A Worthy Pedigree

GENOGRAM, n.: A genogram is a pictorial display of a person’s family relationships and medical history. It goes beyond a traditional family tree by allowing the user to visualize hereditary patterns and psychological factors that punctuate relationships. It can be used to identify repetitive patterns of behavior and to recognize hereditary tendencies.

I have already given you a glimpse into my own pathologies, as well as those of some of my immediate family. I thought an oral genogram might be appropriate at this point so you can understand the complex interplay of the various wounded psyches in three generations of my family, starting with my siblings and me.

Self

• 46 y.o. female, married, no children
• Spouse: codependent, parents deceased
• Psychiatric Status: adult child of an alcoholic, atypical depression, anxiety, PTSD, codependent, addictive personality
• Familial Relationships: verbally/emotionally abusive, alcoholic father and codependent mother

Sister

• 41 y.o. female, married, 3 children
• Spouse: unknown psychiatric status, parents alive and married, seemingly normal relationship with parents
• Psychiatric Status: unknown, although I suspect there are repressed issues
• Familial Relationships: verbally/emotionally abusive, alcoholic father and codependent mother; estranged from mother and brother

Brother

• 35 y.o. male, married, 2 children
• Spouse: narcissist, anxiety, parents alive and divorced, estranged from mother
• Psychatric Status: severe stress leading to facial tic, codependent, anger management issues, addictive personality suspected, other issues are likely but unknown
• Familial Relationships: verbally/emotionally abusive, alcoholic father and codependent mother; estranged from middle sister

Of the three of us, my sister is, by all appearances, the most normal and well-adjusted. Under the surface, however, I suspect she is as screwed up as my brother and I, but she just hasn’t figured that out yet. She may live her entire life in a perfectly happy state of denial. If that works for her, then more power to her. I certainly wouldn’t wish the way I feel on anyone, so if she copes by keeping up appearances then it is all good.

I suspect my brother is as messed up in his own way as I am, but to the best of my knowledge he has never sought treatment for any psychological disorders. Of course that doesn’t mean they aren’t there just festering under the surface, but I don’t think his level of self-awareness is such that he feels the need to go into counseling.

I have a truckload of known psychiatric issues. I believe I am at a place in my therapy where I have identified them all, and now it becomes a matter of learning how to manage them. Part of me believes that perhaps I am healthier emotionally than either my brother or my sister because I have accepted my illnesses and am taking active steps to treat them. That’s a post for another time I think.

Now let’s look at my parents.

Mother

• 69 y.o. female, widowed, 3 children, 1 sibling
• Spouse: deceased, alcoholic, verbally/emotionally abusive
• Psychiatric Status: adult child of an alcoholic, depression, anxiety, codependent, addictive personality, survivor of childhood sexual abuse
• Familial Relationships: estranged from middle child; normal relationship with oldest and youngest child; spouse and parents deceased

Father

• deceased (49 y.o.) male, 3 children, no siblings
• Spouse: adult child of an alcoholic, depression, anxiety, codependent, addictive personality, survivor of childhood sexual abuse
• Psychiatric Status: alcoholic, addictive personality, verbally/emotionally abusive, suspected narcissist, suspected survivor of verbal/emotional abuse by his parents, possibly other pathologies but these are unknown
• Familial Relationships: during his lifetime he formed an abusive relationship with his wife and children; little is known about his relationship with his parents; have been told that his mother was the dominant personality in his household and that there was little or no affection shown between family members; suspect he was verbally/emotionally abused by his parents

As you can see, both of my parents have twisted backgrounds. I have been able to talk pretty openly with my mother about her experiences both growing up and vis a vis her relationship with my father. She has been very open and honest with me about what she has endured and also helping me to remember some of my own past. Unlike me, my mom has a hyperacute memory. She recalls minute details years after they happened. I, on the other hand, can’t remember what I had for breakfast this morning.

I think the most interesting thing to note here is that both of my parents have alcoholic parents and have suffered childhood abuse (confirmed in the case of my mother, suspected in the case of my father). Why is it that my mother did not become an abuser and my father did? Although mom could not shield us from our father’s emotional abuse, I credit her presence with preventing our father from escalating into physical abuse.

