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Sun 23 Dec, 2007 06:49 pm
Actually, he wasn't....but he appears to be the stuff of them!!!!
Thing is, my father died over fifteen years ago, and I STILL have nightmares about him. Good grief.
Mainly, they are that he is alive again, and things are more or less as they were for the last few years of his life.
I thought I had dealt with this stuff a while back, and the nightmares went away, but they are creeping back and it is not something I want to have unresolved (insofar as it can be) for the rest of my life!!! Classic case of physician heal thyself, this is.
I was thinking that some of you might be able to help me think about this in a different way...you know by asking questions, reflecting and such, if you can bear to.
I am waiting to see someone about it...but that's gonna take a while, and I do think that just facing it here might take me a bit further than I have obviously been able to take myself, though that is a long way.
I will test the waters a bit here first, before going very deeply into the background (I have seen threads in this forum get really nasty, and I'm not up for that stuff)...but here is some background.
My dad was a very traumatised fella.....his versions of things were always prone to perhaps a wee tad more than the usual amount of embroidering, but my understanding is that his dad was a violent and tyrannical man, and his mum at some point just gave up, and had to be looked after by the kids.
This appears to have rendered him very uncomfortable with intimacy, unable to express affection once one got beyond early childhood, (except through songs and such, oddly). He was also very morose and depressive at home, whilst being the life of the party externally.
(His sibs were similar, I gather).
He was also very narcissistic, in the sense of always believing he was the only capable, clever person in the world (except for Winston Churchill...and even he...)
He also sort of gloried in his misery.....I was engaged from toddlerhood up as audience to his tales of all the terrible things that happened to him as a child...and they used to break my heart. He was also very florid in his self recriminations...being so narcissistic, he believed himself responsible for everything bad that happened in the family, while simultaneously believing that everything was everyone else's fault. This meant that, if you confronted him about something, he would end up in floods of tears and wailing that it was all his fault, but he would later be very angry.
My parent's marriage appeared, at least from the outside, as a barren waste.
There were literally weeks of no speaking...you know.."ask your mother to pass the butter"....then bitter yelling matches in the night. My mother was often very mean (as I saw it) to my dad, and I would be devastated and try to defend him. Meanwhile, he was passive aggressive to her....apparently very respectful of her, while putting her down and lampooning women a lot around her. He was also a quiet drunk.
My parents experienced the tragedy of a daughter dying, after a long illness that they knew was fatal. My dad lost his beloved first wife shortly after his first kid, a son, was born. Said boy is extremely mentally/emotionally disturbed, which was an ongoing source of great stress for my father.
When I was twelve, as often happens, my mother insisted that I choose between her and dad, by dint of becoming extremely angry with me when I said I thought she was being mean, and did the dummy spit thing about all his faults. I chose her, and had a period when I believed I hated my dad....I would feel physically ill being in the same room with him.
He contributed to that by his means of parenting. His belief was that you helped your children by endlessly pointing out to them their faults...and by endlessly, I mean hours of it, if I would stand still for it!!!
All that being said, he was a decent, intelligent man who did his absolute best. He was generous with his time, strongly supported my thirst for knowledge.......he was a competent and highly skilled person in his non-family life. He was creative and well respected out there. He had good friendships, and was a caring friend, despite his narcissism. He maintained interests and activities until well into his eighties. He was imaginative and meant to be kind.
Anyhoo, my mum died when I was fourteen......my dad was then 64.
As you can imagine, we had a very rocky time. I felt responsible for my dad, with his misery and his drinking, and felt genuine deep pain for him....at the same time, I felt repulsed by the atmosphere of carefully hoarded and polished misery, the frequent verbal abuse (not that he meant it that way)........I wasn't doing that great myself for a few years, and I would feel compelled to help him, with no idea of how, and what I really wanted to do was to run away forever.
That's kind of what the nightmares are about.
As he got older, I felt increasingly as though I should help him more. Thing is, he had plenty of money to have his place cleaned etc., but as a depression survivor he was phobically reluctant to spend money on such things. I was very busy and felt it wrong that I should manage two households when he was perfectly capable of doing better with his, and well able to afford assistance. To be frank, I couldn't stand to be near his place. I would become so tense near him, that I would become a bitch and nearly vomit all the time.
I would force myself to visit him, sometimes I'd do some cleaning, nag him about buying different clothes, and about getting help. At times he did get help. The verbal abuse went on until I figured out how to stop it, and then it stopped.
There was no real relationship....I could never tell him anything about my life because he would have been very disapproving and would, as he put it "worry his soul case out". So....I would just listen to him, take him out for coffee etc.
