/g/ - girl talk

OP here. Over the years I've realized how being neglected by my mom made me more susceptible to being groomed and abused by men when I was a teenager because I was always trying to replace the love and attention that she never gave me through romantic relationships. It makes me wonder how many of these notorious pick me girls crave male validation so much because they were abused or neglected by their parents.

Have you tried Reddit?

>What was your relationship with your mom like as a child?
My mom was so incredibly fucked up i don't think I will ever get to know a person that is worse than her. She did her best to humiliate me and make me miserable, she thought my suffering was amusing or something idk. She multitasked, she didn't only abuse me but almost all people i cared about.
>What's your relationship with your mom like now?
She doesn't fuck with me because I'm not a kid anymore and she knows damn well I'll defend myself. We are in """good terms""" and by good terms i mean not talking or interacting with me at all, and she accepted because it's not like she cared to fix her shit anyway, is peaceful, weirdly peaceful which is uneasy considering how psycho she is.
>Have you noticed how her abuse or neglect has affected your relationships with yourself or others? If so, how?
I used to be a massive tomboy and then a ftm, not because I hated girls but because I felt that if my mom, the first girl i ever knew, hated me and rejected me i thought other girls would see me like a freak too so i was very afraid of female interaction, also i was a teacher's pet because i wanted a motherly figure in my life. As she lacked empathy i mind my actions so i don't hurt anyone like she did, I'm also wary of adults in general to the point of despising them and i tend to be very nice to kids.

alrighty this gonna be a long one

>What was your relationship with your mom like as a child?

She apparently thinks I've been brain damaged since age 3. Her irresponsibility is evidenced from when I was even younger than that. When I was an infant, she kept her nasty dog who hated children despite him hating children, and said dog wrapped his mouth around my head and bit me. Luckily I wasn't injured. Distressed, but not injured. Said dog was later returned to the pound. Very early examples of shitty parenting. My mother is mental. Probably undiagnosed bpd or bipolarfag like her own daughter, had to get it from somewhere. Her own mother was an abusive ass to her (ironically loved me and my sister and her other grandkids, what the actual fuck?), and her family has a long and storied history of lovelessness and psychological cruelty disguised as criticism.

For the longest time I was misdiagnosed aspie and she'd call me a retard for it. It took fucking five years of being diagnosed with the disorders the docs think I actually have for her to accept I wasn't autistic, because she saw those other disorders as somehow being less of a stain on her reputation, I guess.

I don't have a very good memory of my childhood, but I do remember her always trying to force her standards onto me, and being bitchy, blaming me for things, a lot of the behaviors she exhibits to the day that are abusive.

Back then it was normalized to me. She has always been a very narcissistic person, taught me that vanity matters from a young age. She could be negligent as well, she tended to either be negligent or a narcissist abuser helicopter parent. The turning point that really fucked up her mind was when my parents were in the process of divorcing. I was a tween. My mother had a seizure, never found out the causation of it, and hit her head, she was ill for months, and my father didn't want to stop the divorce process that was already in court. My fathers choice turned her against him, she started bent vehemently toxic, and the damage done by the fall impacted her mentally. That was when things got really bad. I think the concussion she received in that fall gave her brain damage. After that and as a result of the bitterness of the divorce, because she didn't have my father around to fight with, she took her anger and narcissism out on her children, especially me. I was always considered from a young age to be the retarded sister. At sixteen I began to realize wtf was wrong with her instead of blaming myself, when she got more physically violent than she'd ever had, tried to choke me out. That was when I realized things were truly wrong.

My mother had a lot of abusive boyfriends post divorce, and if they werent outright abusive, they were two faced. My parents relationship was pretty loveless itself insofar as I could recall. I spent a long time not knowing what a healthy romantic or sexual dynamic was. I still don't think I do.

>What's your relationship with your mom like now?
I moved out of her house around 7 years ago in an attempt to escape from her bullshit. For months after I did not properly talk to her and there have been periods where I haven't talked to her at all in those seven years. I feel bad because I left her alone with my sister, who got kicked out of her house eventually to move in with my father a few years later, but she'd been damaged beyond repair herself. My sister and I now basically both have such lasting damage from our mother in different ways that she has grown to hate me for "leaving" her with my mom. Back onto my mother, I had to move back in with her temporarily a couple years ago when me and my sister had a fight that resulted in me getting an injury and my father took her side. Living with her again I realized she was just as malignantly narcissistic as when I left her, and constantly trying to force others to do her bidding or force herself into personal spaces. I began to resent it, but my father didn't want me back and my sister was still at his house. Only last year around September did I finally move back in with my dad after sis had left, my mom kicked me out. We had so many fights, I felt like I was going insane. Since, it's been more back to normal, but god, I don't know how her current boyfriend lives with her ass. Maybe because they're both bitches. I think the only reason her abuse is less potent towards me now is that she has a man living with her and isnt in a rotating door of shitty relationships, otherwise she might've killed me. At one point a few months before I was kicked out again, she verged on hitting me with a frying pan, so that's not far fetched

>Have you noticed how her abuse or neglect has affected your relationships with yourself or others? If so, how?

As aforementioned, I have a warped perspective of relationships and power dynamics. Due to my dad being negligent and an emotional leech, albeit a lot more docile than mom, I have daddy issues to boot. Starting from my teens I had a heavy obsession with wanting mentorship and a large age gap relationship to fill my parents void, I realize now how fucked up it is as an adult. I even got into relationships with guys my own age or younger who were assholes. To the day fantasize a lot about finding someone to fill my parental void. The love I could not get from the people who were supposed to love me the most. I hate this. I don't want to be into men 15-30+ years older because I have a deep seeded inferiority associated with not being loved by my damn parents. That's not what I want at all.

As also aforementioned, my sister and I do not get along anymore. What she experienced as a result of my mother piling more abuse onto her when I left her residence has traumatized her, since I was the main child punching bag. This trauma caused my sister to become violent, overly critical towards others, including me. The way she deals with her emotions is extremely unhealthy, and she's fought me to the point of physical injury, repeatedly berated me. I have been going to therapy for years not by my own choice, and she also hates my parents for not sending her at the same time they sent me. However she refuses to go to a shrink. The rift between us is massive. Her birthdays in a few days and I won't even be celebrating it. There is no way I could have helped her back then. She was court ordered as the younger and underage sister to stay living with my mother until she was 18, and I was almost 18 when I moved out. The only reason she stayed with my mother was because she wanted to collect child support and would not get it legally if my father let my sister move in. My father was cold enough to force my sister to stay there.

I have tried not to take on my mothers vices and be an emotional drain to people. I ended up being a bpdfag and bipolarfag who for a few years was left untreated as a result of the trauma of my past, but unlike unaware bpdfags, I'm now always afraid if I'm hurting others. I have become hyperaware in trying to detect my emotional vampirism. If it arises in a relationship at all. I am very needy and I am very emotional when I am emotional, however I can also be very distant.

I was constantly put down for perceived failures and never encouraged to finish or do anything that I couldn't either manipulate someone else into doing or half ass. My work ethic has gotten better but I have no motivation. It is a very slow climb up the hill of responsibility, I am afraid I am going to end up with a moid who will hurt me like my mom did. I'm constantly afraid of the prospect of becoming my mother. My mother has been slovenly and reliant on men since before I was born. She never taught me any valuable life skills, and neither did my father, so that's why I'm not out of their house at 25 yet, my fear and my mental shit are making it hard for me to function day to day post covid. The combination of their contradicting yet similar enough personalities and peak narcissism have been mentally ruinous to me.

Generally hard for me to trust people overall, I'm an oversharer or I restrict myself. There's really no inbetween. I crave a lot of love and affection where I didn't get it, and if I don't, I feel like breaking down. I find it very hard to love myself because I'm conscious of my own looks and mannerisms to such an extent that I can't imagine anyone will find them lovable from what I experienced.

>>192207
Nah. You should go back there tho.

As an adult, I've come to realize my relationship with my mom was a lot more toxic than I thought. A lot of crazy shit was normalized. From the outside we seemed to have the perfect relationship and I truly admired her, however she was an extreme helicopter parent who simultaneously urged me to go have fun then forced me to take 5 different self defense items in my purse, check in with her every hour, and be back home by an early curfew. It made me not want to spend time with anyone because I was too anxious catering to her rather than enjoying friends. She has called the police on me when I was at work and we couldn't pick up the phone at that exact moment because the lines were slammed. There was literally nowhere else I would've been and I'd had the job for years. It was beyond embarassing to have a coworker get in touch an hour later with the cops on the line because mommy was concerned I'd been kidnapped (this was in my early 20s and I did not live with her). When I got in my first relationship, something she'd always pushed me to do, it was with a man over a decade my senior and she flipped out. Which was completely understandable at first, but she didn't approach it in a rational way and attempt to explain why it was inappropriate. She just stalked the two of us and constantly butted into my business far beyond a parent's typical level of involvement, which further alienated me. She then enabled my ex leeching off of me by giving him money. It boggles the mind looking back. She thought she was helping to provide for us I guess, but if she had actually let him fail and be the useless unemployed sack of shit he was, I would've woken up sooner rather than thinking everything was fine. She was a grown woman who should've known better and I was barely out of childhood. I'm not totally blaming her, in the end it was still my choice to stay, but that definitely contributed to waiting longer than I should have.

I still care about her and she's gotten much more hands off, partly because it got to the point where I expressed I'd have to cut her off unless she calmed the fuck down. I know a lot of her fear for me stemmed from having a terrible childhood and wanting me to avoid that, and I empathize. At the same time I still ended up falling into abusive relationships because she never just talked to me rather than jumping down my throat and trying to dictate my every action. I hate to use this word because it's often misogynistic, but she could genuinely get hysterical and it just made me feel extreme guilt, anxiety and fear for not allowing her to walk all over me. She was just as controlling and obsessive as the men who used me in her own ways. I still have issues expressing affection towards her because I feel like if I give an inch she'll take a mile and I'll be consumed again. It's been several years now and so far so good, we seem to interact like regular humans these days every couple months. It's going to be a long while before the relationship is fully healed, though.

>What was your relationship with your mom like as a child?
Not great. She has a lot of issues, didn't work, was extremely codependent with my dad. When I was 10ish my dad left and she had a complete breakdown. Her only two moods were depressed in bed or awake and screaming. I had a lot of issues at school and with my mental health and she ignored it because she couldn't handle dealing with it. I started cutting myself and skipping meals when I was 12 as a cry for help and she knew but pushed it under the rug, and I think that really fucked me up.

>What's your relationship with your mom like now?
I don't hate her but I don't love her. She had an EXTREMELY abusive and fucked up childhood, lots of poverty and sex abuse. Logically I understand that she is a broken person who did the best she could, so I don't blame her for hurting me. But I can't love her because it really hurt to be raised by her and she's never gonna be in a place mentally where she can apologize to me and be my mom. I enjoy spending time with her sometimes and visit her on holidays because she's really weird and has cool conspiracy theories and that's fun. But I view her as a kooky aunt, not a mother.

>Have you noticed how her abuse or neglect has affected your relationships with yourself or others? If so, how?
I'm really messed up. I was mute at school from the ages of 11-16 when I dropped out and everyone thought I was literally retarded. School couldn't do anything to help me even though I was obviously in need of help because my mother wouldn't let them. I moved out at 17 and spent until about 25 trying to get my shit together and my mental health under control. I'm doing pretty good now in most areas of my life but I wish I wasn't a lesbian because I'm genuinely terrified of women lol. Between my mother and all the mean girl shit I got at school I always feel like I need to walk on eggshells around women.

>What was your relationship with your mom like as a child?
In a word: Enmeshed. Maybe other anons who grew up with single mothers can relate to my experience: It's almost like when you're a child to a single mother, that you're expected to be her emotional comfort, never complain or fuss, and go above and beyond what's typically expected of a small child because your mother is trying her best and working so hard. There was always this unspoken notion that I owed my mother something for having birthed me in spite of my shitty dad. When things were good it was fine, but she often had disproportionate bursts of anger and her love often felt performative. It felt at times that she 'loved' me out of a sense of duty and image. Her showing affection to me in public always felt 'off,' and now in hindsight it's because she rarely did that naturally behind closed doors so it felt strange and embarrassing. When she did show 'affection' at home, it was usually done in ways to cause annoyance or some reaction. Now that I see what loving parent relationships are supposed to be like, I think I'm mostly correct in my assessment. Maybe my mother had me with good 'baby makes three' intentions in mind, yet after her marriage didn't work out and the second I wasn't a sweet daughter, that's when her regret began to find ways to manifest itself. She loved me when she felt we were a 'duo' and she was venting to me about her divorce or other problems, but seemed to resent me when I'd cause an accident or do something wrong.

