How to deal with outdated anger and put the past behind?

I reread your post. Your anger is at your mother, not your father. ... "anger over the terrible things she let my dad get away with."
I'm not exactly sure 'what' terrible things he did but if it involved physically and/or mentally abusing you (including sexually), I know it sounds cliché, but you should see a therapist to help you work out these issues. I did for many months.

Our mothers are supposed to protect us from anything bad and you feel as though your mom hasn't. Since apologizing to you doesn't work, your mom trivilalizes the extent of your hurt by saying you're too thin skinned and denying everything you suffered.

My father did this to me all my life. I was wounded by his alcoholism (and all the rotten things associated with it). He threw things at me and called me terrible names. I had to put up with his drunk buddies and bringing women in the house and locking the bedroom door. When I verbalized my pain as an adult, he blew it off (denied I had suffered any pain). Of course he would do this. He couldn't stand to open his eyes to reality and see that he mistreated and hurt his little girl!!! That would wound what little feelings he had, so he denied it and made me look like an overly sensitive, whiny brat. My feelings didn't count. My mother (they divorced when I was 5), downplayed it too. She would have to own up to her own drinking and poor behavior and choices also.
Really, doingmybest, what CAN they say. "Oh, honey, I really screwed up. I see you have been devastated by what happened and I'm truly sorry. What can I do to help you?"

Ha! Not in a million years! My parents believed you NEVER apologize to a kid. They are like God, always right (whether right or wrong). Their generation wasn't as "enlightened" as ours is. I've apologized to my son (both as a child and now as an adult) many times. He appreciates that I (mom) make mistakes too. And I'm woman enough to own up to it.

I went to therapy for this as an adult (many years after the fact) and it helped me move on. I was where you are....stuck in this mind set. They can help you release the need for your pain to be recognized. You can move on but it helps if someone can guide you through it. Please know your pain is valid and you deserve to be treated correctly.

And I though I was alone! How the heck did I stumble upon this tread? at this point in time my dad is staying with me and I need to care for him. My situation is exactly the same as Doingmybest10. He is still mistreating my mother and she still allows it. He is much to frail now to abuse us anymore but now it feels to me that the rolls has changed - now I am the one who will be nasty - and feel extremely guilty about it. I just cannot feel any love or anything for him. I shivers if he comes to close to me let alone touching me! I do not want to touch him. We have been verbally and physically abused. My earliest memory of my childhood is that of us children running, trying to hide from a dad with a belt in his hand - I must have been only about 3-4 years old - till today I can remember that feeling of being so afraid of him - we used to pee when he just came in sight. He has hitted my brother at the age of 5 that even his pants were ripped, never mind how this poor child's bottom must have looked like afterwards. And till this day my mom is afraid of him. Even with the dementia, the moment he is wrong, she jumps in to protect him and to testify to his innocence. She does not even know what it is all about - but she will stand her ground - it was not him!

I did not read through all the answers - I am not ready for any of those "forgiveness" suggestions yet. I also just wants to go on with my life without him - I wants to finish this part of my life and are praying that it will pass soon. I do not feel any anger towards my mom. I still feel very sorry for her. We have tried to assure her that she is now in our house and we will not allow him to abuse her anymore but it does not sink in.

One thing is for certain: If she passed away before him - I am not longer taking care of him. Firstly - and I think I am just making up excuses - I am his daughter and will not dress or wash him. And secondly - I will throw him back to one of my brothers - my husband also refuses - he will NOT wash him or helps him. My husband also does not like him though he treats him with much more dignity.

I must just tell you all a short story - the situation did cause some laugh the other day. My mom's parents did not approve her marriage with my dad - they were so upset that they dis inherent her for marrying my dad. He then reacts by forbid her to visit them or them to visit their beloved, beautiful, blond, blue-eyed daughter, which he did really messed up six love. But when my granddad were dying, my dad took us to visit them so that my mom could see her father before he passed away. I can only remember this one time that we have visited my mom's parents. And then I remembered that my grandmother has visited us twice after that before she also passed away. From my childhood memories, they were like the fairy godmother in Cinderella (my dad's mom resembles the horrible stepmother!).

