Attachment styles and intergenerational trauma

[Not_a_Number]

Like the subject line says. These have been very much on my mind recently, given that they're a big part of why DH and I are living apart (and working on things) right now. 

Anyone have wisdom to share? Maybe especially relevant to situations which aren't necessarily all that extreme (no physical abuse or anything like that) -- sometimes it feels like one mostly reads about the most catastrophic cases... 

(On a very mildly related note, Encanto is an awesome movie that's really all about intergenerational trauma, even though it was billed as a simple kids' movie. It really does an excellent job with those themes.) 

[Terabith]

26 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

On a very mildly related note, Encanto is an awesome movie that's really all about intergenerational trauma, even though it was billed as a simple kids' movie. It really does an excellent job with those themes.) 

It really, REALLY is!!!

[Not_a_Number]

Just now, Terabith said:

It really, REALLY is!!!

I know, right??? I read a lot of reviews that I thought TOTALLY missed the point of the movie. 

I love that movie and have watched it a few times already. I should watch it again 🙂 . 

[Terabith]

Just now, Not_a_Number said:

I know, right??? I read a lot of reviews that I thought TOTALLY missed the point of the movie. 

I love that movie and have watched it a few times already. I should watch it again 🙂 . 

I haven't read a lot of reviews, but I've seen a lot of memes referencing how the new generation of Disney movies is about redeeming intergenerational trauma.  Moana, Turning Red, Encanto...

[Not_a_Number]

1 minute ago, Terabith said:

I haven't read a lot of reviews, but I've seen a lot of memes referencing how the new generation of Disney movies is about redeeming intergenerational trauma.  Moana, Turning Red, Encanto...

Haven't seen Turning Red, but I don't remember feeling that about Moana... then again, I wasn't as tuned in when I watched it, either. What's your take? 

[Lecka]

Maybe.  My husband’s parents are crazy at best and abusive at worst.

He also saw a counselor who sees people with military PTSD, but for my husband also said — he looks at if people were fleeing or running away from some very dysfunctional home dynamic when they joined the military in the first place.  This fit my husband.  
 

I don’t know, my in-laws are extremely dysfunctional but they also aren’t “the worst of the worst.”  My FIL is abusive and my MIL has untreated mental illness, though.  

 

But these aren’t particularly dramatic things, in their way, they are normal to my husband and his siblings.  A lot depends on how you look at things.  
 

My husband is not willing to cut ties with his mom, but trying to have boundaries.  I don’t know about his dad,  his dad is clearly abusive towards his mom, but I don’t know where my husband is going to fall in the long term.  
 

I don’t know if this is what you are looking for, or not. For me, over time, I have just found my husband’s family to be more and more dysfunctional, and my husband is more and more out of denial about what they are like.

 

But my husband loves his mom and wants to be as close to her as possible, while acknowledging she is very dysfunctional and at minimum has untreated mental illness.  She is not very able to have a “normal” relationship with my husband, but my husband cares about her and wants to have as good of a relationship with her as possible.  She is extremely one-sided and doesn’t seem to be capable of caring about other people, but she is still my husband’s mom and he still cares about her.

 

 

[Not_a_Number]

I suppose I'm looking for stories about how these things have affected people's current family relationships, how they are dealing with them, what helped, what didn't... I don't know. It's just a topic I've been thinking about a lot, since it has wreaked such havoc in our lives.

Both of us are affected by this to some extent. It's sobering to look at when I can get some distance from it. 

[Terabith]

7 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

Haven't seen Turning Red, but I don't remember feeling that about Moana... then again, I wasn't as tuned in when I watched it, either. What's your take? 

Encanto is the only one I've seen.  I've been meaning to watch the others.  Really, the only things I know about them are what I've seen in memes and that Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote music for Moana.  I think the idea is that Encanto is the only one that addresses them explicitly, whereas the others it's more indirect?  

[Lecka]

Well, it’s hard to say. My husband would love to have a good relationship with both parents. But the dysfunction is so extreme.  Yet he doesn’t give up on either parent.  
 

For my family, my dad is dysfunctional, but both my step-mother and step-father are (or were, because my step-mom has died) very functional people, more functional than my mother and father.  My mom is more functional than my dad, but she is kind-of dysfunctional.  After my parents divorced they both married real gems who embraced the good and minimized the bad, in the people they married (aka my parents).  I’m really close to my step-dad and I am also very close to my step-mom, sadly she has passed away.  
 

My mom would be dysfunctional, but my step-dad is a good influence on her.  I’m very close to my step-dad, and so is my husband and my oldest son in particular.  
 

I love my step-mom so much, I am so sorry she has passed away.  She married a difficult person in my dad but he treated her well.  

Edited February 1, 2023 by Lecka

[Not_a_Number]

2 minutes ago, Lecka said:

Well, it’s hard to say. My husband would love to have a good relationship with both parents. But the dysfunction is so extreme.  Yet he doesn’t give up on either parent.  

