tried to talk to someone about what was going on with my Mom or parents and tried to explain how I felt, somehow the conversation always got turned to how I shouldn't blame my parents.  Frankly, it just never made any sense to me.  I mean in my mind, when you have someone who commits a crime, yeah they get blamed.  Of course my parents should be blamed.  But for me the core issue was, why are we focusing on whether my parents should or shouldn't be blamed when I'm in an intense amount of inner pain from the abuse I've endured and need to be healed?  Why isn't my healing, my wellbeing, and how I feel not the main priority here?

I'm one person who holds nothing but contempt for my parents, but I also want to heal.  And I have been learning how to heal pretty much half of my life at this point and have been making some progress.  But has anyone ever had experiences like this where you are trying to express how you are feeling and what's going on with you, only to find that once again you are being shut down and your feelings invalidated and denied by someone you're speaking to, AND in defense of the abuser?  To me it just seems like total insanity. 

[ah]

Hi ajvander,

I agree, it seems to me too that people who say this type of thing don't really understand what it's like to live and grow up feeling so helpless, and hurt. The sort of experiences that were / are ordinary for many of us here is something they don't want to imagine.

For years I was silent, I didn't dare talk to anyone about my experiences. Then I started trying to share things and talk to people, but I got the same reactions you did. I think people can't imagine this level of pain.
They want to believe the world is safe and family is sacrosanct. To believe what we tell them about our own experiences would be frightening to them, so they push it away. And the way they see it, if you're struggling with your parents you're the problem.

People have said to me "Don't blame your parents", "There are no such things" , "This doesn't exist", "You're paranoid", "Are you sure you didn't make it up?" "Maybe you just interpreted it that way?" , "But why did they do that, what did you do to deserve it?" and the list goes on.

Part of it, I bet, is society's deep, deep ignorance when it comes to narcissists and psychopaths. And emotional and psychological abuse. Many therapists and psychiatrists don't know a thing about these people and their typical behavior, so society at large is clueless and we end up feeling silenced.

I guess part of it is that as kids, we get attached to our caregivers even if there's no care there at all. Even if they were unsafe people who couldn't be trusted, we depended on them so we had to get attached to them or we wouldn't survive. It wasn't up to us.
But people who became attached to caring, loving, supportive, encouraging caregivers just can't imagine such realities or such pain. To them, being attached to someone is a sign of safety and intimacy. They don't understand, they can't imagine what we feel. I'm glad for them that they can't, but it can leave us feeling isolated and lonely for sure.

I've started smiling sadly when these things come up, I think "Oh, here we go again. He's trying to encourage me but he doesn't know what we're even talking about. He's basing his ideas on his own experiences. Here goes the blind spot again." I smile and say "thanks" and "I appreciate your help", and I don't share personal information because it only ends up making me feel worse.

You're not alone. I'm sorry you have to go through it too.
And I'm glad you're here. 

[micmacin]

"Don't blame your parents,"  can indeed be a statement of insensitive dismissal.  Mostly because many people cannot possibly relate or understand or it makes them too uncomfortable. Often this statement is blaming, punitive and infantilizing.  But in all honesty, between you and me,  i have needed to redefine "blame" just as I have learned to  redefine "hope."  It was my parents, my mother's responsibility to keep me and my younger siblings emotionally and physically safe, she did not  and could not.   The looks of terror on my mother's face, when both she and I thought my step-father would kill her, while traumatizing and a source of my CPTSD, became a source of my compassion and understanding.  Even as a child, I sensed that the physical and emotional abuse inflicted on me was the displaced violence perpetrated on her.  Don't get me wrong, my mother's physical abuse and betrayal is the seedbed for years of emotional captivity.  Everything else, the beatings from my step-father, years of witnessing domestic violence, trying to protect and shield my younger siblings, growing up in poverty in the woods of Northern Maine, served only to add to the weight of the loss of my mother's ability to care for and protect me.  So, when I hear the phrase  "don't blame your parent," it is I who dismisses the source if it comes from ignorance but, not if it comes from an inner voice that says " you could not protect yourself then but, you can now."  My heart still mourns for my mother and I feel sadness for my step father, both dead.  My step father, by his own hand and my mother at 68 from years of smoking.   My healing and growing changed when I was able to reframe "blaming" to "assigning responsibility," for this lead to forgiveness and this to letting go.   

[Cygnus]

Sorry to hear people are telling you not to blame your parents.  I definitely blame my parents and think they're trash unworthy of any kind of caring.  And I see absolutely nothing wrong with feeling that way.  I don't think there's such a thing as a wrong emotion.  It seems like I hear all the time people telling me what I can't feel or think.  Personally I think it's ignorant and they don't know too much self-compassion.  I think it takes a lot of compassion for yourself to go against the crowd and feel whatever you feel uncensored and without guilt.  The reality is we have every right to blame our parents and to be as angry as we are.   I let myself think and feel whatever I want and don't care what anyone else says.

[kdke]

This is something of a journey for me as I didn't blame my parents for a long time. I didn't really start holding my father responsible for the abuse he put me through until I was a young adult; I took even longer with my mother, as that trauma lasted the longest and was the most subtle. Now I'm in a place where I see where they went wrong, how the choices they made towards me really injured my mind, and how I carry those injuries in my everyday life. It's very hard.

I do get very upset, too, when others tell me that I shouldn't blame my parents (especially my mother) for their choices against me; however, while it might come from people who just don't understand more often than not, I do notice this kind of response coming from those who have suffered similar trauma but are still in denial themselves. They are projecting their own refusal to face how their abuse has affected their well beings, and you are a reflection of what they are afraid to face in themselves. Many people might never be able to acknowledge their trauma because it's just too terrifying; they don't have resilience for it, nor the support.

I feel sorry for those people, even though what they say might anger me at the same time. I conjecture that they're probably very scared inside.

[Gromit]

The more I have found out about my mother's past & told therapists they have been more sympathetic to her. She possibly suffered post-birth psychosis & had some controversial treatment.  I wasn't born until many years later.

However, I know someone who did go through psychosis after the birth of her child, she has recovered, runs a business, but has never had more children.

In my foo it seems through a genuine illness my mother discovered a 'get-out' clause. My father would always make excuses because of it, didn't treat her like the responsible adult she was, unless it suited her to be a responsible adult. Like an enabler to an alcoholic he cleans up the mess, never lets her face the consequences of her actions. Everyone else, the children, have to face up to the fact they their feelings don't matter, as long as mum is happy.

So, whilst T's play the 'poor mother' card too, I entirely blame my parents & whoever let this charade continue, way past the time treatment ended for my mother.

So, as Cygnus said, 'I don't think there's such a thing as a wrong emotion'. Other people do not know what it felt like, what it still feels like.