Confrontation: Insensitive Family Responses
Post is too long again for you guys?, my posts seem to be... perhaps then just pick 1 family member Dad, Mom, Bro/perp and give me your perspective, thanks for any brave souls for more, I hope more than MS Admins can respond on this issue on non/forgiveness (though that:s been appreciated)
and certainly anybody far along the healing process or anyone successfully dealing with this Non\forgiveness issue I need you..(I consider myself in the early-MID stage), any and all feedback on insensitive families, truly appreciated, really...
I:m hoping someone can give me some feedback or personal experiences to help me resolve my feeling about my family after confronting them 4.5 years ago now, perhaps I need smaller posts to get replies, but unfortunately tis not so simple, maybe nobody can help me here with this, I dunno. My father is the focus here cos he:s the lynchpin...all other:s reactions spiral from him.
======================
PAST
Generally, the Old School Father did not want to deal with even the most gross physical violence, the Mother asked for help on this and Father refused, Mother get nervous breakdown instead of the 3 darling girl ballerinas she dreamed of. 1st of 3 boys is seriously neglected by Ballerina mother who spends all her time preparing ballet lessons for all the girls the 3 boys go to school with. He acts out Physical abuse on beating boy#2, that gets ignored by parents and much younger boy#3/Me gets a little sexual abuse at my age 11 too (took me 31 years to identify this hazing as *sexual*). Mother resorts to telling me *you are asking for it - I will not play Referee* whenever I ask for help and Emotional Abuse tops the cake for Me. The sexual abuse I did not tell at the time primely because it would:ve been blamed on me and further penetration threats by Perp/Bro#2 would:ve been acted out, I now know I saved myself from this.
---------------------------
THE PRESENT
DAD 74y.o. His reaction to his wife walking out of the room while I was being abused was initially *Well, this is between you and your brother!* and *yeah, gee I remember when your Uncle used to hit and bruise me...*. No *I:m sorry, how are you* for two years until I asked if he was a machine or simply didn:t care, he said *I don:t say I:m sorry since I figured you:d never forgive me*. He being forgiven was the Priority. Now he says, *I don:t know if this happened .. I don:t know if it did not happen, I wasn:t there, that:s not denial!* This is a man who wants to be Emperor and he will respond with a sentence or two only once a year and if it is not acted upon immediately his wife and children are to followup until next year:s pronouncement on Violence. This was the problem with the initial abuse - no parental followup (except to blame it on me, the youngest). His responses even to his wife:s nervous breakdown was *she:s sick* and not *I:ve made her sick with emotional abuse/neglect*. Any emotion/al conversation he does not/never has participate/d in...a sentence at most and usually that:s *...Now, change of subject*. He promised me this year to read a book on sexual abuse, but when I found a good one he said *I:ve changed my mind, but that:s not Neglect* and *Betrayal is YOUR definition, I know I won:t understand the book* and *Why can:t we just say I was a bad father and be done with this?!*
This is a man who needs to learn to process Guilt beyond one sentence in the worst way, but only gets as far as the feeling and not a response *I feel bad about what happened, isn:t that enough for you?!* What seems to matter to him is that HE feels bad, and not that I have felt bad for a lifetime, nor indeed that Bad/Guilt is supposed to produce a Re-Action and not just an I-feel-bad-and-don:t-like-this-feeling-so-I-wanna-quickly-change-the-subject/mind-to-EmperorDad-is-Great Reaction.* ...he is not able to identify what he:s thinking when this single bad feeling came to him one sunny day (was it a vision of me getting beaten? the effects it:s had on me? or was it an abstraction of people calling a *Bad Father* as I more suspect). He has agreed to therapy with me (now that I:m safely away in Japan trying to heal!), but I learned only after Confrontation that when Mom had her Breakdown, he went to Psychiatrist to *help fix her*, not to *fix the relationship*. I could not have guessed this much dysfuntion when I Confronted the family, but it:s obvious he intends to go to the grave never realizing his refusal to process Guilt and Neglect has seriously screwed this family up.
Am I supposed to feel sorry for HIM because of his egotistic lack of emotional response?! How should I have a relationship with a man so seriously concerned only with talking about Happy Subjects and how great his TV career was and NEVER able to say *This happened because of me, I am truly sorry*. I don:t think a Psychiatrist will be able to help him cos he will want to need help, but instead he demands everyone say *The Emperor IS wearing Clothes*. the other two Mother and Brother are actually more in the Perp catagory, but none of this would:ve happened, nor would I have received extreme Secondary Wounding and a destroyed career if this man could:ve said - *Tell me what to do and I will do it.*
---------------------
Mom - 75 y.o. Finally gave some explicit response after my lengthy email transcription of the 2 Focus parts of Lew:s Confrontation chapter. Regrettably because she did not know of the sexual abuse at the time, she and Dad both feel exempt from reading books on sexual abuse with *I shouldn:t have to*. She gets furious when I respond with *OK Mom, you knew about physical abuse, how about reading some books on that?!* Her response to Lew:s Foci was 3 pages - a truly thoughtful effort, but explicating all the excuses I:ve heard for now 41 years and told her I don:t want to hear again...no sense was conveyed about any attempt to Understand me, No...I am supposed to understand their excuses, again and again. This is my base problem with the family is me having to understand them, but no good will attempt for the reverse.