To be honest, I was thinking about current family relationships, not relationships with families of origin. 

[Rosie_0801]

Basically, people have to be prepared to work through their fears to form and be able to respect healthy boundaries, assuming they can figure out how. Attachment styles are just manifestations of ptsd. It won't matter what level of safety those around provide, because it can never be enough if someone doesn't feel safe trusting.

[Lecka]

Oh, okay.  My husband is effected still by his family of origin, but he left when he was 19 and is now 41… it’s still an impact on him, but he is mostly “my husband” and does have some distance from his family of origin.  It’s still upsetting to him as well, but I would say — in a manageable way because he has gained a lot of distance from them.  
 

I guess I would say our own family is in good shape with some problems around family of origin.  Our kids don’t see my in-laws and we have prevented my in-laws from seeing them at times it was expected by them.  My kids don’t see my dad either, which is not respected by my sisters, but he has just been so mean I don’t see why I would take my kids around him even when I feel an obligation and I place that obligation on my husband.

 

For whatever reason my father has always favored my oldest sister, and I have helped her with tasks related to him.  But I don’t see a reason to bring my kids into it.  
 

[cintinative]

I didn't read all the responses. I have been reading The Body Keeps the Score and a lot of these sort of questions and thoughts are coming to mind. I am just realizing how the various traumas that my mom experienced prior to my birth affected how she interacted with me as an infant and child, which in turn affected how I interacted with my world and the struggles I had. It's complex, and I don't assign blame to her or my dad. It's just that I see that brokenness has begotten more brokenness. So much unresolved trauma in my mom's life that has ultimately culminated in mental illness. It truly is sad.  

[Lecka]

Thinking about this more, my husband really made a great distance from his parents from the time he left home.  It is still an issue, but it’s an issue from a distance.  My husband was seeing problems with his parents from early elementary school, and saw even more problems when he was in high school.  He has been the “black sheep “ since he was in high school if not earlier.  Really he feels like he was an accidental pregnancy and not wanted since he was born.  He is about 18 months younger than his older sister.  It doesn’t sound nice to say but he feels like he was never wanted by his father and always the “bad kid” from the time he was an extremely young child.  I have a sister who was also “the bad kid” to my dad from the time she was born, that my aunt and uncle saw from the time she was born, but my mom didn’t see or didn’t want to see.  Pretty dysfunctional stuff.  But I think it exists.  

[Not_a_Number]

10 minutes ago, Rosie_0801 said:

Basically, people have to be prepared to work through their fears to form and be able to respect healthy boundaries, assuming they can figure out how. Attachment styles are just manifestations of ptsd. It won't matter what level of safety those around provide, because it can never be enough if someone doesn't feel safe trusting.

Hmmm, yes, definitely an issue here, and one I didn't know about when we got married. 

I haven't found that it doesn't matter what I do, though. It always feels a bit paradoxical -- you can't MAKE someone do anything, but you can affect what they do quite a lot. 

But maybe that's me being optimistic. I swing pretty wildly from optimism to pessimism nowadays. 

[Lecka]

I have read The Body Keeps the Score also.  Ironically my family is objectively less dysfunctional but we are objectively more able to identify dysfunctional stuff and set boundaries.  Not like we’re perfect, but overall I think with the lower amount of dysfunction we are able to handle it better, which is really sad in its way.  
 

My husband and I really have something in common, though, that we have some level of dysfunction and are trying to do much better with our own kids, and make it a huge priority.  

[Not_a_Number]

7 minutes ago, cintinative said:

I didn't read all the responses. I have been reading The Body Keeps the Score and a lot of these sort of questions and thoughts are coming to mind. I am just realizing how the various traumas that my mom experienced prior to my birth affected how she interacted with me as an infant and child, which in turn affected how I interacted with my world and the struggles I had. It's complex, and I don't assign blame to her or my dad. It's just that I see that brokenness has begotten more brokenness. So much unresolved trauma in my mom's life that has ultimately culminated in mental illness. It truly is sad.  

Yes... brokenness begetting more brokenness is exactly what I see and have always seen. 

It's true in my family. My mom's mom is a true narcissist, and it affected her, and this in turn affected me and my sister (my sister is much worse off than I am -- she's much younger and was born into an entirely different family, and the love that others were able to provide for me was not available for her 😕 .) 

Edited February 1, 2023 by Not_a_Number

[Not_a_Number]

1 minute ago, Lecka said:

My husband and I really have something in common, though, that we have some level of dysfunction and are trying to do much better with our own kids, and make it a huge priority.  

I'm jealous of that. DH has been in pretty serious denial until this year. 

[Lecka]

My husband left when he is 19 and he is at a point where more of his life has been with me than with his family of origin.  It’s still hard.  
 