The crux I guess is that I was always feeling I should do more, but feeling that it was unbearable to do more. Constant guilt......
It wasn't as though I especially got the feeling that dad was happy to see me! Perhaps he was feeling the same!!!
Of course, I did more as he got frailer.....but never enough to assuage the guilt.
The nightmares are that he is alive again, and I am stuck in exactly the same situation, except that I often seem to be living in his house, which is a filthy mess. I have a home which I am longing to escape to....but which seems further and further away.
Often, my father is not there, and I am uncertain if he has moved, if he is ok. I STILL feel that pervading guilt and responsibility, but sometimes I am able to tell him how I feel and how angry I am that he won't help himself.
Wow. What you all have gone through together. I am going to pm you, deb.
oy, bunny, bad dreams suck. But theses dreams of yours...
I feel for you.
It sounds as though you've forgiven him, have you?
Maybe not quite accepted who he was though?
The guilt thing. That's the worst.
What happens in the dream when you tell him how you feel? Does it help at all? Or do you feel guilty?
Has something happened recently to trigger the dreams?
I gotta run, but I'll be back.
I wish you a dreamless sleep, bunny.
Oh my.
A lot there that resonates with me, in a lot of different ways.
I'm glad that you'll be seeing someone about this, to talk it out and maybe come up with some stuff.
I'm sure you know that you are not actually to blame and you didn't do anything wrong -- I suspect that logically knowing this doesn't get to the nightmare level though.
Different ways of looking at it... hmmm.
Any links to your regular life? Like, when you are feeling powerless, or trapped, these dreams come? Maybe look to them for clues about your general state of mind, and try to address that? (Like if you're feeling powerless or trapped, try to do something about it... though of course you can't always do anything.)
I had that insight when it came to dealing with hearing loss -- I've dealt with it about as thoroughly as it can be dealt with but of course there is still an element of loss, etc. Occasionally it just seems so unfair, too much to bear, etc. I've figured out that while of course it is a perfectly legitimate burden, there are other things that cause me to view it in various ways, and that I can do something about that, while I can't do anything about the hearing loss itself. Stuff like make sure I am in no-effort communication situations regularly, etc.
Hmm.
Kinda blathering in hopes of shaking something loose... meanwhile, I understand what you're saying.
caribou wrote:oy, bunny, bad dreams suck. But theses dreams of yours...
I feel for you.
It sounds as though you've forgiven him, have you?
Maybe not quite accepted who he was though?
The guilt thing. That's the worst.
What happens in the dream when you tell him how you feel? Does it help at all? Or do you feel guilty?
Has something happened recently to trigger the dreams?
I gotta run, but I'll be back.
I wish you a dreamless sleep, bunny.
I have certainly forgiven him intellectually.....and I have done a fair bit of work re the anger I had for him. I think clearly there are things I have not dealt with re him, though. It's ME I can't forgive!
I think it's an advance that I sometimes tell him how I feel in the dreams.....and he seems a slightly different sort of presence then.
Possible new relationship may be triggering the dreams? I don't know....mebbe I am just ready for another bite at this particular bitter aloe?????
There's something about the dynamic with him......my older half brother was obsessed with him....I cannot describe the weirdness of their relationship. Shudders...
Deb,
This is your life, but there's much here that's familiar. One thing that helped me with my memories (nightmares) of my father and our relationship was an exercise from Laurel Mellin's The Pathway. Thinking back on your childhood, are there things that you wanted him to do differently? What are they? And then, knowing what you know of your father's upbringing, what were his capabilities? Did he have the tools to be a different father than the one he was, or did he parent as he was parented?
And for tougher questions -- Was he unhappy as an older adult, or were you unhappy with the him for who he was?
Well, that was a good coherent post of years of guilt and non-connection. I completely emphathize. Oddly, it sort of reminds me of some of the tales of William Trevor.
I'll spout off an immediate mechanistic comment, but not really an explanation - that I've noticed with my own dreams over decades, and now dammit more decades, that the dreams often involve people of my past, not my present... though that occurs once in a while too. I've always felt this has some expurgating/cleanout function, re the brain, but it's interesting when the pattern seems to be on hold and I dream of the same person fairly often. That can be an angst causing person or a pleasure causing one, but the person keeps showing up.
On the psychological aspects of the complexity of your relationship - I'd be no real help there, unless saying it's a complex thing is itself in anyway useful.
My own parents died long ago. I think we've talked about this before at some point. What I am open to thinking about them changes with the years, even as a lot of data memory fades. I put myself in their slippers more easily now, and sometimes that can be crushingly sad.
sozobe wrote:Oh my.