In later childhood and teenage years, she did things to further alienate me from her and isolate me from others. She never seemed to like me and always made fun of my interests. I remember her being very judgmental of people and super critical towards me. To be honest I got sick of a lot of her shit and even started to say she was a 'bitch' in my head constantly.
I made a lot of dumb mistakes with boys because I was so desperate to feel love and affection, and also in part because I was imitating how I'd seen my mom cater to men in her life. I wanted to escape her. She was overbearing and yet emotionally unavailable. I never got to do much as a kid mostly because she couldn't be assed to either expend effort or money on me, and when she did it was so she'd look like a good parent. I went to her about my problems out of desperation but 98% of the time I would regret it because she would turn it around on me and make it my fault somehow, which always ended in a fight. I got great grades in school but mostly so she wouldn't scream and berate me because any fuckup on my end looked real bad on her. Sometimes I'd break out in hives because she'd follow me around the house screaming, temper-tantruming (silent treatment, scowling, stomping, slamming doors, muttering to herself), and continually stirring up arguments for hours on end. Lol, I remember when I didn't want to hug her or forgive her after a fight, she'd stir up ANOTHER fight based on that and get mad at me! Also, so help my ass if I talked to her in the wrong way or didn't do something that she wanted me to do. She also controlled me financially; bought me my first car but put the title in her name, or bought me clothes in order to hang the fact over my head later to call me "spoiled." I never had boundaries; hell, I never even had a bedroom door that would close and lock up until I moved out at 21 so she'd constantly be in my room snooping and spying. She also didn't want me to have financial freedom because it meant nothing anchoring me to her bullshit.
Tbh I didn't suspect anything was abnormal until my mid 20s, up until then I always thought I'd just been a bad daughter. Other people including my mom's brothers gaslit me as much but what the fuck did they really know about her behind the scenes? When I'd tell my family members what she was doing, they told me to try to "ignore her," as if that was a viable option–my mom wasn't one to be ignored and certainly not by the likes of me.
>What's your relationship with your mom like now?
Non-existent. I cut her off in my late 20s and haven't spoken with her going on 3 years. After her last divorce, she went off the deep end and tried to triangulate me once more which ended in a blowout fight. When I had it, she lashed out at me and it was the last straw. She expected me to keep procession over her feefees for months on end like in the old days when I was a vulnerable child who didn't know better. But this time I was going through my own shit and she needed to be a parent to me during my low. She flat out told me she didn't have time for my problems. So I said fuck her. It wasn't worth the anguish and hit on my mental health anymore. At the peak of my depression and anxiety a few years ago, she told me I was faking mental illness for sympathy, mocked me, and claimed I was trying to get on the dole–in retrospect, I think she was just bitter that she had the same problems in her life but pushed it under the rug and never got help. At 24 years old I learned what a 'narcissist' was and while I don't think she ticks every box, she exhibits traits that would prevent me from having any kind of meaningful relationship with her. And because she does not see herself as ever having done anything wrong and is a victim (I know this because I sat in with her therapy session after her third divorce), she will never change. She's written me letters where she basically says that any major wrongdoing wasn't done on her end, and that it's up to me getting over my "pride" to resume a relationship with her. Yes, she projected big time. I'm still disgusted with her.
>Have you noticed how her abuse or neglect has affected your relationships with yourself or others? If so, how?
Of course, and in many ways.
The biggest way has had to be when it came to my relationships with men. She did things that set me up to be a major pickme.
When I still had visitation with my biological dad, my mom gaslit me about how this man "loved" me. The truth? He'd abandon me during visitation for girlfriends, the bar, and other such nonsense. He never came to any of my school functions and never did anything for me on my birthdays. He neglected me and raised me in decrepit conditions that he'd manipulate me into not telling anyone about because it was CPS report-tier. He only collected me because he felt he was 'paying' for me in child support, and was willing to put me through hell just to stick it to my mom who he hated.
Yes, this man is who my mom insisted "loved me." My dad lost his parental rights when I was a preteen in exchange for not paying child support anymore, which proves it was all about control and money. Later in my 20s when the wool could no longer be pulled over my eyes, my mother admitted the man never really loved me and in fact did shit like allegedly beat her and womanize. Nice of her to have kept this information from the courts, right? Good thing she kept this secret so she wouldn't have to lose face admitting on public record that she picked the wrong scrote to breed with if it meant saving her daughter from the hands of this man, right? I didn't have a happy childhood because of this shit!
One could argue that she thought having a father figure at all costs in my life would be good, but A) She re-married and B) She knew about the conditions and how I didn't like being treated by him but kept silent anyway. Methinks she honestly liked the child support payments, and the weekends and entire summers without me up until I started causing problems about the mistreatment that couldn't be ignored by the court (ie. I'd run away when my dad would come collect me, and my dad accused my mom of badmouthing when I rebelled and said how I hated him). I used to cry, his house in the middle of nowhere was like prison. I missed out on so much during my childhood because of this messed up situation.
So she set a warped standard of what constitutes "love" in my child brain. Didn't help that she was a major pickme in her marriages and dating relationships too, which of course did me no favors. She always waggled her finger in my face and screeched at me to not do this or do that, but she never walked the walk. She never taught me how to date or vet men cause she herself never did that or accomplished anything of it if she did. A hypocrite. I learned from her and I think this really embarrassed her as well. She didn't try to understand what I was going through, just that I was making her look bad and not following her orders.

Anyway, I finally snapped out of pickmeism thanks to online resources and having since cut her out of my life. I learned all about healthy love. Things got a lot better and less stressful for me since, which tells me all I ever needed to know. She made me believe for the longest time that I'd miss her when she's gone and that I couldn't go on without her, but I'm doing great so she lied about that too.
I never want to hear her name again unless it's about money from her will. I genuinely don't care, but I hope that she's finally happy because it seems like she should have never married or had a child in the first place. Both seemed to have made her miserable. I'm inclined to believe she's very happy now despite having to perform the estranged sad parent act.

>What was your relationship with your mom like as a child?
I thought she was pretty close to me. Almost like my best friend, I viewed her as a cool mom. I would go to her with the belief she would protect me from my dad who was emotionally unstable. However, she would consistently burden me with the fact we didn't have a lot of money, or the belief my dad didn't know how to keep his financial priorities straight, often left us with nothing so I rarely asked for things. She'd also push her disordered eating onto me. Would shame me for being fat and chubby, yet I wasn't the one in charge of buying the food. She didn't do a really good job as setting an example of what I should eat, except her serving me chocolate milk and sugary cereals whenever she wanted some as well. I was often shielded away from leaving the house to just be outside. I was mocked for exercising, like "Oh, wow you're finally doing something."
As I got older, she would still put on that façade of being the one to protect me from my emotionally unstable dad. Each year I grew older, the pressure of finances fell harder on me, while I was also pressured to "make tons of money". "You need to look for a job" or "you need to look for some college classes" were often pushed onto me, yet how would I find the time to do both? One costs lots of money to attend, the other I was able to get, yet I was consistently told I needed to make more. Well, dang I wish I could get a raise every month. How much do you make, mom?
>What's your relationship with your mom like now?
I've gone grey rock. I haven't spoken to her in over a year.
The moment I started my first job, she would ask to "borrow" money from me, and pressured me to get a higher paying job and a second job. It eventually turned into her just demanding more than I could make in a paycheck, and this was for things I had no say over, like car insurance for a car I never drove and partial cost of our Xfinity TV bill and I stopped watching TV years ago. She was extremely money hungry. Over time I realized her saying little things like, "I totally need to write a book," and joining multiple pyramid schemes was just her believing she can make a quick buck.
What truly disgusted me was when we found out I had a biological father (supposedly unknown since my conception because the relationship between the dad who raised me and her was off/on for months at a time since they were 16) had a high earning career and she started to shame me for not interacting with him and would often throw in the fact he makes a lot of money that I can try to ask for. Immediately, I was done with the conversation because I knew she just wants me to snake money to her. My bio father mentioned to me that she would message him a lot after we found out we were related. I've vowed to never mention money to her, if I ever do receive a high amount of money from my biological father, for whatever reason. I want to connect to him in a non-transactional way.
>Have you noticed how her abuse or neglect has affected your relationships with yourself or others? If so, how?
My relationship with finances is completely fucked. Although, penny pinching is something I'm grateful for at times, my boyfriend often mentions the fact I am sometimes too frugal. There are many times where I'll overwhelm myself just for trying to save a few dollars, such as making food. Many days I'll find myself with barely enough time for me to rest so I can make a full on meal instead of getting the same thing at a restaurant or premade at the grocer for roughly the same price, minus the two hours or so of labor I put in. The moment we started paying for rent, I had an emotional breakdown because I was afraid we weren't going to afford anything. I was already preparing for us to have to break up and I would be living in my car until I could find a cheaper place to live. I'm private and independent with myself. I also developed PTSD (unrelated to mom, but I do have CPTSD as well) and the way I'm handling recovery is in a way that many would feel is overwhelming for themselves. I feel like it's probably better for the progression, but definitely extremely uncomfortable. Also the being frugal and overwhelming myself with the preparation my food also ties in with my PTSD, I cannot bring myself to letting my boyfriend help me with cooking food, yet, which is why he often suggests we get something prepared elsewhere, which he knows I rarely have issues with restaurant preparation.
Also, my aunt on my non-biological father's side had pointed out the fact my mom didn't teach me basic feminine hygiene. I never knew how to wipe myself correctly until I was nearing 22 years old.

My parents had the type of marriage where they were strangers living in the same house and the only reason they never split was… not wanting to lose the house/not being able to afford 2 homes.

I shared a room (and bed) with my mom til I was about 14. Looking back she was depressed and never addressed her mental health issues at all. My dad felt like a stranger to me too even though he lived there. There was no bond or time spent together. Me and my mom were a lil too close. I didn't get out much because I was always stuck to her side basically.

She died when I was barely an adult and the loss was unreal. I haven't been the same ever since. I feel like I lost my one parent. My dad is nothing to me.

>What was your relationship with your mom like as a child?
I was constantly terrified of her and would feel a bubbling of rage whenever around her or when she was two faced or hurted my big sister or acted like a hypocrite/ bitch. She destroyed whatever good views I had on my looks with her pick me shit. Physically and emotionally abusive.
>What's your relationship with your mom like now?
Amicable but I still hate and her and she's still pushing me things that she likes / liked for herself on me with no regard to my personal preferences. She's still a megabitch every now and then. Still emotionally abusive every now and then as well as physical
>Have you noticed how her abuse or neglect has affected your relationships with yourself or others? If so, how?
I think it has led to chronical shit self esteem as well as me being very affected by female relantioships that mimic my mom's ( especially my old shitty shrink).
I think it also made abnore imposing people and those with short tempers. Luckily my sister and dad weren't too awful. I could be worse but I could be way better and I guess part of resents the stuff I will have to work through because my mom couldn't be bother to face and question her own rearing.

To add on I'm still coming to terms with me knowing that she did the best that she knew rather than what she could, it helps me cope a little bit better because I know an attempt was made but there was no attempt at raising her daughters any differently from how she been raised even after being exposed to not so toxic environments

anybody else have a younger brother and feel the mother cared more about him than you?

I'm still not sure if he was really the favorite or if he just always acted up so he got the most attention that way.

My mom is an actual narcissist. I feel like I'm going crazy whenever I read stuff from other people because everyone's stories are so different from my own. If any anons relate please reply.

>What was your relationship with your mom like as a child?

My mom in a nutshell:
- Grew up in redneck area and her father was a convict who had a second family that they had no idea about, apparently he was abusive
- Married/divorced twice before my dad with 3 children
- Didn't go to college, had her first kid at 18 and married the father only to get divorced not long after. Became neglectful of that child.
- Got married to husband #2, had two kids with him, then the marriage failed and she became neglectful of those kids as well.
- When my dad met her, the kids were all falling behind in school and they (including the 10-11 year old) wore pull-up diapers to bed bc she didn't try to parent them. I think she really just wanted the financial security of being married to a man and she only cared to parent when it benefitted her as a housewife. That would explain why every time her marriages failed she just gave up on those kids and stopped with trying to be a Stepford wife.

