Watching old family videos...

[Cat of the Canals]

My mom recently digitized a bunch of old family videos that were on VHS tape. Most of them I've seen many times, but way back before I was Out of the FOG. I was expecting a pleasant trip down memory lane, but I've found that the videos have made me feel unbelievably sad and anxious all day. There's not any glaring abuse or anything... just little things, like the way my mom expects my brother and I to constantly perform for the camera, or the way she barks orders at us when we aren't meeting her standards.

Anyway, the sadness really took me by surprise, and I'm wondering if any of you have experienced this? Old photos or videos or memories you once thought of as happy and innocent, but now seem tainted or make you uncomfortable?

[Hepatica]

This just happened to me too.  Not the same context, but over the past weekend, my Dh and I watched two CD's that had much of the old footage over the past twenty years of our lives - raising our child. But in some of the footage was my mother and father. And also images of me. And of course my child and seeing him go thru the years and change.

I was in a terrible funk after watching it. I mean I was actually crying. I said to my husband that I don't understand why some people like nostalgia, because I cannot stand it. I felt so off balance afterward. I could see in one video how broken I was (shortly after a miscarriage and so totally in the fog about my family.)  I looked like a lost soul.

Then my uNPD parents popped up in one scene where we had gone to their house to let my child do an Easter egg hunt. As my child was looking, my father was being so nice, but my mother had me sort of in hostage to her complaining - which we could hear but not see - about how much the cost of her glasses had been recently. I heard myself respond and I had a clear memory of how in that moment I had this feeling she was manipulating me, making me feel sorry for them about $$.

Because after that they asked me to loan them $1000 and I gave it to them. The thing is, my parents are not poor. My uNPD mother has a gambling addiction and my uNPD father had another addiction, to buy things, resulting in a terrible hoarding issue. They were low on money because of these things and she was softening me up by complaining about the cost of glasses. When they asked me for another $1000 I wised up and said I didn't have it and my father sort of disappeared for a long time, either angry or realizing I was not useful to them.

Anyway... the video footage really threw me for hours. I had to do some mindfulness breathing and meditation and do a lot of TLC and self-care and I said to my husband, I really had a hard time after watching the old videos.

Is this a thing other people experience? (My sister is the opposite btw. She loves lingering over old family pictures and videos.) She also exhibits NPD qualities and seems to use the videos to prove that we had a great family - because people often do behave their best in photos and video.

[all4peace]

I'm sorry for this hurt you're experiencing right now. I have had experiences like this. Someone once sent me a photo of my family and in it I was probably 6 years old. Everything about the photo brought pain and grief, although to anyone else we would have looked like a fairly normal happy family. Only we knew the story of what was going on in other moments when we weren't smiling for a camera.

In the story you share here, you took really good care of yourself--named what you were feeling, reached out to share here, worked on mindfulness and meditation, got comfort from your husband. I think all of that is incredible. I think it's entirely normal that this would hurt, and just amazing how you worked through it. Sometimes I personally feel our society sells a myth that we won't suffer in life. But how you're coping speaks more that the way I see life--it hurts, sometimes really badly, and there's a way to digest, process, soothe, and then carry on... My best to you!

[Cat of the Canals]

Then my uNPD parents popped up in one scene where we had gone to their house to let my child do an Easter egg hunt. As my child was looking, my father was being so nice, but my mother had me sort of in hostage to her complaining - which we could hear but not see - about how much the cost of her glasses had been recently. I heard myself respond and I had a clear memory of how in that moment I had this feeling she was manipulating me, making me feel sorry for them about $$.

There was a strange off-screen conversation in one of mine as well. My great-aunt and great-uncle were visiting just after my brother was born. At one point my great-aunt starts telling my mom how upset my grandmother is about some completely silly thing (which was also entirely manufactured for sympathy, as far as I can tell). This is when my mother was 2 weeks post-partum! I've always sort of known that my mother must have gotten her BPD traits from my grandmother, but this was a little waif/flying monkey action right there on the screen. Undeniably so.

As for whether other people experience this... I suspect other people with abusive histories do, but maybe only if they're Out of the FOG. Otherwise they ignore all the bad and only pay attention to the "good." The same way they do with anything happening now.

