Posted by Lyrical13 on January 5, 2004, at 5:37:56
In reply to Re: divorce one's family?, posted by kiddo on January 12, 2002, at 15:44:45
I was thinking of starting my own thread about family stuff but on a whim did a search thinking "Maybe other folks have family crap too" And there it was..both of your posts said a lot of the things that I'm experiencing.
I'm the nerd too. Master's degree, always had straight A's with little effort, labeled "gifted" in school. Still continue to do informal research...lots of reading and research everything before I do it (like now I'm researching about depression/anxiety/bipolar... for the past year I've been researching adoption" I feel like a know-it-all when I talk to my family about things I've learned...I'm not trying to be...just trying to pass along some helpful info but they react so negatively... you know..the rolling of the eyes.... I also have a very big vocabulary and they ridicule that. Or they just stare at me or make fun of me... act like I'm a complete idiot or psycho or something. Yeah, I have mental health issues, but at least I'm getting help...they're all sick and completely dysfunctional but think they're perfect...to me that's more sick.
Short life story..I have a hx of depression/anxiety for at least 13 years (when I started college) That's when I started having serious problems but I think it was there on a more subtle level since I was about 13. Been in counseling off and on for 13 years. Tried a couple different meds in those early college years but felt worse on them. Didn't start really taking meds till 1996 and have been on various ADs since then. Now am on Effexor 225mg, Seroquel 50mg and Synthroid 100mg. Just within the past month my new pdoc is thinking that I'm not depression/GAD but BP2. So there will be another med change in a couple weeks here.
I'm just realizing within the past few years that I have an extensive family hx of mental illness (I really hate that term...don't know why) THere is at least one aunt, 2 cousins and my sister with anxiety/depression/mood disorder problems on my dad's side. Grandmother and mom on mother's side, though Mom denies she has a problem..has been too busy fixing me all the while saying that I'm codependent. She's right but the thing is so is she! I told her that once in a very brave (or foolish?) moment and she said she'd been in counseling.."did her time" and was fine. Wrong! Hmmm....isn't the definition of codependency focusing on someone else's problems and trying to fix them? Hello!
My grandma is definitely mentally ill in a major way but undiagnosed...in her mind, she's perfect. It's everyone else who's horrible and out to get her..very narcissistic, selfish and abusive (according to my mom, she was abusive in every sense of the word. I've heard enough of my mom's stories about her childhood to believe that plus my own experience with "Crazy Jane" as people call her. Not very nice, I admit but she's not a nice person.
AS far as my mom goes, she's read a lot of stuff, worked as a psych nurse and in rehab hospitals so talks the talk...but I realized that I've basically been her relationship counselor since I was 13. She would go on and on about her relationships with men, we'd sit there and psycho-analyze the whole thing and then when I started to talk about my life, she'd all of a sudden not have time to talk..had to rush off somewhere.
My dad's family doesn't talk about anything. Bunch of ostriches. My grandpa was an alcoholic but no one every talked about it...there was this perfect facade. I always wondered why he was always sleeping on holidays..turned out he wasn't sleeping but passed out! I was really shocked several years ago when I was at my aunt's house...we were talking about how grandpa always was eating..snacking on something (and he was a beanpole)..my aunt said, "That's because he had half his stomach removed because of his drinking" Wow! Someone actually was acknowledging the problem!
I am a child of divorce...several times. In terms of divorcing your own family.... my mom basically divorced her mother. Has little to no contact with her. I'd have to say that I think that's a healthy move for her. IMHO, grandma is the main reason that my mom lives 1000 miles away (or however far it is from MI where we are and TX where mom is)
My parents divorced when I was in about 1st grade. Mom got remarried in 4th. Moved from MI to TX after 5th due to step-dad's job. Dad got remarried after 6th. Mom got divorced again in the middle of 7th. Brother moved to MI to live with dad. Just mom and me in TX till I graduated college in 93. Then I moved back to MI and mom started her tour around the states. Boston, TX, Chicago, SC, MA, SC, TX There have been a string of dysfunctional relationships for mom. Now she's on marriage #3 and sounding very dissatisfied with him....I'm expecting divorce #3 within the next couple years.
DAd is still married and he appears to have things together but the truth is no one talks about anything, his wife sabotages everything he tries to do and now one of his daughters from the 2nd marriage has recently been dx'ed with some sort of mood disorder and the other one is currently on meds for ADD, though I suspect before she's 20 she'll be dx'ed with an anxiety disorder. It's always been there but my dad thinks psychology is "a bunch of crap".
I feel guilty for saying this but part of me is glad that my sisters are on meds now and are having problems too. It's not that I want them to feel as miserable as me..I'm glad that they're being dx'ed at a younger age (14 and 16) so that maybe they won't have to go through the hell I"ve been through. But the other part is, now I'm not the only one in our immediate family. I don't seem so psycho to them now. My step-mom used to be very supportive of me. But once I moved back here from college and I was actually living with dad rather than visiting, things got very strained until she and I had a huge fight in summer of 97 and I moved out. I was basically unofficially the "other parent".. my dad has always been an absent father. He's physically there but that's it. Workaholic, emotionally detached, very critical, perfectionisstic. NO one talks about everything. To my step-mom everything is a joke...at someone else's expense. If you object or say anything about how you feel about anything, you're made fun of and your feelings are discounted by both of them. When someone said "they put you down to feel better about themselves" that's exactly it. My step-mom would majorly mess with my little sister's heads and think it was funny.
she threw the whole depression thing in my face when we had that last fight. Things have been distant but civil ever since. I've gotten really close to my little sis (14 yr old) who is also probably BP...not sure what variety yet. She's on Prozac and Trileptal. Other sis is on something for ADD but has always been very anxious. Step-mom is starting to come around a little bit and ask me questions about my issues to help her daughter. Thank goodness for that. It sure helps to have an ally (little sis) in the family. I'm trying to be very careful though and not dump my grown-up crap on her...she's only 14 (sound familiar...my mom started dumping crap on me when I was that age) And I've always kept my relationship with their mom separate and have never talked with them about my issues with her. That's their mom and I want them to have a good relationship with her.
Anyway, sorry to write a whole book. I've analyzed my family quite a bit in all these years of therapy! I'm married but still no kids. We very much want them and plan to adopt but hopefully we can have a much healthier more functional family than I grew up with...part of that will depend on how much help my husband gets for all his baggage from his dysfunctional family that he thinks is perfect....
TTFN (ta ta for now)
L13
poster:Lyrical13
thread:16577
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20031229/msgs/296607.html