Was I raised by a narcissist?
Or was he only terribly Aspergers? I have only recently (i am 38) found the right therapist that has started making me question stuff abut my childhood that I until now have believed was normal, because it would get thrown in my face that I was being selfish and wrong and exactly the kind of behaviour theybexpected from me, because I am so much of a non-human that I don't even have the right to have an opinion. There is entirely too much stuff gone on to detail but i'll leave some bullet points. Non native speaker, not entirely sober but I'll do my best. Pleasr note that this is only minor happenings and that the general feeling of dread and anxiety never left and that I was probaby clinically depressed from an early age, still am, with suicidal ideation.
Well early memories laying the ground work would be him (and tbh) and my mom making generally degrading or disivalidating comments, like, no you dont feel that, you are not depressed. You don't like that jewellery that they found tacky, but instead they let me believe they had a say in what my feelings were. Later on when I couldn't get friends because it was soo inconvenientnthat I needed my father (mom couldn't drive) to drive me (legal driving age is 18, no exceptions) to drive memplqces and his reaction was enough offputting that I stopped asking to go places and just had no friends. This was all pre-internet I might add. Totall isolation between the ages of 14-18/19. And the fights we had, where they would CONSTANTLY making the friendlessness my fault and my fault only and then icing the cake with: you know, the prents are the real sufferrs jere, how do you think I feel when I can't tell my friends about my loner loser daughter.
That shit continued into my twenties, I started med school and I was so depressed I started cutting. I hid that from everyone, because I didn't want to be an embarrasment. But I was really scared and one night i took a small amount of benzo and ended up in the ER then psych. They called my parents probably against my will, and from there on out it just went downhill. They forbade me from visiting unless i covered up all my scars, because as my father put it, he should'nt have to deal with this. i was not allowed to talk to them about my problems, which at time,they told me i shoud feel really bad for inflictinf this pain on them, wich I was clearly not doing to them but for myself.
Then came the hospitalisations for more or less serious suicideattempts, after which ome I was told in no uncertain terms that I was behaving unacceptably and was 'disqualificating' my self for any job. At the time, all this time, I held down jobs as a doctor, still do. Never dependend on them financially.
A couple of years later, I got the chance to working in my fathers hospital. When he met me there, he was obviously embarrased and did not introduce me to his collegues just pretended I wasn't sitting there at all. Afterwards he gave me the speech about how he didn't want me working in the same hospital/town as him because i was such an embarrasment to him. He also had agreed with my mother (this was not true) that they would not let my behaviour ruin their relationship, and stated that I was the reason they separated (whcih was years after I left that place....
Etc. There is so much more and it could probably been articulated better. But these memories pop up from under the blanket-decision that he made the rules,all else (including me) was wrong, and every mistep to be punished,. But the worst part is how he made me into this non-existant person, because he said everything I ever felt, had opinions on or experienced was wrong, and if there was someone making me upset, it was basically because I had done something to deserve it. And when I 'came out' on being soo sick, depressed, suicidal, in my early 20s, he treated it as something I did to harm my parents and i don'T even once remember him sayng he felt sorry for me for feeling bad
There is q lot more to this story but it's bedtime. I'll try to find the secret edtiting tool to make this less a wall of text.
Posted Jul 21, 2017, 10:08 PM UTC