Messages By: hgquinn

This is the second time I've watched this show.  When I first watched it, Susan's frowning face seemed angry, closed and hostile, to me.  Now that I'm seeing it for the second time, I see it's mostly hurt and scared, with anger surfacing when Susan's former classmate denies remembering bullying Susan.  When the former classmate lies like that, she's again viticmizing Susan, trying to convince the audience and Dr. Phil (at Susan's expense) that Susan was too sensitive, paranoid, or remembers wrong.  No wonder Susan gets angry, as this woman is still playing the same game, it's just more adult and subtle now! 

Anyway, it's interesting how my perspective changed.  Hurt and fear can look a lot like hostility, on the surface.  I know a lot of people perceive me as hostile and arrogant, but what I usually am is hurt and afraid!

 I cannot agree with you more. 

The parents are all-powerful, and the kids are completely at their mercy until the kids are 14 or so.

I too was singled out by my Mom, who also used a "drama" excuse, as well as many other excuses, to justify her behavior towards me to others.  My Dad saved me from worse abuse, but also didn't put a stop to it 100%, and did his own abuse, which was mostly physical and very dry, and somehow easier to take than the more emotional abuse that my  mother did.   When I was growing up, people turned their heads away from abuse, rather than step in and stop it.   One night, at a dinner party my parents were having, my Mom reached across the table and poured a fresh pot of boiling coffee on my legs.    My parents' friends left pretty quickly, and the cops were not called.  I was lucky that two people, who were nurses, stayed and cared for my burns.  My parents set of friends dwinded down to 3 or 4 people, by the time I was 5 or so, because of my Mom's behavior.  No one on the outside stepped in to stop it or tell my Mom and Dad that this was wrong, they just stayed away, so there was no buffer, and the pressure on my Mom, and her sense of guilt, must have been massive, and her behavior was only kept in control by my Dad.

Until she lost her ability to speak in her early 80's, my Mom was still using verbal abuse towards me.   It wasn't until after she lost her speaking ability that I began to feel free to question what she had done and why.  The thing I wanted most then was to be able to ask her why, and have her give me an answer or apology, but by then it was too late. 

Thanks to Dr. Phil, who I catch whenever I can, I am learning that this behavior was not my fault, and should not be my shame.  I only wish Dr. Phil had been on the air 20 years ago, maybe I'd have grown enough to be able to question my Mom before she became so old.

My younger sister lives the life of a mentally ill person.  Although she wasn't abused as much as I was, she was neglected.  In her adult years, she came to pick up many of my Mom's bullying ways, and now makes others suffer whenever she can, thinking it's OK because her mother did it, and also, who's to stop her.  I speak up about her behavior.   Some people say I'm too blunt, but I'd rather tell the truth and have abuse stop, then be nice and polite and allow it to continue.  Thank goodness her life has prevented her from having kids, as I'm sure she would have continued the cycle of abuse. 

My older sister is mostly a pretty nice person, but she can be a bully, too.  When I was a kid, she blamed me for every wrong thing she did, and I got punished for her.  She still falls into that kind of sneaky bullying, and loves to pretend she's better than she is as a person, and take the moral high ground to beat up on others socially.  She also used to jump me and beat me up regularly, for no reason.  I used to think my parents were fooled by her blaming and beating me up, that they didn't see it somehow, but now I think they can't have been that oblivious, that they allowed her to act that way because it fit in with their own patterns and made them feel less strange about themselves.  My older sister verbally bullies her husband, who accepts it because he was target number one in his own family, as I was,  and he sees her behavior as normal, cause it's like his Mom was.  I speak to him sometimes to let him know I see what's up, but he takes it as my criticizing my sister rather than what I'm really doing, which is aknowledging his suffering and empathizng with his pain. He's not facing that this is wrong, and that his life could be different.  It's often hard for people to face the fact that they are being abused, because they take responsibility for it and feel ashamed.  I was that way myself for decades, defending my parent's behavior and ciritizing myself, except in my most private moments, when I'd rage about what was going on.

Being the daughter of an abusive mother, I am thankful that my reaction to my Mom's treatment of me was horror, so I was able to break the cycle of abuse, and bring up a strong, wonderful son without any negative behaviors from me towards him, and no negative behaviors in him towards other people.