New here, feeling sad, hope u can help
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| Mon, 04-19-2004 - 4:44pm |
I wanted to say hi. I think I've posted here in the past but it was a loooooong time ago.
I'm feeling sad today and wonder if any of you have gone through what I'm going through right now--I have a learning disablitily and attention deficit. I'm in my early 40's. I'm sad about a lot of things, but right now it's my family--
They're kind of toxic for me. It seems that whenever we're together--which isn't much or if I say too much over the phone, the information that I give is either twisted around or I'm told I'm wrong about what I remember. It's my parents who do this to me but my sister doesn't side with me, always with them.
I'm tired of being "wrong" all the time. I know I'm not. I'll tell a story about my own memory and they'll tell me it didn't happen that way and when I challenge them they just say, "well, we remember it differently." It seems like we can't have a conversation at all because I always hear, "that didn't happen," or "I don't remember that...."
I realized with the help of my therapist that toxic as they are, I can't just detatch myself from them. My sister once said that she was concerned about them getting older because it would be "all on her" since I live 6 hours away by car. I could get there 2 hours by plane and would in a heartbeat.
However, due to my learning disability, I've pretty much been branded as not too smart or capable in my family or that's the way they make me feel. Recently when my mother was going through some medical issues and I was visiting I was told not to get on the other extention with the doctor because they wouldn't be able to hear (my mother, father and sister were each on one, why my being on the 4 extension would make it that much harder to hear, I don't know....). My sister has consulted in the healthcare industry. It doesn't make her a doctor but boy do they treat her like the expert on all things.
If I don't communicate with them ever again, then I've created a self-fulfilling prophecy for my sister. I won't be there in the end or when they are sick. Also, by detaching myself from my entire family my daughter loses out, and she adores them. They've criticized my husband too, so he doesn't relish the idea of visits with them either.
So, I've been advised to keep conversations as short as possible and visit infrequently and have them visit less frequently.
It makes me so sad. I can't change things but I'm having a hard time dealing with it. I don't know what to do. I don't want to even talk to them over the phone because I don't want to be criticized.
The ironic thing about them remembering things differently is that they both have complained about being forgetful. When telling a story in which I was supposedly "wrong" the other day my mother couldn't remember someone's name, and my Dad says that he forgets the names of people he works with on a daily basis and is embarrassed about it. And, I'm the one that is remembering wrong?
Have any of you been through anything like this? How have you coped?

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I'm also a huge baseball fan- Boston Red Sox! I live for baseball and football and am constantly watching sportscenter and am on a fantasy baseball league on yahoo.
Anyway, baseballbaby, I just wanted to say welcome and let you know that while I don't have direct experience with disagreements about memories (though I suppose occasionally my brother and I argue over what really happened in fights when we were younger), my Mom and her sister are constantly having battles over "stealing" each other's memories. Even when it's obvious one of them couldn't have possibly been the one involved, they still argue it was them and not the other! I think it's common. Also, what Barbara said about witness accounts is true. I took a course that discussed memory and no two people will remember the same situation in the same manner. When you retrieve a memory, it is affected not only by the perception you bring to it at the moment you are retrieving it, but also the pereceptions you had at the time of the event as well as the perceptions you had each time you previously retrieved the memory. That probably doesn't make a lot of sense, but sometimes memories are in our minds from long ago, and whether or not they are accurate, to us they seem accurate. I am sure you are not always wrong!
I also have been the scapegoat in the family because I have dealt with depression all my life, and when I was young I was messy. To this day, if I am visiting my parents and my brother is there too, if one thing is out of place, I am the one blamed. Sometimes my Mom will call me and ask if I lost something of hers or my father's when I haven't been to see them in weeks! Ridiculous! But I try to shrug it off as best I can.
Best of luck and hope to hear more from you,
Jen
Thanks for your reply. I really do feel better knowing that no two people remember things exactly the same way. I'm trying to not take it personally.
That's amazing that your parents will blame you for losing something even if you weren't there for a while. I can relate totally, though that stuff hasn't happened recently. My mom accused me of having an old jewelry box of my grandmother's years after she had passed away, that I had never even seen!
It's sad to be the scapegoat of the family. It's nice to have the support of people who know what it's like, to talk to about it.
Sorry I haven't been on the board for a while. I hope that you see this reply!
I'll look into all of those suggestions. I'll have to think about specifically what coping issues I need to work on a post them.
Actually, I'm not as a huge a fan as my husband is. I chose the user name baseballbaby about 6 years ago (hard to believe it's been that long) when my dd was a baby. I think my husband had put a baseball hat on her or something like that and when I was thinking of a user name that popped into my head!
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