A lot there that resonates with me, in a lot of different ways.
I'm glad that you'll be seeing someone about this, to talk it out and maybe come up with some stuff.
I'm sure you know that you are not actually to blame and you didn't do anything wrong -- I suspect that logically knowing this doesn't get to the nightmare level though.
Different ways of looking at it... hmmm.
Any links to your regular life? Like, when you are feeling powerless, or trapped, these dreams come? Maybe look to them for clues about your general state of mind, and try to address that? (Like if you're feeling powerless or trapped, try to do something about it... though of course you can't always do anything.)
I had that insight when it came to dealing with hearing loss -- I've dealt with it about as thoroughly as it can be dealt with but of course there is still an element of loss, etc. Occasionally it just seems so unfair, too much to bear, etc. I've figured out that while of course it is a perfectly legitimate burden, there are other things that cause me to view it in various ways, and that I can do something about that, while I can't do anything about the hearing loss itself. Stuff like make sure I am in no-effort communication situations regularly, etc.
Hmm.
Kinda blathering in hopes of shaking something loose... meanwhile, I understand what you're saying.
Thing is...I believe I DID do something wrong...but then I think no I didn't.
Compassion is something I value mightily, (though stumble at all the time)and I had the skills in the last 10 years of his life (and likely earlier) to be a lot more compassionate towards him.
I just couldn't break through the fear of being around him. It used to drag me down in a way I still can't really GET.
I remember one day he rang to say he was busy on a Sunday I would normally have taken him out, and I actually startled my housemate by dancing and singing like a total nut, because it felt so WONDERFUL not to have to go there.
I get it.
What do you not get about it? (Not being snotty.) It sounds like he was very difficult -- and very draining -- and you had to shore yourself up for the effort of being with him and recover afterwards. It sounds like you had very good reasons for feeling that way.
The ability to be compassionate doesn't mean that you need to just ignore yourself.
JPB wrote:Deb,
This is your life, but there's much here that's familiar. One thing that helped me with my memories (nightmares) of my father and our relationship was an exercise from Laurel Mellin's The Pathway. Thinking back on your childhood, are there things that you wanted him to do differently? What are they? And then, knowing what you know of your father's upbringing, what were his capabilities? Did he have the tools to be a different father than the one he was, or did he parent as he was parented?
And for tougher questions -- Was he unhappy as an older adult, or were you unhappy with the him for who he was?
Sure, there are lots of things I would have wanted him to do differently.
And no, I do not believe he could have done them that way. He parented WAAAAAAY better than he was parented. The only way I think he could have done better would have been to face his own demons more fully. Sometimes I would get frustrated by that, because he was smart enough to know that there was help, but I accept, really, that he was unable to do so. I know he did his best.
He was extremely, shatteringly unhappy as an older adult...but I do think he had more fun than he let me see. I just think it was habitual for him to be miserable around family.
I was unhappy about who he was...but I see the problem as very little about him, and more about my internal processing about how I dealt with him. It's MY problem, not his.
sozobe wrote:I get it.
What do you not get about it? (Not being snotty.) It sounds like he was very difficult -- and very draining -- and you had to shore yourself up for the effort of being with him and recover afterwards. It sounds like you had very good reasons for feeling that way.
The ability to be compassionate doesn't mean that you need to just ignore yourself.
Sure....it doesn't.
But....I guess the hard thing for me is that I had the skills to manage very difficult people's effect on me, generally, and I couldn't manage him, in a way that lets me feel ok about how I was with him. Or..I didn't want to......I feel like I was too lazy to...just didn't want to do it. I worry that doing it grudgingly was worse than not doing it at all????
I guess part of it was simply the triggering of trauma that his presence provided, and I would go back to when the trauma happened (like years of it) and be unable to manage it well.
I managed it to some extent (I went) but it was a bit, I guess, like restraining an animal in the vet's!!! I'd be there, but I couldn't stop myself from hissing and spitting!
OK... yes, I get that, too.
The whole reptilian brain thing, something primeval and a bit infantile, that just REACTS and you don't have any control over it.
Even when you feel like you should be able to control it.
It sounds like it was something that was forged very early on and for a very good reason, though. Protective. And that it kept sensing danger and didn't want to be dismantled... and it sounds like that was all a very sensible response.
If one approaches a situation whole, one is better able to fend things off. If one very carefully peels off bandages to expose a gaping wound, any little flying object is going to hurt... quite a lot.
And it really sounds like there was a lot of wounding, in a way that just can't be reasoned out of existence.
