Hi liz,

I share some of what you have just said. My mother always made it clear to me how disappointed she was when I was born. I grew up being a failure time and time again. I started out failing to please the birth parent. She had a script for my brother and I. He got the 'goodie' part and I failed to play my 'baddie' part but I was still the scapegoat. I used to long for a mother's love. By the time I was twelve the hoping for something I would never have became too much. I gave up hope she would ever come to love me. I went through a period of grieving then. When I came out of it I felt as if I was living with a stranger. When she actually died I was never able to grieve for her. I felt as if I grew up without a mother. I find being a mother extremely difficult.  I had no role model.

I used to look for love elsewhere. I couldn't cope with her constant disapproval. When I achieved anything and wanted to share it, she said, 'you're doing too much. You'll get tired/make yourself ill'. There was no joy around her. I realised when I was a teenager that I was looking for 'care' elsewhere and that made me in danger of exploitation. And that if anything happened I would get the blame and be saddled with the guilt. The alternative was total isolation which still causes me to 'shut down' physically and mentally even now. When I get the worst triggers it's as if it's still happening.

I accidentally came across a web site about reactive attatchment disorder a few years ago. I found it very enlightening. It was about what happens to children who are neglected by mothers when they have been abandoned and don't have a female primary care giver substitute. Although it didn't deal with abusive/neglectful mothers I believe the same condition occurs but the symptoms may be less extreme. It talked about children attempting to bond with strangers. I recognised when I read the list of symptoms that I had many of them as a teenager, probably still do. As I read the list of symptoms I remembered a child at my daughter's school. I was waiting outside the school for my five-year old to emerge. A girl of about six who my daughter and I didn't know walked up to me and wrapped her arms around me for a hug. I hugged her back because she obviously needed it. I saw her do this to other mothers many times. We got used to it but thought it was very odd.

If you think it might help you trying putting 'reactive attachment disorder' into a search engine. I think it might at least validate what you are feeling right now.

Thinking of you,

ouch