Here to understand myself better

[jthortist]

Hi,
I’m here to better understand what it was I went through as a kid and honestly the generational trauma that just about everyone in my family is dealing with. I have for many years tried to find the words for the complicated relationship my mom and I have, and it wasn’t until I discovered the term covert incest that something made sense.

My mom was a single mom, and she was a victim of overt invest herself as a child, as well as a lot of other abuse (sexual, physical, and emotional) for a good chunk of her life. As a result she really struggles with normal, healthy relationships with anyone. She just has no sense of boundaries, and I hesitate to say she’s a tad narcissistic, because she is a caring and good person, but she has some of those tendencies. I love my mom, and I don’t want to end my relationship with her, but I want healthy boundaries. Hoping I can learn things here from people who understand what it was like to grow up this way.

[aname]

Not sure I really know enough about what I'm talking about, but I looked through the history of this forum and I saw a bunch of posts without responses so I figure my response probably won't be worse than no response. Hopefully, at least.

I'm not sure my stuff ""counts"" as covert abuse or if looking deeper I'd find out it was overt or counts as something else but.

I read up til very close to the end of this post and thought you might have even been one of my siblings. My mother was also a victim of overt incest, and it looks like there was a history of abuse just throughout my family, and now I'm very disconnected from almost everyone in the family due to connecting family members being abusive.


I think, if I'm reading your post right, that you feel enmeshed/etc with your mother, right? But you're conflicted about labelling it because, after all, she was a victim of overt abuse. Maybe there's some like mental use of the word "real" which is making it hard too. And it almost seems like there's a part of you making excuses like "well, how could she know any better, after all, she was a victim of overt abuse" (sorry if I'm way misreading you, some of this may just be me projecting)

I found out about my mom's history when she tried to kill herself. And then I later found out my father overtly abused another child, when that child came forward and he got arrested. I don't feel that my mom really ever had inappropriately lax or missing boundaries with us, and if I'm concerned about stuff it's all stemming from him.

But my mom did a really good job teaching boundaries and respecting them. She taught me to tell her any time someone touched me and I didn't like it, and when I came to her with "innocuous" touches she didn't yell at me, she helped me either make sure it didn't happen again or like process it and comfort me and stuff. (A lot of it was genuinely innocuous like other kids stroking my hair without asking and stuff) My father didn't really try to touch me very much, but her warning just happened to not cover the way he talked to me and about me. (They were divorced and the custody situation was strained) Sometimes I'd make a joke or say something based on the way my father would talk to me (where she couldn't hear ofc) and my mom would firmly shut it down and not go with it, and at the time a part of me was deeply ashamed for having said it but a part of me was also relieved that she did stop it and I didn't have to actually talk/listen about the thing.

So yeah, she did a pretty good job trying to teach my how to have boundaries.

So I guess all that to say: I don't think your mother being also a survivor/victim means she couldn't have figured it out at some point. And thatss also not a good reason for you to stay quiet and just put up with an ongoing lack of boundaries now. You deserve to be able to safely create your own boundaries and have them respected. Maybe she's just a good person and she's not prepped to have a healthy relationship with you right now, but I still think the kindest thing for you to do now-- kindest to yourself short and long term AND kindest to her, assuming she doesn't want to hurt you, would be to work towards that. Probably with professional help, but also like self research and practicing with boundaries in other situations.

I've gotten a lot of insight from the captain awkward blog, which answers write-in questions, and it goes into detail about how to create boundaries and how to communicate and enforce them. They do kinda general relationship/friendship advice which spans a wide range of questions-- dating advice, how to communicate a boundary, red flags, and answers about abuse and stuff too. I've found a lot of other advice blogs/columns inconsistent in their advice quality, but captain awkward is consistently great, although I don't know if they would be equipped for a question like this if you wrote in, and they have so many questions they don't get to probably 95%+ bc it's just too many. But other questions about boundaries and what are normal boundaries and normal ways to communicate them would definitely apply. It was super helpful to me for sure.

And I say up there that I think it would be kindest to her as well to learn how to have boundaries, get help, work on healing. That's not even to say that you SHOULD be concerned about her, only that if you are, it's still a good reason to try to detach and heal.

[leeanon]

Hi this is Lee, and this is my first time on this pro board.  It felt really good to read both of your posts.  I am a 54 year-old woman and a mother and a grand-aunt, and I’m just coming to terms with the covert incest I experienced with my dad.  I mean I always knew, but I think I have been waiting to have a memory of him violating me physically.  So when I read about covert incest a few months ago, I felt hopeful.  Anyway, I just wanted to say hi and introduce myself.  Do you know if there are any support groups for survivors of covert incest?  Wishing you both healing!  -Lee

[aname]

Sept 19, 2020 17:47:56 GMT -8 leeanon said:

Hi this is Lee, and this is my first time on this pro board.  It felt really good to read both of your posts.  I am a 54 year-old woman and a mother and a grand-aunt, and I’m just coming to terms with the covert incest I experienced with my dad.  I mean I always knew, but I think I have been waiting to have a memory of him violating me physically.  So when I read about covert incest a few months ago, I felt hopeful.  Anyway, I just wanted to say hi and introduce myself.  Do you know if there are any support groups for survivors of covert incest?  Wishing you both healing!  -Lee

Hi Lee 💚 I am uhh probably very early on my journey to understanding myself here so I do not know about any survivors support groups-- the closest I know about is this forum.