But I think maybe we have a different situation, I don’t know.  My husband has known what his family is like for years and years, before I knew what they were like.  Now I know what they are like, too. But it is sad to him.  He doesn’t want to give up on them.  But really he is operating in a much more normal realm than his parents or sisters.  He got treated worse because he saw through them from a young age, but that doesn’t really make it better in some ways.  But his siblings are much more sucked into stuff with his parents, and it seems worse for them, as much as its hard on my husband to be more rejected and try to give his little BIL advice as he gets no good advice from his parents.

 

I used to be more mad at my mother-in-law but now she comes across much more as having untreated mental illness.  But she will not do anything to better her life, which is hard on my husband.  It is a tough situation for him.  

[Not_a_Number]

1 minute ago, Lecka said:

But I think maybe we have a different situation, I don’t know.

It does sound different. Does any of this affect how he interacts with you and the kids? It sounds like he doesn't have the same level of denial as my DH. 

[FreyaO]

My experience is that oftentimes the now adult swings too much to the other extreme, in a conscious or not attempt to correct their own experiences.  This urge or fear may be too much though and cloud their judgment. It often makes them unable to see that the circumstances may have changed and above all, the child they are raising is not a copy of themselves.  

[Lecka]

My husband’s siblings are much more in denial than he is.  He is the black sheep.  I have seen people say the black sheep is a lot worse off in ways. But also more rejected.  Which is hard in its way; but there is something positive to seeing more clearly how things are dysfunctional.  I don’t know if that is the situation but it’s my husband’s situation.  
 

It does take rejecting things my ILs have said to see that they are dysfunctional.  My husband was rejected in a way his siblings weren’t (and the same for me but in a less extreme/abusive way than for my husband — but still a present and existing way).  
 

My little BIL has only seen some

ways his parents are abusive since he has had a child, and that is hard on him.  I have always heard you see things that were dysfunctional

when your own kids reach that age, and I think that is very true. 

[Rosie_0801]

7 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

I haven't found that it doesn't matter what I do, though. It always feels a bit paradoxical -- you can't MAKE someone do anything, but you can affect what they do quite a lot. 

But maybe that's me being optimistic. I swing pretty wildly from optimism to pessimism nowadays. 

Yeah, bad wording on my part. When I said "it doesn't matter" I meant nobody outside their head can retrain their amygdala. if someone feels safest feeling unsafe, you can be as soothing and reliable as humanly possible and one day their amygdala will wig out because you can't be more soothing or reliable than humanly possible. The one thing you do wrong one day, or they feel you have done wrong, or reminds them of something that someone else did wrong, will set off the amygdala which doesn't have a memory of the years you've been a reasonable and supportive person. 

It's important that people make the distinction between trigger and cause, and who did what, and that *they remember.* I've been in conversations where I've been accused of something and I've said "I never do that. That's your mother," and they've said "Oh, yeah." Then forgotten the difference again. Some people don't care to remember because they don't really like us, some don't care to remember because they are afraid of the pain of having memories. 

Anyway, I can't remember if I've recommended chapters 6-10 of 'The Tao of Trauma' to you before, so I'm doing it now.

[Lecka]

I do think my husband doesn’t have denial like a lot of people.  He just saw it from a young age and paid the price with his parents taking it out on him.  His siblings didn’t see it it and were more favored.  
 

I think his sister had it very hard though, I think my husband’s family was a lot worse for girls than for boys.  
 

But she’s pretty dysfunctional now, and my little BIL is touch and go.  He is much, much more favored than my husband, but it does make it a lot harder for him to not be in denial.  But he is doing well right now, I think. He and his wife and son have moved out of the town where my ILs live, which I think has been really good for them.  But my little bil‘s relationshiop with his wife is shaky and we hope they will do well over time.  It’s not a given that things will work out for them, but we hope they will.  There is a lot of dysfunction for my little BIL to overcome, and he has not seen it for anywhere near as long as my husband saw it.  My husband saw it in about 5th grade and my little BIL didn’t see it until his mid-20s.  

[Not_a_Number]

6 minutes ago, Rosie_0801 said:

Yeah, bad wording on my part. When I said "it doesn't matter" I meant nobody outside their head can retrain their amygdala. if someone feels safest feeling unsafe, you can be as soothing and reliable as humanly possible and one day their amygdala will wig out because you can't be more soothing or reliable than humanly possible. The one thing you do wrong one day, or they feel you have done wrong, or reminds them of something that someone else did wrong, will set off the amygdala which doesn't have a memory of the years you've been a reasonable and supportive person. 

Don't I know it.

The things I've done that have made DH feel safest were definitely not what I would have thought. Years of reliability didn't do it, that's for sure. 

It's been a wild ride. 

[Lecka]

I haven’t read that book but I think trauma is very real and my husband has been to a counselor and we have both read The Body Keeps the Score.

 

Other books my husband has are more about military PTSD but one of his good counselors said — some people join the military in the first place to run away from their family of origin, and that fits my husband.  