Finally, lets look at my grandparents:

Maternal Grandmother

• deceased (~80 y.o.) female, 2 children, unknown siblings
• Spouse: deceased, suspected codependent
• Psychiatric Status: alcoholic, depression, suspected narcissist, possible anxiety, otherwise unknown
• Familial Relationships: presumed normal relationship with spouse and children; normal relationship with grandchildren; unknown relationships with parents and siblings

Maternal Grandfather

• deceased (~84 y.o.) male, 2 children, unknown siblings
• Spouse: deceased, alcoholic, depression, suspected narcissist, possible anxiety
• Psychiatric Status: suspected codependent, otherwise unknown
• Familial Relationships: presumed normal relationship with spouse and children; normal relationship with grandchildren; unknown relationships with parents and siblings

Paternal Grandmother

• deceased (age unknown) female, 1 child, unknown siblings
• Spouse: deceased, suspected alcoholic
• Psychiatric Status: unknown
• Familial Relationships: dominant to spouse and child; suspect emotionally/verbally abusive to spouse and child; observed lack of affection for spouse and child; unknown relationship with parents and siblings; rumored to have a number of alcoholic relatives

Paternal Grandfather

• deceased (age unknown) male, 1 child, unknown siblings
• Spouse: deceased, suspected emotionally/verbally abusive
• Psychiatric Status: suspected alcoholic
• Familial Relationships: observed lack of affection for spouse and child; unknown relationship with parents and siblings; rumored to have a number of alcoholic relatives

So there you have it, three generations of screwed-up people. How many of my issues are hereditary versus the way I was raised I can’t really say. I suspect the depression is, in large part, hereditary, passed down from my maternal grandmother, through my mother, to me. I have no doubt that it is exacerbated by my upbringing. I have made a conscious decision not to have children however, since both my brother and sister have children, I can only pray that they are strong enough to break the cycle of abuse and addiction that is our father’s legacy to us.

Confrontations 1

What follows is a letter to my father, written at the suggestion of my therapist.  It is a way to confront him, even in death, with what he did and how it has affected me.

Dear (father’s  name),

I don’t want to call you Dad because you never really were a ‘Dad’.  You were a provider and nothing more.  You made sure that we had a roof over our heads, food on the table, and clothes on our back, but completely ignored our emotional growth and well-being.

My friend, L., says it’s because you were a narcissist who never had his emotional needs met as a child.  Well I have news for you – Mom endured far worse things as a child than you ever could have and yet instead of perpetuating the cycle she was brave enough to try to break it.  You, on the other hand, took a ‘spare the rod, spoil the child’ approach to things.  Your rod wasn’t physical, though, it was mental and emotional.  I don’t remember one time in my whole life where you told me you were proud of me or that I did a good job or that I measured up to your standards.  All I ever wanted was to know that you were proud of me and that you loved me unconditionally.

I heard from your colleagues at your funeral that you were proud of all of us kids -funny how none of us ever knew it and only heard it after your death.  Would it have hurt you to tell us once in a while that you were proud of your children?  There was such a void left in my life, which I have spent almost 46 years seeking the approval of anyone who holds any power over me.  Kids need to know that they are good and worthwhile and worth loving – we aren’t born with this sense of self-worth.  It’s up to our parents to instill this in us.  I’m sorry your parents never did that for you and I’m angry that you weren’t strong enough to avoid making the same mistakes they did.  Your emotional negligence and verbal abuse have left me doubting my worth as a human being and feeling undeserving of other people’s love and admiration.  What is really sick is that almost everyone who meets me is impressed with how smart I am or how sweet I am and I have a hard time accepting their approval when it is what I crave the most.

Another lovely lesson I learned from you is to fear failure to such an extent that it paralyzes me.  I will never forget as a child how when I got a 95% on a test all you could do was to ask me why it wasn’t 100%.  You made me a perfectionist to such an extent that I won’t attempt something – even something I might really enjoy – if I think I can’t do it perfectly.  I start projects and never finish them because even if I do, it will never be perfect enough to gain your approval.  You taught me to criticize myself more harshly than anyone else could ever do, even more harshly than you did.  I take everything much too seriously and don’t remember how to have fun because I’m so afraid of failing.  You never taught me that failure is good; you just taught me that no matter how hard I tried I could never be good enough.  You’ve left me a fearful, anxious woman who is as afraid of success almost as much as she is afraid of failure.

There’s a lot of my childhood that I don’t really remember.  I remember you drinking and how the only time you could ever show affection to us or to Mom was when you were drunk.  Maybe that’s how you really felt and could only let it show when you were under the influence of alcohol, but it’s hard to take a drunk seriously.  Why should I believe that the drunk one was the true one when logic told me that the sober one should have been the true one.

I remember you fighting viciously with (sister’s name) and nearly putting her through the wall in your anger.  Even though I was older than she was, this rage terrified me.  I was scared for her and I was too scared to intervene on her behalf because I didn’t want that rage turned on me.  I wish I was strong enough to protect her from you, but she was the strong one, not me.