As for me and my sister, our dad actually made a lot of money at the time which meant my mom wasn't going to be a total mess for the majority of our formative years. My mom finally got her lavish lifestyle with marrying him until they divorced when I was ~11. Up until the divorce she was a SAHM who was very involved in PTA and my extracurricular activities. She definitely was always sizing herself up with the other moms. My extracurricular activity had a lot of rich girls with wealthy parents and no doubt she was jealous of those wives even if she was better looking. At one point she wanted to sell our house just so we could live in the worst house in this fancy neighborhood. She was always image obsessed.
She cheated on my dad apparently but I don't think that was the only reason that they got divorced. If you watch home videos you can hear her making snide comments at my dad showing that she harbored some resentment towards him even back then. Once she got divorced, she became a full-blown serial romantic mess obsessed with dating men. After every break up she was destroyed and not soon after she was dating a new man. It was always about money.
Out of all the ugly old rich scrotes she dated, she ended up getting back together with some asshole that I hated, moving across the country thinking he was wealthy, and then having to pay all of his bills until she got a divorce and moved back. By that time I was in my first year of college but my younger sister (her last child) has a lot of trauma because my mom used to cry to her. My mom used my sister as a therapist from when she was 7 until she was 18.
My dad was pretty well-off when they got married but after the divorce he was constantly in court fighting charges against my mother. I can't confirm it now as an adult who doesn't talk to her but I remember our child support checks were pretty decent except my mom would always claim we had no money. If we went to the store we couldn't ask for snacks because it was "too expensive" meanwhile my mom was getting her nails done, tanning, her hair dyed, and so on. It doesn't add up financially and my sister and dad swear that she must have been spending the money on herself.

>What's your relationship with your mom like now?
I haven't talked to her in years. Two birthdays ago she texted me some short Happy Birthday text with a heavily edited picture of her holding me after giving birth. It was edited with the apps that put makeup looks on you which was so sad because she's naturally gorgeous then and it's a picture after BIRTH. She was only in her early 30s in that photo yet she feels the need to edit it to be "perfect".
I've worried about her downward spiral as she's now in her mid 50s and she's aging due to the tanning and drinking. Her looks are the only thing she has and yet all of the tanning has wrinkled her. The spiral theory I've had adds up as she's developed an alcohol problem and can't hold down a job.

>Have you noticed how her abuse or neglect has affected your relationships with yourself or others? If so, how?

Yes, for the following reasons:
- Growing up she gave me little to no affection and mocked me for crying. She would send me to my room or make me handle crying fits alone. As a result I feel a lot of shame when crying and I can't offer affection to other people including family members.
- When I became severely depressed she didn't care to say anything until it affected her. This includes waiting to address various problems like a severe eating disorder, cutting, and shoplifting. This led to me bottling up even more because of the consideration that my mental health "affects" others.
- Her lookism and perfectionism manifested in my own lookism and perfectionism.
- Her tumultuous relationships with disgusting men probably influenced my views of men and relationships. I don't pity those men when my mom's motives are so obvious from the start.
- Even if she was getting her nails and hair done, she always claimed to have no money when she wasn't married. So watching her struggle financially because of her reliance upon a husband's money made me a hardcore believer that women should always have a source of income for themselves. I feel like this was one of the most obvious influences that you can see in my own life.
- Overall I look at divorce much more cynically than the average person does. I see it as inevitable as people change throughout their lives and often times that means someone has to make a sacrifice for the other. I don't have such a positive view of marriage aside from romantic movies and such since my parents were total opposites and should have never been married in the first place.

I do have issues with my parents but I wouldn't classify their conduct as abusive. Maybe a bit toxic, inadvertently.

>What was your relationship with your mom like as a child?
We got along well but she went back to working full time within the year I think. I was mostly detached from my parents, in my own little world. Teens were rough cause my parents divorced and that caused a rift between me and my mom. She was depressed and not taking it well, looked a mess in front of me and I wasn't really emotionally available. I was a kid anyway.

>What's your relationship with your mom like now?
Now that I live on my own and am an adult, we are far better. I still struggle with showing affection to her, something in me is disgusted by the notion. I override it when I can, give the old lady some love.

>Have you noticed how her abuse or neglect has affected your relationships with yourself or others? If so, how?
I've been made aware by my cousin who is a clinical psychologist that my mom has NPD and that she must have taken some stuff out on me (despite cluster B not being a boogeyman for her, she predicted I'd been affected negatively). Looking back, she kept telling me I'm like my dad, that I don't care about anything, that I'm emotionally a robot etc. It did define me for a while, but as an adult I realized I am not unloving, cold, distant, etc. I just didn't grow up being attached to my parents because they literally were not fucking at home with me.

So yeah, mommy and daddy issues but they're not abuse related.

Please everyone in the thread look into "schema therapy" it's v good.

My mom sucked. She only treated me as a babysitter and a friend when she had no one else. She let men abuse me and then went back to them afterwards. I do wonder the extent of how much that fucked me up because the physical and sexual abuse from grown men fucked me up more or at least in a way that's more apparent.

my mom was really hard to get along with growing up. she thought i had severe mental issues and wanted to send me to an institution just bc i was rebellious and self-injured (cutting, burning myself). but she also raised me as a single mom and had her own mental issues. nowadays things are peaceful with us. she does her absolute best to help me out and i know she did everything she could to provide for me growing up. she's extremely supportive of me in a way she wasn't when i was younger so i have forgiven her.

Have any anons here been misdiagnosed as a kid, because their mom or other parent(s) wouldn't admit to the abuse you went through? I was misdiagnosed with autism, when I was really just having understandable reactions to all the stuff I was going through. It made me have sperg-like symptoms (only wore certain kind of clothes, severe social anxiety, strong attachments) but the reasons were really hidden (only wore baggy clothes to conceal my body because, well, I was being sexually abused, severe social anxiety from being beaten or yelled at for talking "too much", my dad literally left me when I was five). It really messed me up and made me feel like I deserved to get treated poorly, and my mom used it as an excuse to just mentally snap at me because I was "too hard to handle". When I moved out at 16 the anxiety and supposed "autism" just melted away over the year, and I realized I was just exhibiting those problems because my mom's a literal fucking psycho.

>>194315
Anon, your situation is very unique (though I'm sure some anons here can relate), but it was definitely abusive. I'm so sorry you had to go through that. I can't relate to everything, but definitely bits and pieces. My mom cycled through relationships and relied on men for everything as well, and through every divorce/break up would just become… not all there, as you said. My mom mocked me for crying as well, even though she was kind of a crybaby herself kek. Though I can't say for sure, I think our moms were just resentful of their own lives and wanted to take that out on us. I hope you're doing better now. I know a lot of people struggle with thoughts of becoming like their mothers (I know I do), but the fact you recognize her behavior as unhealthy and abusive means you've become so much more.

>>194370
Thank you for your kind words anon, I hope you're doing better now. I'm sorry about your family situation as that abuse sounds genuinely traumatizing.
My mom is an obvious narcissist so I don't worry about becoming like her; however I do wonder how her range of feelings and empathy/love varies from mine. At times I feel at a loss for even caring or thinking of her, especially in regards to her alcoholism and her downward spiral that started happening as her looks faded. She only thinks of her kids whenever she's dating a new man and needs one around to be a prop for making a good impression as a "mom".
I think her being such an obvious Cluster B made me naturally gravitate to wanting to be the complete opposite of her. Same goes for the types of men I seek out who are the opposite of my dad (who is obsessed with controlling everything, think the "Drill Sergeant abuser"). I'm basically a career-driven woman who wants no kids and wants a sweet guy over a macho alpha type–the complete opposite of my parents' shitshow relationship. Overall I am averse to forming relationships with men and other people in general. I have extreme social anxiety. But I struggle to come to terms with my situation because while it was a terrible home environment it wasn't outright physical abuse like you and other people have dealt with. My memory is total shit probably due to antidepressants which I've been on since I was a preteen. I notice a lot of bad parents will haul their kid into psychiatrists and therapy before ever looking at themselves as the cause of their kids' depression. I've been misdiagnosed with so many illnesses and have spent so much of my life thinking I was too insane and weird for anyone to be my friend or love me as a partner. In actuality we've got shitty home lives and are scapegoated as mentally ill by parents who are putting us in hellish environments.
sorry for this being so long, thanks for bearing with me kek

>>194623
Thanks for replying, anon.

>At times I feel at a loss for even caring or thinking of her, especially in regards to her alcoholism and her downward spiral that started happening as her looks faded.

It's natural to care for your parent (even if they were an abusive POS), especially when you haven't see them for a while, it's just a part of being a human with empathy. However, if it's best for you to distance yourself for your own health, then definitely do that and try not to get sucked back in. I haven't talked to my mom in years and while my life isn't the best, it's way better than how I was as a child, inside all day and terrified of my mom and others.

>I'm basically a career-driven woman who wants no kids and wants a sweet guy over a macho alpha type–the complete opposite of my parents' shitshow relationship.

Those "alpha" type men tend to be very shitty partners, so I don't blame you for staying away from them. It's good you know what you want too. I don't really know my dad so I can't say for sure if he's that type. You deserved a father who took your words in account too and didn't just boss you around, I'm sorry you were faced with that as a kid, what a scumbag.

>Overall I am averse to forming relationships with men and other people in general. I have extreme social anxiety.

That sounds terrible, I know that feeling and it's the worst in the world. Do you know what specifically causes your social anxiety? Like do you have specific triggers (people yelling, commanding, etc.), or is it more of a "any general social situation" kind of thing?

>But I struggle to come to terms with my situation because while it was a terrible home environment it wasn't outright physical abuse like you and other people have dealt with.

I get what you mean about the comparisons between your own trauma and others, but even I and honestly 90% of people would agree your situation was abusive. I compared myself to people who had it "worse" too, but it really helped to compare my situation to a regular, healthy household instead- that's how I knew that I wasn't being treated right. I don't think you were being treated right either.

>My memory is total shit probably due to antidepressants which I've been on since I was a preteen.

I'm sorry about your medication causing memory problems. Have you tried talking to your psychiatrist or whoever prescribes your medication about it? If it's really affecting you, then you should probably discuss a different dose or a change of some sort, whatever you need.

>I notice a lot of bad parents will haul their kid into psychiatrists and therapy before ever looking at themselves as the cause of their kids' depression.

Yup, even somewhat normal parents seem to have a hard time putting the blame on themselves for their child's behavior. I'm a firm believer that if a kid acts out somehow, they learned it somewhere (at least in most situations that's the case). The first person you look to is, naturally, the parent(s) of said kid. I know what you mean about feeling too weird for any one to be friends with, I think I dealt with that a lot before I moved out. As a kid I wasn't outright bullied (maybe picked on sometimes?) but I definitely was an outcast and didn't have that many friends. Like I said, I had severe social anxiety and didn't really know how to healthily communicate with other people.

I'm not sure if this will help you at all, but what helped me become less socially anxious was first realizing I was worthy of conversation, that I'm worth talking to and being listened to. After I realized that, I felt myself want to take care of my body more, and in turn I felt better and more confident. I know you're worthy of that too, anon. You were right when you said our parents scapegoated us as worse than we actually are, because they were projecting and angry at their own lives and selves.

it's okay nonnie, sorry my post is pretty long too.

>>194370
I was misdiagnosed with autism and found out I was bipolar and bpd later down the line and it took until last year after being diagnosed properly five years ago for my mother to accept I was these things. She kept calling me autisitc until then and it was the fucking worst. Or she'd used the outdated OSDD diagnosis that id been given as a kid.