(I hope that makes sense... kind of all over the place.)
dlowan wrote:But....I guess the hard thing for me is that I had the skills to manage very difficult people's effect on me, generally, and I couldn't manage him, in a way that lets me feel ok about how I was with him. Or..I didn't want to......I feel like I was too lazy to...just didn't want to do it. I worry that doing it grudgingly was worse than not doing it at all????
I think it's natural, even for someone with your skills (which are learned and perhaps not all that natural) to want not to have to manage one's parents. I think you are entitled to your grudges, even though you'd rather not have them. Perhaps allowing yourself to feel the situation as a real and honest burden (one should not have to parent one's parents when they're still children) and allowing yourself to be honestly angry about that burden could allow you to let go of the guilt?
JPB wrote:dlowan wrote:But....I guess the hard thing for me is that I had the skills to manage very difficult people's effect on me, generally, and I couldn't manage him, in a way that lets me feel ok about how I was with him. Or..I didn't want to......I feel like I was too lazy to...just didn't want to do it. I worry that doing it grudgingly was worse than not doing it at all????
I think it's natural, even for someone with your skills (which are learned and perhaps not all that natural) to want not to have to manage one's parents. I think you are entitled to your grudges, even though you'd rather not have them. Perhaps allowing yourself to feel the situation as a real and honest burden (one should not have to parent one's parents when they're still children) and allowing yourself to be honestly angry about that burden could allow you to let go of the guilt?
I have certainly gone there....and it helped a lot.....but not quite the crux, or mebbe it is...hard to tell.
ossobuco wrote:Well, that was a good coherent post of years of guilt and non-connection. I completely emphathize. Oddly, it sort of reminds me of some of the tales of William Trevor.
I'll spout off an immediate mechanistic comment, but not really an explanation - that I've noticed with my own dreams over decades, and now dammit more decades, that the dreams often involve people of my past, not my present... though that occurs once in a while too. I've always felt this has some expurgating/cleanout function, re the brain, but it's interesting when the pattern seems to be on hold and I dream of the same person fairly often. That can be an angst causing person or a pleasure causing one, but the person keeps showing up.
On the psychological aspects of the complexity of your relationship - I'd be no real help there, unless saying it's a complex thing is itself in anyway useful.
My own parents died long ago. I think we've talked about this before at some point. What I am open to thinking about them changes with the years, even as a lot of data memory fades. I put myself in their slippers more easily now, and sometimes that can be crushingly sad.
Yes...it does become a lot easier to empathise as one gets older, doesn't it?
Actually, I have that to a limited extent with my mother, because I never knew her when I was adult, and that is sort of frustrating sometimes. The masks were starting to come off just before she got sick, though. She finally admitted that she was not christian, but agnostic, after years of trying to make me go to church!!!!!
Re: Nightmare father.....
I went back and reread your first post. Certain things jumped out at me...
dlowan wrote:My dad was a very traumatised fella.....and his mum at some point just gave up, and had to be looked after by the kids.
Skipping ahead one generation, who was looking after you?
dlowan wrote:This appears to have rendered him very uncomfortable with intimacy, unable to express affection once one got beyond early childhood
How are you with intimacy?
dlowan wrote:I was engaged from toddlerhood up as audience to his tales of all the terrible things that happened to him as a child...and they used to break my heart.
I think you're still paying the price of those tales and that heartbreak.
dlowan wrote: He was also very florid in his self recriminations...he believed himself responsible for everything bad that happened in the family
Are you carrying this torch?
dlowan wrote:When I was twelve, as often happens, my mother insisted that I choose between her and dad, by dint of becoming extremely angry with me when I said I thought she was being mean, and did the dummy spit thing about all his faults. I chose her, and had a period when I believed I hated my dad....I would feel physically ill being in the same room with him.
Is this the source of your guilt?
dlowan wrote:He contributed to that by his means of parenting. His belief was that you helped your children by endlessly pointing out to them their faults...and by endlessly, I mean hours of it, if I would stand still for it!!!
All that being said, he was a decent, intelligent man who did his absolute best. He was generous with his time, strongly supported my thirst for knowledge.......he was a competent and highly skilled person in his non-family life. He was creative and well respected out there. He had good friendships, and was a caring friend, despite his narcissism. He maintained interests and activities until well into his eighties. He was imaginative and meant to be kind.
Interesting that these two paragraphs came one after the other. This dualism is where I see the justified anger.
dlowan wrote:The nightmares are that he is alive again, and I am stuck in exactly the same situation, except that I often seem to be living in his house, which is a filthy mess. I have a home which I am longing to escape to....but which seems further and further away.
Often, my father is not there, and I am uncertain if he has moved, if he is ok. I STILL feel that pervading guilt and responsibility, but sometimes I am able to tell him how I feel and how angry I am that he won't help himself.