I remember feeling like I was just so much of an annoyance to you – in the way when you wanted to watch TV, for example.  I remember you yelling at me, although I can’t remember what you ever yelled about.  It took me almost 40 years to get to a point where I wouldn’t burst into tears when someone raises their voice at me, and yet a voice raised in anger still sets me on edge.

I remember working at the plastic factory one summer in college and how every day you would make a point of reminding me that I should be so grateful to you for putting me through college so I wouldn’t have to work there for the rest of my life.  I always was and still am grateful for what you did for me regarding my college education.  You didn’t have to hold it over my head at every opportunity.  Did you think I was undeserving of what you did for me or did you just want a medal for doing what any normal parent should be thrilled to be able to do for their child?

I remember you never letting me be right about anything we would discuss when I got old enough to have an ‘adult’ conversation with you.  You always had to get the last word in.  To this day I still bear the scars from that little lesson.  Nothing makes me feel more helpless than when people either don’t listen to me or tell me I’m wrong when I know I’m right.  It brings me right back to my childhood and you.  As a matter of fact, it’s that very thing that has kicked off this most recent depressive episode.

You taught me that men were something to be feared.  It has taken me a lifetime to overcome this irrational fear.  I was married a couple of months ago to the kindest, most loving man I have ever met in my life.  He is proud of me and loves me just for who I am, in spite of all my imperfections.  The happiest day of my life was the day I could legally take his name because I consider it an honor to be his wife.  I can throw your name away – there is no pride or honor in it for me, just bad memories and worse feelings.  He is a million times more of a man than you ever were and I am so lucky that all your perverse life lessons didn’t keep me from meeting him and falling in love.

Despite all the years of emotional and verbal abuse, there is still a part of me that wants to love you.  This part understands that you never had a good role model for how to be a loving parent, so how could you possibly know what we kids needed most from you.  This part pities you and makes excuses that you did the best you could, given your upbringing, and that at least you took care of our physical needs.

But there is a little child inside of me who hates you to her very core for neglecting her and not loving her in the unconditional way a father should love his daughter.  This child isn’t ready to forgive you and doesn’t care that you didn’t know any better – she thinks that you were a child once, too, and if nothing else, your own wants and needs as a child should have guided your hand as a parent.  She is filled with anger and rage for what you did to her and what you didn’t do for her and right now I don’t even know how to calm her down and help her understand that she is wonderful and worth loving even if her father didn’t know how to show her that.

Wherever you are now, I hope you have had a good long time to reflect on the mistakes you made in this life.  I hope you feel a fraction of the anguish you have caused me all these years.  I believe you will be born again and I pray to God that you learned something from this life.  I pray that the next time around you will be the loving, kind, and gentle parent that I always wanted you to be.  I don’t want you to hurt any more souls like you hurt mine.

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Where It All Began

I was born into a comfortable, middle-class family.  Mom stayed at home with us kids and dad had a white-collar job.  I am the oldest of 3 children, I have a sister and a brother.

I guess the trouble first started brewing a couple of months before I was born.  Apparently my parents had been playing cards at my maternal grandparents house one evening.  They came home and started to drift off to sleep when the phone rang.  My father’s parents had been in a car accident.  My grandmother was killed instantly and my grandfather lingered for several months before he passed away.  My mom tells me that my father changed after that.  I only ever knew him the way he was after, and he was not a nice man.

I don’t remember much of my childhood.  There are some memories that stand out in sharp contrast, but much of it is sort of dull and gray.  I was always a quiet child and very nervous.  Men, in particular, terrified me.  When I was young, my mom would have to come with my on play dates if my friend’s father was home.  Strange to be so fearful of men…I have asked my mom if there was any physical or sexual abuse that I might have repressed, and she has assured me that there wasn’t.

Round about 4th grade I realized that I was good at school – that I was smart.  This was a mixed blessing.  It gave me something to take pride in, but it left me open to many years of teasing by my classmates.  I was always the fat kid, and a nerd to boot.  My self-esteem took a bludgeoning from all sides it seems.  I made a couple of close friends, but was pretty alienated from most of my peers.

At home things weren’t much better.  My father started drinking, moderately at first and then more heavily as time went on.  He was emotionally distant from all of us kids.  I don’t have any really fond memories of him.  He was always hypercritical of us.  If I got a 95% on a test at school he would scoff and ask why I didn’t get a 100%.  He seemed to get a lot of satisfaction out of putting his children down.  It seemed as though we were more of an annoyance than a blessing to him.   He yelled at us a lot, which often made me burst into tears.  His normal reaction to that was ‘You wanna cry?!  I’ll give you something to cry about!’  Thankfully it was an empty threat.