I think she somehow saw autism as less stigmatizing so that's why she refused to accept the actual diagnoses, that and having bpdfag bipolarfag type behavior herself and refusing to go to therapy

>What was your relationship with your mom like as a child?
My bio mom was an alcoholic, and when I was very young would blame me for throwing away alcohol that she had drunk or accuse me of breaking things that she had broken when she was drunk. The woman who raised me, my step-mother, was a victim of severe abuse. (Only relevant because she had this attitude that I was spoiled because she had suffered so much and I didn't have the right to complain). She seemed very annoyed that my dad was kind to me. She always made fun of me, called me a drama queen when I cried, reacted sarcastically/unimpressed whenever I did something good, and always assumed the absolute worst of me. She told me I was evil and annoying and looked like a witch. She called me narccistic for looking in the mirror. She told me I manipulated people into liking me. She convinced everyone that I was the one with the problem and that I didn't like her, when the reality was that I desperately wished for her to like me more than anything. She eventually forced me to lie to the principal and get held back a year, then to go live with my alcoholic mother. My teen years with my mother were a nightmare, we fought every day and I told her that I hated her often. She got worse physically and emotionally. She was severely depressed and had a failing liver. Eventually it was too much to bear and I moved back with my dad after my stepmother divorced him (and took all his money).
>What's your relationship with your mom like now?
Bio mom is dead from liver damage and I don't talk to stepmother.
>Have you noticed how her abuse or neglect has affected your relationships with yourself or others? If so, how?
I used to be a bright and cheerful kid with a loud voice. But after living with my stepmother I became quiet and hunched with terrible posture. I have a hateful voice that mocks me in my head relentlessly no matter what I do or say, the voice finds a way to twist it into something to feel ashamed of. I think this is a result of my time with my stepmother. I carry a lot of guilt regarding my bio mother, I feel like she died because of me. She was very sad that I didn't want to live with her, but it was too hard watching her hurt herself and not being able to do anything to stop it. I will never forgive myself for the cruel things I said to her. I phase in and out of feeling like my stepmother was abusive, to feeling like she was right and I am a bad person. As for my relationships with others, I don't have any close female friends. (I don't really have true male friends either). The female friends I did have when I was younger tended to be somewhat bossy types and I always went along with whatever they wanted. I didn't mind, but I also didn't consider them truly close. In highschool there was a girl I really looked up to and admired, but she ended up hating me and trooning out. I don't know what it's like to actually like a girl and be liked in return. I had a bad NLOG phase, and only recently woke up to how stupid I was. The only advice I can offer is that boys aren't your friends lmao. They wouldn't talk to you if you were male.

>>194715
> I haven't talked to my mom in years and while my life isn't the best, it's way better than how I was as a child, inside all day and terrified of my mom and others.
I'm so sorry for what you went through. Igi, some people just make your life so much worse off and are so toxic that it's better to cut them out for your own sanity.
> You deserved a father who took your words in account too and didn't just boss you around, I'm sorry you were faced with that as a kid, what a scumbag.
Because my mom is negligent/absent, my dad knows that he can do whatever he wants and he'll still be better in comparison bc he didn't outright abandon us. I'm grateful for him taking care of us but he has legitimate anger issues that idt he'll ever learn from.
> Do you know what specifically causes your social anxiety? Like do you have specific triggers (people yelling, commanding, etc.), or is it more of a "any general social situation" kind of thing?
I am averse to loud noises because of my dad (yelling, screaming, slamming, etc) and also ADHD inattentiveness but tbh the most crippling bit of it is how it results in me being afraid of getting close to people in general. At the root of my personality is a fear that people will abandon me once they see the real me or have had enough of me–my old therapist said that this is likely a result of my mother's abandonment, esp since she just stopped talking to us when I was 18-19. It also doesn't help that I've had an ex who would say shit just to make me upset and one of the last things he said to me was that I will never be loved and everyone will leave me. Ik it's bs but it stung considering we were together for over 2 years and I haven't dated anyone else.
> I'm not sure if this will help you at all, but what helped me become less socially anxious was first realizing I was worthy of conversation, that I'm worth talking to and being listened to. After I realized that, I felt myself want to take care of my body more, and in turn I felt better and more confident. I know you're worthy of that too, anon. You were right when you said our parents scapegoated us as worse than we actually are, because they were projecting and angry at their own lives and selves.
How did you learn this? Did you go to therapy or were you able to get better without a therapist?

Had a dream where I was having sex with my mother (eww I know). I am female, and my relationship with my mother is not great, to say the least. In fact, I could post in this thread just like everybody else…but this dream happened, and apparently it is a sign that I have to change the unhealthy psychological attachment into a healthy one (says some research on Google).

Anybody been through this and can offer some advice? Yes, I am going through therapy and I will mention this dream to my therapist.

Every time I look this stuff up I notice I have a lot of the symptoms, but then I doubt myself because my relationship with my mother is currently very good. Until the age of 18, however, I feared and hated her for what felt like completely unpredictable outbursts and her dismissive attitude towards the things I actually liked. Even now she still acts kind of strange: she talks over other family members' conversations, always thinks you're talking to/including her if you're holding a conversation and she's in the room, takes literally any sort of criticism/expression of displeasure/suggestion of improvement as a personal attack, and tends to assume an unhealthy amount of personal responsibility for things around the house. Growing up, she'd never let any of the kids so much as clean up spills that we made because we were "doing it wrong", and she only trusted us to do chores she hated. She's definitely not as bad as some of the others in this thread and I can tell she cares about me in her own way, but I can't help but wonder how many of my issues stem from her and her weird behaviour.

>>194720
How did you find out it was bipolar/bpd and not autism? I also have an autism diagnosis, but there are definitely days when I wonder if it's not actually a personality/mood disorder.

>>196221
All this attention-seeking behaviour tells me that your mother has issues of her own. She probably hates/doesn't like herself and it may be from some trauma from her own childhood. Maybe her own "mother wound".

Also, remember that the formative years are the most important years of a person's life. So just because now you get along, doesn't mean that you're not still suffering from how she raised you.

>>196221
I started exhibiting far more unstable shifts in mood the older I got, and they were often cyclic, but sometimes they'd be random. My social problems were chalked up to trauma from my family's shit as opposed to autism brain, and my therapist saw I was competent in areas a lot of autistic women are not. I had to chance psychiatrists for my separate meds and my newest psychiatrist who specializes in disrupted identity cases and mood disorders was able to pigeonhole me without even me telling her the diagnosis until the end of the session. I mean I would believe it. Sadly I'm not the functional type with a lot of good output. But I'd moved out of my mothers between diagnoses so she wasn't informed of them and had no part, and I hesitated a long time with telling either of my parents about it until I felt comfortable. She didn't want to accept me for years and only accepted me because she saw information about one of the disorders in a docu or a tv show character with it. It's so sad.

>>196218
I have no solution for you but I wanna tell you that you're not alone. I'm straight but all of my sexual fantasies involve an older woman who looks like my mom domming me, not in a degrading way.

>>192215
>Her own mother was an abusive ass to her
Same here, my grandmother was an alcoholic who'd beat her kids. Dysfunction tends to be generational.

>she tended to either be negligent or a narcissist abuser helicopter parent
Same here. My mom was a narcissist.



>but I have no motivation. It is a very slow climb up the hill of responsibility
Same. I lack any motivation.

>She never taught me any valuable life skills, and neither did my father, so that's why I'm not out of their house at 25 yet

Same here.

>>192229
How did you stop being mute? I had to go to therapy and undergo social anxiety treatment but I still have selective mutism of sorts.

>>194370
>>194623
What are your 'real' diagnoses?

>>194321
NPD is probably one of the worst disorders to have.

>>207502
Seconding all of this. I still live with her and I don't have any motivation to live and to get out of my situation. It would take a miracle which will never happen.

>What was your relationship with your mom like as a child?
She wasn't in my life. She's a drug addict schizo who attempted to kill me as a baby apparently. I only met her a handful of times.
>What's your relationship with your mom like now?
Non existent, I ignore any letters, would get a restraining order if I could.
>Have you noticed how her abuse or neglect has affected your relationships with yourself or others? If so, how?
I don't trust anyone, dismissive attachment style, I can easily drop people. I wish I could have a fulfilling relationship, but everything about it is impossible to me. I don't fear abandonment, I can always replace someone. It is frustrating that it's difficult to find people who would accept me for who I am and who are trustworthy. Nevermind how impossible it is to find someone who would put up with my disordered, toxic idea of love, but also wouldn't enable me too much and would actually call me out. Everything is a performance and ~society~ is the stage, but my courtship efforts are a choice, not forced upon me to survive and I enjoy those performances. If I do those performances for someone, isn't that love? Or wanting to protect someone? Or facilitating that someone can follow their passions? It's controlling, but can't it be my version of love? I just also need alone time to recharge, I swear I'm not ghosting or abandoning you, but if I'm chased, I will. I don't feel human, but I'm not ashamed about it, it's more FOMO. I would hate to feel as much as others, but this is boring and frustrating too.
I don't blame my mother for all of this, there are more reasons I ended up this way. Also I understand why she ended up this way and I blame her parents, but that doesn't mean I give a fuck about her or will ever humor her.
I'm not a scrote, sorry if it comes across this way due to edgelordisms.

>>207503
ayrt. It took a long time. I got a job that involved customer service so I had no choice but to force it. It was brutal for the first while, spilled all kinds of spaghetti because I was socially retarded. My coworkers hated me and thought I was mentally disabled. Sometimes it felt physically painful to force words out. This was Phase 1: Exposure Therapy lol. After a while I got more and more used to pushing through the anxiety and it got easier. Once the anxiety got to a moderate level instead of extreme I was able to do small talk and short scripts I'd memorized, but still had trouble communicating anything I hadn't practiced. I think of this as Phase 2. Once I got more confidence/exposure with the scripts my anxiety started shifting into a low/nonexistence level and now I'm at a point where I can communicate with almost 0 anxiety and no mutism.

Granted I'm still a fucking autistic robot, I didn't become a normie and I don't have a super active social life. But I can communicate comfortably and there's no anxiety so I'm a lot happier.

>>207552
I'm the first anon and I'm living with my father who's nicer but also not helpful at all and I kinda wish someone would just swoop me away from this hellhole. I'm going to try and use any smidge of family connection I can to enter my desired industry, I can't take this shit anymore

Why do so many women I talk to have a mom that chose a shitty man over them?

My mom met a man on OKCupid, he was married to someone else and then he got with her. He was abusive and controlling. He started out as annoying and made us uncomfortable yet she insisted that he was our real dad and she made my 5 year old sister at the time call him daddy and we didn’t even talk to our real dad, so right off the bat we don’t like this man. A few years later he’s a full blown abusive asshole who she argues with he’s a cheater and he watches teen porn, at some point he cheats on my mom with a 19 year old. My mom even gets into an argument that me and my sis overhear about accusing him of being atttracted to us, all these fights we assume they will end. She gets kicked out of the house every now and then. She cheats on him with a bunch of guys and we have to stay with them some of them are blatantly creepy and prey on me and my sisters. My mom always accuses us of trying to steal them from her, and wouldn’t let us wear shorts around the house or tank tops.
we told her these men gave us bad vibes and she disregarded it. She doesn’t care about us, she doesn’t care about our safety. We were teenagers ffs. Anytime my stepdad is mentioned she cops out and uses the “I was in an abusive relationship” excuse but what about all those other guys? We had many chances to escape him but instead from 13 to 18 I had live with an asshole who liked to yell and berate us and make us cry which on reflex is disturbing because my mom told me that he got boners whenever she cried. I don’t get why anyone would do that. I have such resentment for moms with stepdads that their kids don’t like

My mom was the better one of my parents. I always considered us close and when I was a teen she got cancer. She died when I was in my early twenties and I think that's the most painful thing I'll likely ever endure. I loved her to bits, I still do. I don't like saying anything negative about her.

A few years ago while in therapy though, childhood neglect came up. I have very few memories of my childhood, there are alot of blanks. I listen to other people talk nostalgia and I can barely join in. I think 2 different therapists over the years actually started talking about childhood neglect with me. Both times I started to feel these overwhelming feelings and I abandoned therapy as I couldn't cope. I suspect that my first few years were bad and that's why I have so many blanks in memory. My mom seemed depressed in general and never addressed it or sought help. I know that around 8/9 and onwards we were attached at the hip but something was off before that and I can't put my finger on it. I just know I hate trying to think back to that time in my life. Just trying to think back before 8 sends me into a weird state. The older I get the more my brain bugs me about it though. I want to remember all the genuinely very sweet times I had with her but I know theres something else lurking underneath.

My dad was always distant, he liked my brother but he views women as these hyper emotional alien creatures so he's just a write off. He can't connect with women full stop. Surprise surprise I had weird feelings around my gender a few years ago and he hit the roof when he heard that. The phase passed in time but now I'm a 'strange woman creature' again so fuck him. I can't win. I have no parental love left in my life. Ultimately I think my mom went through a period of bad depression (bad marriage prob didn't help) and during the most vital years of my development I wasn't being provided for emotionally by either parent. My mom got better in time whereas my dad never did. Then I lost her.