Any case - my mom was never allowed to take about her childhood or her parents. And he never leaves her alone with us - in earlier days he would not even use the toilet when visiting - he would stop next to the road to pee on their way back home so to not leave her alone with us. When then first moved in with us, one the very first time I needed to wash her - he parked on the bed, claiming - we have been married for 60+ years - I will stay! I just refused! I will not help her if you are in the room - you either leave or you help her - pick your choice! After a fight, he left, parading the driveway in front of the window to try and pick up on the conversation inside the room.

But with the winter settling in - it is getting darker outside and he can not longer do that. So now my mom has started, and that is all she can do - is to talk about her childhood days and her parents. And she will start crying that she misses them so much and wish the Lord will come and take her so that she can go live with them forever.

And then, you will be able to set your clock to it! Just as I say: OK, we are done - in bed old lady! She will start to thank my profoundly and tell me what a great daughter I am - just to make me feel even more guilty - and tell my: My mother would have approved of you - she would say you are a daughter after her heart! You are so much like her - she would have loved you! This ever time makes me feel so BAD. I hate my father and does not want to take care of him - I am a baddy - real baddy!

So on one of these days, when she got to the - my mother would approved of you - I just decided - for tonight I will not feel guilty - I will just let it pass me by. And I responded:

Maybe she would liked me even more if she knows that I also dislikes her son-in-law, just as much as she did.

I nearly had to scoop my mom's pieces from the floor - she hadn't laughed so much in a long time! And I felt much better afterwards. Now I just try to find something so laugh about and to carry on!

Oy!

Thank you everyone for sharing your experience & encouragement. I hope you won’t mind this longer post - its only because I’m so enthused by how much your answers have helped me that I hope someone might gain from reading of my results.

A couple of weeks after this topic was raised & roughly 30 of you had replied, my mom returned from a short out-of-state trip. The mini vacation from you combined with the pure white light of these responses bolstered me like armor.

My take include: 1) caring for myself is imperative for health, marriage, & bliss, 2) that it entails clarifying & maintaining my boundaries, 3) & that I must stay aware that she is expert at pushing my buttons.

Kindness is a must. When I feel that I’ve mistreated her, I snap at her. It seems to haunt me way worse than it does her. Though I’m not religious, I believe that the world is best when people are decisive and happy.

Continually, I must remind myself that my higher power bears this out. For instance, days before mum returned home, a doctor attributed my husband’s recent dizzy spells to his allergy to my mother’s cats. What a gift! I explained to her that she’s welcome to come & go, but that she should always keep her door closed.

For several days, she was a storm cloud, spoke angrily to my husband about me while I was within earshot. According to her, I wanted her not come out of her ‘room’ (really ‘quarters’ as is the best room of our small house — includes her own bathroom, fireplace, bedroom, living room, lots of windows, size of small apartment, & outer door lets out to garden).

It took everything I had to not lash out at her attempting to undermine me through him, throwing me under the bus as she continues to do with my deceased father. Thanks to your posts I stayed unapologetically firm, claimed my space through actions, rather than my usual over-explaining. The first few nights I woke with racing heart, running imagined conversations with her. Staying mute taught me that if the very thought of something to do with her raises my blood pressure, I must avoid it.

Distance, I am finally experiencing rather than just intellectually knowing, protects me from becoming enmeshed — it keeps us swapping back & forth the roles of victim & rescuer. It’s why, before she moved in, we got along better.

Our realities are so far apart that talking only ever makes things worse between us. Finally I’ve relinquished the fantasy that discussion helps us. Only action works.

Hence, within the realm of politeness, I no longer ask anything of her beyond the minuscule. No longer slogging through conversations where I try to be patient as she basically talks nonsense under the guise of offering me advice is utterly freeing! Before, wanting to allow her to feel useful, I would request small things, ie that she empty the dishwasher. Yet I was constantly frustrated, always cross at her haphazard execution of what I needed and her insistence on doing things for me that I didn’t want done (such as washing cooking utensils while I was still using them). No longer do we annoy each other mercilessly.

