Dad was not a "good enough" parent either - some sexual references & swearing

[Oscen]

I've been learning a lot from Patrick Teahan's videos lately.
I watched this video this week:
Was your other parent narcissistic too - 10 signs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PcVXDJQ9Wc

It's about 8/10 for me with my father & it confirmed something I'd known for a long time - that it was not only my mother who has a potential PD and was verbally and emotionally abusive, but also that my father was extremely emotional neglectful, immature, and manipulative. Together, they were toxic. I realised this about 3 or 4 years ago, but have been in semi-denial about it since. I guess I just wanted to say it "wasn't that bad" while I processed it, so I wouldn't attract abuse & derision from my super ego or toxic people while I gathered information about the situation. And I also wanted to believe the possibility that my family could somehow, someday, be healthy, if I got the right knowledge, the right help, did & said the right things, perhaps convinced my parents to get the right help (not that I dared imagining doing that!), etc etc. And this is really it - my family really is just a shell of a family, with nothing healthy or nourishing or real at its core. I have to give up on my parents, and I'm having serious doubts that my relationship with any of my siblings is salvageable either.

I'd been angry at my mother, but I'd invented a sort of fantasy connection with my father at an early age, encouraged in fact by my two older sisters.  I think they wanted to keep M, the real power in the family, "theirs", especially my eldest sister who idolises M.

I'd realised Dad was not supportive or able to show love, attention or help me and unable to balance out M's rather more stormy abuse. He just took no responsibility for the running of the house, which M was not coping with and super resentful about, and also took no responsibility for anyone's emotional well-being, disengaging from just about everything - even pleasant conversations. He doesn't know me as a person. He's made distancing statements whenever I've sought help. At 21, he didn't protect me from a housemate who was cheating me out of my deposit -  the one thing he could have done was at least stood by me at least while I confronted her and her partner, but he refused to come with me (a 5 metre walk) when I asked him to on moving day, saying "it's nothing to do with me". And complaining about having to help me move several times that day, saying "I've already been through this with your older sisters". Like as if I shouldn't exist, shouldn't have needs, because he's already grudgingly parented his other, older children, so.... what? Am I supposed to just vanish? That was a real head-f*ck as you can imagine.

I'd always dismissed the idea of daddy issues, thinking - "my dad is just so useless and irrelevant in my life, how could he have even caused anything bad? I have issues with my mother". Ahem. I can see I'd internalised the lovely, healthy message that "men are useless and/or dangerous".  Now I can see I was a classic daddy-issues type girl. Especially in my early twenties, I slept around, but let the men treat me really badly, using me for sex and walking away. I wasn't emotionally equipped to see how I could control the situation more. I thought I just enjoyed sex, and didn't realise that I was starved for affection and attention of any kind, and also had had very few positive interactions with men or boys, despite definitely being heterosexual. Didn't know how to act or that I could have any say in the way a relationship went or how the men treated me. It was like I was just observing what they did to me. I also did a stint as a sex-worker/escort for 6 months and aside from the low self-esteem that allowed me to think that that was the best option I had for getting money at that time (I actually did it so I could go do volunteer work in Africa - I mean, wtf was I thinking back then???? ), but I just wasn't able to handle it emotionally. I learned a lot from the experience and it actually made me more savvy and increased my confidence, especially in my looks - I used to think if a guy was interested in me, he must like me for me, because I didn't think I was that good looking, but I learned that I'm objectively good looking, which I needed to know. I got better at reading people. But I still have PTSD from a couple of encounters and it's yet another life experience that has shaped and affected me that I can't talk about to people in general.

I've had some better relationships too, fortunately. But I realised that I get really upset when my partner doesn't "protect" me, from his family members or social circle. I hadn't understood that a daughter's relationship with her dad really can affect how she relates to a male partner. It seems icky and reductive, but I can see it's affected me a lot.

