It’s weird, I think my parents did a fine job of raising me and my brother, even though my father was a raging (but functioning) alcoholic and my mother was (is) manic-depressive. They made sure we were taken care of, put us both through expensive college, and have always been there for us whenever we needed anything. But my brother decided long ago (thanks to therapy) that our upbringing was somehow traumatic and he harbors enormous anger and resentment towards our parents (although he keeps this mostly hidden from them). He has consciously chosen to raise his own children basically the opposite of how our parents did, but they have basically turned out exactly like him: socially awkward, depressed and in terrible physical shape. I asked him whether he blames himself for their problems since he blames our parents for his, and it turns out no, he blames our parents for his children’s problems, too.
Everyone has problems. And everyone thinks they are above them and have moved past them. I think it’s more realistic to just love your kids and hope that you do just a little bit better than your parents did. Just like every generation is smarter than the last maybe in time the planet will be less fucked up.
You know your situation better than anyone so feel free to ignore this if I’m way off base.
But I’m guessing two things here:
Your parents were able to provide you with things you needed as a child. Perhaps things like college and clothes on your back were the things you needed to grow into a fulfilled and happy person. But maybe your brother needed your mom to control her emotions better during an episode. Maybe he needed your dad to be predictable and consistent instead of drinking and behaving in ways that were irritating or unpredictable from a child’s perspective.
You might not be fully acknowledging some of the things they did (or didn’t do) that made you feel bad when you were little. It doesn’t have to be physical abuse for it to have an impact on you. We know now that children form attachment styles at least partially based on how their parents responded to their cries during infancy. Kids can be amazingly resilient, but also incredibly delicate.
Also, the odds that they treated you differently based on birth order, their age when they had each of you, gender, your personalities, etc. is very high.
You should ask your brother what really bothers him deep down. I’ll bet you get some tears and probably some very deep, very impactful memories/feelings about your parents.
If you asked my younger, more relaxed brother about our parents, he would say, “Yeah man dad’s a dick for drinking and bailing on us, and mom likes to guilt trip us but oh well.”
I would be the one to explain how their constant fighting, dad’s drinking/drugging, mom’s emotional manipulation and authoritarian parenting, etc. made me feel deeply unsafe and insecure as a child. I felt bad about myself and my life. I wished I could get a letter from Hogwarts more than anything. And when our father got so into drugs that he became absent completely, I felt lonely and abandoned. Took me many years to make peace with it and realize he was really sick and struggling.
The thing is, I suspect that I’ve actually come a lot further in my healing than my brother has. I don’t think he’s aware of some of the things he does or why he does them. Any chance your brother is actually onto something here?
Yeah, what you say is pretty reasonable. I just know from talking to my brother that he has sort of invented many of the negative things that happened to him in our house growing up. He has a tendency to describe things that actually happened but then to impart motives or thoughts in our parents’ heads and to be angry about these rather than the events - when of course he can’t really know their motives or thoughts.
One example: our father was a professor and when my brother was in graduate school he was giving a lecture and our dad came to watch him. My brother feels that he was there because he was worried that my brother would do a bad job and embarrass him - when in fact my father has never done or said anything to suggest that he would think in that way. I know from talking to my father that he is just straight up very proud that my brother has gone on to be a professor like him.
So interesting. I wonder why your brother feels so insecure. Sounds like he felt he was under a lot of pressure to be successful with that lecture or something.
One thing I didn’t share with you is that I also have a younger, younger brother who is bipolar. And I’m very fascinated by the fact that you mentioned your brother dramatizing his life and adding bits from movies. My youngest brother actually does that too. Our childhoods had enough shit to complain about but he always takes it that one step further and adds one small detail to make it worse.
The classic example is the time my brother lost his shit (bipolar, remember) and pushed past our grandma on his way out the door. My mom (perhaps rightfully?) grabbed his shirt and pushed him against the wall, angrily explaining that our grandma was old and pushing past her was way out line. My youngest brother recounts that story as the time my mother choked him until he had bruises. My other brother and I don’t recall it that way at all. And to be honest, I think if you’re pushing past your grandmother, whatever happens to you next is pretty justifiable. Had she fallen and broken a hip, that would have been bad. My brother called CPS and they didn’t find his claim to be credible, so that adds to my belief that I’m remembering it correctly.
We were just a regular middle class family but my mom had pretty poor taste in men to be honest. Hence my drunk and absent father plus youngest brother’s bipolar which he inherited from his father, my mother’s second marriage.
I also recall the time he ran away to a friend’s house, which he recalls as the time that my mother “kicked him out and left him homeless for a week.”
I think the truth of all this is probably somewhere in the middle for us all. Our parents treated us differently because we were different kids. I had fewer issues and I’m sure I was easier to deal with. Maybe my mom scared my brother when she jacked him up against the wall. Maybe he felt like she didn’t want him home which is why he ran away. It’s just funny how perception works, especially when you throw in confounding factors such as mental illness and insecurity, different ages, different temperaments.
Well, best of luck to you and your brother. The best parents in the world still fuck up kids on some level. We can only try to be better for our own kids. This has been on my mind a LOT now that I have a newborn at home myself. I just want to be there for him and break the cycle of absent, drunken fathers. It’s a cycle that goes back to my great grandpa on my dad’s side, so even though I don’t do drugs or drink in my adult life, I worry about the family curse, haha.