She has 2 doors - one to outside, & an inner one that opens into our shared kitchen. Now, when I cook for more than a few minutes, I lock her door. That stills sounds awful to me, but it’s not like I’m locking her in. Not fretting that she’ll greet me with awfulness while I cook has helped me feel human again, as opposed to a maniac frantic to finish quickly.

The 3 nights a week that my husband doesn’t work late, and on weekends, she shares meals with us. Beyond that, I do my best to avoid her. When I see her, I only allow myself to discuss pleasantries with her.

My sleep is better, my days saner, & my sense of fun is returning. I like my mother & me better. I have surrendered to what works, rather than what I believe should work.

Great news! You have made great progress! Give yourself credit for drawing new boundaries and for not allowing her to get under your skin. Sounds like your boundaries are sane and reasonable and healthy. So good to give your husband more space and more peace. Keep up the good work. You are awesome!

Ummm. Mom may have done the best she could. She was quite possibly very much culturally conditioned to think that she had no rights to stand up to your dad - even to save you. And maybe not gifted with enough courage to see beyond that.

Many, many abused women completely fail to gain the perspective they need to truly overcome. Some do not survive. Your mom survived, if nothing else. Forgiving is not excusing, it is simply forgoing sitting in judgement of someone else, not knowing how much better you might have done yourself in their shoes, knowing only what they knew at the time.

I work on this still, 5 years after my Mom passed on, to forgive the really terrible criticism, perfectionism, and non-acceptance that tainted my whole life. She loved me as best she could despite all the voices in her head that said it mattered more what the neighbors thought, and that she had to be perfect, and of course that perfect people have no problems and their children are never unhappy...it went down hill from there.

Doing, really wish I can also one day report on here that I van overcomed! Thank you for sharing, it gives us hope! My situation is not like yours where my parents have their "own place" or "quarters" - we have a very small house - which we bought because it was sufficient for just the two of us - hubby and myself. Now we have to share it with my dad (which I does not want to say loud - I think I dislike to a point where one can call it hate). Since they have moved in I have an UTI, which is something I never had before. I've been on anti-biotics - finish a couple of courses, used herbal anti-biotics in between - have finish an Urizone just a week ago - feel like I am dying right now. The reason? Our place is so small and we only have one bathroom which is right next to their room! My dad messes the place up so we do not feel like using the bathroom. We have rigged an outside toilet for ourselves but obviously cannot use it during the night, so, we use the bathroom only when you can no longer keep it in! I am constipated for days on end and most of the times cannot wait to get to work where I now I will be able to use the bathroom in privacy. I can flush without waking the two old people! I can use without cleaning first!

But I badly need to overcome my feelings for my dad - I really wish I will be able to report one day that I did like you work something out that worked for us!

CyndiT
I have same story as you along with so many others. To answer specifically in regards to how other family members sit back and do nothing when they are aware your mom is off her rocker. I don't know WHY I just know they ignore the issue. My mother's family were all still in Kansas while my immediate family lived in Texas, I have one sister. We went to visit mom's family every other summer for a few days but we were treated more like an annoyance than grandchildren or nieces. I got close to my mother's youngest sister via email and phone about 10 years before mom passed. She became very aware of my mother's abuse during our childhood until she died. I was 60. She witnessed herself how my mother spoke and acted towards me but NEVER said one word about it to my mom. After mom passed about three months later my mom's older sister called me out of the blue. Mom and my aunt had rarely spoken for several years and I just asked her if she had known that my mom was a narcissistic loon and she said "yes". End of conversation. In the following 6 months I got really ticked off that they had known all along that we were being abused and they never intervened. I suppose that they just looked the other way and since we lived 800 miles away they could justify not getting involved. Subsequently I decided to stop any and all communication with any of my relatives. They didn't care for 60 years and I do not care now. I don't want any reminders of my mother in my life especially family who didn't care enough to intervene. The bigger question for me is how did my father sit back and watch her and hear her abuse us day in and day out and not confront her? So the father I once adored is just as responsible to me as my mother who was perpetrating the abuse because he never stepped up to protect us. Both of my parents lay side by side in their crypts where they will remain until the end of time without ever being visited by this daughter. They deserve each other. My mother's hateful words no longer run like tapes through my head all day and all night. I retained no family photos hoping I will forget their faces and dead eyes. I will not give them the satisfaction of knowing how much they wounded me. And I will not be their victim for one more minute because I have a life to live now in peace with only God as my protector and to love me unconditionally. I wish you the best in your "recovery". I wish we had a "rehab" for abused children that only took three months and a few thousand bucks - but we don't. It is up to YOU to determine how long you think you should suffer. I say not ONE MINUTE MORE. It is easier than you think you just have to reclaim what should have been yours all along.