Mom mostly refuses to understand, since I am (especially now) supposed to understand how much Emotional Abuse she did and does suffer. Even asking her to understand my feelings Triggers her into heavy *screw you...what about Mother?!* mode and gets things worse. Regrettably she tell me/everyone *He Emotionally abuse me* and tells Dad *no you don:t*, so she emotionally fencesits for a lifetime of marriage cos Confronting him results in Dad *...stomping around the house like a little boy.* I do truly feel sorry for this woman and she has made the most effort of anyone and has showed believably sorrowful emotion, such litte as it is, these 4 years. The subconscious reasons I have increasingly hated her thru the years are now made conscious to both of us. Still for a woman with the identical Issues with her husband as I have, I expected some stiffspined approach from her of *Hubby, we:re going to a shrink and yer gonna process some Guilt*. Instead it:s business as usual and being an *Ally* of my healing is limited to 3 pages of excuses and some cookies.
-----------------------
Brother#2/Perpetrator 47/4 years older than I - this is a little more complex. He got physical and emotional abuse as well, but only was 2 years younger from his Perp/Bro#1 and I remember was able to defend himself. I was 4 years younger and utterly vulnerable which is how some Hazing happened to me cos I was too helpless. Bro does not even remember cos it was just another day of unquestioned/unmitigated abuse, no lines were drawn for this then-14 year old and after all why should he remember a little thumb poking here and a threat to stick his manhood in my mouth and a...Degrading me was his job..what:s a few comments about I was supposed to ge a girl, and you:re asking for this so you must love it.
Now he tells me *I seem to remember you coming from nowhere to hit me* as though he is incensed that I or anyone actually responded to his abuse at any point in time. This Bro became my best friend and got me stoned for the first time in Jr. High when he and I started figuring out what happened to us was serious Neglect enforced via general Emotional Abuse. Life got busy with school, then careers and we never finished processing our family history. He tried to be a good brother for a good 5-7 years and I forgave him back them (without talking about all that was forgiven...I didn:t know myself at the time), but he does not even remember asking for and getting forgiven. His TV career is demolished cos of lack of personal boundaries and now he:s just surviving trying to retrain as Xray tech. The loss of my career to the family spiralinig me deeper into PTSD flashbacks (I did not know this danger of Confrontation 4 years ago), destroyed my then-prosperous DVD career. Yes I feel sorry for him too cos I know he got a percentage of my childhood experience too. I also know his Psych deflector shields are on FULL since he has a wife and kids to try and support with a new career. This brother-friend is gone and all agree he is not the same man as 4 years ago.
==========================
Some of you will say simply *forgive only yourself* and I am fully OK with that on the original childhood abuse/Primary Wounding. Now I have to work on forgiveness of myself regarding the Secondary Wounding that happened as a direct result of my Confrontation with my quite insensitive family and the helpless PTSD state I acquired and still have big problems with.
Mainly and Eventually and sooner the better, I have to work on re-solving non/forgiveness of Family for both Primary and Secondary Woundings and am quite unsure about both...I seem to have been destroyed twice over and into the future. I have lost a really cool career future (not to mention $$ to help me heal) and I have lost a Hollywood family that could show love, but cannot acknowedge pain. Do I visit family for 1 hour a year at xmas and say, that:s all I got for them? Do I blow them off like they do me? I:m tired of hating them cos it does no good.
It is only in retrospect I tell myself *I should:ve known Confrontation would:ve worked out like this*, but I truly could not have anticipated such extreme degree of refusal to deal from people, nor a physically painful spiral I would be swept away in. After all, the family had some love to show me in Life and I was turned mostly *only* into a family Punching Bag and not a Prostitute (both being potentially equally bad!). As a lifetime codependent I:m historically an all-to-forgiving easy to please soul. That:s changed, I now need good reasons to forgive and my family has given me little and I remain mostly in NonForgive territory. I:m terribly confused, please somebody help me here, I:m tired of the inequity of working sooo hard on understanding a family so intent on not ever trying to understanding me....is it really too much to expect they read a book on Sexual Abuse or broaching the subject of denial?! Abuse has ruined my life and Confontation seems just to have made things worse, yet I cannot believe I could have continued without the confrontation...seem Catch-22 damned if you do damned if you don:t. Thanks for anything guys
and certainly anybody far along the healing process or anyone successfully dealing with this Non\forgiveness issue I need you..(I consider myself in the early-MID stage), any and all feedback on insensitive families, truly appreciated, really...
