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In reply to the discussion: Spanking Child With Wooden Spoon Not Child Abuse, Says State Court [View all]Manifestor_of_Light
(21,046 posts)Because Mom is a hoarder, you can't invite your friends over, you can't have birthday parties with school kids, or sleepovers. I could not do any of those things. I shared a bedroom with my sister because one bedroom was full of her junk (crappy un-air conditioned 3 brm house) Mom would tell me I was lazy when I wouldn't do chores, but I wasn't allowed to throw anything away. The house was dusty and we had rats and roaches.
I also had no spending money. I begged for an allowance but never got one. I was told, "We buy you anything you need." I even cut articles out of the paper saying "Psychologists say giving kids an allowance helps teach them financial responsibility." That was an appeal to authority.
Then they'd get mad because they thought I couldn't handle money. They also wondered why I married men who were verbally abusive, but they never told me to stand up to negative men, and stop going out with them. I was a doormat because they wanted to control me.
Mom was a hoarder and I couldn't clean out her house until she died. We took her to a psychiatrist and he told her she wouldn't live long enough to clean her house. She yelled at him and he told her to stop interrupting him!!! We were trying to detox her from her trank addiction. She was busy sleeping her life away and complaining about how she was too busy to do things. Hadn't worked outside the home since 1947.
We once cleaned out some stuff and she came outside and growled at me. She was so stressed out that she dissociated into another personality, and we did not realize it until a few months later.
In my adult life I have felt powerless due to abusive and irrational bosses, and always felt like they were threatened because I had a lot of education (three college degrees including a J.D.).
I thought I would be rewarded with good jobs because of my education and competence & perfectionism. It's about knowing the right people, or maybe bribing them. I don't know. I never had a boss who encouraged me in any way or praised me. If I did something right I would probably get punished
or scolded, since corporate America is Bizarro World.