Well just remember they are miserable people that can't even figure out that they are miserable. They elevate themselves by making you seem small. But you can choose to join them in their misery or break that cycle in the family. I knew more about who I was as a person at 16 than my mom knew about herself at 86. She somehow got stuck in the 1950's and never gained any insight about ANYTHING for the next 60 years. Life is supposed to be a journey and she missed the whole trip!!!!! I remember noticing when I was about six that before we even got to the car after church she was criticizing how much she hated the tie some man wore or how some child's ponytail was not centered or trying to guess why so and so didn't make it to church that Sunday. I remember thinking in 1960 - was she not listening to the pastor? Why did she even bother to get all dressed up, drive to church and hear or learn NOTHING. She sat in the same damn pew for 65 years and never paid attention to any of it. Gotta wonder . . .I often wonder where she ended up. If a narcissist never thinks they are wrong about anything then they must never ask God for forgiveness because they are always right and do not require forgiveness. Hope I don't have to share my corner of heaven with her.

Sometimes there is not much you can do about a parent mistreating a child in emotional, behavioral ways. Parents have rights to parent as they see fit within rather board limits of acceptability. I have some patients I think the parenting is way out of line- either harsh or overprotective - and there is not much I can change in many cases.

There is somewhat of a difference if you are talking about the parenting of a child that is not a family member and a person that knows a family member IS abusing their child. Abuse is NEVER ever acceptable whether it be abuse of a child or abuse of a woman or abuse against a disabled who are unable to defend themselves. The appropriate approach is if you SEE something SAY something. Parents CANNOT by law strike there children leaving bruises, knocking out teeth, striking them over the head with lamps, chairs or other items giving them concussions. They cannot neglect their children by withholding necessary medical treatment or food etc. they cannot restrain their children by chaining them to a pole in the basement or elsewhere. They cannot threaten their children that they are going to kill them (like my mother did EVERYDAY). They cannot put them outside the house to spend the night in frigid temperatures or leave than alone in a close, locked car on a 105 degree day. It's all abuse and it is EVERYONES responsibility to report this kind of treatment to APS or the police. Not doing so is a cop out and irresponsible.