Edited February 1, 2023 by Lecka

[Not_a_Number]

8 minutes ago, Rosie_0801 said:

Anyway, I can't remember if I've recommended chapters 6-10 of 'The Tao of Trauma' to you before, so I'm doing it now.

Thank you. 

[Lecka]

Maybe I’m wrong, but I think my husband suffers a lot with his relationship with his parents, but I think he does well with me and our kids.  He tries hard with his little brother who seems to maybe be more sucked into their parents’ drama.  We both feel bad about that, because at one point when we were just married we said — “maybe we could have him live with us.”  But we weren’t in a situation it was possible.  Now that we are older — it’s obvious his parents wouldn’t have let him go!  But we both feel bad we know his little BIL was not in a good situation after my husband left home.

 

But really my husband was always the rejected black sheep, which is supposed to be harder as a child but easier as an adult. I do see it that way with my husband.  
 

If there is a black sheep or not black sheep dynamic — well, the kids who arent the black sheep are scared to death of being made the black sheep, which goes into denial.  I think it’s worth reading about this dyanamic if this dynamic is at play.  It is at play in my family and my husband’s family, which is something we have in common.  I wasn’t the black sheep all along, it was mostly my middle sister, but my dad turned against me when I was in high school, so I have it but it’s not as bad as if I had it when I was a young child.  He partly turned against me because I favored my mom and step-dad, so I wasn’t all alone and just plain rejected.  But still I have had that experience in my way.  

Edited February 1, 2023 by Lecka

[Harriet Vane]

1 hour ago, Rosie_0801 said:

Basically, people have to be prepared to work through their fears to form and be able to respect healthy boundaries, assuming they can figure out how. Attachment styles are just manifestations of ptsd. It won't matter what level of safety those around provide, because it can never be enough if someone doesn't feel safe trusting.

Quoting for truth. Well said, Rosie.

[Lecka]

My husband and I do both identify with a black sheep/golden child dynamic.  I don’t know if this would be the dynamic in your husband’s family or not.

My husband is only a little younger than his older sister and felt rejected or unwanted from birth and was always treated worse than his sister.  Everything was always his fault, nothing was ever her fault, etc.  He got in trouble for things she did, etc.  

It’s so ugly and it’s not supposed to exist, yet it does.

Anyway, his parents showed poor judgment that he could start to see and find embarrassing from the time he was in elementary school.  
 

My understanding is that with this dynamic, the favored children have great motivation to not be the rejected child. And not see things as wrong or nonsensical.  And stay in the mindset of the parents even when it’s unfair or dysfunctional.  
 

I don’t think this is the only way to be dysfunctional, but it’s a way. And if it’s a way that fits — then it does fit.  
 

It really is something my husband and I have in common.  It’s much more minor for me but still I can understand what it is like for my husband in a small way, where a lot of people just don’t believe parents can show such favoritism or be so dysfunctional.  

[Melissa Louise]

I know you are not interested in therapy, but psychotherapy is an effective, if slow, treatment for attachment issues.

This is particularly so when an anxious, avoidant or disorganized attachment forms early in life, and has deep influence on the personality.

It's an inner work thing, not something someone else can do or provide for you.

But sometimes you need a safe person to do the inner work with.

~

My story doesn't fit your parameters of not involving abuse etc.

In case it's useful, however, I'll share what makes attachment possible for me in terms of other-person factors. 

Honesty, open communication, acceptance and assertiveness.

 

 

 

 

[Shoeless]

3 hours ago, Lecka said:

My understanding is that with this dynamic, the favored children have great motivation to not be the rejected child. And not see things as wrong or nonsensical.  And stay in the mindset of the parents even when it’s unfair or dysfunctional.  

QFT. I watch this play out, over and over, in my family of origin.  It's...something...to watch grown adults in their 40's play the part of "Mommy's and Daddy's Good Girls".    

[Clarita]

There is intergenerational trauma in my family. I think my parents did their best to overcome whatever happened to them (my mom's mom was very controlling of her and my dad was an orphan living on the streets). They made plenty of mistakes but tried their best.

I've read a lot of parenting books because between my parents and my in-laws neither camp really feels like they were good enough parents to dole out advice. It's been really helpful for my husband and me to recognize how our personalities affect our parenting and know where those weaknesses and strengths are. Seeking help both from professionals (therapists/parenting coaches) and people we know that we think are doing a good job has really helped us. Even with the non-professionals that we seek help from we are very clear and deliberate that we are seeking help from them, like almost a we will pay you for your time deliberate.

For our marriage, a therapist really helped. There are things we needed to do for each other that "normal" or most couples don't have to do for each other.  I have abandonment issues so my husband has to be really careful about telling me when he is going to be away and coming back.   