[blacksheep7]

like the way my mom expects my brother and I to constantly perform for the camera,

Mine was the same way, pulling us over next to her showing affection.   I was pulling away from her, my face showing that I couldn't care less.  I was 15.

Also a picture of the family, I'm around 12/13 yrs old, I don't smile.  The look shocked me at first having not seen that picture is decades.  There is anger, mistrust in my face.  I have looked at it a couple of times and it brings sadness, validating how things were at home.

I understand that it brings us back to those moments and all the emotions that go with them.  It will pass.

take care

[Cat of the Canals]

Thanks all4peace and blacksheep7.

Mine was the same way, pulling us over next to her showing affection.   I was pulling away from her, my face showing that I couldn't care less.  I was 15.

One of the strangest things is that I've always thought of my mother as completely engulfing. I thought there'd be more of the "look how much we love each other" play-acting. But the videos start when I'm about two, and the first thing my husband said was, "I expected to see them hovering around you like the typical helicopter parents. But it's more like they're observing you from a distance."

When my brother arrives, she's *very* affectionate to him... when he's an infant. But as soon as he's old enough to walk or dance or whatever, she's off-camera again, ordering him around.

Now that I think about it, she's done the same thing to my nephew. She couldn't get enough of holding him and staring lovingly when he was an infant. But as soon as he was walking and talking, it's been a constant stream of, "Do this! Do that! Show them this! Sing that!"

We are all just puppets in her show, I guess.

[Fortuna]

I've been remembering lately the staging that came with the photos. (my family didn't really do videos). Like if we went canoeing we'd have to take 'happy' before pictures and  'exhausted' after photos  before we even started. It had to be about some exciting story we were participating in. Instad of actually participating in something that was just...fun. Thanks goodness I didn't grow up in the Instagram age. All this was before online posting. I notice I rarely take pictures that aren't candid unless my kids ask.
Also the number of pics my mom just looks angry is amazing considering how staged so many pictures were.

[AlisonWonder]

I have never heard of taking the "after" photos before the event, that is a new one!
My FOO used to be told to line up like a gymnastics team, but the limp arms, body spacing and facial expressions told the real story. 

I've been remembering lately the staging that came with the photos. (my family didn't really do videos). Like if we went canoeing we'd have to take 'happy' before pictures and  'exhausted' after photos  before we even started. It had to be about some exciting story we were participating in. Instad of actually participating in something that was just...fun. Thanks goodness I didn't grow up in the Instagram age. All this was before online posting. I notice I rarely take pictures that aren't candid unless my kids ask.
Also the number of pics my mom just looks angry is amazing considering how staged so many pictures were.

[Andeza]

Same here. I used to want to get some pictures of my childhood from my uBPDm. I even asked for a few. She sent one.

Now though... I've got a pretty good memory, when I'm not in pregnancy fog, blegh, but I remember many of my childhood photos. They are all fake smiles... More a sense of "Why on earth is she making me do this! I hate pictures!" They aren't filled with joy. I plaster a giant fake smile on my face and then move on.

Now, I'm not keen to get any of those pictures back. They are proof of the dysfunction. Staging, always. Because she was never happy with her weight, but would never do anything to change it. Or she was never happy with her hair, and yet kept getting the same cut and style. Or she complained that I wasn't interested in makeup. Why couldn't I just wear some lip gloss for the picture? It was all just horrible, with her and endad inevitably fighting over the shirt he picked to wear, or the angle of the camera, or this or that just because she felt like picking a fight.

With DS, I just snap a picture every now and then while he's happy and playing. It's natural, he's got a genuine grin on his little face, and there's no fighting for the "perfect" shot because as far as I'm concerned it doesn't exist. Life is imperfect, and it is fine to capture the truth of that.

[Pepin]

I don't really have any childhood photos and I don't want them.  I remember the photos we had out on display and those were bad enough. 

My father also took it upon himself to convert VHS crap onto a DVD which I will NEVER watch.  We don't even own a DVD player.

That being said, we do have a lot of video over the years of our kids that we made with a digital camera.  I love watching my kids but I don't EVER want to se anything with PDmil on it.  Just seeing pictures of her with our kids makes me upset.  She was so fake with them when they were babies and toddlers.  She just didn't know what to do with them other than get in their face and clap her hands or take their hands and make them clap....or say their name over and over - like what is that supposed to do?  And then there is the dumb laugh she also did.....why?  Just why?