I 18F live at home with my mom 52F and sister 20F. My parents just got divorced earlier this year and the house was a mess for months (metaphorically) while they were trying to pretend to get along and make future plans. My dad M55 moved out just a few weeks ago.
I didn’t realize that I had been verbally abused by my father until about 6 months ago and it is a lot for me to process. A therapist helped me realize that being terrified of my father wasn’t right and that everything that happened wasn’t my fault because I was just a child. Going through this realization, I developed a lot of anger or perhabs it was pend up anger towards my father. I never really showed him this, I just became very quiet and tried not to talk to him (when he was still living with us). My therapist helped me with a lot of the anger and I am not as furious with him any longer.
My dads temper was worse when I was younger and it has gradually gotten better throughout my teens, yet I am still afraid of him and he makes me very uncomfortable. My sister has forgiven him for it all and says that he is a lot better and that he is really trying to be nice and more considerate. My mom and sister thinks that I ought to forgive him because he is not gonna do anything and he doesn’t do the abusive things he used to. He has gotten better, I can see it and I believe that he is trying to do things differently. I am glad that he is doing better for himself, but I just can’t forgive him for not being my father when I needed him to be. I spend my entire childhood feeling scared and unloved by him and I can’t seem to get over that. My mom didn’t really know all of what was going on with my dad when my sister and I were kids, but I have talked to her about it a lot and she says that he does love me and that he wants to be my father and be around. But I feel so anxious around him or even when I know he is in the house. My mom says that I just need to rationalize the situation and if anything happens, she is there to protect me. I don’t feel like I can, I have generalized anxiety disorder and have not gotten a grip on how to manage it. I do not want to see him or at most as little as I possibly can. My mom says that would make my father sad, and that it was a long time ago and it wasn’t that bad. She recognized that some wrong things happened but that it wasn’t that often and mostly when we (my sister and I) were pretty small.
I feel like she is dismissing my feelings and not understanding me. How do I get her to understand how affected I still am by this?
Or am I reacting poorly by not wanting to see him? How do I let it all go and see what my mom and sister sees?
Like how am I suppossed to deal with this, am I in the wrong here and holding grudges?
TL;DR To summarize all this, how do I deal with a verbally abusive parent, how do I try to move on from this and is it okay to not forgive him and not want him around. I guess what I am asking is how do I approach this situation?
5 comments
I think a good thing would be to leave your mom out of your relationship with your father, unless you specifically are asking for her advice.
Manage your relationship with him as the adult you are now, independent of your other relationships and forge a path that works for you.
Your therapist is helping you with this in practical terms, but this isn’t something instantly resolved, bring it up at your next session and go from there.
>I do not want to see him or at most as little as I possibly can. My mom says that would make my father sad,
That’s a bit rich isn’t it, coming from the woman who’s just divorced him so she won’t have to see him any more?!
It doesn’t really matter what your mum or sister think at this point. Their relationship with your dad was not your relationship with your dad.
However,
>I have generalized anxiety disorder and have not gotten a grip on how to manage it.
Is your therapist aware of this? Shouldn’t they be helping you?
You are entirely justified in feeling how you are feeling about him. If you do not want him in your life, you are not required to *have* him in your life.
You need not forgive him for what he did to you.
That said, however, once he is out of your life, you should continue to work with your therapist on *letting it go*, so that the burden of emotional hurt he created for you isn’t something that you carry around with you forever after; that gives your abuser power over you *even after he is gone from your life*.
As for this:
> I do not want to see him or at most as little as I possibly can. My mom says that would make my father sad, and that it was a long time ago and it wasn’t that bad.
1. *She* doesn’t get to decide whether it was “bad” or “how bad” it was; you are the one living the life that is the result of how he treated you, so *you* get to decide what *you* think and feel about his behavior.
2. If he’s “sad” about it, the answer to that is a giant, resounding, earth-shaking “so what”. He made adult choices about how to treat his child, and if “being sad” is the worse consequence that comes as as result of that, he should consider himself lucky.
> I feel like she is dismissing my feelings and not understanding me. How do I get her to understand how affected I still am by this?
She is. But here’s the thing: *you cannot make her understand something she chooses not to understand*. There is no magic script that you can use, no speech that anyone can give to you to say to her that will cause her to understand.
She *knows* what happened. She *knows* how you feel about it.
She *chooses* to dismiss your feelings and minimize what happened in her mind and in her words, because doing so serves her in some way. She is still invested in how he feels, and (even though that’s a foolish thing for her to do) you have no power to change that.
I’m sorry, but are you in therapy to get over this or aren’t you?
Because at some point you have to forgive in order to really heal.
May I ask what he did?
I was very afraid of my uncle when I was young, simply because he had a gruff voice. Scary for a child. But as I got older, I could see how my childish impression was not truly representative, you see?
You don’t have to have any relationship with your father. You don’t even have to see him. Ever. That is a choice you should have. Regardless of what your mom says.