It’s weird, I think my parents did a fine job of raising me and my brother, even though my father was a raging (but functioning) alcoholic and my mother was (is) manic-depressive. They made sure we were taken care of, put us both through expensive college, and have always been there for us whenever we needed anything. But my brother decided long ago (thanks to therapy) that our upbringing was somehow traumatic and he harbors enormous anger and resentment towards our parents (although he keeps this mostly hidden from them). He has consciously chosen to raise his own children basically the opposite of how our parents did, but they have basically turned out exactly like him: socially awkward, depressed and in terrible physical shape. I asked him whether he blames himself for their problems since he blames our parents for his, and it turns out no, he blames our parents for his children’s problems, too.
Everyone has problems. And everyone thinks they are above them and have moved past them. I think it’s more realistic to just love your kids and hope that you do just a little bit better than your parents did. Just like every generation is smarter than the last maybe in time the planet will be less fucked up.
You know your situation better than anyone so feel free to ignore this if I’m way off base.
But I’m guessing two things here:
Your parents were able to provide you with things you needed as a child. Perhaps things like college and clothes on your back were the things you needed to grow into a fulfilled and happy person. But maybe your brother needed your mom to control her emotions better during an episode. Maybe he needed your dad to be predictable and consistent instead of drinking and behaving in ways that were irritating or unpredictable from a child’s perspective.
You might not be fully acknowledging some of the things they did (or didn’t do) that made you feel bad when you were little. It doesn’t have to be physical abuse for it to have an impact on you. We know now that children form attachment styles at least partially based on how their parents responded to their cries during infancy. Kids can be amazingly resilient, but also incredibly delicate.
Also, the odds that they treated you differently based on birth order, their age when they had each of you, gender, your personalities, etc. is very high.
You should ask your brother what really bothers him deep down. I’ll bet you get some tears and probably some very deep, very impactful memories/feelings about your parents.
If you asked my younger, more relaxed brother about our parents, he would say, “Yeah man dad’s a dick for drinking and bailing on us, and mom likes to guilt trip us but oh well.”
I would be the one to explain how their constant fighting, dad’s drinking/drugging, mom’s emotional manipulation and authoritarian parenting, etc. made me feel deeply unsafe and insecure as a child. I felt bad about myself and my life. I wished I could get a letter from Hogwarts more than anything. And when our father got so into drugs that he became absent completely, I felt lonely and abandoned. Took me many years to make peace with it and realize he was really sick and struggling.
The thing is, I suspect that I’ve actually come a lot further in my healing than my brother has. I don’t think he’s aware of some of the things he does or why he does them. Any chance your brother is actually onto something here?
Yeah, what you say is pretty reasonable. I just know from talking to my brother that he has sort of invented many of the negative things that happened to him in our house growing up. He has a tendency to describe things that actually happened but then to impart motives or thoughts in our parents’ heads and to be angry about these rather than the events - when of course he can’t really know their motives or thoughts.
One example: our father was a professor and when my brother was in graduate school he was giving a lecture and our dad came to watch him. My brother feels that he was there because he was worried that my brother would do a bad job and embarrass him - when in fact my father has never done or said anything to suggest that he would think in that way. I know from talking to my father that he is just straight up very proud that my brother has gone on to be a professor like him.
So interesting. I wonder why your brother feels so insecure. Sounds like he felt he was under a lot of pressure to be successful with that lecture or something.
One thing I didn’t share with you is that I also have a younger, younger brother who is bipolar. And I’m very fascinated by the fact that you mentioned your brother dramatizing his life and adding bits from movies. My youngest brother actually does that too. Our childhoods had enough shit to complain about but he always takes it that one step further and adds one small detail to make it worse.
The classic example is the time my brother lost his shit (bipolar, remember) and pushed past our grandma on his way out the door. My mom (perhaps rightfully?) grabbed his shirt and pushed him against the wall, angrily explaining that our grandma was old and pushing past her was way out line. My youngest brother recounts that story as the time my mother choked him until he had bruises. My other brother and I don’t recall it that way at all. And to be honest, I think if you’re pushing past your grandmother, whatever happens to you next is pretty justifiable. Had she fallen and broken a hip, that would have been bad. My brother called CPS and they didn’t find his claim to be credible, so that adds to my belief that I’m remembering it correctly.
We were just a regular middle class family but my mom had pretty poor taste in men to be honest. Hence my drunk and absent father plus youngest brother’s bipolar which he inherited from his father, my mother’s second marriage.
I also recall the time he ran away to a friend’s house, which he recalls as the time that my mother “kicked him out and left him homeless for a week.”
I think the truth of all this is probably somewhere in the middle for us all. Our parents treated us differently because we were different kids. I had fewer issues and I’m sure I was easier to deal with. Maybe my mom scared my brother when she jacked him up against the wall. Maybe he felt like she didn’t want him home which is why he ran away. It’s just funny how perception works, especially when you throw in confounding factors such as mental illness and insecurity, different ages, different temperaments.
Well, best of luck to you and your brother. The best parents in the world still fuck up kids on some level. We can only try to be better for our own kids. This has been on my mind a LOT now that I have a newborn at home myself. I just want to be there for him and break the cycle of absent, drunken fathers. It’s a cycle that goes back to my great grandpa on my dad’s side, so even though I don’t do drugs or drink in my adult life, I worry about the family curse, haha.
Wow, this is kind of fascinating. If anything it points to nature over nurture, which I would think your brother would find a relief.