I:m hoping someone can give me some feedback or personal experiences to help me resolve my feeling about my family after confronting them 4.5 years ago now, perhaps I need smaller posts to get replies, but unfortunately tis not so simple, maybe nobody can help me here with this, I dunno. My father is the focus here cos he:s the lynchpin...all other:s reactions spiral from him.
======================
PAST
Generally, the Old School Father did not want to deal with even the most gross physical violence, the Mother asked for help on this and Father refused, Mother get nervous breakdown instead of the 3 darling girl ballerinas she dreamed of. 1st of 3 boys is seriously neglected by Ballerina mother who spends all her time preparing ballet lessons for all the girls the 3 boys go to school with. He acts out Physical abuse on beating boy#2, that gets ignored by parents and much younger boy#3/Me gets a little sexual abuse at my age 11 too (took me 31 years to identify this hazing as *sexual*). Mother resorts to telling me *you are asking for it - I will not play Referee* whenever I ask for help and Emotional Abuse tops the cake for Me. The sexual abuse I did not tell at the time primely because it would:ve been blamed on me and further penetration threats by Perp/Bro#2 would:ve been acted out, I now know I saved myself from this.
---------------------------
THE PRESENT
DAD 74y.o. His reaction to his wife walking out of the room while I was being abused was initially *Well, this is between you and your brother!* and *yeah, gee I remember when your Uncle used to hit and bruise me...*. No *I:m sorry, how are you* for two years until I asked if he was a machine or simply didn:t care, he said *I don:t say I:m sorry since I figured you:d never forgive me*. He being forgiven was the Priority. Now he says, *I don:t know if this happened .. I don:t know if it did not happen, I wasn:t there, that:s not denial!* This is a man who wants to be Emperor and he will respond with a sentence or two only once a year and if it is not acted upon immediately his wife and children are to followup until next year:s pronouncement on Violence. This was the problem with the initial abuse - no parental followup (except to blame it on me, the youngest). His responses even to his wife:s nervous breakdown was *she:s sick* and not *I:ve made her sick with emotional abuse/neglect*. Any emotion/al conversation he does not/never has participate/d in...a sentence at most and usually that:s *...Now, change of subject*. He promised me this year to read a book on sexual abuse, but when I found a good one he said *I:ve changed my mind, but that:s not Neglect* and *Betrayal is YOUR definition, I know I won:t understand the book* and *Why can:t we just say I was a bad father and be done with this?!*
This is a man who needs to learn to process Guilt beyond one sentence in the worst way, but only gets as far as the feeling and not a response *I feel bad about what happened, isn:t that enough for you?!* What seems to matter to him is that HE feels bad, and not that I have felt bad for a lifetime, nor indeed that Bad/Guilt is supposed to produce a Re-Action and not just an I-feel-bad-and-don:t-like-this-feeling-so-I-wanna-quickly-change-the-subject/mind-to-EmperorDad-is-Great Reaction.* ...he is not able to identify what he:s thinking when this single bad feeling came to him one sunny day (was it a vision of me getting beaten? the effects it:s had on me? or was it an abstraction of people calling a *Bad Father* as I more suspect). He has agreed to therapy with me (now that I:m safely away in Japan trying to heal!), but I learned only after Confrontation that when Mom had her Breakdown, he went to Psychiatrist to *help fix her*, not to *fix the relationship*. I could not have guessed this much dysfuntion when I Confronted the family, but it:s obvious he intends to go to the grave never realizing his refusal to process Guilt and Neglect has seriously screwed this family up.
Am I supposed to feel sorry for HIM because of his egotistic lack of emotional response?! How should I have a relationship with a man so seriously concerned only with talking about Happy Subjects and how great his TV career was and NEVER able to say *This happened because of me, I am truly sorry*. I don:t think a Psychiatrist will be able to help him cos he will want to need help, but instead he demands everyone say *The Emperor IS wearing Clothes*. the other two Mother and Brother are actually more in the Perp catagory, but none of this would:ve happened, nor would I have received extreme Secondary Wounding and a destroyed career if this man could:ve said - *Tell me what to do and I will do it.*
---------------------
Mom - 75 y.o. Finally gave some explicit response after my lengthy email transcription of the 2 Focus parts of Lew:s Confrontation chapter. Regrettably because she did not know of the sexual abuse at the time, she and Dad both feel exempt from reading books on sexual abuse with *I shouldn:t have to*. She gets furious when I respond with *OK Mom, you knew about physical abuse, how about reading some books on that?!* Her response to Lew:s Foci was 3 pages - a truly thoughtful effort, but explicating all the excuses I:ve heard for now 41 years and told her I don:t want to hear again...no sense was conveyed about any attempt to Understand me, No...I am supposed to understand their excuses, again and again. This is my base problem with the family is me having to understand them, but no good will attempt for the reverse.
