[ SECRET POST #6592 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #6592 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 15 secrets from Secret Submission Post #942.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Re: An epiphany about my parents.

[(Anonymous)]

They're abusive, definitely. Just not in the way most people think. Contrary to popular belief, abuse and love don't exclude each other. They just swung from not caring to caring too much. If you can, go low contact and tell them why--that their relentless worry about failure means they have stifled your room to grow an change and mistakes are learning experiences, that no one is perfect and trying to be will just put you in an early grave from stress.

Re: An epiphany about my parents.

[(Anonymous)]

I no longer live in my hometown, so I'm sort of low contact by default. We communicate mostly by text and e-mail, I do make brief visits home and make an effort to keep conversation on more innocuous subjects. I tell them almost nothing about my personal life and keep everything bland. Work is fine, it's busy, etc. The sad part is... they don't really ask? They seem content with frequent reassurances that don't give much detail or depth.

They're a little improved now that they're empty nesters, but I cannot tell them when I actually have a problem because they will just freak out, ask a billion anxious questions and make me feel worse about whatever situation I'm in. I don't ask them for help because it's just not worth it. A lot of people in my position spend their whole lives chasing their parents' approval and love and never giving up - I learned early on that this would only lead to misery. Our relationship works within strict limits, anything more and it'd get messy. I do wish it didn't have to be this way, but it's not really my choice.

Re: An epiphany about my parents.

[(Anonymous)]

I disagree that they were abusive.

Re: An epiphany about my parents.

[(Anonymous)]

They literally went so overboard with worrying about failure that they gave their child anxiety that has very much nearly ruined them at points. Yeah, that's abusive. I say this as someone abused myself--though to much more extreme behavior. (Literally being called worthless because I was disabled sure was a thing in my household.)

Re: An epiphany about my parents.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm the OP of this thread and I think... it's complicated. A lot of people think that abuse only means the extreme forms - physical assault, sexual assault, etc. Maybe extreme emotional abuse in the form of yelling and insults. My parents didn't do the first two, and were borderline for emotional abuse. They didn't always yell and get angry, but the phrase "you'll never amount to anything" was used a lot in my childhood. My parents were upset, frustrated and disappointed because they saw every small error or flaw as a sure sign that I'd fail in life. They took that to extremes, because in NO WAY does having a hairdo that's not perfect and sleek at all times mean that I'll grow up to look so sloppy and unprofessional that no one will ever hire me... but that's what they said, and I think their anxiety made them actually believe this. They criticized my weight, my skin, my overall appearance - a lot of things that I had very little control over as a kid.

It led to some pretty anxious, toxic, catastrophic thinking in adult me that is pretty dysfunctional, that I'm still struggling to overcome. If you look at the outcome, that childhood looks abusive, even if it wasn't the kind that would get my parents in trouble with CPS. As I said, they meant well. They had good intentions. But they made a lot of mistakes.