As my father advanced in his career he travelled more frequently on business.  It got to be that I looked forward to his trips.  I couldn’t wait for him to leave so we could have some peace.  When he wasn’t travelling I used to wait in dread for him to come home from work and start drinking.

My father wasn’t an angry drunk, he actually became more pleasant after a few drinks.  It was the only time he could show affection to us or to my mom.  He used to disgust me when he would get drunk and act like he cared.  Why couldn’t he care when he was sober?  Why did he have to be such a bastard to be around when he wasn’t drinking?

My mom, bless her soul, tried to run interference as much as she could, but she had her own dark secrets.  She was the victim of sexual abuse as a child and her mother was also an alcoholic.  She was in a loveless marriage with a man who verbally and emotionally abused her.  She essentially raised us kids on her own.  Knowing what I know now, I’m actually amazed that I’m not more screwed up.  I admire my mom’s courage – it can’t have been easy for her.

My father died when I was 20.  His heart just stopped one morning when he was getting ready for work.  He died on our kitchen floor with my neighbor performing CPR on him and my mother looking on.  He was 49 years old.  I was away at college and remember being called to the administrator’s office where I learned the news.

His funeral was something of a spectacle.  I have never seen so many flowers in one place in my entire life.  Crowds of strangers – his colleagues I later found out – came by to offer their condolences.  Almost universally they would tell us how much our father loved us and how proud he was of us.  The bile rises in my throat at the memory.  Why did we have to hear this from strangers?  Why couldn’t our father have just once told us that he loved us, that he was proud of us?  Was this just something those people felt they had to say because they didn’t know what else to say to us?

Those memories are so vivid even 25 years later.  It was my first experience with death and it was a hard one to swallow, although in retrospect I never really missed my father.  I grieved more because my illusion of stability had been shattered than I did for him.  After all, as far as I was concerned he was just a sperm donor who happened to make sure my physical needs (food, clothing, and shelter) were taken care of.  I don’t know if I ever loved him, although I said I did daily like the obedient daughter I was raised to be.

It is only now, in my mid-40′s, that I can say my father was an alcoholic and an abuser.  In retrospect his death was something of a blessing.  In death he couldn’t hurt us anymore.  What I have only recently come to realize is that his legacy of pain lives on.  The emotional scars run deep.  The hardest pill to swallow is that the least little thing that reminds me of him – even subconsciously – can trigger an episode of PTSD that can lead to a major depressive episode if I don’t get help fast enough.  It’s like walking around with a time bomb in your psyche.  You never know when you’re going to experience something that will set it off, and each time it goes off it gets harder and harder to pick up the pieces.

The Journey of a Thousand Miles…

This is the story of my healing journey, one on which I am just embarking.  I don’t care who reads this blog, it’s not for you but for me.  This is my place to put down my thoughts, my feelings, and hopefully my progress towards becoming a whole person.  If you choose to read this, please know that there will be some content here that is difficult to read dealing with mental illness and verbal/emotional abuse.  If you choose to comment on my posts, please be constructive – I’ve taken enough abuse in this lifetime, I won’t tolerate it here.

Who I Am

• I am a 45 year old woman coming to terms with a childhood of verbal abuse and emotional neglect.
• I have atypical depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
• I have suffered at least 3 major depressive episodes (a.k.a. ‘nervous breakdowns’) in the last 10 years.  I am recovering from the most recent one as I start this blog.
• I am an adult child of an alcoholic, a garden-variety co-dependent, and I have an addictive relationship with food and video games.
• If you met me on the street you would probably think I’m completely normal.  I have a full time job, I’m happily married, I volunteer in my community, I’m remarkably nondescript.
• I’m quiet and serious most of the time, perhaps a bit too serious.  My sense of humor is dry and quirky, but a good fart joke will send me into hysterics.
• I’m very intelligent, kind-hearted, and loyal (basically not much different than your average Golden Retriever).
• I love animals more than people, my wonderful husband not withstanding.  We have no children but 2 big dogs and 3 cats.
• I believe in a higher power and in angels.  I’m very spiritual but not at all religious.
• Most of all, I am strong and I am a survivor.  I am not defined by my illness or my past.
• I’m terrified of this healing journey.  I don’t want to hurt any more and I know that this journey will be immensely painful.  At the same time I’m tremendously hopeful for the person I will become as I travel this path.