Mom mostly refuses to understand, since I am (especially now) supposed to understand how much Emotional Abuse she did and does suffer. Even asking her to understand my feelings Triggers her into heavy *screw you...what about Mother?!* mode and gets things worse. Regrettably she tell me/everyone *He Emotionally abuse me* and tells Dad *no you don:t*, so she emotionally fencesits for a lifetime of marriage cos Confronting him results in Dad *...stomping around the house like a little boy.* I do truly feel sorry for this woman and she has made the most effort of anyone and has showed believably sorrowful emotion, such litte as it is, these 4 years. The subconscious reasons I have increasingly hated her thru the years are now made conscious to both of us. Still for a woman with the identical Issues with her husband as I have, I expected some stiffspined approach from her of *Hubby, we:re going to a shrink and yer gonna process some Guilt*. Instead it:s business as usual and being an *Ally* of my healing is limited to 3 pages of excuses and some cookies.
-----------------------
Brother#2/Perpetrator 47/4 years older than I - this is a little more complex. He got physical and emotional abuse as well, but only was 2 years younger from his Perp/Bro#1 and I remember was able to defend himself. I was 4 years younger and utterly vulnerable which is how some Hazing happened to me cos I was too helpless. Bro does not even remember cos it was just another day of unquestioned/unmitigated abuse, no lines were drawn for this then-14 year old and after all why should he remember a little thumb poking here and a threat to stick his manhood in my mouth and a...Degrading me was his job..what:s a few comments about I was supposed to ge a girl, and you:re asking for this so you must love it.
Now he tells me *I seem to remember you coming from nowhere to hit me* as though he is incensed that I or anyone actually responded to his abuse at any point in time. This Bro became my best friend and got me stoned for the first time in Jr. High when he and I started figuring out what happened to us was serious Neglect enforced via general Emotional Abuse. Life got busy with school, then careers and we never finished processing our family history. He tried to be a good brother for a good 5-7 years and I forgave him back them (without talking about all that was forgiven...I didn:t know myself at the time), but he does not even remember asking for and getting forgiven. His TV career is demolished cos of lack of personal boundaries and now he:s just surviving trying to retrain as Xray tech. The loss of my career to the family spiralinig me deeper into PTSD flashbacks (I did not know this danger of Confrontation 4 years ago), destroyed my then-prosperous DVD career. Yes I feel sorry for him too cos I know he got a percentage of my childhood experience too. I also know his Psych deflector shields are on FULL since he has a wife and kids to try and support with a new career. This brother-friend is gone and all agree he is not the same man as 4 years ago.
==========================
Some of you will say simply *forgive only yourself* and I am fully OK with that on the original childhood abuse/Primary Wounding. Now I have to work on forgiveness of myself regarding the Secondary Wounding that happened as a direct result of my Confrontation with my quite insensitive family and the helpless PTSD state I acquired and still have big problems with.
Mainly and Eventually and sooner the better, I have to work on re-solving non/forgiveness of Family for both Primary and Secondary Woundings and am quite unsure about both...I seem to have been destroyed twice over and into the future. I have lost a really cool career future (not to mention $$ to help me heal) and I have lost a Hollywood family that could show love, but cannot acknowedge pain. Do I visit family for 1 hour a year at xmas and say, that:s all I got for them? Do I blow them off like they do me? I:m tired of hating them cos it does no good.
It is only in retrospect I tell myself *I should:ve known Confrontation would:ve worked out like this*, but I truly could not have anticipated such extreme degree of refusal to deal from people, nor a physically painful spiral I would be swept away in. After all, the family had some love to show me in Life and I was turned mostly *only* into a family Punching Bag and not a Prostitute (both being potentially equally bad!). As a lifetime codependent I:m historically an all-to-forgiving easy to please soul. That:s changed, I now need good reasons to forgive and my family has given me little and I remain mostly in NonForgive territory. I:m terribly confused, please somebody help me here, I:m tired of the inequity of working sooo hard on understanding a family so intent on not ever trying to understanding me....is it really too much to expect they read a book on Sexual Abuse or broaching the subject of denial?! Abuse has ruined my life and Confontation seems just to have made things worse, yet I cannot believe I could have continued without the confrontation...seem Catch-22 damned if you do damned if you don:t. Thanks for anything guys
