Recharacterizing PD Parent(s):

[IRedW77]

This is maybe for those of us that didn't learn our parent was a PD until we were adults.

How has the process of re-examining your childhoods gone?

I just have all these memories of my BPD mom as the character of herself that she created for me. She was a wonderful self-sacrificing mother that always acted perfectly reasonably—even though she suffered greatly, and the world was against her.

Changing the character changes the story. I feel like I have no idea who she is at all.

I keep revisiting various memories of childhood and trying to imagine her as a cartoon villain. A lot of her motivations may have been different than I anything I understood, or what she understood I guess.

I have this feeling that she had to reign herself in more as I became a more cognizant witness, and that there are terrible things that I just don't remember. But I could be imagining that. The earliest things I remember are the most awful, and the things before that were just as bad.

I can see everything in the present and last few years clearly. Seeing how little responsibility she feels towards her grandchildren had already started to change how I saw her before I knew anything about PD's.

She's always been the center of her own universe. She wants to believe that I was. I used to actually believe that, but that's her story.

What was the real story?

I'm an only child so there weren't any other witnesses for most of it. She's certainly not a reliable witness.

[Hepatica]

It's a huge realization when we come to terms with disorder in our childhood. Huge. HUGE! It's like seeing the picture behind the picture in those drawings where there are hidden images.

So many people never want to go there and sift thru what they went thru because they see it as blaming or they doubt their own perception. Having a parent tell you how it was doesn't help either. They cannot know what it was like for little people in their lives. They were seeing things from a strong, powerful adult perspective. Children are just developing, still believe in monsters, feel really big fears, feel huge emotion in general and need emotional and physical safety to thrive.

My parents were truly ignorant people. They could not get out of their own a$$es (so to speak) to consider their child had feelings of extreme fear and sadness. Maybe because children are so cute and generally happy as a rule. But the severe lack of care, the not checking in with me when I cried, not checking in after they had one of their huge fights, not ever asking me how i was is not how I see other parents parent. Even my friend who is a single mom and really tired is excellent at checking in with her daughters feelings and listening to her. Feelings did not exist in the children of my FOO. If they did, they were an annoyance and the kid was meant to manage them alone.

The process of re-examining my childhood has saved my life though. I no longer longer live unconscious of my current behaviours. I see how they evolved from a childhood that lacked intimacy and warmth and I see how not examining them could have made me unconsciously repeat the lives my uNPD parents live.

I think the thing that helps me stay grounded when the feelings are big and I feel like blaming them and blaming the world is that I really believe most of us are healing generations of trauma. My parents did their parenting without that idea, and based only on reflex and the idea that food, clothes and shelter were pretty great parenting. I'm lucky I had that. But there's a lot more to parenting.

I certainly have gone thru stages where I am really angry that I still go to therapy. And I really have angry phases when a memory surfaces, a like WTF were my parents doing and not doing? And sitting with those feelings is painful. But sitting with all the feelings is what I have to do now because my parents never sat with my bad feelings. It's unfair. But life ain't fair for a lot of folks. That has humbled me lately.

I just believe it is better to be conscious of these things. I've seen my life improve for the better because of the consciousness. It is hard to be conscious but it looks to me, way harder being unconscious and unwilling to be brave enough to heal.

[Maxtrem]

What was the real story, that's a great question, but no one will ever know! Personally, I have forgotten almost all of my childhood and I think it's better that way. I remember my uBPDm threatening to kill me for failing an exam, threatening to have my dog killed as punishment, telling me that the whole family would have a party to celebrate my death when I was 8 years old, etc. Still today, my uBPDM mentions how happy I was as a child, that I was given everything, she also tells me that everyone was against her and that if she ever took it out on me, well it was because of the others and that she couldn't have known that I was such a sensitive child... 

I used to downplay her toxic behavior, but now I was able to put words to what she really is; self-centered, no empathy, manipulative and of course a very bad mother.  She portrays herself as a person who is always centered on others, who gives so much, but it's just a character, a projection that she wants people to get away from her but it's completely false. I still don't know if she really means it or if she know that she lie!

