Troubled_OneSenior Contributor
Being misstreated
This is my little rant in this forum.
I am going on 31 and have a brother about 1 year younger than me. Throughout my whole life in our family there was not much love and communication. My brother and I did get along but the majority of the time he and I would not get along and often my father and I would gang up on him and call him names and get our self esteem from this. To me as a child growing up I thought it was ok to do this and never understood what it would be like to be my brother.
My father and mother never communicated emotion and thier relationship was feuled with negative energy. This is where the trigger was I feel and where the dissharmony arose.
My mother only recently said to me that at one stage she said to my brother that my fathers opinion did not matter. To me this may have been the trigger which over time sent me off in the wrong direction. When she told me this it set off alarm bells in my head and that she never spoke to me but spoke to my brother. I think she said this was around when my brother was 14. At around 15 I started drinking and at age 17 started taking drugs. To me this seems all to coinside with each other too much to be a coincidence. When I have asked my mother why she never trusted me as a child and spoke to me she says I did until you started taking drugs. Then she says that I lost her trust but now I have it back.
My brother took drugs and drunk I know this but now I hear she said she told my brother my fathers opinion did not matter it makes me realise she put all her trust in to my brother and left me with my father. My father and I got along but our relationship is terrible, if you have read my other thread in the Our Experience and Stories forum http://saneforums.org/t5/Our-experience-stories/Living-with-depression-and-anxiety/m-p/17866#M2415my father is adopted and is very detached. I think my mother sees the side of him in me and rejects this and this is what has happened throughout my life. Neither my mother and father can seem to accept both thier childs.
Anyway that is my problem I find at the moment with my family. I find I do not get the respect and understanding I deserve.
I speak with my mother tomorrow 15/02/2015 for my birthday 16/02/2015, I will let you all know how I go.
Thanks for your support.
) Care of the Soul by Thomas More, and The Road Less Travelled by M. Scott Peck. The latter is quite good, but you need to read it recognising that he wrote this back in the late 70's so it is devoid of almost any inkling of the impacts of trauma on people's ability to think clearly. In my view it lacks compassion, yet I still feel it's a clarion call to self-honesty and growth - or at least it has been for me and others I know. Thomas More's book is much more nuanced, compassionate and quite complex - I really love it.