I'm thinking about how I'm going to process this, but lots of journalling I guess, and finding resources about what a healthy father-daughter relationship should look like, and how it hurts her if it doesn't look like that. I think it explains a lot about the hellhole that was my twenties, and I can blame myself less for my mistakes. And reparent myself too. My self-care was poor because of my mother and my self-protection has been poor because of my father.

The thing that made me realise that I need to actually work through the issues with my Dad was because when other people in my support group mentioned the enabler parent who they were sympathetic towards, I realised they were in denial about that parent enabling their abuse and likely had feelings of betrayal to process. I thought I'd processed that myself, but I found myself dissociating/ruminating and imagining the advice I'd like to give to them, though obviously not sharing it.

Does anyone else find that - that you notice things you yourself need to deal with in yourself because you fixate on it in others? I've done a lot of work on my emotions and am so pleased and grateful for the progress, but I've noticed I've got some really embedded issues where I don't feel anything emotionally; it just catches my mind sort of obsessively/compulsively when I see it around me, and then if I dig it's connected to about 5 other things that are really painful to deal with. I knew things could be buried, but it's weird the way I fixate on it and genuinely don't see that it literally applies to me. I get it, I get it, defence mechanisms etc, but seriously - is anyone else able to discuss defence mechanisms like this they've spotted in themselves (not in others) and how did you first realise what was going on? How do you recognise it and deal with it each time?

[Cat of the Canals]

Oh yes. Looking back, it's ridiculous it took me so long to recognize my mother's PD. I first learned about personality disorders in a college psych class. I was immediately fascinated by BPD in particular, because my close friend and roommate at the time fit a lot of the criteria.

We had to write a paper for the class, and I chose BPD as my topic. Even my professor could tell I was genuinely fascinated by the subject and asked me if I knew someone with BPD. I would have been 20 at the time, and I've since met people here and there where my PD alarm bells went off. And yet it wasn't until I was in my thirties that I started piecing everything about my FOO together, and realized, "Oh my god. My mom is borderline."

Sometimes I feel like an idiot for not seeing it sooner. But most of the time, I can acknowledge that with all the gaslighting and rugsweeping that went on, of course I wouldn't see it. I have spelled it out for my brother and SIL, and they still can only *kind of* admit what's going on.

I also definitely have some denial about my dad being an enabler (and having some OCPD traits). I've been mostly Out of the FOG about my mother for 3-4 years, but with my dad, it's only in the last year or so that I've started to acknowledge that he is far from perfect. I'd see people referring to their other parent as an enabler, and I'd think, "My dad isn't, though." Ha. Well, he certainly wasn't standing up for me. So what else could he be?

I think one of the things that makes it so hard to see these things clearly is that we're like that old joke about the two fish:

Fish 1: Water's cold today, huh?
Fish 2: What's water?

We were born in it and lived it everyday. It was the only reality we knew, as children. And it's usually only as we get older and get some distance from it that we realize, "Hey wait... that thing I took for granted as 'normal' isn't normal at all!"

[Oscen]

Fish 1: Water's cold today, huh?
Fish 2: What's water?

Haha, I love this. Thanks Cat of the Canals.

I'm glad to hear it's not just me. I don't really mind that I've been in denial - I don't expect that I'd be above that, as I've met so many people including trained therapists who are. It's just crazy to catch my mind in the middle of self-delusion and see how it's all working. I'm genuinely surprised that what I thought was true, was actually true. 

[Jolie40]

lot going on when I was a preteen/teen which greatly affected me

however, it wasn't until I watched an Oprah show about toxic people that it all connected for me
then got a book on toxic people & there were PD parent/enabler on every page

couldn't wait to get out of that house & away to college
once married, knew that any child we had would be treated complete opposite as me "the SG" was treated

parenting our child lovingly & husband and I giving our child the childhood I would have wanted, I often feel like "I'm re-parented" in small ways....giving me joy!

when our child was a toddler- playing with child in sandbox, fingerpainting, rocking daily, reading books, giving daily hugs, etc not only was beneficial for our child....I felt benefits, too