Verbal abuse and emotional abuse generally, in the long run, is even worse than physical abuse. It changes a child's view of their own self worth and alters them forever. For 60 years the nasty things my mother said to and about me ran constantly through my head like never ending tapes. You couldn't have a simple conversation with her without her hurling some insult my way. After I had fixed her a superb birthday dinner one year she called the following day. Not to thank me but to give me hell. The flowers on the table were not what she would have chosen. Her favorite color is pink. The flowed were pink roses and pink gerbers daisies. She didn't like the China I used which was simple square gray with white border trimmed in silver.? They were almost exactly the same as her favorite China pattern she had at her house. The Italian wedding soup's meatballs should have been made smaller and the butter on the table was not the right temperature to her liking. Her final remark was "I wish I could say I enjoyed my dinner but I didn't. Don't invite me again if you can't do a better job. Two days before she died I brought her cane in that she had left in my car when I had taken her to her last doctor's appointment. She was never going to use that cane again because she only used it outside her house and she was never going to leave the house again. I hung it on the door knob where she usually kept it. She said "get your stupid ass back over there and hang it up the right way you idiot." I got up and asked her what was wrong with how I hung it." Her reply came through gritted teeth and at high volume "Turn it around to the left side of the knob instead of the right." I asked her what difference did it made. Her response was " I swear to God I'll never ask you to do another thing for me for the rest of my life." I told her I thought she should consider sucking that comment right back from where it came. She say no she would not and ordered me to leave. I went to the refrigerator and took the vials of morphine and dilaudid and told her I was leaving - and when she needed her meds she would have to apologize and kindly request me to return to take her pain and anxiety away or she could experience the kind of pain and anxiety she had put me through for 60 years. Even on her deathbed could she be grateful for the daughter who compassionately cared for her while she dying. She never spoke a word to me again until five hours before she passed when she called my name for more meds. Which of course not followed by a simple "thank you".
These are examples of verbal and mental abuse towards a 60 year old. Given that fact you can only imagine what her abuse was like to a small defenseless child, adolescent, young adult, grown adult . . . Middle aged adult. Even though I was old enough to speak for myself but having another party speak up and tell her that this would be a good time to speak to me in a kinder tone would have been appreciated. But it was not to be. I never heard an "i love you" not a "I'm proud of you" nothing but hatefulness and vileness. She will be judged by God now and have to come to terms with why she caused so much pain for her children. She can't ignore they way she chose to live her life now. I hope she has to relive every abusive remark, every slap, hit, punch, kick, and choking she delivered to us. Maybe she will have to eat hundreds of bowls of cold egg vomit that she fed us for breakfast. She's not going to enjoy having a hot steam iron placed on her back and held there making sure a scar would last forever. That scar was visible to anyone that ever saw me in a bathing suit. You could see the point of the front of the iron and all the holes where the steam escaped. But NOBODY ever spoke up. YES there IS something you COULD and SHOULD do unless you are totally void of compassion.

OMG texriner, I'm SO sorry for how you've suffered. My heart goes out to you and your siblings. I look back on my childhood with 2 drunk parents and it seems petty compared to what you just shared. You are right, now it's her turn to be judged and God will deliver justice in dealing with her. I'm glad you have faith and I hope you can put the past behind you. Enjoy your life now and try to rid yourself of all memories of your tyrannical mother. May God richly bless the rest of your life.

Thanks for response, Thanklessjob, my whole point of telling that story was to let people know, without being preachy, that there is light at the end of every dark tunnel or struggle if you look in the right place for strength and healing. Everyone is entitled to the own beliefs about spirituality but for ME the answer was the God I believe in. I was so low after my partner went into a nursing home with dementia at 55 the May after my mom passed at the end of January. For an entire year it was too much for me to leave my own house. So I cried and prayed screamed and prayed and cursed and prayed . . . I was exhausted but gradually figured out that I was not in control. God was. He gave me these struggles and brought me out the other side stronger, wiser and with peace and calmness that surrounds me everyday. I am walking among the the living again, laughing again, silly dancing with my dog again and my condescending wit has returned with a vengeance.
So if there is anyone out there reading this that feels like you would rather end your life than go through one more painful day please just consider connecting with your higher being. Give all your worries to Him/her because your load is too hard for you to carry alone. You might be surprised that their is relief out there for you and blessings are just waiting for you to be ready to receive them.
I gotta go now, I have a fun life to live and I don't want to miss one moment of it. Praying for all of you everyday.

Texriner1, Thank you for an encouraging word. So glad you have found calmness and peace and wisdom and strength in God.

Well, Texriner 1, I think you are in the top three 'winners' here, god bless. I am amazed you hung in there all those years. I would have been out the door of that abusive household the day after my schooling ended and never, ever would have spoken to them again. (for those reading such things, you know it is possible to do this. Cut them off. Forever.) god bless you. (I went through much abuse myself but never had the opportunity to blow town like everyone else. Much pressure from relatives safely out of harms way to step in. I didn't mind much at first. Toward the end it was H*LL on earth, but at least now she's in a nursing home, hallelulah.)