>>192203
My relationship with my mother was never great. She was frequently really emotionally abusive with me, just the most stereotypical mean girl bullying you can imagine, but my mother and for as long as I can remember. She was especially nasty about my looks and being shy and would constantly make fun of me and make cruel comments. I wouldn't say she was exactly neglectful (when it came to material objects she could be pretty generous, actually), but I couldn't really go to her with any problems or issues because she would just mock me about it, either in the moment or at some later point. I always got the feeling that she just didn't like me at a very fundamental level and because of the way she acted towards me I ended up disliking her.

She died a few days ago and I feel really strange about it. It is very hard for me to think of any really good memory, at best I just think of minor moments of kindness, usually her giving me things but I still mostly just remember her cruelty. The night before she died she called to have a last "conversation" with me which was actually a lot of ranting at me, that I never liked her and she mentioned random little things like not calling her on her birthday once. She was pretty out of it, probably on a lot of pain medication, and she did say a few nice things but it was mostly her typical self pity and acting like I was always against her.

I had long thought that I would bring up her past behavior and ask her to apologize to me (and my brother/stepfather as she was hideously abusive to them) but I didn't, I was just quiet. I don't regret keeping quiet, exactly, as I don't think saying something would have helped at all and I wanted her to die in peace, at least.

I feel very sad that we will never have a moment of understanding and the chance to have a real relationship is now gone forever. I always wanted her to like me and say nice things about me (I lived for any random little compliment she rarely gave me) and now it'll never really happen again. it's just really strange.

>>209229
I'm sorry for you loss, especially so young.

Maybe I'm being childish, but I can't stop thinking about this Mother's Day at my aunt's. We were having dinner with the rest of my family and my other aunt said that they (the moms) should each speak about what they like about being a mom. She went first and said she found it interesting how she gets to see her son develop his own personality and my mom comments Oh god, no. No, no. while shaking her head. She was pretty much talking about me, and the silence was so bad I wanted to die. Anyway, the subject was changed.

I mean, I guess I always knew my mom only wanted a daughter to use as a doll, probably because of her trauma, but god, why. I can't hate her fully though. My relationship with her isn't always so bad. We have our good moments. It did get rocky in my teens and it sometimes still is now, and she can be emotionally and (sometimes) physically abusive. But I can't help but see her younger self crying inside so I end up feeling bad when I rightfully defend myself. She also has some health issues but tbh I can't get myself to feel sad. Sometimes I feel so disconnected from her and other times I see her as my best friend. Just so confusing kek

My mom has autism, so my dad basically took on both parent roles.

>What was your relationship with your mom like as a child?
My mom always wanted a "girly girl" but I never was one, although I was never considered a tomboy either. She had a tough childhood and teens and tried to vicariously live through me with certain things she missed out on when she was young. She went straight back to work when I was very young and was obviously stressed, had (and still has) mental health issues and couldn't cope when I was upset, so sometimes she'd beat me and tell me to stop crying, so after some time I resorted to just chalking everything up instead of expressing my feelings because I knew my mother wouldn't console me but rather punish me for expressing my sadness.

Things got a bit better in my teens because at that point she'd stopped beating me, probably because she realized that I could go tell the authorities (she still denies ever beating me to this day, even though my brother and my did still remember it too). As I mentioned, she wanted a girly girl and for me to act like we're best friends and for me to tell her everything, without realizing she couldn't have pushed me further away from her. She'd always want us to go shopping, get our hair and nails done, talk about boys and whatnot but I never cared for such things and she grew resentful over time, which made me become closer to my dad and that would piss her off even more because she felt like I'd chosen him over her. She'd always mock me for being a "daddy's girl" or would call me "daddy's little princess" in front of friends and relatives and say things like "Aww you're crying? Go tell daddy." in a condescending tone.

>What's your relationship with your mom like now?
It's okay, but we don't see each other often and I prefer it this way.

>Have you noticed how her abuse or neglect has affected your relationships with yourself or others? If so, how?
All of this left me with major trust issues in relationships to this day. I struggle opening up and being vulnerable with people and thus push them away in fear of getting hurt, which in turn leaves me feeling lonely and isolated. I feel embarassed and weak when I show any signs of struggle or sadness. I fear people mocking me over it, just like my mom did.

Bump for CP don't scroll

My bf has a 'mother wound' and has cried a lot about the abuse he and his sister faced from their mother. She used to physically hurt them both when the father wasn't around, yelled at them, ignored them and abused their father in front of them. He is trying to have a good relationship with her now, but what is some advice on how to heal from this?

This is a mess of a board. Radical feminism and hating moms don’t mix well.

>>264042
This thread isnt about hating mums its about dealing with abuse given to people by their mothers and how they're coping with it.

I honestly feel like its impossible to have kids and not mess them up somehow. thats my biggest fear with having kids.

>>192203
>>What was your relationship with your mom like as a child?
My mom has been so weird towards me, it almost doesn't seem real.
She was very controlling. I liked reading, playing with my girl friends, dancing, but when she caught me doing those things she'd get so angry. She used to tear my library books, scream at me when I was staying in, come out to scream at me when I was playing with my friends. When I was around 14-15 it got so bad I could only do three things a) study (not history and literature though kek) b) stare at the wall c) go biking, but only with my dad and NOT my friends. She'd check my phone every day, check my computer, come to my room every two minutes. She even wanted to install a camera when I was 16 but thankfully nobody wanted to help her set it up lol. I also wasn't allowed to eat most stuff, obviously no fast food, sweets, but also healthy things I "liked too much" (broccoli and raspberries). I was constantly insulted, she called me big (even though I was severely underweight thanks to her diet), stupid, retarded, autistic, ugly. She'd obsess over every little physical characteristic I had, my legs were ugly, my elbows, my neck, my shoulders, my hair, everything was ugly according to her. For many years I wasn't allowed to wear a bra or any cute clothes so I had to cover up with books and my arms. Sometimes I got hit, she used objects like pans, books, pots, pencil cases, tiny kid chairs, brushes, hangers and ofc it wasn't "real" violence because she never used her fists. One nonnie brought it up in her post already, my mom also made fun of everything I told her so I just stopped sharing anything with her. I had told her that some asshole at school called me a giraffe because I was taller than him, and from that point on she'd call me a giraffe for like a month.
>What's your relationship with your mom like now?
It all seems unreal because my mom is an angel to strangers. She is a teacher who works hard, she cares for her pupils a lot. Our older family members rely on her, she makes them warm meals, cares for them. It's been 5 years since I moved out, went to uni, found a job, and my memories are starting to get hazy, sometimes I think maybe I dreamt it all up?? Like there's no way someone who has as many friends and is as loved as my mom was so psychotic? I still visit family for holidays, and I'm close to my dad so we aren't no contact. My brother went through the same thing with her and he has been no contact with her for close to 10 years (he's 11 years older than me).
>Have you noticed how her abuse or neglect has affected your relationships with yourself or others? If so, how?
I hate it when people look at me for too long and try to control what I'm doing. Obviously it prevents me from dating seriously, being on a date is a huge source of anxiety for me, when a guy asks me out I immidiately get suspicious. As cringy as that sounds I can only e-date kek, because I only meet my bf every two months and he doesn't know what I'm doing most of the time. Privacy is a big deal to me. Also I got messy relationship with food. I use it as reward but at the same time I get so much guilt when I try to eat something unhealthy, I can't even finish it or I vomit it out. Same with clothes, makeup, I hoard a lot of cheap stuff. I try to work on those habits but it's hard and I don't know what I can do. Especially since I got a decent paying job, I don't feel the pressure to save and end up spending a lot of money on useless crap I wasn't allowed to have as a teen.

>>264042
just say you know nothing about abuse from mothers and leave. don't be retarded

>>264065
Mom is a teacher too…apparently narcs like to keep up appearances like that. She works with elementary kids too. It angers me because when I was still in pre-school, I was molested by a family member. She knew about it too, but kept sending me back to that same family member to watch me, alone, aware that it could happen again. Also, when I got older, I was physically assaulted multiple times by siblings, yet she didn’t report it and even made me go to school with the broken wrists and bruises.
It just baffles me when she talks about how she cares about kids, and how she feels bad for the “mentally unwell” kids and knows soooo much about mental health, when she didn’t care about my safety at all, and whenever she visibly saw my depression in high school (I wore the same covered clothing everyday and couldn’t bother grooming), she told me to “quit it” because “it would make her look bad and get in trouble”, and she thinks mental health isn’t real. I hate that people only see whatever front she puts on and the “teacher” title, when she’s absolutely terrible.

>>264104
>>264065

your mom is a bitch

>What was your relationship with your mom like as a child?
non-existent, I was basically thrown to high schoolers they paid to raise me most my life, I was a burden accessory when they wanted to go out, they wanted to vacation and party it up, drink like no tomorrow and I was just an annoying tag along. It was easy to forget about me to them
>What's your relationship with your mom like now?
it's there but it's not
>Have you noticed how her abuse or neglect has affected your relationships with yourself or others? If so, how?
I didn't understand what a healthy relationship was like so became a doormat for others, I thought it was normal to be used for money, I thought it was normal for friends and boyfriends to ignore me for days, weeks and so on. I thought it was normal to have my emotional and physical needs neglected to the point where I thought I was being overdramatic when an ex boyfriend would ignore me and treat me like a burden if I was in the hospital or very hurt (I'm clumsy so get hurt a lot). I thought it was normal for people around to drink it up, creep on other girls and just treat me like I'm a burden who must be carried around. It wasn't until I got into a healthy relationship I realized how messed up it truly was to neglect someone in this fashion

>What was your relationship with your mom like as a child?
She was always very overbearing, controlling, and nitpicky. I suspect she had undiagnosed autism as she would have huge meltdowns every few weeks, couldn't stand not getting her own way, and would talk at people instead of with them. Nothing was ever her fault and she was very childlike mentally. I also had undiagnosed ADHD/autism and my mother would punish or ridicule me for my symptoms, even though she had the same ones. I didn't get a diagnosis until I sought it myself.

Her "special interest" was saving money, which meant she was miserly about everything and we never went anywhere or did anything. Her lack of social connections also meant she was very out of touch, and being older, she would accuse me of being spoiled for wanting things that are normal these days, like running water in the kitchen, heating, normal food, etc. She used to call me a leach despite not having worked for decades herself.

She would tell me almost weekly that she regretting looking after me when I was younger. Even straight up told me she regretted having me. She favored my sister, who is also very childlike.

>What's your relationship with your mom like now?
I've been NC with my entire family for several years and LC before that. I don't plan on attending her funeral.

>Have you noticed how her abuse or neglect has affected your relationships with yourself or others? If so, how?
It gave me very low self worth which meant a string of abusive relationships. It feels like I grew up in a different world from everyone else which makes it hard for me to connect to others in a healthy way and makes me vulnerable to abusers. My mother would often seemingly make things up and I've had to train myself not to believe anything she told me. I lack a lot of social experience because I never saw my parents socialising with anyone, not even family, and as a result I have zero friends. She screwed up my formal education too. Her abuse is ingrained in every part of my life and I can't escape her.

Overall, it feels like whenever I get over the childhood issues currently bothering me, new ones arise and I have to start all over again. I'll never be free of this. I've never gone to therapy as I feel like the only possible result is reaching a weird abnormal situation where I pretend that I'm ok with what happened and that I don't need a mother figure in my life. It's not like I can solve my issues and then forget about it all or get a new family. Even if I did try, being on the spectrum would probably make it much harder anyway.

It's a very strange feeling to be constantly craving a mother that does not exist.

My parents were such fucking porn addicts I'd catch them watching porn like every single day. My mom would watch lesbian porn in front of me and they'd bring me to hooters and flirt with the waitress and stuff, they'd make comments on friends moms and I thought all of it was normal and started having hypersexual behavior at an early age. I feel physically sick anytime I see anything remotely pornographic and cannot be attracted to anyone who remotely resembles either of my parents. My husband was also sexually abused by his mother and has the same reaction

>>272132
I really don't want to armchair diagnose people with autism/adhd, but I suspect my mom has one or both and it makes life hell. In public she behaves normally, but at home it's like she stops seeing us as autonomous people. If she has something to say to one of us and we're talking to someone else, she will interrupt the conversation and get offended if she doesn't immediately receive a response. Similarly, she assumes all conversations that happen in the same room include her, and will get offended if she is not included. She does not seem to understand other people's emotions; being upset around her makes her upset, and she yells at you to "get yourself together" or to "stop stressing her out" instead of listening most of the time. The only person allowed to suffer is her. I have stopped telling her about any severe mental distress because she always makes it about herself and how she feels so bad that her children are suffering and she can't fix it. She still tries to control what I eat and wear by buying me stuff or dumping her old clothes on me or telling me that we're going shopping even though I live by myself now. She refuses to listen or pay attention to us long enough to learn our habits or what we like and demands we tell her exactly what we need when we need it, which feels impossible after a lifetime of either being told no or having those decisions made for us. I don't think she hates us, and I think she does try to love us, but it feels more like the way someone would love a pet or even a useful tool.

