My Mother is Toxic! - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Message Board

Pamk · 06-15-2003, 01:43 AM

I, unfortunately have a toxic mother. I am better off when she is not in contact with me and vice versa. Something happens to me when I come into contact with her. She has lied and betrayed me and has gotten me into trouble with things. She has made my family turn against me and believe what she tells them. She also has tried to sway health professionals her way but thanks to the HIPAA laws she didn't stand a chance. There is a big anger problem here for me and I wish I could rid myself of the anger and hostility that I feel when I think of her. She is in "denial" that I have "mental illness" (depression and anxiety) and has never given me any credit as far as anything goes. She never gave me any credit or a pat on the back when it comes to how I take care of my daughter. I am only berated and put down and told that I should do it this way, not my way.

I guess this is more of a vent than anything but she is the cause of my PTSD. I was recently hospitalized and I had flashbacks of her shaking me and telling me how she was going to take me to "family court and give you away so that you can be a foster child..." I relive this on an almost daily basis. It hurts so bad and nothing is making it go away. I am 37 and I cannot seem to get rid of this anger and hurt.

Thanks for listening.

ffsmith · 06-17-2003, 09:57 PM

My mother is the same in many ways.
She lies and steals form me. Tries to put me in jail and get me on the medications that she wants.
She also is part turning the family against me.

It sounds like your mother is probably worse than mine is however.
But it also sounds like you probably have more of a “life” than I do.

For me it is not so much one event, but I just can not get over the feeling that to my mother and father
I am a failure and a disappointment.
I can not get over the fact that they do not like me but that they like my brother and sisters.
That they think I have the “problem”
And that I am defective.
They have said this, and they have treated me like this all my life

Besides making me feel sad

It is all I know about myself.
It is the only way I know how to treat myself.

All I ever learned is that I am bad, defective looser, and failure
All I ever learned is how to hate me and attack me emotionally and mentally

Nobody ever showed me how to love me?
How do I do that?
How do I like me?
How do I be supportive of me?

Nobody demonstrated that to me.

All I know how to do is to attack and hate me,
I imitate my parents and I hate me.

Pamk · 06-19-2003, 10:34 PM

You sound so much like me. Really. All of my life I was told how much of a failure I am, that I would be taken to family court and given away, brat, instigator, my sisters did nothing wrong, it was always me, of course. I was the trouble maker of the family. I have no life at all. My daughter is my life but she is not living here with me right now thanks to my mother and her plots and schemes to get me "help" but believe me I am helping myself without her and she will be the one who loses out.

I was just recently in the hospital as I said in my last post and they told me that I have to prove her wrong. You should prove them wrong too. Prove them all wrong. Get in counseling if you aren't and get better for no one else but yourself. How old are you, if you don't mind me asking? I am 37. I was always hated by my sisters. I am in the middle. Even my mother's parents didn't care for me much at all. I found a letter that my maternal grandmother wrote to my mother telling her to put me in a school for troubled kids. I was troubled but you know why? I needed love and I needed to learn how to love myself because no one showed me how to. You said the same thing in your post. No one showed you or taught you how to love yourself and now you hate yourself and that is really sad. I hate myself too but I try to make the best of what I have and most of the time it doesn't work and I spend many hours crying in the car or in my bed, wherever no neighbors will hear.

I am trying very hard to get better. With 37 years of trauma we can't expect it to happen overnight. Your parents and your family are the ones who are sick. They gave you your trauma and you need to get help for it if you aren't. You can get over this and so can I but we can't do it alone. You sound really sad and I can very much understand why. If it doesn't sound as though you have posttraumatic stress disorder I don't know what else, depression and anger too. I have lots of that. I take it out on myself and what does that do? It only scars me. It doesn't make my "mother" hurt, but me. It says up top No HATEFUL posts but this is post has hateful feelings because I very much hate my mother but I also want to get over it and over her.

I wish you luck. Don't give up. I refuse to give up. Do everything you can to prove them wrong. They are the ones with the problems but they hurt you and made you have problems. They are in denial. They pick on the weak or the black sheep and watch us squirm. My mother gets off on that stuff. She is sick. I would love to have her committed for a psych eval. What information they could find in her! Dreaming!

Don't give up. Best of luck to you.

Pam

ffsmith · 06-22-2003, 01:46 PM

My mother is cold and gets off on that stuff too.
She hates my dad. They went to a marriage counselor who told them with out a doubt to get a divorce.
She decided instead to stay with my father but to hate him, disrespect him and make his life hell.
He tells me that in 10 years that they have had sex 3 times.
All I know is he has a lot of porn and she has a stack of about 1000 romance novels

So yes they are not perfect either.

I am very sad. I want to kill myself.

Everyone says that that you should not kill yourself because that is just giving into you parents and giving them more power than they have.
Others say that you should not kill yourself because that will make you parents and family feel bad.

I do not really care about any of that however; I want to do it because I am really sad like you said.

But I would like to not give up too?

I know that they will never change and that I will never prove them wrong. At least not to the point where they say that they were wrong. They do not know how to say sorry or that they are wrong.
(I admit it is hard for me to --- having never seen them do it)

I do not know exactly how old I am. I have not kept track or celebrated a birthday since grade school.
I was born in ’71 and my birthday is in about 3 weeks that is all I know.

Pamk · 06-22-2003, 09:49 PM

I am sorry you have the same kind of rotten parents that I have. I have wanted to die for a long time but I can't give up. I feel that in the future somewhere there will be happiness and that gives me hope. It sounds like you are really depressed and I can tell why, so am I. If I were to kill myself it would only make my parents and other family members talk about how "sick" I was and what a pity it was that I didn't "get the help" that I needed, blah, blah, blah. I had two cousins kill themselves and it hurts the family more than anything. This was years ago but the mother and sister are the only ones left and it still haunts them. I feel that is a selfish way to go and there has to be hope for people who feel so sad and depressed and just not worth trying to live anymore.

Are you on meds? I am on a bunch. They help at times but I end up sleeping my days and nights away most times and wake up about 5 pm some days and then stay up until maybe 2 am and then the cycle continues again. It isn't much of a life but I am living. I have a child and eventually I hope to get her back. She hasn't been with me for about a month or so. That is one reason why I will never trust my parents again. I hate my mother with a passion but as bad as the fantasies are about what I could do I would never because I have to live MY life the best I can and I don't want to spend the rest of my life in prison or worse.

I often wonder what it will be like after she dies. If I will miss her or if I will be relieved. My grandmother (her mother) didn't like me very much at all and when she died I didn't shed a tear. I can see that happening with me when she dies. She has a long life ahead of her though probably because her own mother was about 94 when she died. She has about 20 more years or so.

There is a woman I know who has a mother like ours and she just deals with her and "uses humor" whatever that means so it doesn't get to her as much. I am too much of a softie and I cry too easily and let things get to me too easily.

Don't give up. It is too easy in one way but hard in others. I hope you get some help so you can get out of this somehow. I am going to counseling now once a week and although I don't really like it, it is helping a little tiny bit each time.

Pam