[Lawyer&Mom]

Encanto was a horror movie for me.  My mom was a covert narcissist, like the Grandma in the movie, bad enough to be scary and do real harm, but just safe enough you could still see all her positive traits.  I know narcissists can be much worse, but Encanto was a punch to the gut.  Way too relatable.

The one year anniversary of my mom’s death is this month.  I miss her, but more than anything her death was a gift. I can (mostly) stop worrying about her all the time, which is so freeing.  I’d love to still have her without her trauma, but that was never an option.

I found therapy in my forties, the year or so before her death, to be amazingly helpful.  I had done therapy before, but having a husband and kids of my own gave me the distance and insight to really dive into my relationship with my mom.  I realize now that I couldn’t have dealt with that stuff any earlier even if I had wanted to.  There is a real timing to how we can unravel our own issues.  You are ready when you are ready.  I think you can choose to engage with your issues when they appear, instead of avoiding them, but you can’t really control when certain issues emerge in your life.  Letting go of control has been the big lesson for me. 

[Shoeless]

 

.

Edited February 4, 2023 by MissLemon

[Indigo Blue]

I just think I’ve been a bit of an anomaly in that I’ve always, even when young, seen the unfairness in the treatment of us. I say anomaly because I think some children just absorb instead of having the ability to see “something just isn’t right” at a young age.  I didn’t think of it in terms of it being abuse, though, and it was all somewhat normalized, but I was often upset or crying in bed over something my mom said or did. I didn’t know what narcissistic personality disorder was until I was in my 50’s. My mom also has very positive traits. She can be such a “good” person but also so abusive. That made me very confused and left me trying to figure out whether I was “good” or “bad”. I often felt bad in her eyes. Now I know I was never bad. I was just a child who didn’t receive enough guidance. I was quiet and compliant by nature.

By the time our boys came along, I was aware that I wanted to be a different kind of parent. I wasn’t an emulator. I wasn’t perfect, but I took my “chance to do better” very seriously. Now, that I’m older and have learned about abuse and have come out of the fog FULLY, I’ve thought more about the ways my mom parented (dad was absent) and how that affects/affected the way I relate to our sons and my dh that I might not be aware of. “Fleas” as they call it. That awareness has led to my working on myself and trying to improve even more. I’ve been more aware of my sons having their own boundaries and autonomy in a more concrete, educated way, instead of just going on my intuition of what  “doing better” looks like. 

As for relationships outside of that, I fully admit I’m trending towards avoidant. My personality has attracted many people who have hurt me in very real and deep ways. I’m already introverted in the first place by nature, so I’m actually content, really, with this. I do not have a bad attitude toward people. I have just learned that making myself happy hurts a lot less than trying to make others happy. I still want to, but I don’t trust myself or others. 

I am over apologizer. A ruminator of a thing I may or may not have done to bother someone inadvertently. A wanting to blend in and not be seen type. A keep my real feelings inside type. A slow to anger but explode when finally had enough type. Easily triggered…. in my head….you’d never know. I used to be a people pleaser. I did overcome that, mostly. 

I am having to work toward no longer being afraid of my mom. 

Having said all that, I do feel as though I have healed so much and am getting closer to being a more consistent, sure version of myself. Slowly. 

I work on it all the time. Every day. Always aware. This is what intergenerational trauma looks like for me and how I’ve tried to process it. (I’ve never had therapy).

I will always have a social limp. I accept that now and no longer really care what anyone thinks about that.

My mom was abused. She wasn’t protected from that abuse. She is highly anxious. She can rage when triggered. She was/is physically, verbally, and emotionally abusive. She lies easily and often. She is manipulative. She doesn’t understand how her behavior affects others. She exaggerates. She loves attention from people. She will never, ever give a true apology. 

She is so unaware…..and she would never do the work it takes to self reflect. She has the emotional maturity of a little child. 

It’s fascinating to think about all the different ways people react to childhood/intergenerational trauma and how it affects who they are as adults.  

[cintinative]

Such hard stories from so many. I pray for mercy.

It has taken me years of working through therapy to be able to have compassion for my mom and yet not feel responsible for her.  Everyone's path to the point of responsible to vs. responsible for is going to be different. But as long as you feel like you can change that person, or that you can control that person, or that somehow if they make bad choices it is your fault for not preventing it, life will be an emotional roller coaster for you as well.  I say that as the poster child for doing it wrong for many, many years, and as someone who at times desperately wishes I could fix my mother.  I hold no judgement for those who struggle with this.  It has been a hard journey for me.  

[Carrie12345]

So, our toxic traits here come from Dh spending most of his upbringing as a Golden Child in a fake-rich family and I spent mine being as independent as humanly possible, then my older teen years with a broken and overworked single mom and two younger siblings.

I am a fixer and he is… how do I put it into words? “Everything should be fine. Why isn’t everything fine?!?”  And that’s after coming a long way.

