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Originally Posted by LostinPhilly
I think it's sad they've undone 4 years of hard work on my emotional and mental well-being. I finally felt more or less free from their influence, burden and pain. Now, I will have to go back to therapy and work through these emotions all over again. God only knows how long it's going to take me this time around.
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Firstly sorry for the length:
I can't tell you how much your story resembles mine. I'm going to hit the high points because it lends weight to what I'm going to say at the end.
Eldest, daughter, scapegoat, physically, emotionally (worse) and verbally abusive upbringing. I was forced into the unwanted role of "little mommy" to my many siblings, the dutiful and silent daughter which I chafed under.
Parents joined a religious cult in my teens and ended up moving to a commune several thousand miles away. I married very early to "get out of the house" but it was a bad marriage to a "high value" but verbally abusive emotionally unavailable man who wanted me dutiful, quiet, pretty and under his thumb. (A very familiar pattern.) I woke up enough to understand where my life was headed and I divorced him striking out on my own essentially cut off from my family who were furious about my divorce. I went to therapy and got heathy enough to build a good career and remarry a good man.
Parents eventually broke from the cult after giving them every dime of their life savings but wouldn't disavow the cult or apologize in any way for what they had done. I lived several thousand miles away but was always recruited to help in times of trouble. The old dynamic would rise up every time I would go back to visit or help. So I would stay well away for years between family deaths and calls for help, only calling very briefly a couple of times a year at holidays, only getting called when someone died or they needed help. I didn't feel emotionally healthy enough to have children and not pass this on so I didn't. It turns out to have been a very responsible decision.
30 plus years pass this way on this emotional seesaw, my father dies early, my mother immediately remarries an old high school fling. She inadvertently tells me after having had too much to drink her secret that she had tracked that man's whereabouts and life details throughout her life and that we were essentially the "wrong children" and that's why she couldn't/wouldn't love us, especially the older children who are essentially viewed as servants in one way or another to her. This was something that I had intuitively grasped from a young age, knowing a "great passion" had gotten away but couldn't entirely put together. Having gotten the entire picture I got to a good therapist right away and spent a couple of years on and off working through the layers. Painful but productive. Worth every dime, every minute and every tear.
I eventually had to make a total break from my family after trying again with a healthier psyche. I have another sibling that finally saw the light a few years ago and is in therapy now that I'm in contact with, the rest remain under the influence of the chaos that is our mother and now my brother who has taken on the mantle of family abuser. I probably won't return for any family funerals. I will send flowers and condolences. It helps that I'm 2000 miles away. There will be no opportunity for the misuse of the moment for airing of grievances, recriminations or ganging up on the family scapegoat. If they do, they are welcome to do it behind my back. I don't care.
So here's what I want to say: Work your therapy. It's not important that you go every week but during times of progress that might be necessary but actively work the program. Doing so saves time and money.
Read suggested self help books, write in a journal, maybe support groups if that option is available. Take what you can use, leave the rest for another time or maybe it won't ever apply. Spend some time in meditation whether it's active or passive like walking in the woods alone. Feel those terrible feelings, do the grief work, then give yourself a break to really enjoy life and let what you've learned settle in and fit comfortably on your shoulders.
At all costs protect your golden goose that allows you to remain free of your family, your job, your friends/found family, your life that you build outside of their influence. Resist the urges to "give it another go" because unless there is significant changes on their side, it will AGAIN be a completely one sided relationship and will lead to heartache and relapse. Give your "found and chosen" family a break from the insanity that you are dealing with which is why journalling is so important. Most people will never be able to process what you are dealing with.
Realize that your progress won't necessarily be linear and don't beat yourself up over that. You have been subjected to a lifetime of trauma and it will take some time to unwind it but there is true light and real progress at many points throughout the work of getting clarity. This is just a temporary setback and the work that you did previously will be work that is built upon in this and any other round of therapy. You probably have a head start frankly because for decades I was in semi-denial and blamed myself for everything, failing to fit in, to make my family love me and that was a HUGE impediment to my progress. It didn't allow me to see that people outside of my family loved/liked me for who I was without attempting to please them or somehow earn their regard which is self defeating.
I've had to go back to therapy for 3-4 session tune-ups every now and again after the major work was behind me because the life I'm living isn't necessarily "normal". I have learned to say that "We don't have much family." which is a very truthful (especially on my husband's side) answer for what we aren't doing for the holidays and why we don't mention family in any context. It avoids the urging of reconciliation for the "sake of family" from people that have no real interest in your welfare and absolutely NO IDEA how dysfunctional and harmful families can be. Your situation isn't a mere disagreement about what color to paint the living room or how to arrange the furniture metaphorically speaking. It's the demand to remain in a burning house to continue rendering demanded service by the arsonist/s that set it ablaze, a true existential crisis.
I feel your pain. Your story, while different in some detail is my story. There is life, joy and love through and on the other side of this. I promise. ((((Cyber hug))))
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