Dae find themselves fawning to a neglectful mother? I always go overboard on gifts because she's very materialistic and unsentimental. Even though I resent her a lot and I know she treated me unfairly, as soon as an opportunity comes up to please her I jump through hoops. I think the only time I've seen her truly happy is when she's holding an unexpectedly large amount of cash.

>>272137
>She still tries to control what I eat and wear by buying me stuff or dumping her old clothes on me or telling me that we're going shopping even though I live by myself now
Omg my mom sounds a lot like yours, especially this behaviour. Why do they do that? Half my closet is shitty boomer clothes my mom compulsively buys me.
As soon as I moved out she also bought me a bunch of art and furniture, curtains, etc. Thing is it's never practical stuff but uh "statement pieces" so my house also looks like a mishmash of her style.
It's like she needs to be in every moment of my existence and in every room of my house ugh.

>>272152
Yep. I'm supposedly "no contact" with my mother and I've given her just over £10K this year alone because I feel bad for "abandoning" her - even though I cut contact at the request of literally everyone close to me who could see how much this woman hurts me . My wife got me to try and add up all the money and expensive gifts I've given her in the past, as a way to make me realise that she's conning me, and it came to about £57K. I worked my ass since my my first part-time job at 14, I bought her a gift from my very first paycheck. I'm now trying to provide a future for myself, my wife and any children we might have and just one self-pitying email from her and I'm sending her flowers, jewellery, money, etc. I still feel like a little girl trying to win her love and approval even though I'm 31. I wish I knew how to cut ties and actually stick to it because it's causing arguments with my wife, biological father and stepmother. Ironically in trying to win her over I'm letting everyone else down.

>>272166
Ayrt and omg
>worked my ass since my my first part-time job at 14, I bought her a gift from my very first paycheck
I literally did the same thing when I got my first job. I completely forgot about that but yeah, this has been a pattern since I started making any money at all.
I wish I could help you get free of the guilt and remember that your money you earned is better spent on yourself and your family who truly loves you.

>>192203
I wouldn't say my mom was abusive or neglectful, but I definitely related to those last two bullet points growing up. More than either of my parents individually, it was their unhealthy relationship that hurt me the most, though.

>>272166
Filter her emails to trash anon

My mom's dead and whenever she's in my dreams she either doesn't recognize or hate me. Or a combination of both. And she usually has a whole brand new family too. It's really weird and I can't wrap my head around why these themes are so prevalent in these dreams.

>>272235
Did you have a good relationship with your mom otherwise? If so, I wonder if some part of your deep subconscious never accepted the fact that she died—having a new family or not liking/remembering you might be ideas your brain is cooking up to explain her absence.

>>272239
It was a turbulent relationship but she passed when I was 14 so it was nothing deep and profound. She was just emotionally unavailable a lot and had her own issues. And yeah I agree with the second part, I think my brain is still wracking itself over having lost the one person I wanted to live forever.

I'm an autist and was a very difficult child to deal with. I always felt my mom liked my siblings better than me and there were signs of it throughout my childhood. When I began having problems in grade school, my mom was dismissive of it or thought I was overreacting. She worked directly with the woman whose son terrorized me the most and did not even attempt to do a thing about it.
I continued to have issues into adult life and felt as though she just had no patience for it, some deep resent or exhaustion from having to raise me. I had a traumatic life changing event and she once again thought I was overreacting, and wasn't there for me in the end. I'll never forget the cold, indifferent look on her face when I told her my life wouldn't be the same. When a sibling or other relative went through some other stuff, it seemed like she would drop everything to help out. Just not me.
It was the last straw for me. Looking back, I do have empathy for what she had to put up with, I know I wouldn't be able to put up with someone like me. But it just sucks I can't really look to her for support because I cashed in all my mommy credits a bit too early.

She's most likely gonna die the next few years. Hard for me to think about but I don't think things are really reparable, but I know a lot of that is on me. I know it's childish of me but it just sucks to remember some of the moments in the early days when I felt her love and that I can't ever get that back. I admit as an autist I have trouble understanding boundaries, so for me it's hard for me to grasp that a family member can't support you through a hard time. Idk. Someone who isn't a tard, help me out here kek. And yes, I know I need to grow up.

Seeing my friends raise their kids can be so painful. So many problems I thought were immovable mountains growing up, that made my life hell, were only there because my mom thought if I wasn't starving her job was done.
>kid mercilessly bullied? Move schools
>Kid is bored and destructive? Sign them up for extramurals
>Kid has no friends? Make an effort to socialise them and teach them people skills
>Kid tries to kill themselves? Do something, literally anything about it
Yeah. We were poor and she couldn't chuck me into expensive therapy. But fucking check out a book from the library about how to keep your suicidal kid alive. DO SOMETHING. BE A PARENT.

>>272253
Anon I know this is a late reply but it's really not your fault, all children are needy and a lot of parents grow to resent their children because they just weren't meant to be parents so it's the parent's fault in the end. She might've been exhausted with you but the way she'd help others proves her exhaustion wasn't the issue unfortunately.

You deserve better and considering how most mental illnesses are hereditary I think she could also have something wrong with her. Even if she hated you, no matter what a mother should be sad if something bad happened to her child, even animals get depressed when their baby is hurt or in danger. i
It's just the bare minimum a mother has to provide to her child.

I also have a similar experience but I was a perfect child throughout-which is why I believe this situation isn't your fault - even now I'm considered perfect by academic and social standards but my mother resented me the day I became a teen, some parents are like that and we can't do much. I also had a life changing event and afterwards, my mother would read the women in news who suffered similarly to me and mock them for being useless dumb whores. She'd look me in the eye and laugh.

You deserve to be loved and I hope you get the support you deserve elsewhere, either from another family member, friend or partner. Stay strong. I know it's hard to watch her die to know there's no possible way for you to ever gain her love and support, don't go through this alone.

>>272253
I'm also an autist and while I don't think I was hard to deal with (or at least I don't recall it that way), I also feel like I used up all mommy credits when I was too young. It felt like the older I got, the more my mother saw me as a chore. She has never ran out of credits for my much older sister though, who may or may not be an autist.

I kind of wonder if the delay in developing empathy and the lack of need for chit chat is to blame in my case. Like my mother got tired of putting lots of effort into me and getting nothing of the same in return.

She never had any friends and had a bad childhood and so she began to take out her pent up feelings out on me, I suppose because she didn't feel a motherly bond towards me and I was available. Things like ranting at me as if I was the cause of things that happened before I was born, or things I did when I was five that she felt "ruined" her life (which couldn't have).

I don't think you need to grow up, wanting affection and care from your mother is a basic human need and you can't just switch that off, especially not out of personal choice and when you never received enough of it as a child.

>>272277
Aw anon I'm so sorry :( I can relate SO hard. As I've grown up a bit through my 20s and 30s I realise just how fucked up my upbringing was, and how I could never treat a child how I was treated, even considering how poor we were and my mum's own problems. It fucking sucks and makes me so angry. It's also really difficult for me to accept that I was neglected and abused - like that doesn't fit with my self-image at all - especially now I've got a more objective view of exactly how out there my life was as a kid. Therapy has helped a bit but in other ways it has shone a light on how much my childhood has affected my whole life (like making me vulnerable to being in abusive relationships etc). Sometimes I think I would be better off if I hadn't figured this stuff out. I still have a relationship with my mum but she has never supported me, taken time to relate to me, or even really looked after me properly. I still feel I have to maintain a relationship with her 'because she's my mum' but honestly I'm questioning what purpose that even serves these days. She is a total narc and any interaction has to be 100% on her terms which is completely draining as she is so unpredictable. Urgh.

>>272277
Ps. Also has serious mental health problems as a teenager which I got zero support with. I told my mum I was self harming and she had a go at me telling me I ruined her night. I laugh about this because what else can you do but it's so fucking bleak. FML.

>>272288
>I don't think I was hard to deal with
Actually, thinking more about this, I think for my mother I maybe was hard to deal with because she made it that way. She was so overbearing and controlling about every little thing in my life that it must have been exhausting for her. She was always quick to anger over the smallest thing and seemed to expect me to follow adult logic from a young age and any time I didn't meant I must have done it intentionally to be bad. Being an autist meant I misunderstood things a lot more too.

>>272175
I'm sorry to hear you were stuck in that pattern too, anon, but it's strangely comforting to know I'm not the only one. I wish you all the best with your mother.

>>272201
Did that and then I just kept check trash like a kicked dog waiting for it's master to return. I also changed email address but caved and emailed her. I need the Men In Black thingy to erase the damn address from my memory. Phone numbers aren't an issue as I barely remember my own and I would never visit her in person as I'm certain it would trigger a panic attack or something. Email is the last hurdle, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel! I'm so close and I hate it. I should've been through the fucking tunnel years ago.

>>272277
I'm sorry nona. I really relate, I had issues as a kid that looking back would have been so easy to deal with if my mom had just…wanted to deal with them. I was so autistic that the school noticed and was offering to connect me to resources and help me but my mom wouldn't work with them. Mental health services are free and plentiful if you're under 18 here so there was a lot she could have done with a single phone call but she just didn't want to.

>>272300
Don't have an email address then. Use temp addresses to register for things or open and then immediately close an account.

>>272301
Different anon but my mother used to threaten help for my issues as a punishment but then never follow through.

You keep compulsively skin picking? I'll take you to the doctor if you do it again.
You're doing it again? Yeah, I said that but never mind.

You keep having meltdowns recently? I'll take you to the doctor if you do it again.
Wait, forget that, just get over it.

How hard is it to see your child needs professional help and then get it.

I think my mom having a bunch of miscarriages before finally having me was a sign for her to just stop trying. She just wanted to have a baby just to have one. I don't understand why she had to stay with my dad. I remember she would vent to me about how she would probably be out there in the world doing something completely different all while not knowing I was an already suicidal teenager kek. She tells me not to have a kid at my age now or else I'll be stuck. Just stresses me out to think about all the shit she went through and continued to get pregnant and then stayed with my dad who was shitty at the time. Dumbass.

How do you get over the fact that you will never have a "proper" mother nonnas?
Everytime I think I have accepted things for how they happened, I see something that reminds me of how normal parents act and/or how nice it would be to have been raised by someone suitable to be a mother, the sadness just instantly creeps back. This time it was the Chinese Confinement video of Taylor and the nanny in it was so caring, sweet and helpful, teaching without a condescending or ruling tone and ready to explain as much as she has the ability to. It's such a simple thing and yet it set me off again about things I will never have with my mum, because she doesn't even see me as a human and never will.

this is probably retarded of me but does any one else cope with religion or spirituality of goddesses or mother figures? i practice marian devotion because i was raised catholic. i don't really believe in it and i'm an atheist and against organized religions altogether but it's nice to put all that love for a mother figure somewhere. my mother was neglectful so it helps me to feel like a "mother" is always there and looking out for me and could help me when i need it, even if it's kind of delusional and a huge cope

>>192203
>The mother wound, or "mommy issues" as it's more commonly referred to, is something that's frequently attributed to men in popular culture
Is it?
Everything in my experience says that mothers are more likely to be emotionally distant from their daughters than their sons.

>>273539
I'm doing the same! When I'm in great distress I pray to mother nature. With praying I mean screaming for your mom like a child would. It helped me a lot because it was the first time I screamed for "my" mother. It is really comforting. And she never fails me.
And the nature is our mother, right? Like we were born out of it.

>>273538
Telling myself nature is my real mother is my cope.

>>273615
yes! i love the idea of mother nature. i'm glad she brings you comfort, nonnie.

>>273539
I kind of pray to artemis in a way? I've been pretty sick lately and knowing her lore, it helps to deal with stuff and get stronger, I touch and greet an old ass statuette of her every morning and leave the animals in my yard some food with her in my mind. I know it's silly but thinking of her really helped me and comforted me in the hospital, with the whole no visitors being a thing all that. She's a pretty motherly figure in my head for sure.