Deb, do you see yourself becoming your father?
I hear you, Deb...
Families can be difficult burdens. I mean the kind we put on ourselves. They are what makes in some ways. But then we, if we mean get a better outlook, need to take responsibility for who we become.
Your Father did the best he could with what he had.
Sounds like you know this.
You're right, it is about you and how you see yourself.
Accepting that you did the best that you could at the time you did it.
You may not be happy with how you responded back then.
Anger and guilt and love, combined is hard.
But you did what you could and finding forgiveness for you is as important as it was to understand and forgive him.
I understand. I might not be getting the words right...
Re: Nightmare father.....
JPB wrote:I went back and reread your first post. Certain things jumped out at me...
dlowan wrote:My dad was a very traumatised fella.....and his mum at some point just gave up, and had to be looked after by the kids.
Skipping ahead one generation, who was looking after you?
dlowan wrote:This appears to have rendered him very uncomfortable with intimacy, unable to express affection once one got beyond early childhood
How are you with intimacy?
dlowan wrote:I was engaged from toddlerhood up as audience to his tales of all the terrible things that happened to him as a child...and they used to break my heart.
I think you're still paying the price of those tales and that heartbreak.
dlowan wrote: He was also very florid in his self recriminations...he believed himself responsible for everything bad that happened in the family
Are you carrying this torch?
dlowan wrote:When I was twelve, as often happens, my mother insisted that I choose between her and dad, by dint of becoming extremely angry with me when I said I thought she was being mean, and did the dummy spit thing about all his faults. I chose her, and had a period when I believed I hated my dad....I would feel physically ill being in the same room with him.
Is this the source of your guilt?
dlowan wrote:He contributed to that by his means of parenting. His belief was that you helped your children by endlessly pointing out to them their faults...and by endlessly, I mean hours of it, if I would stand still for it!!!
All that being said, he was a decent, intelligent man who did his absolute best. He was generous with his time, strongly supported my thirst for knowledge.......he was a competent and highly skilled person in his non-family life. He was creative and well respected out there. He had good friendships, and was a caring friend, despite his narcissism. He maintained interests and activities until well into his eighties. He was imaginative and meant to be kind.
Interesting that these two paragraphs came one after the other. This dualism is where I see the justified anger.
dlowan wrote:The nightmares are that he is alive again, and I am stuck in exactly the same situation, except that I often seem to be living in his house, which is a filthy mess. I have a home which I am longing to escape to....but which seems further and further away.
Often, my father is not there, and I am uncertain if he has moved, if he is ok. I STILL feel that pervading guilt and responsibility, but sometimes I am able to tell him how I feel and how angry I am that he won't help himself.
Deb, do you see yourself becoming your father?
Most of those points are important, and ones I have had to deal with, or am dealing with, and true in parts, but are not really what I am wanting to help clarify in this thread.
I am very aware that two of the points you make are relevant, though
1. the sad stories thing is part of the current problem. He certainly trained me (unwittingly) to feel responsible for, and traumatised by, his misery, at a time when I was helpless to escape or do anything for him....and he modelled continuing to BE traumatised by things way in the past..(he carefully tended each stone of misery) and never reaching any healing or moving on.
2. Also the responsibility thing is one I have to struggle with.
Um ... not sure how to say this, but I'll give it a go anyway ...
I don't, personally, believe that dreams are literal, so I have doubts that the problem is your relationship with your father. I believe, but may be wrong, that dreams are a subconscious manifestation of current anxieties, or whatever. They may take on the colours of the past, because those images and sensory memories are buried deep, but strongly. The dreams, however, are likely to be interpretations of current problems that have some resonance of past experiences. In other words, if you're dreaming of conflicts with your father, I would suspect that it's because you have real fears of being trapped into a similar untenable situation, now or in the foreseeable future.
....
I could be wrong. It's just my 2 cents. ((hugs)) either way.
Quote:... I often seem to be living in his house... I have a home which I am longing to escape to....but which seems further and further away.
Ugh, I have dreams *exactly* like that -- it's weird to hear someone else describe it -- oh, uh, 'cept in
mine, your dad's usually not there-- but my mom makes a good substitute....Hey, I'll take over on your dad for a while if you'll do the nightmares about my mom, deal?
......I wish I had advice, but I can't figure out the triggers for mine, either... just sometimes there are bunches of them, sometimes even multiple times a night, and I wake up all tense and with jaws clenched for days at a time; then other times I go months without 'em... So mostly I'm just posting to say, boy, do I hear ya, and I'm going to read along and hope for insights too...
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