But I think what’s most relevant in our household is that we are many years older than we used to be, and neither of us is the 22/23yo we were when we met. My parenting expectations have changed SO much over half my lifetime, and so have his. In some ways, they’re closer to the same page, and in other ways they are definitely not.  Also, our kids have become different people, and this is our first time parenting them at their current ages. It isn’t easy to navigate, and we don’t have enough conversations about it. But we do have some.

In fact, we just had one this morning. He didn’t enjoy what I had to say, but we’ll pick it up again when he gets home and revisit the points I made that are hopefully playing in his head right now, whether he agrees or not. 

If he persists with his current position, he’s going to be, sadly, stuck with the fallout. I hope that isn’t the case. Fortunately, this isn’t a situation of external punishment or reward with a small child, so I am not obligated to present a united front. We are separate people with different opinions and my child is entitled to mine.

And that child also has a responsibility, albeit not as heavy, for their relationships with us. We can’t force them to accept either of our positions.  How they participate in the situation is a choice with consequences, whether positive or negative. And I have to accept that.

Obviously I’m not talking about, like, a 5yo. But, outside of any form of abuse, their dad’s dumb stuff is their dad’s dumb stuff and I can’t demand he change or that they accept whatever he says. I can only make sure I’m here as my best me for them. (Which isn’t saying I’m the best, only MY best.)

[Lawyer&Mom]

One thing that is hard is that my mom *was* aware of intergenerational trauma.  She thought she was the one who would break the cycle.  She went to therapy, she raised us in a radically more loving and stable household than the one she was raised in.  And she was *still* emotionally abusive.  It isn’t a one generation problem, and it isn’t a one generation fix.  My job is to take the yardage my mom worked *so* hard for and advance the ball with my own kids.  And accept that they will someday probably have issues with me…. 

[Murphy101]

I think every generation spends 80 years trying to overcome their first 20 years.

The affects of that are often unseen for 2-3 generations.

We are living the fulfilled prayers of those long dead.

My prayers will be lived out by great grandchildren.

I have been a better mother/wife/friend than my parents and grandparents. I didn’t make the same mistakes they made. But I have absolutely made many mistakes of my own. My children are going to have to make their own strides to do better than me and make their own mistakes too probably.

The best I can hope for is that my children will know that despite all my many failures, I loved them through it all and was trying to do my best with what I had.

 

[Lecka]

Some really good posts…..

I agree about the poster who says things come up at times and can’t be avoided.  For me (and I see this with others) the times that were very high conflict or neglectful are hard on me when my kids are at the same age.  
 

Middle school for my oldest son brought up a huge amount of resentment for me and a growing realization that there were some things that weren’t okay about my own middle school years.  
 

My little BIL has major abandonment issues and it’s been hard for him in the last year, since his baby has been born.  He’s close to his son and I think it does bring up — why wasn’t I cared about the way I care about my son?

 

It is really hard and sad.  
 

I don’t know if this is the kind of thing going on, either.  
 

I think something that is hard, too….. with my little BIL, even 5 years ago he got upset with my husband for my husband saying anything was deeply dysfunctional, he wanted to minimize and say — oh, we have some problems, but nothing very bad, nothing to think we need to see ourselves as coming from a troubled home and needing to come to terms with that or adjust his thoughts about how to be married or be a parent.  
 

That has been changing and it has been hard on him especially since his baby has born.  After he was married he definitely had realizations/ownership that he doesn’t want to do “what is normal to me” but it seems like it’s even more in the past year.  He is having a hard time but I am optimistic things are going to work out for him.  
 

My husband was working through some things at a much younger age, but I think there is so much manipulation involved in — if you’re not the black sheep, you can SEE your parents are more than willing to treat one of your siblings poorly, but then you don’t want to be treated poorly, while knowing and seeing your parents are capable of it.  And then there is even denial of that to say “oh well that sibling actually caused a lot of problems” and buy into the parents’ version of events and their rationalizations for the poorly treatment.  

 

But we don’t totally understand what it’s like for him because he is much younger and was treated very differently in some ways, and he had a really different experience, too.  In some ways his parents did things in an opposite way with him yet still a very dysfunctional way.  
 

My little BIL is going to counseling and I think it’s a good thing.  

I don’t think we would be married right now if we hadn’t gone to marriage counseling 10 years ago and if my husband hadn’t gone to therapy starting 5-6 years ago and off and on since then.  
 

There are two things.

 

One is it just is helpful to hear feedback and the marriage counselor gave feedback and views that we were not seeing ourselves.