Me and my mother have a strained relationship. I resented her for years but now that I'm much older I don't hate her anymore because now I'm more sympathetic to why she was the way she was to me. She had a really shitty upbringing full of child abuse, wasn't educated at all, got pregnant for a man who left her after the miscarriage and has mental illnesses as a result that she definitely needs treatment for. True she shouldn't have been be taking out her pain on me, but she's a broken woman and society isn't kind to women who have issues, and as a result she has a roughness to her that she uses to hide all her pain.
And tbf she did what she thought was the right thing at the time. She would spend half of every year in first world countries as some kind of carer/nanny/nurse to pay for my education and because she couldn't even read until adulthood she had very unrealistic expectations of me to succeed because I was getting opportunities she never had. I don't think I'll ever get over how much she hurt me by trying to force me to be someone I wasn't. But now that I think back on it I at least understand now her thought process and I don't have it in me to hate her anymore like I used to. I wish we could start over but there's too much history between us neither of us can undo and it will probably haunt us for the rest of our lives.
I've decided I'm not going to have children because I don't want to end up doing the same thing she did, overcorrecting for a shitty childhood and fucking the kids up in the process.

>>273691
aw, nonna, i'm glad you're finding strength. you'll get even stronger, keep going

>What was your relationship with your mom like as a child?
The more I think about it, the more it's clear that my mother was not ready for children. She was extremely paranoid and prone to explosive angry outbursts. I wasn't raised religious and this is corny, but as a kid, it felt like my mom was my first example of God, an omniscient, angry one, at that. She was emotionally neglectful yet extremely controlling at the same time. She called me retarded and lazy, would yell a lot and hit me a few times too. She often switched between commenting on my weight and telling me that I need to eat - I'll never forget when she called me a pig. Once, I was crying, probably having a tantrum around 5 years old, and she got so sick of me that she somehow managed to lock me inside the bathroom. At my big age to this day, I still avoid public bathrooms because the idea of getting locked in one terrifies me. Granted, I was probably too fucking stupid at 5 to realize bathrooms can't be locked from the outside, but oh well.
We were lucky enough to have a nanny, and she would make her take my sister and I to museums and parks and it makes sense now why I didn't want to go. I think it's because she didn't want to do it herself. When I hit puberty, she quickly became very critical of my looks - especially since I take after my dad in the looks department. She never knew how to look after my hair type (dry brushed 2c hair until I was about 15 lmao) and made me get brazillian waxes starting at ages 12-13, which immediately made me feel like a freak. She would pick my acne and I'm left with scars all over my face. I know she cared and probably didn't want me to develop insecurities like herself (I dislike my nose the same way she hated hers) but it honestly just made me develop violently horrible levels of BDD. I feel like I look subhuman now.
I'm 70% sure she had BPD, 99% she had a personality disorder for sure. She never respected my privacy, I always could tell I couldn't be entirely myself, even in my own room. I never kept a diary for those reasons. She somehow went through my phone and found out I'm gay and outed me to a few family members behind my back and I only found out after she died. She was so fucking sneaky.
She was also epileptic, which I don't blame her for. Her first seizure happened when I must've been about 5 or 6, thankfully with adults in the house, but shortly after that it was almost always me, my younger sister and her. I had to keep my sister from witnessing seeing her in such a state and also look after my mom whenever she had a seizure. I took it upon myself to make sure she took her meds because anyone else in the family risked having to deal with her anger. No one talked to me as a kid. I had to figure it all out by myself. She never took her meds and eventually died 2 and a half months before my 18th. Our relationship was already rocky by then and the last time I saw her was before I left to see my friend overseas. I was so dismissive and a little bitter towards her and it's one of my biggest regrets to this day. I have her text messages saved on my computer and can't bring myself to read them. I never followed her instagram and the account remains locked. I flew back home and the day we buried her, it had never snowed so much, I had never seen such huge snowflakes. I feel so guilty.

>What's your relationship with your mom like now?
I think I still have one. Some days I despise her. Other days I miss her like crazy, like her death makes her a martyr. I'd take all the abuse back if it meant to see her alive again. I don't even see her in my dreams anymore lately.

>Have you noticed how her abuse or neglect has affected your relationships with yourself or others? If so, how?
I have BPD. Apart from my FP, I go through phases of ghosting almost everyone. My mom was very paranoid, even of my friends in elementary school. She always felt like someone was out to get us; she took the evil eye belief extremely seriously. She always told me my friends were going to betray me or go behind my back. I have this memory of us walking somewhere, where she tells me that I can't trust anyone in this world, not even my father or sister. I don't know if that ever happened or if it was a dream anymore, but I don't trust anyone and I don't

My grandma treated my mom pretty badly, by my mom's account, and I think she wanted to do better by me. But I envy their relationship, because at least she doesn't give a shit what my grandma says or thinks about her. Meanwhile I'm consumed by her criticism and approval. I live with her (have for three years) and should just move out, but I feel scared to… sometimes I think I won't survive on my own, sometimes I think I will hurt her if I leave, sometimes I just don't feel like this is that big of a deal and that we are fine. Then I have days like today, where a misunderstanding between us has me crying and avoiding her at all costs, thinking she's calling me a bitch behind my back and laughing at me. She has slagged off my older sister to my face so I know she has it in her to hate her daughters that way. Anyway I wish I didn't care about her opinion so much.

I don't have a relationship with my mom because of how little she cared for my safety over her fun growing up. She had her own trauma for sure but she made blatant decisions she can't take back. It's kind of rough to see many younger 18-25 women find refuge in her just because she gives them a safe place to party. I see so many of them call her mom and take pics with her and post that they would be lost without her. It's made family/family friends question why I don't want to talk to her when obviously she's cool and chill. I'm the bad guy now I guess.

>What was your relationship with your mom like as a child?
She abused me constantly physically and mentally. Whenever I'd talk back she'd threaten me in some way and enjoy the fact I was afraid of her. When I was 5 or 6 we went to family therapy because neighbours had called the police one night and the therapist wanted to tell my mother about how I'm more afraid of her than anything else and she said "Good, She should be" with a smirk on her face. Nothing happened and everything went back to normal. I was her servant and her ego boost. She has never loved me. I was the easiest of all of us kids because I was quiet, but I got all of the shit because she actually wanted me to be like my siblings. She's attempted to strangle me, told me to off myself, broken my bones on purpose, given pedos my phone number when I was just a child, endangered me in so many ways I can't count quite honestly.. And none of this happened to my male siblings.
>What's your relationship with your mom like now?
I pretend everything is fine when I'm forced to see her but I hate her and I'll never love her. She will never love me either. I avoid her whenever I can. I would cut her out if it didn't make things difficult for other family members, but I love them so I put up with her sometimes.

>Have you noticed how her abuse or neglect has affected your relationships with yourself or others? If so, how?
I'm attracted to women but am incapable of keeping romantic relationships with other women because I deal with a lot of internal misogyny. I find it easier to be with men because I feel safer, probably because I was always safe with my father and literally all my good traits came from him. I project a lot of my traumas onto other women and I hate myself for it, so I just avoid getting too close in order to not hurt others.

>>273707
you both sound like you might have autism

>>274221
ayrt i can't tell if you're joking or not.

>>274227
not joking. i'm on the spectrum and have similar symptoms, as does my (undiagnosed) mother. the anon is diagnosed bpd which is often confused with autism in women

ot but i think a lot of mothers labelled as "narcissistic" are actually undiagnosed on the spectrum

>>274343
im that anon. my moms side has lots of dysfunction, i’m pretty sure almost everyone has a brush with cluster b disorders. ive always thought my mom had undiagnosed bpd, especially bc of her outbursts and paranoia and even more so after i was diagnosed but i do also wonder if i might be on the spectrum.
sorry for coming off cold, i just appreciate the insight and was surprised.

>>274346
no problem, i know autism can be thrown around online as an insult and it maybe wasn't clear i didn't mean it that way

>What was your relationship with your mom like as a child?
My mother was pretty uninterested in my upbringing. Until my early teens we lived as a family of four: my mom, my dad and my grandmother, who was my dad’s mom. I was basically raised by my dad, who passed away when I was 11 years old and then my grandmother passed away 2 years later. The main factor was that my parents were heroin addicts, dad never got clean, mom got clean in 2014. As I analysed this more and more I’m convinced she’s only had me because she was just in love with my dad. They had a fucked up age difference (he was 15 years older than her and they met when she was 17, she had me after she just basically turned 19). And after he died she fully broke loose on the drugs, but at least my grandmother, who was her mother-in-law kind of helped, until she passed away too and my mom went off the rails. She stole money, lost jobs, she would disappear for days on end, she would lie to me constantly, I had to nurse her through heroin withdrawals, OD episodes and a suicide attempt. She would tell me absolutely insane things, as well as she loved to blame me for my father’s death. We started living with my grandmother who was my mom’s mom and that grandmother was just insane: she physically berated and abused me constantly, as she did my mom, I had to constantly pull them apart. And my mom just didn’t care about me at all but of course I think I gave her leeway even though sometimes I felt so angry at her and I was such a lonely and upset teen, and her addiction ruined a lot of parts of my education too.
>What's your relationship with your mom like now?
As I said, my mom got clean in 2014. In 2018 she found out she’s HIV+. Since all that it’s… strange to describe. At first I thought we would be able to mend our relationship but it just never came. She still barely cares about me. She doesn’t know what I like to do, what I’m interested in doing, she doesn’t know who my friends are and even if I tell her things (which happens rarely, but sometimes I just try and try again to see what happens lol what an idiot) she just forgets them. She only comments on my appearance in a mean manner (when I was sexually assaulted, she said it was my fault for wearing a dress that short), she prefers to spend money on her dog rather than help me when I asked for it because I had health problems. When I got diagnosed with BPD she dismissed it instantly, she still never even asked what it means or just tried to found out herself even though it’s been years. Once she earnestly asked why I went to therapy. She doesn’t consider my girlfriend and my relationship of 6 years serious (we live in a non-Western homophobic country) and when I told her we want to go to Europe to get married (tbh I did that just to try and get a rise out of her) she just dismissed it again. She does call me every other day for a 1-minute-long conversation of “How are you?” “I’m ok, and you?” “Me too”. In the rare moments she does tell me something it’s always something mean-spirited, with an implication that I can’t do anything, that I’m ugly and stupid. But when I manage to confront her about something she starts screaming and threatening to kill herself, every discussion about the past is dismissed, she pretends that I had a completely normal childhood.
>Have you noticed how her abuse or neglect has affected your relationships with yourself or others? If so, how?
I feel like because of her neglect it’s very difficult for me to open up. I just prefer to bury things inside and not tell anyone about what I feel or think about myself. Also the loneliness that I’ve felt since my teen years has not gone away, even though now I’m pushing thirty and I have a loving partner and plenty of amazing loving friends I still feel very isolated and lonely a lot of the time. And also because nobody cared for me as a child, I still haven’t learned how to care about myself. I just literally don’t give a shit about myself. I’m bad with self preservation, I had problems with eating disorders, alcohol and drugs in the past and it still goes on, and I’m partial to various forms of SH as well. What absolutely kills me and makes me hate my body, especially face even more is that I look almost exactly like her.

I don’t know if I want her in my life long-term. I’m moving out in 6 months and have to decide. She shows love occasionally and we get along sometimes. But other times she turns into the narcissistic self-absorbed idiot that i’m most familiar with. She believes every idiotic fact she reads on her fundie circle-jerk news websites, is anti-vax, is rude to any friends i have over, is disgusted by the idea that i have ever had a girlfriend, and denies all of the neglect and physical + emotional abuse that she put me and my brother through as kids. She lives rent free in my dad’s home, whom she was a terrible partner to -though they have been divorced for years- doesn’t work, has no hobbies except sitting all day at the kitchen table on twitter until she gets banned for spreading misinformation, sees me as competition and berates me for what i eat (then denies doing it). Every day I hate that stupid useless bitch and everything she stands for more and more. How did she gets here? When she was young she used to be smart, strong, compassionate, driven. I know she never wanted me and all I wish is that I had been born to a better woman. I’m tired of her making me cry my whole life and then feeling like it was my fault. She has caused me such deep pain all my life. I want a mother. But i know that to have any semblance of a relationship i have to keep her at arms length. I wish i could just hate her forever and be done with it.