[xredshoesx]

what's the real story is a theme i constantly experience

i have vivid nightmares.  still.  as a 49 year old.  then there's the narrative she wanted everyone to believe.  so the duplicity of having to know the truth vs the truth as she saw it still does still cause me issues.  it's been complex to unravel and tbh i should be back in therapy face to face but with the pandemic that's not happening right now-  i know we can do telehealth but i already work 8 hours a day online so i need that time away from the screen more for my day-to-day stress.

the best answer i've been able to cobble together is that my mother as a mentally ill person peaked in her development as a 13-14 year old mean girl- i picked this age b/c that's when she had her first kid who her parents took from her and told everyone he was 'theirs'.......  there is a strong possibility her first child was conceived as a result of an incestuous relationship and from then on it was all downhill for her- with drugs, drinking every bad thing she could do.  i was her second chance, her shot at redemption and showing she was functioning and she messed that up (she gave me to her parents when i was 7.....) multiple times.  i'm also pretty sure that if she wasn't organically mentally ill the abuse she suffered at the hands of her parents put her there.

i went through what she went through and turned out different... why i don't know.  i'm mostly thankful these days i was able to compartmentalize to get through that trauma, but then also able to unpack it and somehow try to move past it with several awesome therapists as well as the good folks here.

[Sneezy]

What's the real story?  Such a good question.  And sadly, one that I won't ever be able to fully answer.  Even with several siblings who I am close to, we don't have a consensus.  One sibling is convinced that a certain event happened that "changed" mom.  But I remember some bad things from before that event.  Another sibling thinks mom was always "sad," but "sadness" is not the way I would describe it at all.  As one of the older siblings, I can actually remember a time when my parents seemed to love each other.  But I also remember the men that came over while my dad was at work.  Was that innocent?  Normal?  Maybe I am remembering repairmen or neighbors?  I don't think that's all it was, but I have no one to ask or compare notes with. 

One thing that has actually helped me is to reevaluate my mom's opinions of people I knew when I was growing up.  I have come to realize that people she scorned or looked down on or said mean things about were, in many cases, perfectly nice people.  And so I have adjusted my memories of them, and somehow that has helped. 

[Duck]

This process of evolving perspective will probably last forever for me.

For example, I used to think of my enabling mom as almost the equivalent of my sister and me, the same kind of victim with the same amount of power. I remember saying - maybe 15 years ago - that my greatest sorrow was realizing I can never save her.

After several more years, I realized she was an adult when I was a child. She lived in the same house but with the advantage of near 30 years' additional experience. I realized it was not my responsibility to save her. She was supposed to be taking care of me. My greatest sorrow changed from sadness that I can never save her to sadness that she did not protect me or my sister and she always chose her husband over her children.

Who knows what I will think in another several years? I will probably understand something new.

The people in the generation above me were always extremely insistent that they were mature and they were right and I would understand their point of view when I got older. As I reached the ages they were when they made spectacularly bad life decisions, I realized they were immature people with poor judgment I wouldn't be friends with.

On one hand, it is validating that my father was diagnosed with a PD. It proves it wasn't my imagination growing up that he didn't act right. It also helps my understanding to assess my dad's upbringing and understand how his PD may have developed. However, he and my mother constantly use his diagnosis to prove how much he suffered and how much understanding he requires and how much better off my sister and I must be bc we don't have PD's. as a matter of fact, I am annoyed with my mom this instant because she told the Sob Story of Poor Father yet again in a text to me. They are devoutly religious and masters of FOG dispersal.

[Duck]

This from Hepatica is true: "Having a parent tell you how it was doesn't help either. They cannot know what it was like for little people in their lives. They were seeing things from a strong, powerful adult perspective. Children are just developing, still believe in monsters, feel really big fears, feel huge emotion in general and need emotional and physical safety to thrive."

My mother will probably die not understanding this. She thinks she can accurately assess my childhood from her perspective and what she noticed at the time. In my head, I constantly say things like, "when you were 30, I was 3."my earliest memories are of my Dad raging out of control. I want to be like, if he upset you at 30, what do you imagine the 3-year-old was thinking and feeling?

[Duck]

One more thought - Even though our understanding of what happened is a work in progress, and we may never reach 100%, it is important because it is part of breaking the cycle. Martin Miller says that if our parents were affected by war, it can be considered a kind of peace work, to unpack what happened and not continue the cycle.