 

Two my husband needs someone who is not me, for some things.  I can’t meet all his needs and it is not a good role for me and it would detract from our marriage relationship.  There are things that I can think “well I also have that insight” but even if I can have the same insight as a therapist sometimes , it is still better for my husband to have another person besides me.  There are also things he chooses not to share with me.  It is good for him to have those boundaries.  There are ways I can feel like “well just talk to me about it” but that is more in the past since I have seen that it works for him to have someone besides me, and  it’s okay for him to not tell me some things he doesn’t want to tell me.  And I am more into the idea that — there is a difference between being a wife and being a therapist and I want to be a wife and I don’t want to be a therapist.    Part of this is because I get angry over things that have happened (to my husband), and I don’t think that is helpful — but I don’t think it’s fair to me to have to put my feelings aside, while I think that is the role of a therapist.  My husband still wants to have a relationship with his parents and then it doesn’t work if he tells me some things and my response is to be really angry at his parents.  It’s just not something I can work through with him.  When we were younger though I think I did think — I could have that role, but now I don’t think it’s good for us and I don’t see it as desirable. 

[kbutton]

17 hours ago, Not_a_Number said:

I'm jealous of that. DH has been in pretty serious denial until this year. 

I think what Lecka said about being in a married relationship longer than in the parents' home making a difference makes a ton of sense. 

16 hours ago, Not_a_Number said:

The things I've done that have made DH feel safest were definitely not what I would have thought. Years of reliability didn't do it, that's for sure. 

I am curious if your DH knows what makes him feel safe, and if so, whether or not he was able to articulate it or if you had to figure this out by trial and error. If he couldn't articulate this, then I assume any progress toward realizing this doesn't work must've been trial and error, most of which was your trial and error.

It's a gut punch to read about reliability not being what makes your DH feel safe; I have tried that (and probably not always been good at it), but my goal has been to...not be a surprise, put all my cards on the table/play with an open hand, etc. Whatever version of reliability you've tried to use, if you know that it doesn't work, it sounds like you're learning something that will keep you from pouring a lot of effort down the drain. I have no suggestions for something else to try, but I hope you can see it as encouraging that you have identified a closed off route even if it's not satisfying.

[Context...DH just started seeing a counselor (it's supposed to be for him, but we're having some joint sessions first), and I think he asked about trust vs. safety, but I wonder if he's driving at the same thing. I have my own counselor that started as joint but is now just me going.]

 

[Melissa Louise]

3 hours ago, Lawyer&Mom said:

One thing that is hard is that my mom *was* aware of intergenerational trauma.  She thought she was the one who would break the cycle.  She went to therapy, she raised us in a radically more loving and stable household than the one she was raised in.  And she was *still* emotionally abusive.  It isn’t a one generation problem, and it isn’t a one generation fix.  My job is to take the yardage my mom worked *so* hard for and advance the ball with my own kids.  And accept that they will someday probably have issues with me…. 

This is how I see things. Each generation (hopefully) managing something more than the generation before.

My parent managed to stay alive, which was an improvement on their parent.

I wasn't physically or verbally abusive to my kids, which was an improvement on mine.

My children aren't frightened of me, which is a happy thing, but I am very sure they have justified issues with me, mostly around the ways my anxiety affected them.

I hope if they have children, they will do much better, and part of them doing much better will be because I didn't beat or abuse them. Trauma absolutely is inter-generational and we do the best we can. Maybe some people can overcome it all in a single generation, but I couldn't.

[Not_a_Number]

18 hours ago, Melissa Louise said:

I know you are not interested in therapy, but psychotherapy is an effective, if slow, treatment for attachment issues.

Gosh, Melissa Louise. I know you mean so, so, so well. I know you want to help. 

And I know I do the same thing: I want to help, and in the name of help, I push people even after they've asked me to stop. 

I want to explain how it feels to get this message, though. 

I have this website blocked except for 7-10PM Eastern Time, since otherwise it eats up too much of my life. So I didn't see the message itself. Just the beginning of it in the notifications in my inbox, talking about therapy. I saw the snippet this morning, when I was checking my e-mail. 

And I felt myself get anxious and I felt myself tense up. And I started thinking about how I would respond to this without sounding annoyed and defensive. And I kept thinking about it, as I made the kids breakfast, and then throughout the day -- how to respond to this message. I think I've now had at least 20 dialogues about this in my head as I've chewed it over. 

At no point after getting this message did I actually think about therapy itself. 

It's not that I'm not interested in therapy. It's that we consider therapy all the time, and for deeply personal reasons I'm not currently interested in discussing on this forum, keep deciding that it's a bad fit for our family, at least for now. 

I'm really glad therapy works for you.

But I'd like to ask you (and everyone else who keeps prodding me) to kindly stop pushing me about this for now. It's on my radar. The reminders aren't helpful and make my threads feel less comfortable to be in.

Edited February 2, 2023 by Not_a_Number

[Not_a_Number]

17 hours ago, Lawyer&Mom said:

 Letting go of control has been the big lesson for me. 

Yes. For me, too. Truer words have never been spoken. 

[Clarita]

23 hours ago, Not_a_Number said:

The things I've done that have made DH feel safest were definitely not what I would have thought. Years of reliability didn't do it, that's for sure. 

