Why Estranged Parents and Adult Children Tell Different Stories

Comments · 403

• SU

  @SuZieCoyote · 3 months ago (edited)

  For me, it wasn't one event, but a pattern of abuse.  Frequent belt whippings, hair pulling, shaming, face slapping, etc.,  became "We never did that,"  or "It was never that bad," etc.  I can see a parent forgetting one or two events, but not frequent, repeat assaults against me and my younger brother (I was the eldest).  And when called out, they went to the younger siblings and said I was lying. Maybe in some cases the parents don't see the impacts or remember the slights, but my personal experience has been they know and they know often in detail. They just refuse to accept responsibility for what they did or, alternately feel they had the right to do it.  I always understood the abuse was often the result of the frustrations that came of poverty, substance abuse and likely mental illness, and I've come to terms with all this....but not the lying about it. What I often see in therapists serving the jilted parent is a sort of coddling and a refusal to help the parent see their role and impacts.  I'm not saying this therapist has done that, but it is not a service to people to cover over and excuse their cruelties.

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• RO

  @rosbat60 · 2 months ago

  This has been so helpful. I'm estranging from my mother and sister after a lifetime of dominance and abuse. I've just had a huge argument with my daughter and after watching this realise that I've done the same as my mother - refuse to see that what I said, shouldn't have been said and I threw the anger back at her. I am going to go and repair this.

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• JE

  @JennyT101 · 3 months ago

  I was at a family dinner once and my mother boasted that she never hit her children. I corrected her because she certainly did hit us, and usually in anger, not to discipline us. She was indignant and insisted that she never in her whole life hit a child. One of my teenage nieces said to my mother "Grandma, you even hit me a few times!" It was hilarious. My mother had a meltdown, but I enjoyed it immensely.

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• KA

  @kaya-i4v · 3 months ago

  Downright denying, minimizing or  invalidating the harm they caused their children is where I draw the line of having compassion to abusive parents. Because everyone can forget or pick up something differently. The refusal to believe your child and attempt repair is the ultimate argument for me to have zero sympathy for people that shouldn't have reproduced.

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• JI

  @jillianjoyce8749 · 2 months ago

  For my mother it's always she can't remember the violence and abuse because 'I was an alcoholic' but I've told her I REMEMBER.

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• BL

  @Blue_Grass_Girl · 3 months ago

  Re differential encoding: it's so interesting that those with the power in the relationship are the ones who don't remember the event. Not only parent/child, any power dynamic.

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• KN

  @knit1purl1 · 3 months ago

  In my late 20's I confronted my mother with a true episode of abuse. She freaked out, hurled verbal abuse at me and denied it. Of course. But the thing I really remember is that she was slightly trembling. I think in the back of her crazy brain, a place she would never go, something was knocking and trying to tell her "she's telling the truth, she's telling the truth." I wish someone could explain how their minds discard their abuse and behavior.  My mother died believing she was a good person whose children had happy childhoods. She had no idea of her damage and destruction she left behind.

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• DO

  @donna-mariebroomfield4584 · 2 months ago

  This analysis is so insightful. Just because the intent wasn’t malicious, doesn’t mean the impact was any less harmful. I’ve found that trying to discuss behaviour and impact results in the parent playing the victim - which shuts the discussion down and invalidates your experience even more.

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• MA

  @MarleyLeMar · 2 months ago

  I wrote the familiar "unsent letter" in therapy. In the process, I realized my parents could have sent the same letter to their parents. I saw the intergenerational pattern we were all trapped in. And I perpetuated much of it because I got into trauma therapy when my children were pre-teens. It was this perspective of the legacy that helped our relationship, but it was after we each had done our individual therapy. Both my children confronted me in the most gracious way. I'll never know the coaching they must have had. On my side of it, I was ready to hear it.

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• RO

  @robbismoot6986 · 3 months ago

  This should be called &quot;How To Intellectualise Contempt.&quot;<br><br>My mother knew exactly what she was doing. She knew how it hurt and where it hurt. Explaining it away as &quot;we just remember it differently&quot; is nonsense.<br><br>I wasn&apos;t part of the family—I was there to absorb its dysfunction. I was the punching bag, the distraction, so nobody had to ask why she was so destructive.

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• FU

  @Fuchsbau101 · 2 months ago

  Parents like that believe they have the right to treat their children badly if they want

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• AM

  @AmberBundy-p8t · 3 months ago

  Dang a lot of parents are narcissistic or borderline. Children are too no less but for some reason millennials and younger Gen X are standing up and saying no thanks, let’s either repair or say goodbye. I would love to repair but my parents refuse to even acknowledge the physical or emotional abuse.

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