>>278646
>has no hobbies except sitting all day at the kitchen table on twitter until she gets banned for spreading misinformation
sounds based honestly

I have a very complicated relationship with my mother. She is an ultimate pick me and is incredibly self hating while still narcissistic. She had me and my sister when she was very young, and passively resents us for ruining her youth. She has always seen my sister and I as her dolls, me in particular because I am the more sensitive one who never sticks up for myself because I don't want to make her feel bad. My father was abusive during our childhood, so I understand why she was pretty crazy when I was a kid, however, she had a rampant love addiction and would meet so many random men online and introduce us to them. This started from when I was 8 to even now at 22. The worst part is that they are old weirdos who give her money, and she always talks about it in a bragging way. My mother has an eating disorder she passed on to my sister and I, she was very cruel to me because I was the "big" one and so she would bully me and torment me about my weight in a way that would make her feel better about herself. I recently had a baby, and I decided to invite her to visit us when the baby got home. She took this as an invitation to sneak into the hospital multiple times and shame me for getting pain medication and telling me the doctors are trying to kill me and my baby. I was very stressed and tired from labor (the baby wasn't here yet) so I told my husband to make her leave. She took this as the ultimate "Fuck you" so she totally exploded and said horrible things to me and my husband. She said I was ugly and fat and useless, my husband is going to leave me, he is abusive just like my father, our baby is ugly and disgusting - it was pretty horrible. I haven't talked to her since but she texted me sorry. I feel bad for her still though. She has no one. I don't know how to deal with it because I still feel so much sympathy for her.

>>192215
Samefag. I finally cut her off in November. She finally pushed me to the brink and I blocked her number. Wasn't worth it. I have an unwritten letter I will probably never send her. The only contact she's made since this is sending my father a five email long rant about what a terrible parent she thinks he is

She knows where I work, she knows my email, and she has other ways to bypass the blocked phone number. Not tried to contact me once. It hurts. I expected she'd at least be begging for validation again at this point given wast a bpdchan she is and bemoaning that my sister cut her off before I did but it's like she's entirely moved on? Her kids mean nothing to her. She was only pining for my sister because she was the sorority girl with status. I was the loser retard child. Nothing ventured nothing gained, I guess I was always worthless. I took care of her when she had health scares and was there for her when she almost died. Meanwhile all she ever did was treat me like garbage? almost got me killed or tried to kill me several times? This woman gave birth to two children she didn't even deserve to have. I wish I was fucking dead sometimes.

I found excerpts in documents I wrote as a teen buried in my drive folder about her trying to choke me and it fucking broke my heart. it may be years and me moving out of state and having a career or children, if I ever decide to forgive her.

>I can’t live knowing her disappointment drove her to pin me to the ground when I was pleading for her to calm down, to wrap her fingers around my throat and press at all because she felt my life was best scrapped
>It hurts so much when you realize a parent hates you enough to attempt to kill you
>A woman who still looks quite youthful for one approaching late 40s, who dresses classy and speaks in a cheerful little timbre?
>You’d never expect it, but she thrusts awful obscene statements at me, and false ones at that
>She’s damaged me.

Have any of you experienced a weird change in your relationship with your mother the moment you became a teenager? My mother would mock me for growing bodyhair although she was hairier than me, tell me I'm disgusting for having periods and that my hair getting darker was a shame and I should bleach it back to how light it used to be even though she naturally had black hair herself and burnt her hair the few times she tried going blonde.

>>314384
My mother started beating me as a teenager. She didn't beat me as a child but she was constantly screaming.

>What was your relationship with your mom like as a child?
She would scream constantly if I wasn't perfect. Any transgressions or mistakes would result in more screaming and shaming. I learned to freeze up and go silent because interacting with her in any way just resulted in more screaming and once I was a teen, in beatings. The beating only stopped because I started to fight back, but she still screams and rants for hours at a time (more at my dad and my sister now than me).

>What's your relationship with your mom like now?
I feel either tense and extremely irritable around her or simply numb. I try to limit my interactions with her as much as possible. She tries to rope me into her antics but I grey rock her until she stops paying attention to me. It's the only way to have any peace.

>Have you noticed how her abuse or neglect has affected your relationships with yourself or others? If so, how?
I developed a serious lying habit in high school out of fear of more screaming meltdowns. I started skipping school and acted out a lot because life felt meaningless/pointless because no matter what I did I'd get screamed at, so might as well have fun between screaming sessions. I'm lucky I was not interested in drugs or getting drunk, I could have ended up so much more fucked up. I still have issues opening up to people because I'm trained to believe if you trust anyone or make a mistake they'll belittle you and hold it against you forever. I have to force myself to be honest with people because lying to keep the peace is definitely ingrained behavior in me at this point.
My sister got it a lot worse, she cut herself nearly to the bone, went vegetarian, then starved herself, and eventually went ftm because of my mother's impossible standards.
Neither of us want children because of how we were raised.

>>278646
Go NC. My mother is very similar to yours and my life improved tenfold after I stopped talking to her entirely.

My mom stole my identity among other bullshit. I don't know why I am the scapegoat. What did I do? I've always been the one my mom would beat til bloody or maliciously insult when I hit 13 things got worse she'd insult my body and call me a slut and she was so suffocatingly strict with me and it sucks because I have younger siblings and while she's abusive to them she was far more abusive to me. She made me wear a trash bag and threw out all of my clothes. She read my texts with my boyfriend when u was 14 out loud in front of my step-dad, and then he called me a whore. She told everyone in the neighborhood I sent nudes to him too (yeah its stupid, it was me in underwear and a tank top posed but she still said nudes and told literally everyone ruining my reputation) she just would make fun of me and air out my dirty laundry. And when I complained oh I was just a bad kid, a rebellious reckless teen or unruly child. Obviously it seems that way when she posts pictures of me throwing a fit on Facebook. She ONLY did all this with me she's a shitty mom to all of us and my heart goes out to my sisters but why was I the target? I just want to know, I want her to apologize too, I kept on letting her back in my life the whole time she was using my name and social and birthday to get a tax return and unemployment pandemic, foodstamps you name it. I don't even know what to do because it's all so confusing. I have to just wait.

>>314384
Mine had a seizure that gave her brain damage shortly before I became a teen, as well as other medical problems, plus she and my father were divorcing. She was already abusive, but brain damage made her a thousand times worse. I feel bad and sometimes wonder what it would be like if she didn't have that seizure

I don't know at what age it began but whenever my mom talks to me she just talks about herself and dumps all of her relationship problems with my dad and all of her other troubles on me. She has apologised about it a lot of times but she still does it to this day. After she calls me I feel so drained and depressed, and still guilty because she's been through so much.
Ironically she always mentions how she wishes she could help me but barely listens to more than a sentence or two i say about myself before continuing on about her life. Even my dad who's a piece of shit understands me better and has given me more useful advice and I hate that.
As for how it's affected me, I think people are often drawn to me as an emotional sponge to dump their negative feelings on to this day (even managers at work and people I've barely talked to online, even random people at the store). I hate it so much. I wish I had more confidence to say no and to just be less acommodating in general. I wish other people's moods didnt affect me so much.

>>314623
Get her arrested for identity theft and save your siblings.

>>315083
I've already got two of my sisters to safety but my dickhead stepdad reported us for kidnapping the younger ones.. ugh CPS is no help they just told my sisters to go to therapy after they said our mom beats them and is on drugs, oh well they're fed and have clothes. Don't even get me started on the cops. Idk what I was expecting from racist domestic abusing pigs. I don't legally have my sisters my mom just doesn't care they're even gone. And I'm waiting for the IRS to respond. But I will. It will take years but I hope I can vanquish this beast. I want to try to get custody of the two smaller ones but their dad is such an asshole, and the cops like him.

>What was your relationship with your mom like as a child?
Growing up, my mom made herself seem like she was the nicest person in the world. She gave me permission to do things behind my dad's back, like eat extra candy and watch TV shows and listen to music with bad words in them. She also let me hang out with kids in the neighborhood and friends from school were able to come over at anytime, as long as before my dad got home they were supposed to go home so I wouldn't get yelled at. Dad was the enemy. I remember writing a blog post back on MySpace about how I was so afraid of my dad because of the memories of him spanking me and our family would be better off without him, they always talked about how they were going to divorce and I got happier each time they said it would happen. There was a time we left him to go live with my aunt for about half a year, but he came back. I also remember the time she told me how my dad was playing favorites between me and my sister and how my dad's side of the family bought my sister so many presents for Christmas and not me. I also felt closer to her because my grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins I spent the most time with growing up were on my mom's side. The biggest struggle our family had were financial issues and from my young childhood until I was in high school, I always heard from my mom about how poor we were. How we always didn't have money and how my dad would spend so much money and leave us with nothing.
>What's your relationship with your mom like now?
I've gone no contact with her. I haven't directly spoken to her for almost 8 years now.
After I got my first job, my friends started pointing out to me how my mom wasn't innocent either for demanding money from me and demanding I get a higher paying job when my paycheck wasn't enough for what she wanted money for. She tried making me pay for car insurance for a new car, which was about $400 a month. Eventually I moved out. Even after moving out, she tried to get money out of me through phone bills, because the phone I used was on my family's line, I calculated it was going to be $30 a month, but she said it'd be $175, and I remember going to my dad saying that wasn't right because then it's like I'm paying for my grandpa and sister's line. There was a point I didn't have a job and stayed with my aunt and she realized I didn't know how to properly take care of my hygiene, she told me my mom has been neglecting me . This was also around the time I accidentally found out my dad wasn't my biological dad, I was just curious about my genetic background as a wetback, nothing more. I remember her being so upset because she said she ruined our family, yet I was excited because from before then I was still scared of my dad, less scared than while living with him, but still scared and I thought it would be so neat to meet the father I'm blood related to because I recalled how my dad had played favorites between me and my sister. Turns out my biological father made about 4 or 5 times more than our family ever could, but that didn't phase me at all, the money was never important to me, but it was something my mom pressed me about often. "Anon, remember your father has money so don't be afraid to ask…" Immediately, I had signals go off in my head. She wanted to attempt to use me as a middleman to extort money from my biological father.
It wasn't until a few months afterwards when I finally went gray rock on her. I had just moved to another apartment now further away from home. My ex and my dad got into an argument that ended after like 2 days, but my mom didn't want the flames to settle. Suddenly she turned everything onto me. I got multiple calls and texts throughout my day, this lasted over a week. Her telling me to leave my ex, then also giving me dollar amounts of what I owe her because I still owned stuff that was in her name, then threatening to call the local police on me, then telling me how she's going to say my ex is abusing me to my landlord, then saying she loves me. Texts, calls, emails. Repeat, repeat, repeat. I lost so much sleep over this. Finally I was done. I dropped off everything I had still in her name and got them replaced for a much cheaper price and that was the end of it all. I went to my bank and got money I gave to her to make her finally shut up back. She tried to leave emails still demanding money because I put her in the negative, but that wasn't my fault, she should've prepared for that.
Over the first couple weeks of that, I realized she took over my old phone number. I suspect she talked to my landlord at the time saying I was being abused, because she told me it was OK to let her know if my ex was hitting me and we can get police to arrest him. For as much as a narc he was, he never put a hand on me.
Until under a year ago, I realized my mom knew this entire time my dad wasn't my biological father and she kept this a huge secret from my dad and the rest of our family to upkeep her own reputation. Thinking about all the things she said to me about my dad, which got me to act out and be afraid of him, I can't imagine the shit she would say to my dad to get him to get angry at me. No doubt my dad did harmful things to me by hitting me with the belt and whatnot, but I do question if some of the abusive things he said or did to me were because of things my mom said to him about me. I won't forgive him for mindlessly going along with my mom's word, if that were true. I won't forgive her for allowing my dad's abuse to continue, even after I cried for him to leave the family. She doesn't believe she's done anything wrong at all.
>Have you noticed how her abuse or neglect has affected your relationships with yourself or others? If so, how?
Yes, a lot. I often feel like a burden to my boyfriend and those around me because I feel like I have to pick up after everyone else. I have poor communication skills and I'm working on them. I recognize it's because my sense of trust was broken after so many years of believing my mom was the better parent, among other things.
My relationship with my dad is greater than it's ever been without my mom getting in between us. He's apologized to me for not being around and he makes sure I'm doing good, especially during times of bad weather in my area.
I think one way it affected me was I became too independent too fast, thus goes along with feeling like I have to pick up after everyone else. My boyfriend told me I put too much responsibility on myself that it overwhelms me and I don't feel like I can do things to enjoy myself. I have trouble relaxing. I feel like I'm being watched by people who know me and want to tattle on me if I "mess up".
This is extremely long, but it's super complex to get every detail. I guess that's why they call it CPTSD.