That's what helped us with a knowledgeable 3rd party. It was to identify what issue each of us had and what actually made us feel "safe". (Safe's not the right word probably feel OK).

For me I didn't care that he was reliable (even 100% it should have been just fine). It was my body would have all the feelings of he's abandoning me (even though he's just going to dinner with some buddies). I would let him but I'd be anxious then he'd feel guilty (for all his reasons). Then in the end no one is really happy. The whole thing would just be bonkers if he came home late. We both had to work on it. I had to acknowledge that I was unreasonably anxious and communicate to him (and me) that I know he's reliable and I'm really OK. He had to be OK with letting me deal with my feelings, and not worry that I'm (unreasonably) staring at my phone or whatever. Just both of us knowing the crazy that's going on really helped. 

[Shoeless]

I want to put out here that there's no silver bullet for this. There are no magic words that can be said to make everything alright and "fixed" once and for all.  I'm not sure what you're looking for in this thread. Maybe hope that there's a solution for this problem? There is a solution, but it entirely depends on your husband being willing to put in the work. It's not a quick process and it's not something where if you just act the right way or say the right thing, he'll logically see how safe, dependable, trustworthy, etc you are.  Logic has nothing to do with it.  Like, I've had that conversation with my own spouse, but I'm the one that's like "I trust nothing. Nothing is safe or ok", and he's the one banging his head against the wall saying, "Sixteen years and you still don't see that I'm not going anywhere?" 

I don't know whether your husband decided to move out on his own or you told him to go.  From an outside perspective, you are at the place where you have to pick which hard thing to grapple with: working through his trauma from childhood or working through the trauma of divorce and how that impacts the children. 

Healing from the trauma is deep soul and brain work. I've been actively working at it for 3 years and only feel like I'm really making progress now. I spent a long, long time talking and thinking about the trauma.  I don't think that talking will help *me* anymore, because I've said all there is to say about it.  Repeatedly. 🤣 

If your husband has never discussed it with anyone, then he probably should, and that someone maybe shouldn't be only you. Sorry, I know you don't want to hear that, but as you've discussed in other threads, sometimes the advice one needs isn't the advice one wants to hear.  

[YaelAldrich]

I have hesitated about 20 times in writing a comment because you refuse to look at a therapeutic relationship. 

My marriage almost shattered after my sister's death. The beginning of the chasm was directly because of my husband's FOO (and the generation before that). There was and is terrible familial dysfunction. And it took a year of intense marital therapy and personal therapy on both of our parts that continued afterward off and on (and I bet will continue for my DH because of his family). 

I love that therapy could save our marriage and make it so much better. There is ABSOLUTELY NO way we could have done it on our own. We're smart (really smart h ) and accomplished and I'm extremely good at listening to people. But when inside the chaos there was no way we could learn the techniques and skills to bring our feelings to ourselves and our marriage. Without my DH 's personal therapy he would have broken this marriage even after the marriage saving therapy. 

If you want me to delete this I will. But a lot of very smart women are saying the same thing. I truly wish y'all the best. 

ETA: I don't know if it will make it more palatable to hear there is some stuff I will NEVER bring to therapy. I know enough about myself that I cannot come to certain conclusions and so I won't go down that path. But I DID use therapy for stuff I know I can work with. And I'm so glad I did. The deep stuff I did with through was integral to staying in the marriage. 

Edited February 2, 2023 by YaelAldrich
Wanted to bear my soul a little more?

[Lecka]

Another thought I have — is the primary issue a marriage issue, or is it the husband’s issues.  
 

If the primary issue is the husband’s issues — I think to some extent he needs to have ownership and maybe privacy (?) to some extent about what he wants to do to try to address or deal with his issues.  
 

To me saying something “isn’t right for our family right now” is something to say about kids, and making decisions on behalf of kids.  
 

I think if the main issue is with his issues and family background, to a great extent if he can take ownership, that’s good.  And then he has space right now to take ownership?  Which I think is good.  I think it may just take time and there may not be updates or whatever, but if it seems like he’s trying then I think that’s good.

 

I have a dynamic where I can be the person who wants to take charge of things — well some things another person has to do on their own or at least do it without a dynamic where — maybe they are used to a spouse taking care of some things.  
 

I have thought some of my husband’s ideas/solutions have been stupid or haven’t made sense to me — but that is the point, that it makes sense to him.  

[Scarlett]

I don’t really understand what it is about your personality that makes you get so tensed up and irritated when people suggest therapy.  What makes it so hard for you to just scroll past the advice you don’t want?

Also I find this type of thread awkward because I can’t fathom what makes it impossible to live with my spouse unless they are being abusive in some way. And abusive people don’t respond to marriage counseling anyway……so that wouldn’t help.  
 

Maybe I am just old but this is not that complicated. Vow to be kind and respectful to each other and apologize when you screw up.  I agree with @Murphy101…..we are all human and we just have to do the best we can.,