What happened to my family

[John_smith]

It's 9pm on my mums birthday and ironically the only person not here is my mum. Events like this have become a norm in my family and I often find my self looking back on the past with tears in my eyes. The fact is my family has fallen apart in every possible way, though more recently I have become curious if we were always this way. So I an attempt to find the truth of my family I decided to search through the mass decay that is my family photos and videos.

Surprising, yet then again not surprising at all, I descovered that in previous years my family got along incredibly. My youngest sister seemed to idolise me whilst I idolised my older sisters. My parents would take us on bike rides and join us for family photos and I would giggle along with there dumb jokes rather then criticising them.

As I contiuened to watch, the answer to why my family fell apart became clearer and I began to feel stupid for not realising it earlier. What ruined my family was anger. Mistakes I made as a child would be cleared up and giggled and rather then dealt with by anger and force. The anger itself was obviously reflected by my sisters as they became angrier over time. The anger treated me differently and made my self confident and shy, because why try when everything you do will be shot down.

To blame this on my parents would be wrong, it is a mistake so many people make. When it seems that kindness and time doesn't teach kids it seems the best way to fix them is by shouting at them, making it obvious to them, but this is just dumb. Like a lot of things it seems that you are failing until very slowly every thing falls into place. You just takes things slowly like making a soufflé, because in the end a few small mistakes are so much better then permentent mental issues, loss in self confidence, anger issues and a family falling apart

Then again this is just my opinion on the matter. I could of course be completely wrong a million things happen behind the camera that I couldn't ever attempt to scavenge in the maze my brain has become. To anyone out there who has read this far and has gone through similar things I have or even someone who hasn't but has an idea in the matter, tell me what could have gone wrong in my family.

[colinberry1]

Well family, are generally a problem, everyone is growing up at all different stages and that is the problem, when the children turn to adult the parents turn to elderly grandparent, everyone seemed to be taking too long to grow up, when the children finally mature, it's time for them to be burying their parents. whatever happens in your family it's all down to maturity some take longer than others to mature some parents take longer then their children to mature. and that is if they mature at all.

Well then there is the definition of maturity, what is the definition of maturity. in my family it was my mother's mother that held the whole family together, when she died it all collapsed. she was the person who found the time to keep in touch with everyone holding the whole family together.

[Livetowin]

I had a very difficult time with my father during my upbringing. My mother was there too, but she might as well had been one of the kids because she was compliant to whatever my dad did. Most of my dad's weak moments were taken out on me verbally. And we're not talking about a standard scolding. We're talking topics like being told he wished I were never born when I was six and seven years old. That tends to mess with your head during your formative years when you think your parents know everything and whatever they say must be the truth.

So finding my self worth was a long and tumultuous journey that fortunately got me on my feet by my early to mid 20's. That's a long time to be ambivalent about what you think you are or what you believe you can do. And to be so self aware at such a young age as I was is a bad place to have start your life too. Because my dad said those things to me when I was so young and impressionable, it made me instinctively look to others for my self-worth because I was too confused to know if I did something well or was no good at it. And even when I was told I did something well, I doubted the authenticity of the statement. My common thought was, " Are they just being nice to me?"

So yes you can absolutely assign blame to people if you can look back and examine who had an impact on your life when you were very young and depended on them for guidance. That period shapes who you are early in life. And depending on what kind of messaging you were getting, plays a HUGE role in how you assessed both yourself and the opinions of others.

Now beyond the origins of how something started, we all have to assume control of our own lives and take the wheel once we become aware of how we got off in the ditch. I've come to realize my ability to lift myself out of those circumstances is rare because many people fare much worse most of their lives and that's even with counseling. For me, I was lucky to have good friends with good hearts early in my life. So as time went on, I could differentiate what was normal reactions in a family unit versus something I was dealing with that was uniquely my problem. My dad shamed us in order to maintain authority. Our low self esteem was his leash.

But over time I found my voice and I began to see where I was good and I began to do something I never did in the past - I doubted what my dad said and felt I was more right about me than him. That was the corner I had to turn. I had to relieve myself of the belief that my parents "knew better" and always had experience anchored on their side. My experience now counted and I didn't have to stay glued to that insane notion that they were the purveyors of the truth.

It was having good friends and seeing myself through demonstrated ability that I found the positive path to my identity. But I found a load of other truths in the process and that has been a life time of learning to get those. I'm 53 now with a wife (of 25 years) kids of my own and a grandson. You learn more as you take on those roles that you use to revile when someone else had the job.

But here's the truth of what I have learned from my life experiences - You only control yourself and you don't let others define you. Nothing else in my life takes higher authority, because without those two principles in play, I would be lost. You must define yourself and love yourself first. Because without that as your base, it's impossible to set standards for what else is good in the world if you don;t know where you stand. So once you know who it is you are which means you understand your weaknesses and you understand your strengths, THEN you can go out into the world and pick your goals and pick those whom you want to take that journey with you.

People can (and will) disappoint you, but you still have yourself so you shouldn't lose much more than the disappointment in the process. The more you know yourself, the better you can read people in terms of what you want and whether they are a good fit for you. But you also understand that everyone is an individual. You can give them titles - mom, dad, brother, sister, uncle, best friend, soul mate, wife, partner, etc. And based on that, people often defer a certain degree of authority to those people and their opinion. In other words we give them latitude because of who they are, more so than who we might give to the average person on the street.

But where many make the mistake is assuming the people who have these titles will consider us with the same perspective or interact with the same values and principles we bestow upon them simply because of the title they have. We forget they are INDIVIDUALS with their own issues, values, and agendas that may not necessarily fit our definition of them. In short we defer too much too often to people we should be looking at closer to see if we know them to be who they are or if we just fill in the blanks based on their title in our lives.

And that's not to say you should be paranoid of everyone around you. I'm not saying that at all. Quite the contrary. What I AM saying is you need to be understanding of who each person actually is in your life as an individual and not a title. Parents are not perfect people, anymore than siblings or extended family members are. You can respect them and love them but also get to KNOW who they are. I had two other brothers in my original family. We all grew up under the same two parents but we all turned out quite different. I'm the baby of the three, but I became the most level headed and responsible one of the three. When something needs to get done, it's my shoulder that gets tapped. My middle brother is ubber liberal while I'm moderate at best. Our oldest brother past away when he was 59. He battled depression his whole life but always blamed everyone else for his issues. He never took care of himself as he should so high blood pressure got him.

Sorry for the long read, but we all come up from different origins. We all can tell a story of how we got the short end of the stick. And while our family and friends likely all played key roles in how we came up, ultimately we hold the keys to our own lives. Hopefully when we look back, we can make amends with those who may have done us wrong and we learn to move on. But I think we all have to learn that everyone has a journey to take in life. We interact with others along the way and hopefully we can find a path that leads us to a place where we can share our lives with those who treat us best. But we have to define who those people are through knowing ourselves first. Once we've done that, the titles don't really matter. It's what people do in life that counts and what we remember them for. The titles, not so much.

[colinberry1]

Well you sound quite levelheaded, and no your priorities, no one knows your family more than you do, so keep up the good work you are doing, I can always remember my mother saying this to me, whatever you think we are doing wrong, just remember not to make the same mistakes and do better. Thanks for the tread, very interesting assessment made.

[colinberry1]

Now that you are an adult yourself making judgement on your parents, ever considered communicating with them on their feelings towards you when you were younger, and see how they feel now, have things change, is their opinion still the same.