A mother's lesson in social skills

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Sorry you had to go through that, take it from someone who knows. I try to limit the contact I have with my family these days, and it's not too hard since none of them live in the same city I do. This treatment I got from my sister and parents in a way spread to the rest of the family, in that it sent them the message that since I'm treated that way and nobody else is, I will always be a lower class citizen than the rest of them, no matter what I do or what happens.

An example of the abuse that did this to me in my family:

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt379.html

I could've written this last post of yours too!! !

Dysfunction skills topic

PrisonerSix, I just read your Wrong Planet thread from three-four years ago, and I came across a post from a member called Young_Fogey, in which he talks about NT parents being ashamed of their children because the kids are AS and "not normal". Then it dawned on my that this is how my parents treated me. Previously I had no idea this is why they rejected me, and now it has all come together, in one word. I am now conscious of the meaning of this abuse. There is a word for it.Shame. Their shame, not mine. I had nothing to be ashamed of. They projected all their shame onto me, in order to deflect their own shortcomings/inadequacies. This is common, I guess, and seems to be a theme in Franz Kafka's stories. Franz understood this at a young age, and wrote about it. Just today I have made this discovery. I feel blessedly relieved and unburdened. Also, better late than never. Thank you.

Greentea, I thank you as well. Excellent thread.

Thanks, Sue. (And by the way, I've always wondered if this specific kind of family dynamics with "the sister" (see my reply to PrisonerSix on his thread) is a custom of the shtetl. Because my mother was raised in the same way as I, and her parents come from the shtetl, (same country and community as Kafka, by the way).

Very true. I like to think that it wasn't my shortcomings they couldn't deal with, perhaps it was their own. I posted that story because I thought others here could relate to it, many do it seems. The part of it that made no sense to me was for a long time, they didn't make an issue of it, then it became the center of everything and I will never know why.

I'm not sure I've ever gotten over the damage all of this did. I think I can, but have no idea how. I try not to think about it, then it all comes back again.

Life goes on though.

The Descent of Shame topic

There is a whole psychology about the concept of shame. Heavy stuff.

I have read some info about shtetl life, and of course there is the move/play Fiddler on the Roof. My family is not Jewish, but Irish, and we were descended from survivors of the Potato famine sent to North America to escape death. I am descended from the youngest daughter of a family of seven. Only two survived the Atlantic crossing--the oldest brother, a priest (who obviously did not marry) and my great-great-great grandmother, who was about 15 years old at the time (1845). (the only reason we know of this is because my great great great great uncle, the priest, wrote it in his private diary, which was found by an uncle of mine 23 years ago. There were no passenger lists, only death lists, and only if there were relatives who recorded the names on a memorial, now found in Eastern Canada.) I suppose the shame of poverty and death and disease was something they did not want to talk about and any family problems (including alcoholism, being gay, premarital sex, pregnancy--and yes, these do run in the family) were simply ignored and closeted as the family shame.

Add AS to the mix and it was yet another skeleton to hide in the closet or shove under the carpet. The elephant in the living room--or the BED BUG of Kafka. Kafka embraced his known idea of shame and concretized it as a beetle--a loathsome form of life that he knew would shock and repel his readers, and turn their discomfort into absurdity as they read about how Gregor tried to ignore his condition and try to resume being normal. The crazy thing is that the parents tried to hide the shame of the insect while they tried to hide their own shame as well. Total dysfunction.

Not all families are aware of their dysfunctional survival shame coping skills that need to be addressed, and so these skills are retained, much to the detriment of family members who do not deserve such abuse.

Thank you again, Greentea, for your response. I can feel empathy here.